being alone
I’ve never lived alone before, and I knew it was going to be a difficult transition, but I suppose I didn’t know exactly how it was really going to go or how exactly I was going to feel. It’s a bit strange to be honest. I’ve always identified myself as an introvert, despite happily organizing events, having no problem talking to strangers, and having the ability to be quite energetic in a group setting (totally depends on the group). When my social interaction bar fills up, I find myself desperate to escape, craving comfort and familiarity in my own space. Socializing is vitally important to my mental health, but I find that negative social interactions are far more draining than no social interactions. Without the same consistency and familiarity now as I had especially back in San Francisco, I’m left both craving more social activity yet feeling unmotivated to engage in communities that I know I can, but just don’t scratch that same itch.
My very severe procrastination mentality also doesn’t help in my current, highly unstructured lifestyle. I wake up with a set of tasks that I want to accomplish for the day, but without a strict externally imposed schedule, I end up pushing things off out of laziness, which ends up snowballing into accomplishing nothing. For example, I’ve been wanting to work out very early in the morning in order to set myself up for work and studying. I’ve actually been able to consistently wake up early enough to do it, but when I wake up at 5 am, I look outside my window and it’s dark, my body is tired and achey, and all I want to do is continue laying in bed. I’ll pull out my phone and watch “a” Youtube video, and after the sun rises, I’ll tell myself one more video, it’s still so early…until it’s no longer early and I don’t have enough time before class to accomplish all my grand plans for the day. There have been times in my life where I ban Youtube for myself and it actually helps my productivity, but sometimes my brain and my body are so exhausted from the day that I just want to decompress (and get that dopamine hit). I guess it’s really good that I’m writing this blog post because I’m starting to recognize that despite not doing drugs or alcohol, I absolutely have an addiction, and I need to get off of it to turn my life around.
I’m not going to be too hard on myself, because I have been keeping up with my triathlon training - I’m making noticeable improvements week-by-week, and I even ran my first 10K on Friday! I’ve been able to make progress on work, I’m definitely doing stuff with people almost every day, and I’m slowly correcting my sleep. Often when I’m procrastinating work I’ll end up cleaning my apartment, which again, is a completely different me than past me’s. However, I completely recognize that when there aren’t any scheduled tasks, I’ll end up wasting so much time, and then I’ll tell myself an excuse and claim I’ll do better tomorrow, which doesn’t really end up happening. I think this is going to be the biggest area of growth for me now - can I stick to a pre-planned schedule derived from my own willpower that has no consequences other than my own future disappointment? Can I avoid watching Youtube when I’m feeling tired and lazy? Stay tuned…
On Saturday, I dragged Steven to my tri club’s OWS practice down in Hayama Bay, 2 hours south of where I live. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but I’ve been considering moving out of Tokyo in hopes of fast-tracking my Permanent Residency application, and it doesn’t hurt to save a bit of money on rent. Another reason is actually so I don’t have to commute 2 hours to go to swim practice - when I tell people this, they often react with, “wow, you’re taking triathlon training so seriously!” It was very weird for me to respond to because it feels like the implication is I’m going to go pro or something, which is not even remotely on my radar. I think I actually just want to escape from the city and have easier access to doing outdoor activities. I think San Francisco was really a perfect city for me in that regard - it wasn’t so dense that I felt like I was in a concrete box and I could actually see and smell nature still, but it was dense enough that I could run all my errands by foot or bike. As another example, despite being pretty inaccessible to center Tokyo, I really missed life in Musashi-Koyama. When I wake up in my apartment in Takadanobaba, I don’t feel any motivation to go outside, but I definitely felt that back in Musashi-Koyama. I don’t want to identify as an outdoorsy person because I feel like that sets up the wrong expectations for me as a person, I’m just really not a big city person either, is what I’ve learned.
