Why?

I often wonder why I'm over here in Japan. Driving home from the city to my tiny village this morning I once again asked myself this question. On the weekends I try to go to the city to hang out with my friends. These people are usually Japanese because most of the foreigners here are not people I care to hang out with. This weekend I went to an izakaiya (food and alcohol bar with little private rooms). It was fun, but unless I hang out with other foreigners, I usually have no place to sleep. I never go with a plan for that sort of thing. I usually end up stumbling back to my car on the 3rd floor of a parking garage and sleep there. My car is actually quite comfortable and I'm paying 1400円 for parking anyway, why pay an extra 3500円 for a capsule hotel too?

All of this is fine and I love my excursions to the city, but every Sunday morning when I wake up in my car by myself I sort of wonder... why? What the hell am I doing here? It's the strangest range of feelings. When I'm with people, it's amazing how nice everyone is and patient with me as we talk in broken english and japanese. Other times I feel like I crash landed on Mars and I'm E.T.

I am just ranting and I'm not a poet or creative writer so I can't fully capture the feeling in words. Today that feeling was particularly strong so I felt the need to write about it.

This is video of the people I typically hang out with on Sunday nights. Maybe you can get some sense of what I mean from it, but probably not.