I’m in Japan as you know already, and life is great here; got lots of good friends, got a nice apartment near the university, have enough money to survive, etc… In other words, so far so good. If you were to ask me, I would say that this country is just awesome. Some stuff could be better of course, but… it’s awesome still. Yet, even though life is so much fun… there are a couple of things that make me regret the fact I ever came here.

One of the things I regret… are weddings. No, I’m not getting married or anything, and there’re no plans for that… at least not for now that is (don’t worry mom, I’m just teasing you a bit ). But, since I came here, I’ve already missed five weddings of friends/relatives. It’s like… everybody was just waiting for me to leave, so that they could get married once and for all or something. It’s not like it’s such a big deal or anything to miss 5 or 10 weddings while I’m here, but it would’ve been nice to share those moments with family and friends on such unique occasions you know? Those moments will never come back… and I just missed them.

There are many other things I regret… failing the entrance exam the first time, not being able to see or talk with my family and friends in my country, etc… But probably the one I regret the most is not having been able to be at my grandpa’s funeral. It’s been almost one year since that day… and I still haven’t paid my respects. With all that was going on with the entrance exams and the high price of the plane tickets, I just couldn’t afford to go… and still can’t. My grandpa was a very special person to me… He would often complain about things, like most old men do, but would always help you if you asked him. Harsh… but gentle, that’s probably the best way to describe him. Yet, for such a person who helped me and taught me so much, I still haven’t gone to his grave even once… as if I was being oblivious to his death.

There are so many words I wish I had said… so many things I wish I had done… so many moments I wish I could’ve shared… and I just couldn’t… Will God ever forgive such impotence?

Even so… after one whole year… I still remember you grandpa… in every single day… and every single smile. Even though you are no longer around… I’ll make sure I make it up to you somehow… someday… I promise.

In the next few days (hopefully), I’ll be doing some maintenance on the blog (removing stuff, adding stuff, etc…), especially on the photos section.

You might have noticed that if you go to the Photos page there’s several photo pages missing. Also, some photo pages have no pictures at all because my previous online storage service, MediaMax, changed its service from free storage to monthly paid (first was extremely bad service and now this… damn you bastards!! DAMN YOU!!!).

I’ve managed to upload several picture sets to Flickr instead (thank God I switched before it was too late… friggin’ MediaMax bastards ), but there’s still lots of stuff to do. There are even some pictures I won’t be able to reupload because I don’t have a backup of them at the moment (Screw you MEDIAMAX!!!!).

Best way to learn Photoshop ever!!

http://www.mydamnchannel.com/Big_Fat_Brain/You_Suck_at_Photoshop__Season_1/YouSuckatPhotoshop1_398.aspx

I personally like numbers 3 and 4.

Hope you don’t suck too much at Photoshop anymore after watching this

I have always had a problem ever since I was in high school, for some reason I always woke up extremely tired and feeling like my head would blow anytime.

The consequences were that I would always end up sleeping in the middle of classes, even when I was sitting in the front of the whole class so the teachers could even see me clearly, and most of my ex-classmates can account for that, they called it “falling into trance“.

So, I spent the rest of my high school life, university life and even professional life falling into unexpected trances every once in a while. Nobody really complained that much since my grades were really good and my performance in work was actually pretty good.

Also, I felt I couldn’t think properly and had problems to concentrate properly while studying or having conversations.

Sometimes I even felt like life was a complete pain because of this. I wasn’t feeling depressed or anything at all but certainly I wasn’t the happiest person in the world.

So It Got Even Worse…

The situation worsened when I got a job at one of these computer technical support call centers (that job was hell itself, if you have the opportunity to work in a call center just do it if you are enough a masochist). With completely irregular schedules that changed every month and having to work until 1:00 or 2:00 am I was feeling like crap even more. The situation continued even after I quit working at that hellhole.

Then I came to Japan, and I noticed that, even though I wasn’t feeling homesick or anything, I was feeling like crap even more and it looked like this would just get worse over the time and I didn’t know why.

The Quest for the Solution

Since something was definitely wrong I decided to try to do something about it, so I visited many web sites that talked about the same problem and how to solve it; none of them worked.

