Even if you are "living the dream" and living in Japan, you still have to live, right? It would be weird if there was nothing that got you down, or if you were super happy all of the time.

I'm also quite a solitary person, I can happily spend days and days on my own and not mind about the lack of human contact at all - as long as I know that it's there if I need it. I think if I was in your situation I would feel the same as you... it's a shame that your job has such rubbish hours!

Would it be possible for you to talk to your friends on skype or something instead of emailing them? I think that's much nicer than communicating over email all the time...
I think that good friends will always be good friends, you just need to see them again! Which will happen when you go back to Germany.

I would definitely take the census thing into work and get people to help you - I got completely lost when I was filling it out!

Also, I get what you were saying about not having any goals any more. I wanted to be a translator for a while, until I realised that I like interacting with people too much to do that, and the fact that stress makes me really ill has made me realise that probably being an interpreter isn't the way for me to go either... so my future plans now are basically... get married, have children, be happy... which kind of makes me seem like I'm from the 1920s or something - I feel in some way like I'm betraying my gender by being intelligent and well educated, but not actually having any ambition.. stupid, I know.

I think it can be kind of depressing to realise that you don't really have any goals... the only one that I had for quite a long time was to get good at Japanese, and now I am.. not perfect, but at the stage where people seem confused when I say that I still study, and my boyfriend suggested that I should study something else instead..

Anyway, I hope you can figure out what you want to do now soon!!!! :)

Um.. I should end this comment on a positive note... YAY for Japan being cooler! It does feel quite cold now, even though this would be warm weather in the UK, hahaha.