I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was

I might write a more significant post later, but this picture is significant enough. Old pic from Spring Break.

スイーツみたいな毎日

So Andy and I did a lot of cool things over Golden Week, as per usual. We started out in Kobe　and did the hip things, like hang out at Harborland hitting up some Golden Week sales, since Andy had to buy some new shoes because he lost one of his. Yeah, just one.





For some reason, Harborland has a ridiculous amount of gelato and boba.



One of me and Andy's favorite things to do has become going to bakeries. These are turtle melon pan I guess? Really fucking cute.

I've got a lot more pictures and stories, so stay tuned. I'm doing a pretty good job convincing myself there isn't that much more school left and I can just chill out. And my birthday is in one week when I will turn 21! And more adventures are just around the corner.

またな

Starting tomorrow, I am on vacation, so don't look for me.

jk I'm never that far away from the Internet.

Expect pictures.

♥ s

quick update and handy tool

I wanted to point you Japanese-learning types towards http://www.hiragana.jp/ which is a secret I learned a while ago but forgot about until just now. It takes all the kanji on a webpage and adds ふりがな。 Very useful in combination with lyrics in Japanese!

In other news, I had a rather awesome day. I bought 100 yen juggling bean bags at the 100 yen shop and while they are much too light, there are 4 of them (I need to learn how to do 4 ball, I can only do 2 and 3 ball), and I missed juggling. I also finally asked if I could play the guitar in my host brothers' room, which was ~the best~ idea I've had in a while. My fingers hurt because I haven't played since I've been here and I played a lot this afternoon. I've been busy learning more Neko Case songs and brushing up on my old repertoire of the pillows and Voxtrot. I wish I could play more but actually my fingers cannot handle it. The guitar was covered in dust so I'm just going to kidnap it unless someone wants it back. I don't know why it took me so long to ask. Just goes to show, you have to know how to keep yourself happy.

広島 Hiroshima pt. II

So what else did we do in Hiroshima... we wandered around some department stores and ate bakery food, because that's what we do apparently. Of course we had some Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, which in contrast to Osaka-style, is layered instead of mixed together and also commonly features soba. NOW, I love Osaka, and will thus defend it, and its okonomiyaki. My host father insists that they are entirely different and thus do not merit comparison... but I think eating it all mixed together is easier, even if it makes for a less dramatic preparation, since they generally make it on a hot surface at your table.

Our second day was a little cloudy, but we went and checked out Hiroshima castle, which is a reconstruction so Andy wasn't as interested in going in as he was in taking MySpace pics outside (though of course I love the MySpace pics and will never turn down an opportunity).





After that, we checked out the Hiroshima Museum of Art, which had mostly modern European paintings (impressionists and the ilk) but also some Japanese paintings in a European style, which I thought was interesting.

For lunch, we had Italian バイキング baikingu which is not biking, it is in fact viking and it means all-you-can-eat. The people working there assumed we couldn't speak Japanese, which I suppose is the product of being in such a heavily touristy area, but we reassured them that our comprehension level was at least acceptable. I realized a while ago that the first time I came to Japan after having studied Japanese, I thought that everyone was so impressed by the fact that I had some knowledge of the language, but now I know that everyone is just relieved that they don't have to try and speak English.

It was a little tough to come back to school after having such a fun weekend, but I studied all of my vocab on the shinkansen, so I didn't fall behind in my work. I'm really glad I decided to go, even if I didn't get to see Andy's mom who ended up arriving after I went back home to Osaka due to confusion about the international date line. And now Golden Week is only just around the corner, woohoo!

宮島 Miyajima

I've been feeling pretty down the past few days, but trying to keep myself entertained by keeping up with new anime (FMA, Bleach, Kuroshitsuji) and doing fun things, like going to Pokemon Center with Nella and eating various kinds of cuisine in Namba with Ryoko and friends; Jess and Althea, respectively. I still haven't caught up on the adventures Andy and I had last weekend in Hiroshima and Miyajima though, so it's time for a little catch-up.