So, the train that goes from Tokyo to swim practice passes through all the areas I wanted to scope out to see if I’d enjoy living in - Kawasaki (just on the border of Tokyo), Yokohama (biggest city in Kanagawa prefecture, lots of foreigners and things to do), Kamakura (huge tourist destination, wasn’t actually on my radar but the train passed through it and I’m always trying to keep an open-mind), and finally Zushi (beach town, also wasn’t really on my radar because too small and too far). We ended up visiting these 4 spots in reverse order, since swim practice was at 9:30 am so we went to Hayama first and worked our way back up (we didn’t end up swimming with the club anyways and just goofed around for an hour).
There was definitely a huge bias here because the sun was hitting the town in the most beautiful way after departing from gloomy Tokyo, but Zushi just seemed like the most perfect little spot. There was a lot of activity around the train station - a great selection of restaurants and stores, streets that were full of people walking but not too crowded at all, a river with a nice path alongside it, local streets with only the occasional car driving through. I told Steven it kind of reminded me of Noe Valley, the neighborhood in San Francisco we both used to live in. The few encounters we had with people in town (at the restaurant and train station) were extremely nice. I did not expect to like it as much as I did to be honest, and in fact, I think I liked it so much I got a little sad, because I know there would be basically no foreigner community here, and as isolated as I am right now, it would be so much worse over there. I was really eyeing Yokohama and Kawasaki though, so we continued on our journey.
Kamakura was really just too full of tourists, everything around the train station was a touristy restaurant, it was way too crowded. No way I was going to live there. Next up was Yokohama, which had a pretty cool vibe, but it just reminded me way too much of Tokyo. I was definitely having an instant negative gut reaction towards the city-ness - concrete towers and flashing lights. I could at least see a world in which I’d live in Zushi, but if I wanted to meet up with foreigners, I could always go up to Yokohama - it’s only 30 minutes away. But I had my taste of city living in Takadanobaba and find myself severely underutilizing whatever potential local community I could have here. Now that I have the most freedom I’ve ever had and maybe ever will in my life (no partner, no existing community, no in-person office or school requirements), I should try the life that I’m genuinely excited about. Finally, we visited Kawasaki, which I was hoping to fall in love with because it’s so close to Tokyo. It lies along the Tama river, which is known to be great to bike along. But it was not my vibe at all. It reminded me of the US, but not really in a good way (it’s also home to the only Costco around Tokyo which is a huge plus, but…). Cars galore - the widest streets I’ve seen in the Tokyo area with very sparse crosswalks, making it very inconvenient to walk around. Tall buildings towering everywhere and few people walking on the streets. Even walking along the river was pretty annoying because the path was way too narrow for both pedestrians and bikes. It felt modern, but also quite sterile, like the city suddenly sprung up out of a huge housing demand from an influx of Tokyo workers who didn’t want to pay Tokyo rent.
For what it’s worth, I only explored a few blocks out of the station for each city, but I want to live as close to the station as possible for relatively easy access back to Tokyo. Time-wise, in theory the closer to Tokyo I live, the wider my search could be for the same amount of time, but needing to change trains or walk/bike then change to the train is more annoying than finding a seat and hanging out there for an hour, where I can read peacefully and stuff. The other consideration I had was with the money I save living far from Tokyo, if I do need to stay in Tokyo overnight and there isn’t a place I can crash, or I have friends visiting and they don’t want to stay in the middle of nowhere, I’d feel less guilty about booking a hotel room for a weekend and such. That’s also pretty fun and exciting for me because I can try out different hotels and areas in Tokyo.
Anyways, I’ve been starting to picture my life in Zushi more and more, but I’m fully recognizing that I need to solve my social isolation problem. I’m very curious to see if over the next little while, once I start developing more self-directed, self-scheduled habits and hobbies, there’s a chance I might just be okay. Seems hard to believe at the moment, but it seems like figuring out the answer once-and-for-all is more important than giving up and going back to what’s comfortable and familiar, at least for now. I think the comfort and familiarity of the US will likely still be there for a while, but I think I’d regret not taking this opportunity to really challenge myself and grow in ways that I think I’ve always wanted to.