I’ve been thinking about friendship lately. Well, rather how it ebbs and flows. Precipitated mainly by a sense of profound social burnout towards the end of last year, I spent some months hiding away from as many obligations as possible. It was truly relentless in the run-up to my decision. You see, most seem to know that summer is a form of long-term torture in Japan, and therefore I am left to my own devices for those months. Sheltering in place you could say. I don’t go outside, I don’t see people, even hiking up to 3000 metres above sea level offers little relief. Then, as autumn arrives, the visitors do too.
It’s a precarious balance. Most of these people are folk I genuinely want to spend time with. In fact, were I myself on holiday and in their respective homelands, I would have a ball. However, on the contrary, when you experience a slew of visitors one after the other, the dynamic is flipped. This is their holiday, they are at leisure and looking forward to a good time. It’s their special week, or fortnight. From my perspective, it’s just another week. Meanwhile, I have obligations, entries in the diary, a desperate struggle to stay healthy and exercise, knowing that in a few days’ time another group of well-intentioned visitors will be in town, looking forward to their Japanese Experience.
By the end of 2025, I was totally burnt out. Too much pressure coming from too many angles. In a dream world, I could shout for peace just once and all would hear and understand. Instead it’s grovelling text after grovelling text; I’m sorry I can’t, I’m struggling here. Ah, sounds great, unfortunately I’m up to my neck in it. Hope you have fun!! I can’t make it, sorry… There’s no catharsis in this, just the grind of rejecting, denying, apologising. I have some friends who simply stop responding when in such a situation; for some reason I feel obliged to let the other side know I still exist and that I’m just very terribly sorry but simply so busy and would you mind awfully if we could reschedule to fucking never again? No we’re still on good terms in general just that I can’t tolerate the you that’s making this request on my time right here in this minute. Yep, yep, we’ll definitely find time soon!
Let’s not forget the workplace obligation to go out drinking with people I don’t even like.
So there I was, cancelling my own birthday party and shutting down on basically every front. I got invited to something for Christmas. I rejected firmly. I got called a Grinch. So it may be. Have a lovely festive season! I booked some cheap tickets to the mountains, stayed at a tiny mom-and-pop pension that was comically cold, and went skiing alone. Where I didn’t have pre-organised obligations, I spent my time alone. I fantasised about getting a dog and using it as an excuse to avoid any future social request. I fantasised about leaving the country for somewhere boring where no one would want to go. I fantasised about cutting all ties and running away with a new identity.
Interspersed between my solitude were group activities I had already committed to; not only is it very hard for me to flake on people, but there was the minor benefit of having mentally prepared for it and dutifully saved what little I had left in the tank for these occasions. If I was sharp with anyone at this time, I’m sorry. I hope you understand. Nevertheless I was able to feel a little better, and I appreciated that relatively few demands were made of my time outside of it. I guess I finally got the message out loud enough and clear enough.
The redemption arc came through a trip to Europe I was essentially peer-pressured into taking. Got added back into a group for organising an annual ski-holiday with the simple message “He said yes”. Of course in reality it was some kind of meagre mumbled phrase along the lines of “if I can make it work…” I got my affairs in order and started looking for flights. Huh, that’s surprisingly good value to fly halfway across the world. How’s my money? Looks ok… Ok, booked. I’m in.
In all honesty, I wasn’t sure if I was looking forward to it or not. Why did I just dump such a sum of money on this flight of fancy? The snow is better in Japan and Europe has been having a terrible start to the season… I only have so much leave in the year, can I really take this? I chose not to think about it until the night before where I packed everything up in a hurry, falling asleep immediately afterwards. Head empty. I remember finding it impossible to sleep ahead of such a holiday as a kid. This time I barely registered that I was leaving the country in twelve hours’ time.
Flying over started smoothly, but with three connecting flights, it is hardly out of the question that something might go wrong, and go wrong it did. Starting with someone falling sick on my flight out of Hong Kong, a delay that made my already tight transfer onto a totally separate airline almost impossible, I spent the first two hours of the flight on the plane wi-fi trying to figure out whether or not to re-book my connecting leg for over 600 Euros. In the end, I gave up and put it in the hands of the universe. What will be, will be. Waking up after a nervy sleep, I found that we had caught up time. Great! Only to land at Schipol and have the immigration officer warn me it will take a very long time for my bags to make it out and that I was cutting it fine. Long story short, after waiting for an eternity, my bags came out and I dashed across to the check in counters just in time. We had done it.
Psyche. I spent an hour in Lyon waiting for my bags. They didn’t show up. I eventually found a member of staff and filed a missing luggage report, and took my soon-to-depart bus to Grenoble with all the usual worries around just how lost these bags really were, and whether or not I would need to file some kind of insurance claim against them. After some time, good news! My bags had been found. They were to be express couriered over. Excellent. Ah, the express courier has subcontracted to some other company. You’ll have to wait. Feel free to track your delivery on the app! It’s only updated every ten minutes and the driver wants to stop at every possible building up and down the valley along the way. Wait, why is it turning back? Did they forget to deliver? Hit and run delivery note? Oh god. Wait, why is it in a park? Oh that’s the driver…taking lunch? Finally it’s coming our way! Wait, why is it in this random village over the way? Why has it teleported across the valley? Finally, the phone rang, and with several years snatched off my life expectancy I got my bags.
In the meantime, the gang I was staying with very kindly pulled together to fashion a make-shift skiing setup, using a bunch of mismatched spares that somehow worked out perfectly for the days that I was using it. I think this is where my attitude began to turn. I hadn’t seen these people in years, to some degree I had neglected our friendships. I guess on some level I felt there was some baggage (in reality, none) and thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. What actually transpired was a week and a half in which I was flash-banged out of my cynicism and exhaustion. I think part of it was the easy-going nature of the trip. The others were there for two weeks. Conditions not perfect? Well, we can loaf around reading. Why not go down to the valley floor and check out the village there? A panache while we decide? It was just so easy. I was finally off the hook. No-one to entertain, no-one to be responsible for, just my own time with a drama-free group of kind and friendly people with no shortage of good conversation, food, and camaraderie.
I think this is why I try to keep good people around. To quote Satre’s Garcin; “Hell is other people”, and to quote one of my best friends, Dave; “but so is heaven”. My restless childhood meant that as an adult I both make and lose friends with relative ease. I had to learn this; new friends at school that you get to know for a couple of years before moving to the other side of the world. So it goes, so it goes. With this group, I have known the majority of them for over a decade, some closing in on 15 years. It shocks me sometimes, how easy it can be to kick off from where you finished, cracking old jokes and making new ones as you go. New entrants this year were; deciding which sumo wrestlers looked like dogs, Go To The Woods (command), going to the woods (action), the concept of bee hotels, and brochacho as a word.
I’m not sure what else I have to say here, I was completely done with humans, and now I’m not. Who would have thought it’d just take a short holiday to the Alps to fix it? Here are some photos of my friends 🙂
It is not everything! 