hannah.ananas

the Power of Music

The thing about music is that it is incredibly powerful.

Siting around, waiting for my dance class to start, I was listening to music just now. A few songs came on from a musical our theatre did several years ago. As I listened to the female lead sing her song of love to the male lead, I was suddenly transported to a different time and place – I was right back in the preparations for the musical, way back when we were putting it on.

I could hear the director talking about casting the female lead, every word as clear as though he were sitting here with me, like all hose yeats ago, and chuckling at the end of it all. I remembered verbatim what he said. I do every time I hear this song, and whether I want to or not.

Just one small part of the power of music, you know?
Post-a-day 2017

The Fear of Openness and Intimacy

It is often terrifying to be open with people regarding very intimate things. Usually, though, the result of the openness is absolutely wonderful, often beyond expectations.

Tonight, after months of nervous waiting and somewhat avoidance, I finally asked a friend about something that had been driving me absolutely crazy, – it even played a decent role in my depression – and the resulting conversation was beautiful. Rather than the worst happening, and losing the foundations on which our friendship stood, as I had somehow feared, it feels now as though we are closer than ever, and ready for most any terrain (as opposed to just being on steady ground, where any change in the land would send everything rocking to a tumble and crumble). And, at long last, I am free of that dragging, straining haul of thoughts that had hassled me for so long. I have a headache, and I feel like I might have a fever, and yet I am in an easy happiness as I am going to bed right now. Life is sometimes terrifying, and that’s okay. Sometimes it just makes the next bit even better for the struggle it took to arrive there. So is tonight. 🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Lifetime Movies

I have no idea why, but today I was thinking about how I knew various wonderful things to do to have an exciting relationship/marriage with my future man. One thing in particular that I recalled, is the trick of buying a guy a shirt, and getting him to try it on when you give it to him. The situation can remain completely innocent, or can turn in a more sultry direction, if you get my drift. As this thought was going through my head, I began to wonder why on Earth I had this idea, that I knew this was a sort of trick, and that I even thought of it as a “trick”.

It suddenly occurred to me that I knew this from a movie. And this isn’t just any movie – this is a Lifetime movie. Suffice it to say that I was totally embarrassed at discovering this fact.

“Really?! You’re getting your relationship tips and tricks from a Lifetime movie?!”

I’m not sure it can get more messed up than that! 😛

Thinking it over, though, I came to realize how much I had enjoyed Lifetime movies growing up. It was a favorite pastime of ours: my two older sisters and I spending lazy days watching the Lifetime channel together. It remains today one of my favorite memories of growing up. (One of many, of course.)

I mentioned all of this to my eldest sister tonight while we were on the phone, and we couldn’t contain our laughter. At first, I couldn’t recall why I had even been thinking about the Lifetime movies. When I suddenly remembered that it was from the t-shirt gift trick, she was practically snorting with delight.

We proceeded to discuss a few of the movies that we remembered most clearly, which I think were also some of the last ones we had all watched together.

One of them, of course, was the one with this t-shirt trick, starring Erica from the soap opera All My Children (it was actually a button-up shirt, and the actress’s name is Susan Lucci). This young guy to whom she gave the shirt eventually bores her, and, when she tries to dump him, he goes kind of psycho on her, eventually meeting this slightly older guy who tries explaining to him that she doesn’t love him – it was just her thing, her most recent fling. “She gave you a shirt, right?” That was the key line from that film, where we realize that she likely had a whole line of poor young guys who had it all start with the shirt gift.

Another was about a writer who was renting out a house from these older people, and the older people got so excited knowing that they might be in her next book, because she always used people around her to inspire the characters of her stories. There was a hot 30-something neighbor next-door, who liked to use her basketball hoop. Beyond that, neither one of us could remember anything about the story, which led us to believe that we might’ve had to leave before we’d watched the whole movie.

The third movie we recalled, – and we recalled this one the best – was one that, at first, my sister did not recall at all. I mentioned that the main lady was someone I knew from maybe another movie or a TV show, and her name was something like Christie, possibly three names (to which my sister responded initially with Anna Nicole Smith), and she seemed a rather largely built woman, but she wasn’t usually very heavy. Although, she was somewhat heavy in this particular movie.

The general outline of the movie was something like that this woman was a foster mother, and she would force her foster daughter to steal things from the store when they went shopping. Early in the movie, when the girl got caught shoplifting, this lady, the foster mother, began yelling at her and throwing a fit and ripping out from her clothes all of the items the girl had stolen, and so the shop did not prosecute. When they get back to their house, we find out that the girl’s actual mother is being kept in the basement, and the girl has to steal stuff so that her mother can have things.

We could not for the life of us remember the name of this actress, though the movie rang a clear bell for my sister as I described it. We figured our best bet was looking up Lifetime movies and scrolling through to find one that sounded right, or that had a picture of this lady actress with it. However, seeing as I was sitting right next to my phone, I went ahead and tried a longshot search.

I typed the following:

lifetime movie girl steals things.for her mom in basement

Believe it or not, the very first search result from Google was the IMDb link to the movie. Neither one of us could quite believe the results of such a search – we were somewhat baffled, even. “Now that’s the Internet for you,” my sister declared.

So, in case you were wondering, the film is called Family Sins, apparently. It was a totally freaky movie, like any Lifetime movie, so totally watch it, but make sure you have your girlfriends or sisters or family with you when you do watch it.

Anyway, that’s all I care to say about all of that for now. Be blessed. 🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Driving Lesson

Today, I had a driving lesson. Though it wasn’t so much a driving lesson as it was my asking questions to a friend while he let me drive his car. Japan drives on the left, so I wanted to have a practice session before going off on my own on the roads. Not that I even have a car or anything, but I’m thinking about getting at least a scooter, to help with exploring better, as well as getting around to places with significantly increased ease.

