On flickering lights

Accidentally pressing the button to the wrong floor today had me almost stepping out into a darkened hallway with flickering lights. Thanks, but I'd rather not be chased around and ultimately killed by Pyramid head if that's all the same to you.

On neglecting, birthdays and varying degrees of closeness

You guys know the drill - I drop off the face of the earth for a bit, come back, promise to get better, post responsibly for a few weeks, and then I'm gone again. I'm like the abusive, neglecting parent of blogging. I'd say I'm sorry, and that I'll change, but you know as well as I do that it's bullshit. And that's okay. I'm kinda okay with that.

Oh, and happy belated birthday, blog. You're two years old now. Honestly I thought I probably would've abandoned you by now. I guess I'm not that much of a neglecting parent after all.

On yearly highlights and a total lack of fireworks

And what a year it's been.

On tequila, life goals and homesickness

Now this may be really pretentious of me to say, but you haven't lived unless you've been in a really sketchy bar in Tokyo at 2 a.m., downing tequila shots while people chant your name.

In Tokyo, I'm living the life I will one day be telling my grandkids about, and I am madly in love with every second of it, so going to Stockholm was obviously something that was a bit dreaded. Incoming: I'm totally going to unload what's been going on the past week. Wall of text incoming!

On Christmas crisis

The thought of going back to Sweden legitimately terrifies me.

On roads and growing

The Philosopher and I broke up last night. It was kinda long in the making, with things being bad for quite some time this fall, but it just got to the point where we wanted different things, and couldn't give the other what they wanted. I wanted space, he wanted more emotional availability. I'm not the type of person who likes to admit defeat, but the distance wasn't doable in the way we would've liked it to be. We still both deeply care for one another, and would've obviously wished that things could have progressed differently, but things don't happen in this world as they would in an ideal. I worried a lot about the future, since I don't want to leave Japan, and while he offered to try to find a graduate position in Tokyo, this life isn't easy. This place is different. It makes you different, and if you don't want that, or don't want to come here for your own sake, it's not going to work. For him to give up his entire life and move across the globe to a country he knows practically nothing about and with a language he knows literally nothing of, would have been too much weight on my shoulders. I didn't want that.

On infinite spaces

Sad things happen to good people.

On decisions

On playing catch-up, part one

Oh hi there! Bet you guys were thinking I was dead or had been kidnapped by the yakuza or something. I'm back anyway. You miss me and my everyday ramblings? Well here, have a much overdo long-ass, picture-heavy post. Take it as a token of apology. I feel bad for neglecting my writing, and for neglecting you, my silent readers. I don't know if I'd say that things have been busier than usual, but there's a lot going on in my world and in my head, and I haven't really felt like writing all that much, but I haven't forsaken you! I'm going to give you a quick rundown of everything now instead. Brace yourself, walls of text and pictures are coming. And goldfish. A lot of goldfish.

On prodigal returns

On boats, fish and concerts

I'm really kind of bad at the whole updating thing, aren't I? Apologies, Silent Readers, as always. Things are cosily chaotic in my world as always. Ups and downs, back and forths, and it's hard to really know where my mind is at. While that's pretty liberating, I feel a little like I'm lost at sea, just paddling any which way and hoping that whatever current carries my boat will eventually carry me to some peace of mind. It's been a bumpy couple of weeks.

On yo-yo work and yo-yo days

August has so far not been the most stellar of months for me, at least not work-wise. Everyone in Japan is currently celebrating Obon, which means that everyone who's not originally from Tokyo is leaving the city to hang out with relatives, and everyone who's actually from Tokyo is deciding to not give a shit about English. My bookings are low, and I got another pesky negative yesterday. It ended up making me feel rather crushed. Luckily though, the blow was significantly softened in that I'd already asked my bosses for my lesson score comments, so that I'd know what to improve and what I was doing right. This apparently impressed the both of them to the degree that they even mentioned it to the Gaba higher-ups. I've gotta hand it to Peewee, him telling me to ask my superiors really put me in an awesome light. One of them came by my booth today to tell me to not mind the negative, and that he 'got more negatives in the first few months than I can count with all of my fingers and toes'. My colleagues also tell me not to freak out about it either. I'm working on caring less. Some students are just messed up, I guess.

