On air con fears and the appeal of skirts

I have this weird love-hate relationship with the air conditioning here. Today was roughly 29 degrees out at its hottest, so all day it was pretty sweltering. I get home, I'm exhausted, and I relax by turning on the air conditioning. No matter what the temperature I set it to though, I get chilly after like five or ten minutes, and have to turn it off, leaving me to like five or ten comfortable minutes before it gets too hot again and I have to turn it back on. I just can't get comfortable with it. I wonder if it's one of those things I'll get used to. I'm a little bit scared of getting a cold, like last time I was here when I got the worst air con cold ever, snivveling and being gross in general all across Kyoto. Not to be recommended.

On house shopping and boundless narcissism

Today turned into a day of apartment hunting. Hot apartment hunting in sunny Ikebukuro in near 30 degree weather. It was extremely tiring, and mid-walking I got my period early, so hey, that was fun. The rather small woman with the cute pixie cut who was out showing us the properties, Yagami, was really sweet, and walking for four hours between properties didn't really feel all that bad. The first was a traditional Japanese apartment with tatami mats, from sometime during the 80's. It was nice, and I was pretty tempted to take it, but in the end I went with the fourth property, on the top floor of a building overlooking a shrine close to Ikebukuro station. Mom argued that it would've been better to go with a bigger (and marginally cheaper) brand new apartment at Kita-ikebukuro, about 15 minutes from the station, but so much of the space was lost on a strangely large corridor, and the actual room was quite a bit smaller, on the second floor and overlooking a highway. Not so impressive. Dad took like a million pictures while I was filling out forms with the realtor, which was super awkward. As always I forgot to take pictures while out and about, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue. I'm signing the contract next Friday, and moving in next Saturday, so you'll be seeing a whole lot more of the final thing. Oh, and I'll be living like next door to a Muji store, so if you'll excuse me I've got some minimalist interior designs to consider.

On unicorns and casual nationalism

 I had the weirdest dream last night, that Pony and I were still living together in the house I lived in when I first moved to Sweden. She'd for some reason brought Junsu over with some other girl she knew, when I was swamped with work and unable to even talk to him, and then adamantly wouldn't understand why I was upset when I could hear them through the walls; talking, laughing and, for some strange reason, playing board games. I ran away and later confronted her with screaming and ugly-crying. The whole thing felt really bizarre.

Things became even more bizarre when I was having lunch with my parents, and suddenly the spitting image of Jaejoong walks in and sits down next to us. I tried not to stare, but, well... come on, it's Jaejoong. It's kinda like spotting a unicorn, if unicorns hung around cheap fast food places in Shibuya. If anything I had to stare for Pony's sake. I even veered from my usual rules of being discrete and snuck a picture of him on my phone. I know, I know, it was rude, but whatever. Some things just need to be done. There was no way I wasn't going to show her. We may be thousands of miles away, but this is pretty much the dance of our people. Stalking.

On Tokyo blues and having a phone as a boyfriend

It's happened, silent readers. I'm currently on day two in the busiest city in the world, currently perched on the bed at the place we're renting, writing after a busy day of errand running around Tokyo. I'm finally here. It's so many things at once - busy, humid, loud, stressful, cool, sad... I don't know what to think of it, really. I can't really be any kind of reasonable in this matter. I'm confused as all hell. These past few weeks have been kinda awful, filled with fun things like not being able to sleep and crying on an almost daily basis, and I'm still not sure this is what I want to do, but here I am, and I'm going to try to make the best out of this. I fought to get here, now I need to make sure that I can make something out of all those years of effort.

On suit conundrums and passport freakouts

I find it rather irrational that one of my biggest concerns and stress inducers right now is that I don't have a work-appropriate wardrobe. Business casual is kinda not my thing. It just feels kinda stale and un-cool. I can't really imagine myself in a suit or jacket, it's just so stiff and uncomfortable-looking. That being said, I think I'm going to do what I always do when it comes to rules - I'm going to bend them, slowly yet intently. If you start by pushing the boundaries little by little, it's amazing what you can get away with in the long run. Start with something as small as funky-coloured socks, end up with a far more relaxed attitude towards what counts as professional in the clothing department. Either that or I just Tilda Swinton this mofo and suit up to high fashion levels.

On life changing and being a big ball of stress

Hello there silent readers! Due to my life being a bit of a shit storm at the moment I haven't really gotten around to posting like I said I would. I've been crazy stressed over just about everything, mostly because I finally got it. I got the Certificate of Eligibility, which is pretty much the final hurdle in the whole going-to-Japan thing, apart from the actual sending-it-to-the-Japanese-embassy thing. It's pretty safe to say that by this time next month I will be teaching at a language school at Ikebukuro, Tokyo. I made it, you guys. I made it, and it feels... good. Bad. Weird. Stressful. All adjectives related to that and more. About half of me is going 'YAY!' and the other half of me is going 'Oh my god, I'm going to die. Seriously die.', which I've been told is pretty normal, although far from fun.