I continued trying stuff by myself and finally found something that worked for me, now I wake up feeling much better. Since I tried doing a lot of stuff gradually, I don’t know exactly what were the necessary steps to achieve this, but it definitely worked for me and now I share this with you.

Most of the sites I visited said stuff about quitting smoking or drinking alcohol. I don’t smoke nor drink so these didn’t apply to my case and therefore I can’t say whether these two factors affect this condition or not, but if you do everything I did and still feel like dying probably you should quit it as well just in case.

Experiment #1: Change Your Pillow

One of the very first things I bought in Japan was a pillow, since my dorm didn’t provide any. I thought it was a nice comfortable pillow (and kind of expensive as well), but after a while I noticed I was waking up with this horrible pain in the back of the head sometimes. I changed the pillow and the pain disappeared.

• Results: Completely effective in reducing pain in the neck and the head. I still kept feeling like total crap, but without so much pain.

Experiment #2: Don’t let Sunlight Get in Your Room

The room at my dorm was OK, except for the fact that at mornings too much sunlight gets in and I always woke up because of that. That’s alright if you want to get up early I guess, but if you want to sleep a lot because you are damn tired it is just annoying.

The curtains of my room were so crappy that a lot of sunlight could still get through them. A while back ago I got a much better set of curtains from a friend of mine. Now I can sleep until whatever time I feel like without interruptions.

• Results: A good idea if sun is always interrupting your sleep. I still kept feeling like crap, but for less time a day since now I could sleep longer.

Experiment #3: Avoid Coffee and Soft Drinks

This is one that is always being mentioned in other sites that talk about this. That caffeine interrupts your sleep and that, besides coffee, a lot of soft drinks contain huge amounts of caffeine, etc etc.

I was never too much of a coffee drinker, but I loved cola a lot as most of my friends can testify. So well, I just decided to quit cola and any other soft drinks and drink water, green tea and fruit juices instead. (In case you are wondering, quitting was really easy actually)

I was kind of happily looking forward to see some results from this, but shocking as it is, four months later I still continued suffering from the same problem.

One thing that a friend pointed out is that, when going to the gym I would end up feeling like dying sometimes and this could be because of soft drinks. I guess this is true since I haven’t felt that bad when doing exercises after quitting soft drinks.

• Results: Almost none at all, I kept feeling like crap as always and kind of disappointed as well. I continued avoiding soft drinks and that kind of stuff just in case.

Experiment #4: Don’t Use Painkillers (In fact, try to avoid all medicines if possible)

A couple of months ago I had a problem in my jaw that it would hurt like hell whenever I tried to chew anything or opened my mouth too much. I went to the dentist and he just gave me some painkillers.

After some days, the pain disappeared, but while I was taking the painkillers I noticed that I slept and woke up feeling much better. After I stopped taking them the problem reappeared and had even intensified.

• Results: Although taking them will surely help you sleep better, you cannot keep simply taking painkillers your whole life since it’s kind of freaking dangerous and it kind of worsens the problem if you stop consumption. So well, I still kept feeling like crap, but at least had a vacation of about a week from that damn condition.

Experiment #5: Avoid Chocolate

So, even after doing all of that, it seemed like death was the only way I could ever escape from this. I want to keep living as much as possible and I personally dislike suicide since that’s kind of a gay or emo thing, so instead I tried to gather more information on stuff that could possibly have something to do with this; I found the same stuff over and over, caffeine, alcohol and smoking.

As I said before, I don’t drink nor smoke, so my only option was caffeine. I got a list of most of the stuff that contains caffeine, and chocolate was in it of course.

I am not so fond of chocolate myself, but occasionally I would buy a bar or a cup of chocolate chip ice cream whenever I wanted some snack. My chocolate consumption was not so high but it still was worth a try; sadly, it didn’t work.

• Results: Almost none, still feeling like crap, but I never consumed too much anyway, so whether it has some effect or not I still don’t know. I kept avoiding chocolate just in case as well.

Experiment #6: Don’t Drink Green Tea or Any Other Kind of Tea

Next on the list of stuff containing caffeine was tea. Ever since I came to Japan, I had been taking at least one cup of green tea every single day because I had always been hearing about the benefits of Japanese green tea; that it will make your life span longer, that it prevents cancer, that it cleans your body, and all that nasty crap which I don’t know whether it’s true or not, and also because it’s Japanese tradition.

