Seasonal greetings

Oh hi! It's been a while and I missed this space. Here is my first photo essay with some of my 35mm that needed a home.

Jun 26, 2024

It’s getting warmer - hotter actually, and I already used my AC for the first time weeks ago. I always wait till the last minute until I start dripping sweat down my back while typing in my room. I don’t know if that’s my gaman (my patience) spirit in full force or that I’m secretly an energy saving environmentalist - regardless the sunlight is hot on our face and humidity is curling our hair. I thought of doing a little bit of seasonal greeting, a seasonal catch up, a check in with some of my 35mm photos that I haven’t posted online yet. It’s been a while since I’ve written, reflected, to be alone with my own thoughts and frankly, I sort of forgot how to do it all. Let this be me easing into the writing practice.

I’ve been in a reading slump. This past couple of months from the end of April has been non-stop with work, social events and life. Naturally, my writing has been on hold a little bit too. My morning routine that I have kept for 3 years now is almost non-existent. I don’t even know if I’m a morning or night shower type of person anymore. My schedule is so up in the air and on the go, that I have to live by the week or day almost and it’s been exhausting. When one is exhausted, making nutritious meals or cleaning up the house becomes a choir that adds an extra layer to decision fatigue. But I also need underwear - if I don’t run the washing machine, how is a girl supposed to have a clean pair of socks and underwear? As I see a pile of clothes stacking up in my small hallway, I think of all the other things around the house that haven't been taken care of. Watering my plants, cleaning my toilet, (period trash being neglected ), taking out the general trash, the weird smell from my kitchen sink, dust gathering around all corners of my house, more clothes somewhere - my mind drifts away and I can’t quite decide on tackling one thing at a time when I’m exhausted. There’s this 6 minute rule my boyfriend taught me - you set a timer to finish a simple task for not 4, not 5 but 6 minutes. Somehow, it works.

Pleasurable things like reading, watching a movie and that sort of stuff comes in seconds when I’m exhausted. If only, I had the energy, strength, and will power like this woman to sit on a rock still amongst noise and children running around her, tackling her book head first.

When people are in need and friends and lovers are in pain, I want to be there for them. Mothering has always been in my nature, not my gender nature but just as a person. I love to be the big sister to everyone, the mother of the group. I used to hate playing that role when I was in high school though. While everyone could be playful and teenager-like, I was always the responsible one and I couldn’t break out of that personality. I like taking care of people, so does my best friend Yurino and when I see someone so similar as I am (but different in many ways), I see the act of taking care of people can also hurt yourself in many ways too ; a martyr. No one asked for your help, you are taking on too much. You asked this for yourself. It’s true, my boyfriend didn’t ask for me to make him soup when he was sick after I just got off of a 14 hour shift on set. My friend didn't ask me to bake her a cake when I could have just bought one. My friend didn’t ask me to delivery her cookies, but I did anyways. I like to care for people and be there for them, but it also doesn’t come naturally. It takes effort and labor to care and love people.

I wonder if this sakura tree is carefully cared for in preparation to bloom for the Spring? The bush around her neatly trimmed, I wonder if some local gardener comes by and takes care of the wild tree or if the tree just does its thing every year. I wonder if us humans also have that will power to naturally blossom on our own without help - i doubt that. Humans are fragile, so dependent on others. Maybe the better question to ask is, do I want to blossom without no one’s help or effort? That seems a little lonely.

I used to envy youth a lot when I was 23,24. It was at the time when I first started working at my corporate job. I couldn’t wrap my mind around not having a break anymore for the rest of my life. Jokes on me because just in 2022, I ended up taking a sort of a life sabbatical from work for several months. At 23, I wouldn’t have imagined my life would take a turn this way. If you are a student, each season you get a long break. As a working adult person, you can if you want but unless I was working in Japan, having 2 weeks off of work was out of the question. When I was a kid, summer break meant for me that I could go see family back in Portland. It was one of my favorite things to do as a kid. A foreign country with people I see once a year - I was the youngest kid in the family for a while and I was very spoiled. Weirdly this past couple of months, I have been busy more than any salary women possible. Freelance life does that. Controlling your workload is up to you. The past couple of months, I asked myself, why am I working so much? But actually, I think I do like to work a lot - it’s been a while since I took a vacation for myself. And then just like that, I’m soon planning a birthday trip with a special person in my life and I’m very excited about that.

I’m going to write this in depth another time, but I’m in a weird place when it comes to making new friends at the moment. I am always open to making new friends, but I have high standards for what is a friendship and what I want from a friend. making a new friend at this age seems almost impossible. I’m too self aware to just make superficial friends for the sake of Instagram followers. Friendship to me has been a sacred space. Probably for many people as well, but for me I relied a lot on friends. I never had a partner and naturally, when something happens in my life, the place I share the news is to my friends. Recently I’ve been realizing that I don’t particularly enjoy it when my friend brings their friends to a group hang. It even annoys me to some extent. If I wanted to hang out with random people on my Friday night, I might as well not come and have this night for myself. It’s not that I don’t like to socialize with strangers, perhaps there’s a little bit of that too, but it’s more of the lack of need of wanting to become friends with these people. Why? Because probably it takes effort to get to know someone. I don’t feel the need to tirelessly converse with people I don’t know maybe. I probably just need a handful of friends in my life and talking shit about something like these women are.

