Thoughts of home attack at odd times. I’ve been in Japan for ten weeks or so now, and whilst for the most part England is not forefront in my mind, it creeps up on me. I woke up a couple of nights ago having dreamt that I was sleeping at my parents house in Coventry, and when I woke to find that wasn’t the case, it was a strange and not-too-pleasant feeling.

Which leads me onto this. I loathe England for what it has become, a TV infested, tabloid sponsored witch-hunt. But being 6500 miles away you start to wonder is it really so bad? Sure, it is not paradise, but then nowhere is - not Even Japan - but it is home, and no matter how far or for how long I travel away from it, it always will be.

I’m surrounded here by people who don’t know what a digestive biscuit is, who have no idea who Stephen Fry is, and who have never sampled the delights of a Sunday roast in a british pub surrounded by salt-of-the-earth Britishers on an early summers weekend; with the din of banter filtering in from the bar next door. At times, it’s like trying to talk to a blind man about colour, there is no reference point, no common ground on which to build a rapport. There are of course pieces of shared knowledge you can cling onto, but they are usually either tiresomely dull, or they warrant no conversation at all!

These things in themselves are unimportant (except the Digestive biscuits) but they are the fabric with which you are crafted as an Englishman. When everything non-academic you know is taken out of commission you are in danger of becoming either the most boring person in the whole of Fukuoka, or being assimilated into an altogether stranger culture, one which keeps it’s rape-porn next to it’s Disney DVDs, or which breeds a fear of foreigners in it’s young. And have you heard any Japanese music recently? Christ. Sure, Japan is a phenomenal place, and I could really see myself living here for a while after I’ve graduated, but it’s hard to share your life with people who have developed at such a parallel opposite to you.

In slightly less taxing news, it’s the University festival this week, so I have Thursday and Friday off. Japan has an excessive amount of public holidays for which I am very grateful.

ps- If you feel like sending me some digestive biscuits, I’ll happily give you my address!