I Swear, I Only Listen to Bright Eyes Ironically. Really.

I really like Irony. I like it so much, I just capitalized it.
Back home in the Usa, sarcasm was basically a constant fixture of my speech- and working in a dysfuntional (but charming!) local bookstore with a bunch hipster/geek types was exactly the environment where this sort of thing flourished. I don't think I went a whole day without making fun of Nicholas Sparks, James Patterson, or Nora Roberts. No, I've never read any of them- but we mercilessly skewered them anyway, even as we sold half-priced copies of their paperbacks.
Here, though, things are different. Obviously they are, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it.
Many people mentioned that most Japanese people don't have much a sense of sarcasm, culturally. I sort of thought that this was some sort of fatuous generalization- I mean, who couldn't have a sense of sarcasm and irony? It's innate, right? Right?
Well, no. It's not. Being perpetually sarcastic and ironic, it seems, is basically the province of snooty effete intellectual types and cantankerous old people. My old job had both, and I include myself in the first category.
Here, though, my sarcasm runs right into the face of my job- I mean, I'm dealing with people who need to be introduced to basic stuff like the passive voice. My most advanced students struggle with euphemisms. Sarcasm is so high up the communicative ladder (especially my own style of dry sarcasm that sometimes even confuses other native speakers) that I need to turn it almost completely off when I talk to students.
Broad stuff is okay. Really, really broad stuff- like claiming that it's a wonderfully sunny day when in fact it's raining outside. That works. However, subtlety doesn't really make it's way through the communicative wall.
I've resorted to (gasp!) having to say exactly what I mean without resorting to wit, euphemisms, guile, or intonation. My words have been forced to, as directly as possible, correlate precisely to what is going on in my head. While this may seem intuitive to some, I find such unshaded and direct communication to be exceedingly strange. Even though I've gotten much better at it, I'm still not used to speaking without my old friend Irony.
I'm sort of worried about this.
I mean, it's bad enough that I like Belle and Sebastian and U2, twin pillars of rock-'n-roll earnestness. It's worrisome to think that perhaps when I get back I'm going to be this overly earnest, utterly sappy, irony-free bag of sincerity. I imagine myself as going from this smiling, funny, occasionally witty guy to the worst sort of overly earnest "sensitive" guy. You know- the sort of person who listens to Bright Eyes. I think of myself soulfully, earnestly, and humorously pouring out my feelings without a white of self-awareness and I sort of cringe a little.
Though such a thing is not likely. If anything, this is probably a good thing. Perhaps, sometimes, I was too ironic, too sarcastic. Perhaps, sometimes, it was a crutch and now I'm learning to walk without it.
When I speak with native speakers I'm still the same old sarcastic person that I always was- mostly. I still love irony dearly- and I mean that sincerely.