Trying to Maintain Balance in Japan

When I initially wrote this in 2019, I was back home visiting my family and friends so I took time to just sit back and reflect on my life in Japan so far. I forgot that I had this in my drafts for almost a year and given the current COVID situation that we currently live in, I thought I’d revisit and finish this post.

Regardless, It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that the Japanese lifestyle is completely different to the life I once had back home, but over time I managed to settle in to my new environment. However, even for someone familiar with Japanese society, it can eventually become quite taxing to the mind and body.

Love & Japan Part 3: Distance

Welcome to another edition of Love & Japan. Compared to the previous two editions, however, this one is going to be bit more reflective and serious as this is a topic I am sure most of us have experienced at some point in our lives: distance. While this one doesn’t pertain to love specifically, this post relates to those of us who have someone close or dear to us, but cannot see as much as we like due to distance or other circumstances.

A (Humourous) Guide to the Japanese Language

So the other day I was taking a nice, nightly stroll around Kawaramachi after watching Godzilla: King of the Monsters (which was actually a good movie) and caught a Starbucks in the corner of my eye which allowed you to enjoy your nice cup of pumpkin spiced latte coffee near the banks of the Kamogawa River. Intrigued by this prospect, I went inside and, as always, ordered my coffee in Japanese. However, on this day, I also brought along my coffee tumbler so I asked the barrister, in Japanese, if it was OK for him to put the coffee in the tumbler instead. Instead of asking him “Kore, ii desu ka (Is this ok)?” I accidentally asked him “Koko ni ii desu ka (Is it OK to have my coffee here [while pointing at my tumbler])?” It took a brief second for the barrister to realise what I actually wanted to say, to which he replied with “Hai. OK desu (Yes, that’s OK)”.

So this embarrassing language blunder is only one of many times where I’ve accidentally said the wrong thing while having the right intentions, but I guess this is just part of the language learning process, right?

Making Japanese Friends: Possible or Impossible?

So at this time of writing I have lived in Japan (specifically Kyoto) for almost two months now, experiencing so much in so little time. From visiting Tokyo, Kobe and Osaka to eating a wide variety of Japanese foods to even having an almost awkward encounter with a female staff worker at an onsen, these are just some of the things you’ll never get a chance to truly experience back in your home country. But while all these things are nice and dandy, sometimes it’s nice experiencing these things (except for the awkward onsen encounter) with other people, especially with local Japanese friends who have more knowledge of these things than you do. “But wait,” you ask, “how hard is it to make a Japanese friend?” Well, my friend, the answer to that is pretty complicated so today I want to talk about this topic and share some of my experiences with trying to make Japanese friends.

What’s Next for That Baka Blog?

Hello everyone and welcome to 2019! I’m very glad that 2018 is over because it proved to be one of the toughest years of my life for various reasons. As everyone knows by now, with a new year comes new challenges and changes to one’s life. Today, I want to speak about one of the biggest changes that is about to happen to me personally and how it is going to affect my blog.

Kiki’s Delivery Service: The Miracle of Self Belief [OWLS Blog Tour December 2018: Miracles]

Tis the season where miracles happen. For December’s theme, we will be exploring faith in anime and pop culture. We will discuss some of the miracles that enter a character’s life during their darkest moments. Some of their questions we will explore is how does a “miracle” change a person’s life? How do we define miracles? Can miracles only happen due to a legend or a mystical being? Or do miracles happen every day, but we just don’t see it? We hope that you enjoy this holiday season! Happy Holidays! 

When one thinks of Miyazaki, apart from his themes of flight and nature, the three films that come to mind are Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and My Neighbour Totoro. This is not to say that Miyazaki’s other films aren’t good or memorable, but these are the films even non-anime fans are able to recognize, mostly, in part, due to their impact on pop culture.

What also separates Miyazaki from most other anime directors is his depiction of the shojo (which has been well documented by scholars, such as Susan Napier, over time), who were mostly depicted as passive and helpless in other mediums at the time. Most of Miyazaki’s films have female leads and these characters are often depicted as strong, active and independent figures. One of these female figures is Kiki, a teenage witch who moves to a seaside town with her cat, Jiji, as part of her witch training.

Live, Love, Laugh – Or is it Life First, Blogging Second?

Hello, folks! I am still alive and well, thanks for asking! As you’ve all probably noticed by now, I haven’t been active on the blogosphere for quite some time now (the last post I wrote was for OWLS) so I wanted to address what has been going on from my side.

My Love for Professional Wrestling and Why I’m Not Ashamed of it [OWLS Blog Tour June 2018 – “Pride”]

Welcome, everyone, to my first blog tour for OWLS (Otaku Warriors for Liberty and Self-Respect). For those of you unfamiliar with OWLS:

We are a group of otaku bloggers who promote acceptance of all individuals regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and disability. We emphasise the importance of respect, kindness, and tolerance to every human being. Even though we come from all walks of life, each and every one of our amazing members are dedicated to our cause!

As you can guess from the title, this month’s theme is “Pride”. Below is the prompt that was given to us:

In honor of “Pride Month,” we will be discussing the word, “Pride” and its meaning. We will be exploring pop culture characters’ most satisfying and joyful achievements or skills that they possessed and whether or not these qualities could be seen as a positive or negative aspect in their personal lives and/or society.

So what is pride? Given that it is “Pride Month”, the first thing that comes to mind is queer pride. Pride can also mean the following, according to fellow blogger Matt-in-the-Hat:

Pride is having the abundance of confidence on one’s own skills or traits. People can have pride on certain things like their skills in their hobbies or even their own personality such as being kind or cocky. Showing some pride can be a good thing because it shows how much the person cares about something and it makes them stand out and different.

Today, however, I’m going to play the black sheep of the blog tour and talk about a form of pride that is very personal to me: pride in an interest or fandom. In this case, my love for professional wrestling. On a personal note, this took a lot of courage and self-motivation for me to write about as this is a topic I usually keep to myself.

Dealing With Depression Using Dark Souls

Disclaimer: The views and comments made in this post do not necessarily reflect how other people suffer from depression. Everyone is different and everyone experiences things differently to others. These are purely based on my personal experiences.

Before I start with this personal post of mine, I’m going to try my best not to turn this into a sob story. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been dealing with depression for a very long time. This, naturally, has had an effect on many areas of my life: feeling shy and socially anxious around people (especially women), putting too much pressure on myself due to societal and family expectations, saying negative things to myself when I do something wrong, even if it’s miniscule (“useless”, “idiot”, etc.) and so forth. Luckily, though, I have learned overtime to accept my depression and realise that it’s a part of who I am. By acknowledging this fact, it’s made the coping process a bit easier for me these days. 

5 Centimeters Per Second and the Pain of Holding On to the Past [Spoilers]

Love doesn’t win; reality does

Holding on to someone you truly love, even when you know that you can never be together with them, is one of the most painful things in the world. Whether it is because of physical distance, growing apart with time or even both, holding on to the past can sometimes cloud your vision of everything happening to you in the present. That is the crux that makes up 5 Centimeters Per Second: a tragic, yet realistic story about loving someone you cannot be with and the pain of holding on to the memory of them. This is something that I’ve been personally dealing with for a while now, so I thought it would be appropriate to write about this film in relation to my own experiences on this.