Book About Japan

Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 7:40pm
So, as some of you may or may not know, I am working on a book about my life in Japan. Considering the levels of racism, harassment, and simply bad experiences here, I feel that I need to step back and look at them. And I have been. Writing this book has reminded me that not all of my experiences have been total shit, but a lot of stuff recently, including exchange students, death threats, and people simply abandoning our friendship because of silly rumors, has impacted me a lot. You know, when you go from having over 50 people that you can talk to (even if you don't consider them all your friends), multiple parties to go to during the week, and just having a fantastic time -to- a couple of friends, no parties, and having people come up to you between classes threatening to kill you, with all of this happening over the course of a couple of days... it really messes with you.

I have a rough draft mostly finished (since I am still in Japan, I can't be completely finished yet). I am working on writing the full story now, which I will send off once I get back to America.

The biggest problems have been coming up with new names for people, since I don't want to be an asshole and ruin their lives, even if they messed mine up pretty badly, and remembering everything that I want to write about. For example, after I finished my rough draft, I went through it and read it, remembering things like Yukata Matsuri and whatnot, which I had forgotten. And I do write about a lot of stupid stuff that I do. At this point, I feel that me staying in Japan for this long is a bit stupid, but I am pretty stubborn and want to try to tough it out a little bit longer. I know my family wants me to come home though, so I am thinking about when I might want to leave.

I hope to be finished with it by this time next year, but who knows how things will go. Right now, the book is going to cover my life from August 2007 - whenever I leave Japan.

The most common question I seem to get is, "Why are people threatening to kill you? What did you do?" I would imagine it has to do with the rumors/lies, but otherwise, I don't know. So stop asking that.