One of the aspects that deeply, deeply upsets me in this country is most people's absolute lack of spontaneity, their exasperating inability to drop the social script and do (or say, for god's sake!) something unexpected for a change. As if life's main purpose were to rule out the unpredictable.
If you want to invite someone to lunch or dinner, you have to plan it days and days (and often weeks or even months) ahead, as most Japanese folks are always way too 'isogashii' - busy, hectic, whatever - to accept an impromptu invitation. I often think they must derive some sort of puritan pleasure from making themselves unavailable, irresponsive to other people: 'tsugo ga warui' ('it's a bad/inconvenient time for me'). A recurrent, calculated, morally superior excuse for which I have less and less patience. It's such a difference when you invite a European pal (not yet adulterated by native customs, of course, since some are already beyond hope) for a spur-of-the-moment stroll or drink... Such a difference.
I used to find it hard to believe, but in the past few years I've come to fully understand why so many foreigners leave Japan with the bitter feeling there is no 'native' they can genuinely call a friend. A friend is someone who uncalculatingly, un-arse-lickingly has time and space for you, and there are, alas, fewer and fewer people like that around town.
The sad paradox is that usually none of this isogashisa, none of this self-righteous franticness, translates itself into high standards of productivity and excellence - well, certainly not in a creative, inspired way, even though most people do in fact excel in sheepishly doing what they are told, no questions asked. I guess that's what keeps the status quo from crumbling or imploding.
And how could you expect things to be otherwise when the educational system (aided by religion, I would add) laboriously, obsessively extirpates from the outset any signs of individuality, passion, desire - the very lifeblood of creativity, imagination, vision, originality - in favour of authoritarianism, senseless hierarchies, narrow-mindedness and collectivism?...
Well, anyway, the show must go on, or, as the song goes, everybody's got to live their life, and god knows I've got to live mine - god knows I've got to live mine... [sigh]
*(14:32): Yup, you're absolutely right, Antonio. If you surround yourself as much as possible by genuinely interesting, caring, humane, warm-hearted people, like a fortress, you can at least ward off the most crippling effects of the contact with the system and its hypocritical zombies.
