What's Jappening?

So this is a bit of a strange one. Since coming to Japan, I've obviously noticed a whole bunch of differences between here and old blighty. Some of them were to be expected, such as the food, some of them were a surprise, such as how cheap eating out is, some of them were not a big deal, such as the train/subway system, and some of them were totally random and unimportant and yet somehow completely threw me. This is a post about one of those things. Now the majority of the eastern world uses the Roman alphabet (a, b, c...) and whilst the order of these 26 letters is fairly arbitrary, we never really think about it. It also makes sense that the vowels follow the same alphabetical order. Now Japan doesn't use the Roman alphabet. Instead, it uses Kanji (Chinese characters representing words), Hiragana (a set of 46 syllables, or sounds, used to construct words), and Katakana (the same 46 syllables but with different characters, mostly used for foreign words). Hiragana and Katak...

Existential questions aside, this is something I've been thinking about for quite a while now. Obviously, I'm studying abroad, so that would suggest that I should be focusing on my classes whilst I am here. But it's not quite so simple. My friends and family, myself and the wider realm of the internet have all told me that there is more to it than that. I should not only be studying, I should be making friends, learning about the culture, learning the language, travelling (both in and out of Japan), trying new foods, going to local events, visiting galleries and museums, the list goes on. The thing is, as much as I really want to do all of those things, I don't think I can. As I'm sure many of you reading this will know, I have Aspergers, and one of the characteristics of that is that I find most situations more difficult than the average person, for a number of reasons. The two main ones being that: a) I have sensory difficulties, meaning that my senses are much...

It's no secret that I don't exactly blend in here in Japan. My relatively different appearance has earned me many a comment, but there's one that keeps popping up time and time again. かわいい. Pronounced 'kawaii', this word is usually translated to mean 'cute'. Now the word 'cute' in english has two meanings; cute like a puppy and cute like Zac Efron, neither of which are descriptions I would usually assign to myself. Being generally larger than most of the people I've met here, I can't be seen as cute like a puppy, and I highly doubt everyone's been hitting on me. So what's the deal? Well, just like how the word 'cute' has many meanings in English, so does the word 'kawaii' in Japanese. The first and foremost meaning of 'kawaii' is something that is cute, small, and generally makes you want to make high pitched noises and squeeze something. The second meaning is a little more subtle and is generally used to...