On Christmas crisis

The thought of going back to Sweden legitimately terrifies me.

On confusing boys and beautiful furniture

Furniture stores in Japan are something special, especially the more expensive ones. I love going in there to just look around, checking out all that minimalistic elegance. Touching the furniture in a japanese furniture store is like sex. It just feels that good. The good stuff is grotesquely expensive though. I found some nice desk lamps, all costing about the same as a month of my rent. Geez, why can't I have worse taste?

On finding myself mainstream

Just as pop culture has taught us, Japanese girls are cute. Most of them are cute in that non-descript way that happens when people have the same haircut, same makeup style and look like they shop in the same store (i.e. probably 80% of all college girls around here), and it's a way that requires a lot of work. When I moved I was about as low maintenance as anyone could imagine. Since moving, however, I've grown far more interested in makeup and other girly things, and I've expanded my routines to things like bb cream, blush, makeup remover before bed, and shaving my legs with razors that aren't the cheap disposable kind (setting the bar high here, I know). In the Japanese mind, I'm still very low maintenance, but it's funny how much more effort I spend on this stuff now. It's funny how much I like spending effort on this stuff. I'm still me. I'm just a far more put together version of me than most people know me as.

Still as true as it ever was.

On channeling Korean housewives

I had a total housewife day today, deep cleaning the apartment and cooking up some chicken bibimbap. Mid-cooking I started thinking about what it was like when Moonlight cooked it for me and Pony, and how much I really miss him. I even use the same brand of Korean chili paste as we did then, just out of nostalgia. Moonlight and I used to hang out all the time, and he became very close to our friend group very fast, and the fact that I wanted to go to Seoul last weekend but couldn't just made it a little harder to bear. It's been so long now. Then out of nowhere, he started talking to me on facebook again. I don't know if my brain sent out an 'Hey friend, I need you'-SOS, or something, but it was nice to know that I'm not the only person feeling the loss.

On happy Mondays

Today T and I hung out in Kawasaki, going to the Nihon Minkaen, an open air museum in the woods, or at least a park that actually looked like woods instead of a silly little grove with manicured trees (which is what usually passes for woods around here). It was really relaxing, and a whole lot of fun. Definitely a good way to end my four day weekend, which I was feeling a little guilty about taking seeing as I managed to do spectacularly little with it. Still, it feels worth it to be feeling so refreshed. So yeah, brace yourselves, idyllic picture spam incoming.

On hormones, walks and being, well... tall

I know I took all this time off to do something awesome this weekend, but frankly, I haven't really done shit. I don't know if this was a good thing or bad thing. Maybe it was something I really needed. I've been drawing a lot, and that's something I haven't done in a long time. It felt nice to reconnect with it, if you know what I mean. I felt a little lonely the first two days, and I didn't really open my mouth for 48 hours except to speak to my fish and the shop staff, but in a way, maybe that was restful too. I've been having crazy hormones too, resulting in both my body hating me and my head feeling kinda out of sorts. Gotta love all those wonderful female hormones, am I right?

On colds, concentration issues and cuties

So hey, you guys remember when I wrote that this apartment is kinda cold?

I am currently wearing not one, but two knitted sweaters and a big-ass woolen scarf, because oh-my-god-this-fucking-country-needs-to-learn-to-isolate-their-fucking-buildings. It doesn't help that one of my walls is literally just windows. I guess this is kinda exacerbated by the fact that I'm exhausted and am probably getting a bit sick - that does always make me really cold (and gives me undereye circles of absolute fucking doom), but the truth cannot be denied - I look like an eastern European immigrant from the 1800's. I'm so happy I have the next four days off. There's a lot of tea drinking and heat conserving in store for me for the next few days.

On parental love and new work allies

Is my phone trying to tell me that it thinks I should stop being a loser, cleaning my aquarium, and go out and play instead?

On scales, the subconscious and sad students

In accordance to starting working out, I've been wondering if I should get scales. This might not sound like such a big deal, but it's something I've been staying away from for five years. As people who know me know, I used to have an eating disorder around the time I was 19 - I'd weigh myself once a day and the number had to be lower than the day before, even by just a little, or I'd kick the whole not-eating thing up another notch. After I'd gotten over my food obsession, I didn't get on a scale for years. I didn't want to jinx it. But now I'm wondering if it's safe to try again, or if it'll just be the gateway to new obsessions. Are former eating disorders really something you can get rid of? Are relapses really relapses, or does it just never really go away? And would it definitely mean relapse to get one, or can it be just a piece of furniture the way I want it to be? I don't feel obsessive about it now, after all. I'm thinking I should be able to handle it. I mean, it's a scale - an inanimate object with numbers on it. I think I'm enough of an adult to have it not control my life.

