My friends and food diary

I don’t like starting on a negative note but I wish I had been as outgoing and determined to make new friends when I moved to London as I have been in Tokyo. I decided to be very deliberate about making friends in Tokyo and it was actually one of my three goals for my first three months in Japan, which in case you were wondering were:

1. find somewhere nice to live;
2. make some friends; and
3. learn some Japanese.

I am happy to say that being so deliberate about making friends is paying off.

At school, college or university and then at work, you are thrown together with people. You happen to get along with some of them and before you know it you start calling these people your friends. And a lot of these friendships start in a natural and effortless way and to some extent they are down to luck - luck that you ended up studying, living or working in the same place or had the same hobbies - rather than deliberate efforts to meet new people.

But as you get older, I think it becomes more difficult. It takes effort to test and invest in new friendships, and it is hard enough to sustain the friendships you already have. Trying to coordinate diaries to meet up can be a logistical nightmare - a good week in London was if I managed to have a cup of tea with my best friend who lived 30 seconds away in the same building. We don’t prioritise our existing friends let alone make time for new ones - we’re trying to figure out our careers, there are family commitments, Netflix is always tempting and we all want some lazy days and need time to ourselves. And that’s absolutely fine. But my life as I knew it was pretty much dismantled when I moved to Tokyo, and making friends here was as much of a survival technique as videocalls to my family.

I have found that you can be more selective as an adult in choosing your friends. I don’t mean this in a cynical way, but you can choose friends that reflect who you are as an adult, the interests you have now or want to explore, or friends to fill any gaps you have in your life e.g. I could probably do with some sportier friends who’d motivate me to exercise!

To some extent my new friends could be a way of shaping and developing myself as I create a new life in Tokyo. So when I’ve met someone who seemed interesting or I thought we’d have things in common I have resorted to my go-to line...“Hi, I have recently moved to Tokyo and I am trying to meet new people here. My diary is pretty flexible and it would be great to meet up for coffee or food. Let me know when is good for you...” or some variation of this line. It may not sound cool asking people to be your friend but I had nothing to lose. And my approach has been successful - some people I have only met once or twice and others I see pretty regularly. I have met some really lovely people that I enjoy hanging out with and exploring new areas of the city. The other great bonus is that it is fantastic to have buddies to try different cafes and restaurants! But don’t take my word for it, here is my friend and food diary for the past week.

In the past week I have hung out with the following friends and eaten the following foods in their company:

Tuesday
Friend: a girl I became friends with a few months ago through stalking her on the internet and then reaching out to her over Twitter. I actually got social over social media. This week we went to a beach in a nearby town for a fireworks festival. She didn’t murder me and bury my body in the sand so there is no stranger danger for you to worry about there. But Wil did think I was a bit mad when I met up with my “internet friend” for the first time and then he realised I was the “weird one”  who had reached out over the internet and, therefore, I was the one who presented the risk. For the first time in my life I felt dangerous and edgy.

Food: picnic on the beach consisting of the finest food we could find in one of Japan’s epic convenience stores, including sushi, sandwiches and mint choc chip ice cream. The shop assistant gave us seven sets of chopsticks instead of two as he thought we had several mouths to feed based on the amount of food we had.

Wednesday
Friends: A girl I met at the mosque and I went over to her house for a Japanese study date. After our study date, my friend introduced me to one of her friends and the three of us had dinner together. We then went to see my friend’s friend speak about her travels and share her travel photos at a really cool event. It was in a basement so that counts as cool for me.

Food: I had a swordfish burger with truffle fries (but I did share some of the fries) for dinner. Later that night as I was walking home I got a strawberry milkshake from McDonalds to finish off what had essentially been a “posh” Filet-o-Fish meal. Oh, I will confess that I tried to order a large milkshake and because this is Japan they told that they did only small and medium - my food shame continues.

Thursday
Friends: two girls I met through language school but none of us had an actual Japanese class together. I met one at a film night the school had organised and the other at a sushi making class the school had organised. I introduced them to each other and the three of us met up for lunch. I like to think of myself as the puppet master.

Food: we went to an Israeli restaurant and my lunch included hummus and chips - a win. Why have I not dipped chips in hummus before?!

Friday
Friend: my first friend in Tokyo who I met in my first week here. Her husband work’s in Wil’s team and is also here on secondment. We’ve seen each other every week since unless one of us has been out of town or had a visitor. We met up this week for lunch (with my aforementioned internet friend too) and the plan was to go to an art gallery afterwards but we were suffering from food comas and just walked around some shops and the neighbourhood instead.

(She took the photo that I've used at the start of this post It is from another one of our days out!)

Food: we went to a Thai restaurant and I had a pad thai just as I always do whenever I go to a Thai restaurant as I love pad thai. We then went to a cafe to have kakigori (shaved ice) and my “regular” sized one was as big as my head. For the first time in my life a Japanese food portion was bigger than expected. The waitress could clearly tell that this was the case because of the expression on my face, and as she placed it down in front of me she wished me good luck. I failed and only managed half.

Between them, the friends I hung out with this week are Moroccan French, British, Spanish, American, Chinese and Indian. It has been far easier to make friends with other expats, who speak English and may also be seeking new friends, and I’ve not made that many Japanese friends yet but I am trying.

My mission to make friends continues and today I went off to a “brunch mixer” run by a women’s business and social network. Yeah, I just gagged little too. But this is what my life has become.  

Not every week is as social as this one has been and it was just good timing for when I decided to write this post. And to my mother who will be worrying, yes, I did hang out with Wil this week too and I dragged him out tonight to meet some new people.

So to finish, I wish I had realised that you don’t need to move 10,000 miles across the world to have an excuse to make new friends. We have to nurture and sustain existing friendships but it is refreshing to let some new people into our lives.
 

Setting the scene for as I wrote this blog:

• Location: bed and sofa.

• Weather: about 30°C which now feels cool after the heatwave. We had some crazy rain earlier today as a typhoon was passing across Japan but it has stopped raining now.

• Soundtrack: we were watching Designated Survivor Season Two as I wrote this. It is not that great but it is easy viewing.

• Bonus fact: "tomodachi" is the most common word for "friend" used in everyday Japanese.