"Why did you come to Japan?"

As a foreign resident in Japan, I'm often asked this. The answer is both simple and complicated: put simply, I love Japan.

Sigh, I hear you, er, sigh. A blogger confessing their love for the country they're in. What else is new? Well, maybe nothing, but the thing is, I have no idea WHY I love Japan so much, and I fear it might be a slightly masochistic love affair. And this is where it get's complicated, folks.

Firstly, Japan isn't really a conventional country to 'escape' to, is it? True, their impact on pop culture and modern life can't be denied: from Sony to Nintendo; Nissan to Kodak; Manga to Anime: these are words anyone with even half a finger on the pulse of today's world will recognise. But these are things you can experience and absorb quite happily in your own country, as authentic or not as you please, with the peace of mind that when you step out of the door that the signs are still in a language you know. You don't really need to move to Japan to immerse yourself in an Otaku lifestyle, not really.

So no, Japan isn't an 'escape' country. For the most part, Japan is a working, modern and often stressful place to live, and more often than not it resembles every other first world country out there. And let's get one thing straight; for all of it's much vaunted advancements and trumped cleverness, Japan is not the uber-space-age-techno-land you might expect. Oh sure, there are great dollops of fantastic neon-lit futurism to be savoured, no doubt, yet for all of it's dynanism, Japan can be frustratingly backward and slow-moving in other respects. Those used to going light and paying with everything by plastic will be shocked to find that Japan is still a cash-heavy culture, and TV ads are only just starting to push ATMs like they are new things.

And for all the complaints we might level at the quality of our own television, you'll be sorely missing them when you witness Japanese TV: garish game-shows, cheesy daytime TV dramas and SO! MANY! ADVERTS! (Sometimes entire shows are just whole adverts for products - a critique that could be levelled at our own TV sometimes but in Japan it's so in-your-face it actually causes a headache).

How about the traditional Japan, then? True, their history and culture is enigmatic and deep, and I love exploring temple sites and shinto shrines. But again, this is holiday material. You don't move to a country for the history, because annoying functional necessities like buying the milk get in the way.

Japan isn't even really an especially pretty country. Oh sure, the national parks and mountains are beautiful (aren't they always?), and the night-time bright lights of the big cities hold their own appeal, but the majority of urban Japan is surprisingly scruffy: the lack of wire-grounding means that telephone poles are often choked with wires that web thickly overhead, often ruining views, and when looking out from a train window at a suburb, it may just surprise you just how strikingly similar some of the tightly-packed houses look to a shanty town (they're not, of course, but on first glance it may take you back).

And yet...yet...despite ALL this, despite all of the frustrations, contradictions and everything else, in Japan it all works. Somehow, all of these ill-fitting pieces come together to form a truly alluring, unique mosaic of culture and society that I just couldn't (and still can't) describe in mere words. Returning home from the eye-burning experience of Akihabara, with it's neck-straining heights and endless floors of electronic delights and stomach-churning colour clashes as capitalism rides high, to return to the quiet back streets, quaint and old-fashioned somehow yet clean and entirely modern, to slip off your shoes as you enter and watch from the back door as birds rest on the reams of overhead wires and children make their way home in their strange uniforms, to when the sun sets and Japan lights up like a beacon from space, knowing the night's entertainment, whether out and about or at home in front of the box, is brainless and daft but a light and undemanding way to unwind after the long days many work. This, and everything else, is all at work in everyday life, new and old, forward-facing and backward-looking, sophisticated and intelligent yet childlike and MASSIVE on kawaii-culture (more on this some other time)...Japan presents itself from many angles at once, and it's contradictions make it a fascinating place.

When the Japanese talk about their own uniqueness as a race there's more than a shade of arrogance and naivety to it, but I'll tell you what, there's a fair chunk of truth to it too. Like all the best love attractions, I guess, you have no idea why you love it, you just do, for many reasons and yet no real reason at all.

So this is the aim of my blog, 'Breaking Japan'. To try and make sense of this confounding, enigmatic country, and report it back. All of it: the good, the bad, and the downright bizarre.