August 3, 2006

I have officially been living in Nagoya for a month… I have been in Japan for approximately 4 months. The time here seems to be creeping by at a steady pace. Not exactly fast, but definitely not slow. In 4 months I’ve had three jobs, owned two apartments, amassed a small fortune in credit card and student loan bills, and for some reason unknown to me managed to add a year to my life.
Its true. I’m 24, but recently I suffered under the belief that I was twenty five. I told countless students that I was 25. Often times they didn’t believe me. I believed me, but one day one of my students… actually a week ago today, asked my birthday and we realized that we shared the same birthday. He was 26 and I 25. We were thrilled until he started to do some very simple math and realized that I simply could not be 25. 24, he concluded and then proceeded to question if I was entirely sure of the year in which I was born. I took it all in stride, but could feel a considerable amount of my credibility as a teacher slipping through my fingers.
When I explained the situation to my mother she replied in her best motherly fashion that I have simply been under a lot of stress, a conclusion that I find quite easy to accept. While accepting her theory I have also created one of my own. Several of my students often comment that I look like I’m in my early thirties. For Japanese people that isn’t odd because every one here looks extremely young. SO telling the age of a foreigner is not a skill that I expect them to have developed in great detail. Still, I’ve been told I look thirty so many times that I think I subconsciously began to add days and months to my life to eventually get my age to match what people are seeing.

I look old… very old. I’m 24 but appear thirty. I’m starting to see how plastic surgery can appear appealing to people. I want to be young forever damn it or at least young when I should be. I think the difference in people’s actual age and the age they are perceived to be is what makes people lay willingly under the surgeons knife. Japan is gonna make me buy all kinds of look young creams and shit next time I go home. Which once again may be around Christmas. My friend who moved to Okinawa quit his job after a day and returned swiftly to the mainland. Eventually he will come to Nagoya for a while and then proceed back to the US. What will he do ? I don’t know, but I’m glad to help. He did let me crash his place for almost a month after I lost my job.
That’s one reason why I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to have to recount the details of me losing my job to my family repeatedly . Maybe they won’t ask… immediately . Eventually I know they will. Who am I fooling. I’m not going home at Christmas. It would simply be too expensive. The trip alone would probably drain my meager resources. I don’t even want to get into my innate desire to buy stuff.
Shit. Christmas would wreck my plastic surgery fund. I will of course do things to naturally regain my youth. Exercise and shit. But I think a happy bitch is gonna need a facelift.