I used to be a football fan. Liverpool was my team. Why do I say, “Used to be” you ask? Well I probably have not watched a game or read up on anything football related for the best part of 2 years.

 

As far as I can tell football does not come up on TV. Maybe there is some special channel, but the games are on at 1-2am while I am asleep. Come to think of it, I don’t really watch TV full stop anymore.

 

A funny thing happened last year sometime. I probably couldn’t tell you what month it happened in. I signed onto MSN messenger and saw that somebody had changed their name to, “First black president Barack” or something along those lines. I remember thinking to myself, “What is this clown smoking” and, “Who in the hell is Barack…”

 

So I Googled his name. I clicked on the first hit and see some skinny Middle Eastern looking dude and the words, “WINNER” written above his picture. I was confused. What in the world had happened? Some black guy has become president? So I messaged the guy on MSN.

 

Asking him outright, “Who is Barack?” would make me look pretty retarded since it seemed to be pretty big news. So I decided to play it cool.

 

Me: “Sup man, it’s a good day. Barack did it. We have a new president.”

 

But obviously he was AFK (away from keyboard) and didn’t answer lol..

 

So I Googled more and found out that he wasn’t the president. He had beaten Clinton for the democratic vote or something like that. It is a good thing that the MSN guy was AFK. I decided to block him on MSN for a few weeks and give him some time to forget the retarded message I had sent him.

 

I have been in Japan for like 2.5 years now. I don’t read the newspapers, or more correctly I can’t. If I sat down with a dictionary for a few hours I would be able to knock out quite a few pages. But that just isn’t happening. g

 

I don’t really turn my TV on much so I don’t catch the news. Reading news online is something I don’t really like doing. I only check out murder cases and weird stuff once in a while when people send me the links.

 

As a result, I am really behind on current affairs (like 2 years behind). I am a Brit, but I only found out about Gordon Brown becoming the Prime Minster late last year sometime.

 

Heck I didn’t even know it was Easter until someone told me on Facebook on Saturday..

It is like I am living in some alternate universe.

 

If someone asked me what is going on in Japan now I would not even be able to give them an answer. I am not Japanese, and even though I live here I am not really in the, “System” so to speak. I think because of those reasons I have convinced myself that is ok to adopt a, “I don’t need to know what is going on in this country” attitude. And when you are abroad I guess it is easy to just let yourself say screw it all, and walk around living oblivious of things that are going on around you.

 

As a result of that I stopped taking interest in not only Japan, but things going on back home and in the rest of the world.

 

I think I am going to have to start forcing myself to spend at least 20 minutes a day reading Yahoo news.

 

Tags: Current Affairs, Japan, Life