The weather turned cooler today. My bed has grown softer and more inviting, and once I lie down, nothing can persuade me to get up again.
I am forever swinging between two extremes: I should study Japanese more diligently before going to Japan; or I can wait until I arrive and then begin in earnest.
As I grow older, I find it increasingly difficult to move nimbly between different tasks or kinds of work.
Each kind of work requires its own period of ignition before I can truly enter what people call a state of “flow.”
Once I do enter it, I hate being distracted or interrupted, because it becomes so difficult to return to the feeling I had before the break.
Building something little by little each day, persisting with one thing, has always been difficult for me.
Even the goal I set myself of writing a daily record before leaving for Japan has proved no small undertaking.
Last week, I also began what I call the ant method of packing, slowly putting away the little everyday things I expect to need in the dormitory.
The website does not clearly say whether there is a communal kitchen or whether shared cleaning supplies are available.
That reminded me of my time as an international student in Shanghai, when I likewise applied for a postgraduate dormitory on campus.
At many Shanghai universities, the accommodation offered to international and local students differs. In general, foreign postgraduate students could have a place to themselves, while local students shared rooms.
The first thing I did after moving into my Shanghai dormitory was go to a little shop near the university and buy a broom and dustpan. For a moment, it felt as though I had actually gone there to study at Hogwarts.
Having to buy myself a broom before classes had even begun was wonderfully absurd. I wonder whether that experience will repeat itself in Japan.
I still remember the torrential rain on the day I moved into the Shanghai dormitory. It raged for an hour or two. When I stepped outside, water covered many of the campus roads; great pools, unable to find a drain, rushed noisily along the edges of what might have been flower beds towards lower ground.
It shocked me at the time. After all, it had been many years since I had seen a single downpour leave an entire campus waterlogged.
The Shanghai dormitory room was not large either: one bed, one desk, one wardrobe, nothing more. There was barely even room for a suitcase.
The tall wardrobe stood beside the bed, directly beneath the air conditioner. Shanghai winters are cold enough to require heating. I turned it on, yet still felt as though I were freezing to death in my room.
The reason was that the wardrobe beneath the unit trapped all the warm air above it.
It gave me a thorough refresher in elementary physics: warm air rises; cold air sinks.
Only after I asked a strong male classmate to help me move the wardrobe did the air begin to circulate through the room. At last, I no longer had to sit shivering in the dormitory.
One of my strongest memories of the Shanghai campus is that a medium-to-large campus had seven or eight canteens scattered across it. Each served its own dishes and had its own character, and every one became so crowded at mealtimes that finding a seat was often nearly impossible. The university also had a canteen devoted to halal food.
I had never seen a student and staff canteen devoted to halal food on a campus in either Germany or Taiwan. To some extent, it seemed to reflect the large number of Muslims living in China. One of the classmates I was closest to at the time came from Bangladesh, and he was Muslim too.
He said the food at the halal canteen was not good and was often too oily, so he bought an induction hob and cooked in his room. It cost him less than eating at the canteen.
Meeting him reminded me of the first friend I had made at a German language school more than twenty years earlier. He, too, was Muslim, and came from Turkey.
I know very little about Islam. Yet in European public discourse, Muslims are often linked almost automatically with extremists.
The two Muslims I have known personally, however, were both easy-going. They would even drink a little alcohol, and showed not the slightest disrespect towards women.
In ordinary life, their religious requirements often seemed to me more like the dietary rules followed by vegetarians, ovo-lacto vegetarians, or people who simply avoid the meat in a shared dish. I could not sense even the faintest trace of extremism in either of them.
Turkey is often regarded as a prominent example of a secularised Muslim society. I know far less about Bangladesh, but the relationship between religion and politics there does not seem reducible to a simple divide between secularism and fundamentalism.
Europe today is filled with fear of Muslims. From time to time, I also encounter news about Muslims supposedly “invading” Japanese society, or about the quiet ways in which Japan excludes Muslims.
I think, too, of the many Uyghurs in China who have been labelled terrorists within counter-terrorism narratives.
Then I look again at the two people I knew, two Muslim classmates who are in no way a statistically representative sample.
I cannot help believing, with all sincerity, that when religion ceases to be an inward pursuit and becomes a doctrine imposed upon others, even the most beautiful, benevolent, and sacred divinity begins to change.
Religion can hold up our human frailty. It can also make people so unyielding that they will exclude anyone unlike themselves, whatever the cost.
Religion is a double-edged blade. Handle it with care.
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