I used to think my time in Japan was the most isolated I had ever been, but San Francisco turned out to be a little worse, in a way. Since I don’t have a physical workplace, I don’t get to mingle or as much as say hello to anyone regularly outside my house.
I’d started to think about how I used to attend almost anything, and I mean anything, when I lived in Tsukuba. Everyone knows I was invited to a Baptist Bible study group that met every month and I actually enjoyed it (reading and offering my thoughts on a couple of Bible verses was a small price to pay for homemade food and a few hours of interaction). So what was stopping me from doing something similar here?
The situation became untenable when I started to notice my language skills were actually getting impaired by the isolation. So I decided to take action. A long time ago I had checked out Meetups in San Francisco out of curiosity, so I knew there was one devoted to conversation in Japanese. The time had come to stop lurking—there wasn’t much to see, anyway, just the fact that it was still active—and finally attend one of its weekly gatherings. This impulse was spurred by the fact that a friend of ours mentioned that she has an acquaintance only for watching movies. That reminded me: that’s the way things work here. Everything is compartmentalized.
(If I were to describe Meetup, I’d say it’s a platform for people with common interests to find each other through events created by established groups. Very convenient in this modern world.)
Anyway, I’m back from the meeting and I must say I’m genuinely dumbfounded by how easy it felt to socialize. Not even to make friends, just to have a friendly exchange with strangers. It was fun.
A couple of Japanese girls asked me if I’d attend next week before leaving. I certainly think I will.