(no subject)

starlady's post about quick food in Japan makes me think of my own year in Japan, when I was at Nagasaki University and staying at the international students dorm.

The international students dorm was about 95% Chinese. There was one kitchen on each floor, so maybe 8-10 students to a kitchen, and they usually used the kitchen as a place to hang out and talk to each other in Chinese.

Thanks to circumstances on my end, I spend my first year at McGill living more or less alone -- my dad was up there at times, but I didn't see him much -- and I had no experience of communal living and cooking. Partly it was because dealing with Japanese all day made me desperate for quiet and alone time, partly it was because loud conversations in a language I didn't understand made me feel awkward and excluded, but I started to get really anxious about going into the kitchen.

I developed a routine of buying a bento from a convenience store, and going back to my room (which was directly across the hall from the kitchen) and listening for quiet in the kitchen so that I could dash into the kitchen, microwave my bento, and dash out with as little human contact as possible.

Somewhere near the end of that year I started figuring out that I might have some social anxiety.

The thing is, I no longer think of social anxiety as something that's a big deal in my life -- working customer service for ~8 years has desensitized me to a lot, though I'm still prone to taking angry customers to heart more than I should -- but when I think about having a communal kitchen, I'm like DO NOT WANT, AVOID AVOID AVOID. (One or two roommates who I'm on friendly terms with is fine.)

Back then I was mad at myself for being so antisocial and unable to cope, but now I'm like "Yeah, wanting to avoid awkward small talk with people you just barely share a common language with, when you're tired and hungry and oversocialized, that's pretty reasonable actually."