I mean, I say I'm an adult, but I just noticed that the shirt I'm wearing is on backwards. SO YEAH WHATEVER. I also accidentally bought cereal with a 'light chocolate flavour' instead of the bran cereal I thought I was getting. Looks like my subconscious is set on being immature for a little longer.

My subconscious, were it a pupppet.

On workouts and pig-outs

Usually, when people move to Japan, it's pretty common that they lose weight. After all, Japan has a lot of really good low-calorie foods, like sushi, and a lot of walking to keep people in shape. I, on the other hand, gained weight, probably mostly due to karaage, coffee drinks, alcohol and carbs galore. Not exactly happy about that, so when I went out on Saturday, I got myself a yoga mat. I tried out a 30 minute program that very night, and a 20 minute program the next morning, and was pretty embarrassed by how extremely weak I am. My whole body was shaking within the first ten minutes. I knew I wasn't all that strong, but to witness the full extent of my powerlessness did feel like a bit of a wakeup call.  You know what I was saying the other day about wanting to improve? Yeah, that wasn't me bullshitting. I'm actually going to attempt to find some mind-body-heart balance. Hell knows that would be a first.

The Tomsons like watching me do yoga. Not sure how I feel about that.

On colds and coziness

I used to scoff when people would tell that Tokyo was really cold in the fall and winter. Like "Shut up, I'm from the great white north, I've known cold you wouldn't even believe", but shit, this place is freezing. Why the hell is there no isolation at all in these walls? I mean, I knew they were thin, but I thought that the apartment being tiny would make up for that. Yeah, that's not the case. Come night time, this apartment can be dubbed mini-Siberia.

On image changes and autumn days

There's something about living in this country that makes me legitimately want to become a better version of myself. I put a lot of effort into things, from work to clothing, to language skills and general appearance, in a way I didn't do before, and I find myself enjoying it. I've started studying again on a daily basis. I pay all of my bills on time. I do skin care. I have the cleanest living space I've ever had (which anyone who's ever lived with me can testify to). I can keep plants alive. I change my bed linens on a weekly basis. I do laundry even when I haven't run out of underwear. I iron. I use fucking fabric softener. Is this what it's like to be a grown-up? Because... I kinda like it. Bet you never saw that coming.

(and can we just take a moment to appreciate how super hot Beenzino is in this fucking video? Like damn, boy, lemme get you some.)

On hubs and dancing

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how amazing this song is? Sakanaction are totally awesome on their own, but when they remix their own songs, it's like a whole new level of something that just makes the pleasure centers in my brain explode. It's like an 8 minute eargasm. It's the first song they played way back when T and I went to Sonicmania, and I've been searching for it ever since in an obsessive attempt to make it mine and listen to it every day. Luckily they released a new single a few weeks ago, and there it was. Listening to it again for the first time since that night yesterday, all I could do was to once again acknowledge Ichiro Yamaguchi as God, and bow down to his brilliance.

On dates, design and day dreams

Oh silent readers,  you really are sweet when you aren't silent. Time flies, and suddenly it's been like two weeks without posting and I have no idea how that happened. Things have been... I don't know, pretty happening I guess? No worries, I'm going to clue all you dolls in. I'm not dead anyway, nor are things all terrible over here. On the contrary - about a billion things have happened, a lot of them quite pleasant, and while I was feeling kinda low about stuff there for a while, the real turning point came when one of my friends and I were chilling on my balcony, watching the clouds in the night sky, and after telling him all about how I felt given everything going on, he paused for a bit before going: "You've left your home to go live far, far away. You're doing this all by yourself, and sure, it's hard, but you're doing it. I really respect that."

In a way, that felt like what I needed to hear at the time. A local, just acknowledging that this shit is hard. I wouldn't change it for the world, seeing as I love my life here, but hearing that you're admired for your efforts was like a turning point for me. A lot of the time I feel like people I meet view me as a strange but entertaining specimen, and they can't really understand why I came to Tokyo, but in that moment it was like at least one person here gets it, and can relate. It cheered me up more than I thought it would.