On good trips and strange brains

 
I find it funny how my brain and body decided to go: "Oh, so the person who's been visiting is actually your boyfriend? Sorry, our bad." and suddenly dumping massive amounts of affection on me to spread around a week before the Philosopher left. Now I feel like all the hugs and cuddles. Awesome. Mom did tell me that things would be weird, but I feel a little guilty for how things have been recently. I wish this could've kicked in sooner. It's not like I've been aloof on purpose, but things haven't felt easy for me. And while we've spent a lot of time trying to iron out awkward issues that arose on account of everything being horribly weird (because there's like, what, half a world between us now?), I did really enjoy having him here, and we did a lot of pretty great stuff.

On goodbyes

On party vibes and Cuba Rivers

 

I don't know if it's me that's become weak as fuck since moving here, or if the Japanese bartenders are happy with the alcohol, but I'm loving drinking in Japan. Seriously, when they call it a Cuba River instead of a Cuba Libre and dunk a shit-tonne of alcohol into it, charging a measly 500 yen (or 35 SEK) a glass (and giving me one for free, along with a basket of nachos and some fried shrimp for being slow with getting my burger ready), what's not to love? I haven't been in the mood for getting shitfaced in a pretty long time, but now that things seem to be solving themselves with everything I was worried about regarding work, I'd love to just go out and get completely black out drunk. Obviously with people I know and safely and yada yada, but just like... wasted. Where's Yanyan when you need him? That boy knows how to party.

On ups and downs

Be right back, café hunting.

On bad days with bad feelings

The same way a month can feel like an eternity, a week and a half can feel like aeons. I've been torn between every emotional state from glee to feeling like I'm at the brink of a huge gaping black hole, sucking all of my happiness into it. I wish I knew how things got this way. I never thought they would.

On Hogwarts houses and the thought of losing people

I had a really weird dream about Moonlight the other night. I dreamt that he for some reason started dating an American man, who wouldn't let him be my friend anymore. I tried reasoning with him and asking him why, since he used to say that I was his best friend, but he just kept telling me that we weren't friends anymore. I tried talking to him about it, but his new bartending job seems to keep him really busy, and he doesn't call me like he used to. I miss him. After we stopped seeing each other we eventually developed a nice friendship, and we'd been talking about visiting each other, me going to Seoul and him coming to Tokyo, and that we'd go traveling around Asia in February together. Now, I feel forgotten, and I want to have him back in my friend sphere again. Ex-lover or not, he's really special to me, and I want him in my life. I just hope this dream wasn't some weird psychic vibe telling me that the fun's over. That'd suck some balls.

On shaking awakenings and coming to terms with time

I have awoken from my blog slumber!

Delays delays! Sorry silent readers. Things have been pretty hectic lately. Work, trying to straighten out some sort of social life, and the Philosopher coming here last Tuesday has left me running in circles. Running in circles in a good way of course, but I've missed blogging. I hope you'll all forgive my tardiness.

Life in Tokyo is as exciting as ever, being woken up at like four in the morning by an earthquake. I'm sure there have been earthquakes here before while I've been living here, but I've reasoned that as long as I don't notice them, I haven't experienced an earthquake. Well, this one I experienced. It turned out to be a 6.5 quake off the coast of Fukushima, which translates to probably not 6.5 in Tokyo, but enough to wake me from my death-like sleep. It took me a second to realize what it was, before it filled me with a kind of primal fear, during which time I wondered if it would be a sort of pre-quake to a really big one and how much shit would hit the fan if that were true, but it passed withing fifteen seconds, and I fell right back to sleep again. So much for primal fears right? Apparently this makes me an official Tokyoite, according to the people I know. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that stuff, right?

On fluffy heart things and blog hiding

Mom walked by as I was doing stuff on my computer. "Oh hey, you have a blog?" Uh... no? It's, uh... a mirage?

I answered really vaguely and I think she got that I don't want her to read it. I write things as they happen to me, and the feelings that come along with them, so it's not always the most flattering things that make its way onto this medium. I'm considering if I should stop linking it on places again just to minimize the risk of her finding it. We annoy the hell out of each other sometimes, but I don't want to be hurtful. I also don't want to censor myself, because this blog is a comforting emotional outlet.