Miyajima was overwhelmingly beautiful. It's an island off the coast of Hiroshima and one of the three famous "views of Japan" known for their beauty. On the ferry ride over, I stuck my face in the ocean wind and was exhilarated. The pictures I took from the ferry aren't too fabulous, but you can get an idea.





Luckily for us, we managed to catch the very tail-end of the sakura, as they are all gone now (at least where I live).

On the island, there are tons of wild deer just hanging out looking for some food from tourists. It was kind of hilarious to see them sauntering around, mostly minding their own business, completely accustomed to the whirlwind of human activity around them.



They even pose for pictures. We saw a tour guide of sorts persuading one to stand with a group of tourists as they were having their picture taken in front of the torii.

The torii is the quintessence of Miyajima, probably, so we took a lot of pictures. Supposedly, it is the most stunning at high tide where it looks like it's "floating," but we were there as the tide was almost all the way out. This did mean, though, that we could take off our shoes and wander into the water a little bit, which was a little cold but nothing years of practice in the Pacific ocean didn't prepare me for.









The rest of the day we spent climbing Mt. Misen, which we misjudged in terms of time commitment. We saw a sign warning about wild monkeys, which I did not believe until I saw some... much like the deer, they were just chillin'. There was something distinctly East Asian about climbing a mountain via millions of tiny stone steps surrounded by luscious foliage and wild monkeys.



Andy said, "Didn't you know, the days I don't bike 100 km I have to climb a mountain."

About halfway through I lost steam (when we started paying attention to how much more we had left to go, it was 2.2 km [1.37 miles]) but with a lot of encouragement, I made it. We were thoroughly rewarded with the view from the very top of the mountain and also the knowledge of our baddassery.









After that, we took the gondolas down (which we could have taken up, but after all that I'm glad we didn't) and gradually made our way back to our hostel in central Hiroshima and then had delicious, spicy, cold tsukemen for dinner at a restaurant called Bakudan, which means bomb, so I'm glad someone has a dark sense of humor somewhere. I am notoriously weak when it comes to spicy food, and on a scale of 0-20 I chose 3, although the gradation was pretty steep according to their chart... I think flames started coming out of your mouth at around 7 or so. After dinner, we did some very last-minute 花見 as the flowers were about halfway gone, and found a party organized by 外人 in the Peace Park and chatted with some New Zealanders about life in Japan.

痴漢

A few days ago, the Center for International Education at Kansai Gaidai sent out an e-mail advising students to be careful around town, as lately there had been a couple of reported incidents of girls being groped around the area. Today while I was walking home around 6:30 PM, on a street almost directly in front of my host family’s house, some young guy rode by on his bike, grabbed my ass, and rode away. Flustered, I yelled at him, though couldn’t do anything else because he was faster than me, and the only other person on the street was a middle-aged woman at the opposite end. I wished I knew how to say what I really wanted to tell him in Japanese, but I was glad I did anything at all instead of remaining silent, like so many Japanese women do. When I got home, I told my host father, who was extremely sympathetic, and was glad that I wasn’t hurt or robbed, and told me to forget about it. And sure, I’m glad I wasn’t hurt or robbed either, but the incidence rate of this kind of sexual harassment is so high in Japan, and women are told to just forget about it because there’s nothing you can do. So much of it goes unreported, because women don’t think there’s anything the police can do for them, and they’re pretty much right. So for exactly that reason, I told my host family, and I e-mailed Kansai Gaidai about it, because at least it’s being reported somewhere, and I am not silenced. (To Kansai Gaidai’s credit, as I was writing this they e-mailed me and asked me to come in and provide more details so that they could report it to the police by my host family’s house.)

I am the most frustrated and angry because I already feel like as a woman and a foreigner, I can never be an integrated member of Japanese society. It’s hard for me to articulate how I feel oppressed as a woman here, but I definitely do. And it’s clear to me, and my host family, and Kansai Gaidai, that foreign women are a particular kind of easy target for chikan (perverts), probably not only because we’re exotic but because we have less agency. I understand that this kind of thing happens everywhere, and of course it happens in the United States, but because this kind of sexual harassment is so common in Japan, and because Japan is otherwise absurdly safe, and because women have significantly less agency here, etc., I am outraged.