I recently had dinner with my boyfriend’s friend and he said something so thought provoking that I can’t stop thinking about it. We were talking about gatekeeping culture (my usual favorite topic), and he said, “This city is Japanese people’s first. The tourist comes third or even forth on the line.” That takes a lot to admit for someone who is a foreigner living here and who can also speak Japanese. Tokyo is becoming - not the Tokyo we used to grow up with. That happens with any metropolis city, but its speed and excessiveness is crazy. The city is now mostly catered for tourists - English menu provided everywhere, your usual restaurant can’t accommodate locals like they used to so you need a ticket to get in line now, old clubs are being demolished and new buildings are being made at every corner for more tourists to buy shit. When a city as big as Tokyo becomes what it is now, it’s hard to claim who owns it. New York people have that ownership towards their city but I don’t know how much Tokyo people have that. I like seeing the 3D cat in Shinjuku, I enjoyed going to the observatory in Shibuya Sky (maybe because it wasn’t my money I guess), I like eating cheap sushi too. I like the things tourists like doing too, but they only scratch the surface of this city - they can only see what’s happening and never fully understand it and that’s fine. My city became the main character all of the sudden, and maybe as a Leo, I just slightly feel overshadowed.

I found this cafe because my friend Yuri told me there’s delicious ice cream here, but I went to work outside of my house early in the morning, it turned out to be a hidden neighborhood delight. It was in April so I still had my sweatshirt with me, the wind was just right, the sunlight was just perfect and there was no noise. Tokyo is quiet, that is one of the things you hear people say when people come to visit. But this day in particular, maybe because it was on a weekday and people had gone out to work and the rest of us are either freelancers or elderly people just living our best lives, the street was calm. This man was a diligent sweeper of the leaves in front of the cafe. When a single leaf dropped from the sky, he will attend to it. When someone was in his way, he would make it known to go up to that person and say nothing but stand still with his big broom and try to sweep away. I was getting distracted by my work while I admired his work ethic.

Crowds - my enemy and your enemy while you are in Tokyo. Everywhere you go, you can’t avoid it. But if you can and you found a spot of breathable space, which can happen often, finding those spaces becomes your assignment. Shibuya crossing during golden hour is now impossible to walk. Shibuya in general is just impossible. Sakura season in Tokyo is impossible. Summer in Tokyo is impossible. Kyoto is impossible. PST is impossible to get a reservation now - because of some Italian or American posting it on Instagram. (That one was a bit specific but it’s true.) Tokyo is big but small, if you catch my drift. There is nowhere to escape between these tall buildings. There is but it’s getting narrow and narrow. Tokyo is a great example of space being finite. There is just not enough space. Buildings are stacked against each other, our shoulders are touching each other in the streets in the morning rush hours. Personal space is difficult to maintain in the trains in the morning. No wonder we start slouching our backs for the sake of not wanting to touch strangers or being ‘respectful’ of other people’s space. We are doing the impossible on the daily; doing what we think is right and respectful in a very crowded space. A very humid and busy summer is upon us, get sweatin’.

Other Stuff

Each week, I give you some extra things you can read/listen/watch that I consumed and thought was interesting. Here is this week’s edition! If you like this portion of the newsletter, I do a whole section dedicated for it once every month called #juststuff where you can read all the archive here. Enjoy.

Reads

What it’s like to use onsen in Japan as a trans person - I’m currently obsessively looking for stories about Japan that are unique to that person and I really loved this story.
Tangled Strands and Fictitious Wigs by Cult Magazine. Challenging what ‘Japaneseness’ can look like, and how media and storytelling can change that perception and we can do better to deconstruct the myth.
Maybe you shouldn’t talk to someone by the Cut is an interesting take on therapy and how some of us use it as a ‘clutch’ to actually talk about the problems we have to our therapists and not to the actual person. I have been thinking of going back to therapy to a lot recently, but maybe thinking about why I want to could benefit me. I would love to learn more helpful tools but I guess I don’t need more people to just talk to.

Substacks

Totally Recommend
wrote a piece on I regret what’s in my camera roll and now I want to investigate what’s in my camera roll, circa 2012 and now.
I read two pieces from
You've Got Lauren
. A day in the desert is an essay by her late mother on a truck going from Nepal to London in 1979 makes you want to hop into a train or something and see what’s out there without your phone. The Boring Girl Summer is very appetizing to me to.
I did end up watching The Idea Of You because EVERYONE was watching it, and I loved Anne Hathaway in it. This report by
Book Enthusiast
Harry Styles, Anne Hathaway's Collarbones, and Me was very specific and I loved it.

Podcasts

Really been enjoying the Gen Z esque commentary in culture on Lemme Say this with

Hunter Harris

and Peyton Dix

only listening to Charli XCX this summer and LOVED this episode

love or not to love

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