Since a long time ago I had been hearing of people that can actually sleep better after taking a cup of tea before going to sleep. Well, I can tell you now, and some people will most likely be shocked, but that’s just plain BULLSHIT.

The next day right after I stopped drinking tea I felt way much better, and I kept feeling better with each passing day. It kind of makes sense since my condition worsened after coming to Japan, the land of green tea.

• Results: The problem had mostly disappeared after the first day I stopped consumption. It might lengthen my life, but I personally prefer a nice short life rather than a long painful one, so it’s up to you.

Conclusions

If you have the same problem as I had, probably caffeine is what’s slowly killing you. Try to check up if the stuff you consume contains caffeine and try to avoid them.

Some people might actually have no problems at all with caffeine, but then, maybe it is that I’m more sensitive to caffeine than other people or something like that. Remember, each person is different.

Also, try to avoid any disturbances that could affect your sleep, like sound or too much light in your room.

Further Theories

As many people already know, the suicide rate in Japan is actually very high. This can be accounted to many factors like bullying in schools, pressure at work and stuff like that.

I, being a Chinese guy in a country filled mostly with non-asian people, was bullied almost everyday for 12 years by your average air head bullies, and did not commit suicide. Instead, I decided to grow powerful enough (monetary speaking) to make all their lives completely miserable. I don’t hold those grudges anymore, but I still want to grow powerful though.

Also, work had always been pressing as well, especially while I was still in the university with a full time schedule.

So, at first, it seemed to me like the Japanese were just looking for any stupid excuse to commit suicide.

But, what if a large part of the population was actually quite sensitive to caffeine and not aware of it, and thus, being this a country with lots of tea and coffee drinkers (there is a coffee shop in almost every corner), the high consumption of caffeine would actually induce them to commit suicide.

Believe me, when I said I felt like crap, I really meant it, so some people with similar problems might actually end up depressing like hell.

Yesterday, we were watching this movie called NANA on the lobby, which was highly recommended by Shi and Sophia (thanks!). At first I was a little bit skeptical about watching this movie, but after the first 10 minutes I was proved wrong.

The story is about these two girls, which share the same name (both are called Nana), the same age and even the same apartment, but their personalities are totally different, and somehow, they manage to become sort of best friends.

The movie is based on a manga of the same name, and there’s also an anime adaptation of it.

Really nice movie indeed. We laughed and had a very good time with it.

There’s a sequel of this movie as well, so maybe we will end up watching it next week or so.

So, very early this morning, I was woken up by a call I received from my mother, telling me that he had just passed away. When I picked up the phone and saw the number on the caller ID, I sort of knew right away what had happened before asking anything.

And the thing is that, I surely wasn’t expecting this to happen 4 months ago when I came to this country. As I said in previous posts, I knew that things will never be the same when I get back to Panama, I just didn’t know how different they were gonna be.

I have many memories with him.

Whenever we spent weekends together on my parents farm we would play dominoes with my brothers until very late in the night.

We used to go almost every Sunday to his house when I was a kid and he would cook for us, my grandpa was the best cook ever, I missed his food a lot when he stopped cooking.

He used to tell stories all the time from when he was working at the Panama Canal zone, that I really didn’t pay much attention to because I always felt I had heard them thousands of times.

My grandpa was really good at drawing, painting and many other things.

He was 84 years old, the next month was his birthday. Over the past few years he had spent a lot of time on hospitals, but always recovered somehow, and I sort of thought it was going to be the same this time.

I’m really going to miss you grandpa, and I’m terribly sorry for not being able to be there in your last moments. I can’t even go to your funeral because the plane ticket costs three times the money I have saved until now, please forgive me.

I know you must be in a much better place right now, so please rest, and watch from there.

I’ll be uploading everything in the next few days, so I hope I can share my pictures with you anytime soon.

And then, on Marine Day (海の日) , a national holiday, at around 10:30 a.m., disaster struck again, the huge earthquake at Niigata (新潟) took place. Niigata isn’t that close to here, but still, it could be felt in Tokyo. There were 3 earthquakes that day. People died, a lot of people was injured and many houses, roads and bridges were damaged.

My daily nightmare.

People here in Japan just don’t believe in waiting 2 minutes for the next train.