Everyone loves Japan in January: addendum.

On a somewhat morbid whim (and before I post more- I assure you all that while I`m not always thrilled with everything here, psychologically I`m chugging along nicely- and when I get blue, I play Mariokart)- I discovered that there are now fewer than 54 words for suicide in Japanese. 54. That`s not including phrases, like "off oneself." You could write a seriously morbid haiku anthology with nothing but synonyms for suicide. Lest it slip my mind in some later post- I`ll say it now Japanese society puts a lot of pressure on people, and has for a very long time. It`s one of the things about Japan that takes getting used to- how stressed out people seem to be on any given day. It`s also comforting in a twisted kind of way- when I`m feeling stressed, I know that, if the language is any indicator, my experience is not unique.