I've been back in the UK for about four months now. In some ways, it feels like I never left. I got rid of the habit of bowing, and I don't find it weird that trains are cancelled at random. I get stuck when I try to speak Japanese, and an inarticulate stream of nonsense syllables comes out instead. I miss a lot of things about it, and there are parts of living in the UK that frustrate me now. But let's do something positive and talk about 5 things I love and appreciate now that I'm back in the UK:
The wealth of food available - When I was in Japan, and people asked me what I missed about the UK, my mind always jumped to food first. There were a lot of individual things that I missed - sausage rolls, English breakfasts, parsnips, sausage rolls - but the whole picture was the most important thing for me. Apart from the US, I'm not sure the UK can be beaten for the sheer variety of what you can buy in the supermarket. There are some upsides to the more limited, focused approach of the Japanese supermarket - the fruit and vegetables always tend to be seasonal, for example, which provides you with a smug sense of being in tune with nature - but overall it could be pretty frustrating to walk into a Japanese supermarket and find entire aisles dedicated to ramen, but pretty much zero non-Japanese food apart from the token packets of spaghetti i.e. Italian ramen. Import stores exist, but are expensive and limited. Part of me dislikes the talons of the big supermarket chains and the way they slowly crush the British high street, but another part of me loves that I can buy nam pla, ras el hanout and marshmallow Fluff all in the same place. (Funnily enough, if you combine those three ingredients, you get my favourite midnight snack.)
No weird bugs - you don't think of Japan as a tropical place, really. But make no mistake, it's in the geographical zone of Weird Bugs and Insect Horror. I've had far too many "what the hell is THAT" moments in Japan. Why does it have fur? Why does it move like that? Can it fly? Why is it eating my quiche?
Weather - this might seem like a weird one. Most people don't think of British weather as a plus, especially at this time of year. But to be honest, I love overcast weather. It makes things feel still and peaceful to me, and I guess gives me an odd sense of beginning-of-the-school-year nostalgia. I like that the leaves get wet and muddy and all clump together and make you tread carefully, so your autumn walks automatically become a little slower and more contemplative. I like the slow trends of temperature, not flashing straight from one season to the next but meandering back and forth. I like the contradictions; that warm sun can fall on frost and rain can fall six or seven times in a day without the pavement ever really getting wet. Plus, no horribly sticky summer.
Hearing different languages on the street - okay, some people don't like this one. Some people *really* don't like this one, as anyone who's kept up with the news this year could tell you. But I get excited walking down from Brighton station through the centre and hearing Spanish, then Chinese, then Korean, then Polish amongst all the English. For starters, my ears are still not quite used to being able to automatically understand most of the people around me, and it kind of hurts overhearing everyone at once, so it's a relief not to understand all of it. And it's just fun to me. Hearing other worlds interacting with your own is cool. Meeting people from other places is cool. It makes me want to learn every language in the world, even the ones that are of no use to me. That's a specific kind of energy I found missing in Japan.
Being able to engage with employees - Japan is well-known for its strong hospitality culture. People say the service is the best in the world. And that's....sort of true. Service staff always look happy to see you, they're always super-polite, and they always come running when you need them. The issue is that they will do everything they possibly can for you, so long as you are doing things in the specific way they expect you to. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going round Japan asking waiters to put caramel sauce on my gyoza or demanding they only talk to me in rhyme. I'm not a demanding customer. But do something like ask for more than one sandwich or tell a hotel employee you'd rather walk to a certain place rather than get a taxi, and they will look at you like you've got two heads. It's like the whole tree of events has broken down in their minds, and they're not sure what crazy thing this weird foreigner's going to do next. Is it time to get the manager? Is this maniac going to get a gun out and start shooting at the ceilings? It's so nice just to be able to ask for a second sachet of ketchup, or a doggy-bag for your leftover dessert, and to have your needs instantly understood without feeling like any request is breaking The Unspoken Rules.
So that's five things I love about being here. Don't worry, I hate things too.
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