My bestie, @MotoHotei , the one time he came to Japan, along with several of our other bestest friends.
I can't wait to have them visit again sometime.
Kyoto. Easily one of my favorite cities in the world. Even in the rain.
Looking at this photo just brings up all sorts of feelings, about the beautiful energy of that city, where culture and nature and urban vibrancy all come together.
Kyoto, to me, is a city that is definitely a city, with all the vibrancy and amenities and things one might want from a city, but built around a core of history and culture, cute cafés and wonderful historical and nature spots, not around business and government. Kimono not suits
Naha, Okinawa. Certainly, Shuri castle or other more historical/cultural sights do make me smile, but it's just the city, the whole city, with its beautiful blue skies and warm atmosphere, and the culture that suffuses Naha even if architecturally it's all grey concrete ...
Last one. The Manoa Valley, in Honolulu. Makes me think of dear friends and my hānai Mānoa ohana.
Even living in HNL for only three years, I found such family and community there that I never have elsewhere.
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Feeling helpless and hopeless today, and very much on the verge of tears.
This coming Monday, May 15, marks the 50th anniversary of Okinawa's "reversion" to Japanese governance, i.e. the end of the formal American Occupation of Okinawa.
The Tokyo International Forum is one of several places holding exhibits in connection with this history.
For fifty years, Okinawans have been protesting, in great numbers, in numerous forms and venues, and yet the military bases are still there. The toxic spills, the plane crashes, the occupation of Okinawan land, the devastation of the environment, the countless incidents of SA.
Very interesting. Living here in Japan for the last few years, I've begun to think more and more about how, even when we know dictionary definitions, and are fluent enough to get by well, there is still so much that can be so elusive as to the connotations or nuances of words...
Mishima Kitan here informs us that when women / fem-presenting people use boku 僕 as their first-person pronoun ("I"), it can be read as butch, queer, trans, and/or as cringe, as someone who is too influenced by pop culture and/or trying too hard to create a persona for themself.
I never thought it had this connotation, this sense. To me, if I heard a woman use "boku," I would have simply thought they were being a little strong, a little independent. Giving off a slightly boyish, assertive, feminist energy, in a good way.
While the museum did not allow photos in the main portion of the exhibit space, it was mostly just reproductions anyway - so, if I take the time to go to NDL and look up the microfilm, I can see (and get a printout copy of!) these very same materials anyway.
One thing that was particularly interesting, though not surprising, was to see just how straightforwardly stated many of the headlines were. And, also, to see what they were juxtaposed with.
@Docstockk Others have surely answered already, but I'll add to the pack. (1) Read around. A very quick Google search will reveal plenty of pages explaining that, yes, generally it does mean "I'm fine with either." Why? Well, I'll speak for myself, and give two reasons.
@Docstockk First, because "they" is a neutral pronoun. It applies to everyone. "Someone lost their wallet." "I wonder who they are." Second, because some people don't feel 100% fully comfortable with the social constructs of "a man" or "a woman" and want to express that.
@Docstockk Some people feel that being called "they" instead of he or she helps reinforce their own feeling that they are being seen as a person first, an individual, and not first and foremost as representative of a social category - man or woman.
Visited Tobu World Square yesterday - a theme park near Nikko featuring models of famous buildings from around the world. Kind of cheesy, I guess, but kind of cool. My main purpose in going, ofc, was my interest in seeing their new model of Sui gusuku (Shuri castle).
Very much looking forward to visiting Shuri again. We'll see when that ends up happening.
Some sites of modern Japan: the Tokyo National Museum, Akasaka Palace, Imperial Hotel (Frank Lloyd Wright), and Tokyo Station.
The quiet, unspoken, pressure to embody gender norms, to try to fit in and seem like a typical, "normal" guy/man/bro/dude, even when, who knows, maybe all the other guys are also pretending or self-policing in the same way, to fit in with you.
Even when you know the guys and they'd probably be totally cool with you being a diff sort of guy to them, I'm always sort of curious, how many of them aren't actually that sort of guy either? We all just sort of play along to try to fit in, but maybe *all* of us are pretending?
If only we could all drop the act all at once. I'm sure there's a movie/TV reference I could reference here, but I'm blanking. But surely, there's one where everyone is standing around, brewskis in hand, talking about football, and then everyone sort of eyes one another and then