In July, I went to Izumo Taisha Shrine to get acquainted with the gods of love-those gods not to be underestimated unless you want to wind up eating microwave meals for one for the rest of your life. Maybe my wishes weren't loud enough or maybe they fell on deaf ears because, after all my efforts, it came…that phone-call.

A few weeks ago, my Welsh Prince back home, due to join me in Shimane any month now, told me the results of his interview with a popular teaching agency cruelly known as the 'Fast food restaurant of the English-Teaching world.' Turns out the agency did indeed share some parallels with your average fast-food joint in that you go in thinking it will be the solution to your immediate problem, but when you get there it is just not as satisfying as you had hoped. Our plans for Japanese paradise looked bleak. Thinking about it from a selfish point of view, I began to dwell on my ruined plans: "Oh how distraught I am in Japan having a marvelous time and now my dearest can't come to this year-long party I've thrown for myself." I thought, if, as Liza Minelli once sang, 'Life is a Cabaret,' then this has to be one of the worst gigs I've done. In the end, we half-heartedly agreed to battle out the issue. Little did I know the face-off was just around the corner.

After a night of merriment in Hirata, I naturally wanted to phone my loved one back home to declare my deepest-hiccup-undying love. "When are you coming over?" Silence, low tones, breathing in through teeth (you know the sound, the one when you ask the mechanic how much it'll cost to fix you car). It seemed he had indeed reached a decision, complete with plenty of reasons: the lower pay, the interest rates, it's just too painful. Then he asked, "Would I come back tomorrow if it meant saving the relationship?"

My silence. My pouting. Wrong timing. Wrong everything. With the gods of Taisha less than 15 miles away, and telephones and e-mail, I had been convinced that in the face of adversity, all I'd need was love. But my Welsh Prince had decided to close the door on our 10-month love roller coaster.

"But I love you," I said. "I love you too much," he said. "I wanted to marry you." Had he no idea? I also wanted cute Welsh babies with unpronounceable Welsh names! WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM?

It was so moronic. Love shouldn't fall at the (in our case) seventh or eighth hurdle. But I wanted the movie ending! This wouldn't happen to Nicole Kidman! Nobody would call it a day with her because of interest rates! I wanted wailing and roses and the stopping of planes on runways. I wanted the fairytale!

Aren't break-ups meant to be extremely dramatic and eventful? This was just like arranging a funeral. In my cabaret, my leading man had taken an eternal Sabbatical and I imagined settling for one of those dreaded understudies, who, however hard they try, will never be quite as good as the original. At 5:30 that morning, I was still awake, making up my own lyrics to blues songs in the dark, churning out lines about samurai swords and high-speed trains-dramatic ways to end this little Cabaret show.

The worst and saddest thing about love is that it leaves you incredibly vulnerable and open to ridicule. Love is so cliche and vomit-inducing, but when we are infected with this euphoric disease, we lose touch with reality. My Welsh Prince sounded gutted, but worse than that he sounded defeated. Maybe defeat is a disease worse than love.

Before that call, I had been unknowingly hurtling head first towards emotional oblivion. So what now? Suddenly, I realized that, in effect, I had abandoned him the moment I got on the plane at Heathrow. Out of nowhere, I had decided to step into the ring with the English Agencies out here in Shimane, meanwhile valiantly declaring, "Since I am still in love with you, so I happen to think that this is worth fighting for and I'm not gonna let anyone spoil it either." Cringe. Preparing for ten bouts of pain and confusion, I decided still to make the employment pilgrimage I'm sure many Shimaneans have made, selfishly leaving their other halves behind and then trying to lure them to this strange land with "You'll love it here…It's not that rural."

I imagine these individuals have maybe wound up in a straightjacket at a rehab centre for the criminally-in-love. At home, their (ex) other halves have moved on. They've had a promotion, they've won the lottery, they're dating attractive TV presenters with 28-inch hips. Meanwhile, the newest love victims in Shimane, like myself, are running on their last reserves of sanity. They have just begun the grueling process of whoring their other half's credentials to prospective employers, like sales people with invisible products.

Since the night of the phone call, I've discovered the local Ichibata train can't really go fast enough to kill me. So, instead, I went back to Izumo Taisha to make my peace with Okuninushi-no-Kami, the god of love and happiness. Back in July, I obviously hadn't done enough to secure my romantic future so this time I threw an offering into the box, clapped four times and bought a slate to write my wish/statement to the gods. Call me a fool or a hopeless romantic but there wasn't a trace of irony or remorse here. I wrote a simple message in Welsh: "Cariad am Byth"-Love Forever.

Photography by Ben Logsdon