Anyway, it was fun. It’s magical how our brains can so easily flip-flop the physics for us, allowing me to be on the opposite side of the car, yet still drive well and safely. Way cool. 🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Monkeys!!

Today, a friend and I, kind of for her birthday, went up to Nikko (a city in Japan). We did several neat things, saw some beautiful stuff, and we had a very good time.

However, the most odd and somewhat amazing part was when we pulled down a small road in the middle of town to get to the parking lot behind the city information center. What to our wandering eyes did appear, but a band of monkeys playing in the road!

I halfheartedly attempted a photo as we pulled nearer, but they wandered off as the car got closer to them. When we walked into the information center, I stopped at one spot next to the wall and hovered my hand over a specific spot where I had seen one of the monkeys perched a few minutes beforehand.

“A monkey was just sitting here!” I declared. “A monkey’s butt was right here,” I happily exclaimed. “I want to touch it, so as to have been on the same ground, but I’m not going to touch it, because a monkey’s butt was just here, but how cool is that?! A monkey was just right here!”

So I was five for a minute there. It was splendid. 😛
Post-a-day 2017

Love-Hate relationships

Do you ever wonder about why we can be simultaneously angry at and totally in love with someone?

I certainly do.

A friend of mine is kind of a terrible long-distance friend. Actually, one of my best friends is rather bad at it, but we have been friends for so long, that it always works out wonderfully whenever we do get to talk and to see one another. But she’s not the point here. A newer friend is.

I so incredibly value my friendship with him, that it is hard not being in contact with one another. However, since he is such a terrible long-distance friend, we regularly have long periods of almost zero communication. These times result in my growing very angry, even furiously fed up with him. And yet, even in those moments of extreme anger, I am aware of how much I love him.

I suppose it makes sense, though, seeing has how the only reason I’m mad at his not being around is because I want him to be around (because I love him). However, I just find it somewhat crazy that I can so easily simultaneously experience both sides of the spectrum – complete love and utter anger – with one single person at a single given moment in time.

It just seems nuts, you know? While also being totally normal and everyday ‘duh, well, of course.’ 😛
Post-a-day 2017

Blonde and Beautiful

Today, I went to a sort of workshop day for students in the international studies program at a very high level high school in my prefecture. There were nine other ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) helping with the day, as well as myself, and we are all currently part of the JET Programme (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme) in my prefecture.

The ALT who works at this particular school, John, happens to be from Texas, and is kind of what one might describe as a blonde babe. He now has a handlebar mustache, but that in no way changes the fact that he almost always looks like he’s in a sort of advertisement, usually of a sort of Calvin Klein style, but with clothes. He is tall and lean and fit, dirty blonde hair, tanned skin, and bright, bright blue eyes. AKA he is like an unreal dream for Japanese people.

As we were hanging out together this morning, we ALTs, before the workshop day was starting up, one of the guys asked John how students had reacted when he first showed up at the school, if they hadn’t just swooned at the sight of him, and if they didn’t still go gaga whenever he walked past them, wishing they could have class with him for all six class periods in a day. While things weren’t quite that dramatic, John assured us, it seems that all the girls certainly were and still are in full-on fangirl love with him and his beautiful eyes and hair, and everything else.

Later in the afternoon, that same ALT who asked John about girls being in love with him, turned a similar question to me. Are students not totally in love with me at my schools?

Now, I certainly do not see myself to be of a similar quality of model perfection as our friend John, so I asked about the background to his question. Well, he explained, when I had walked in a bit later than everyone else that morning, for our opening ceremony, the entire population of girls in the room had turned full attention to me, casually finding my spot at the front of the room, facing everyone. He continued, saying that the gazes that were following me were of a specific nature that suggested young girls looking up to their older sister, who is their own personal embodiment of womanly perfection… Wow. Wasn’t expecting that one.

“Well, students are still amazed whenever they look right at me and see that my eyes are blue – they announce it to all nearby students, and get all of their friends to gaze into my eyes for a few seconds.* I also get a lot of love from kids. Boys and girls alike tell me on a regular basis, whether passing me in the halls, or saying goodbye after we’ve been chatting, say to me, “I love youuu!” So I guess they kind of are totally in love with me…”

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to go back to being plain white bread after this adventure. I mean, I still totally am plain white bread. However, I’m plain white bread in a place that doesn’t really do plain bread in the first place.

*How odd is it, that I am totally comfortable with this now? Seeing as how it has happened consistently for the past seven+ months, how could I not be?

Post-a-day 2017

Trains, Phones, and Social Experiments

Riding on the train tonight felt like a sort of social experiment.

In all the trains in Japan, there are signs, and even announcements, informing everyone not only to put their phones on silent mode, but to refrain from talking on the phones. Therefore, even though almost every single person on the train is using his or her phone, people are usually using headphones, and the train is always rather quiet. Tonight, therefore, when I heard a noise that was clearly coming from a phone, I looked up immediately.

The girl standing near me seems to be playing a video on her phone. I wondered what the deal was, seeing as how nobody ever did such a thing, letting the sound play openly from the phone. After a quick visual evaluation, I realized that although I knew her phone was playing the video on loudspeaker, she likely had no idea. I watched as she turned up the volume to full blast, even, and had to refrain from laughing. People around the train car kept looking up from their own phones, clearly wondering what on earth was going on. (I wonder if they thought I was the one doing it at first, seeing as I was before and are on the train, and then they were surprised that it was a Japanese girl.) Now I knew that this was kind of a huge sort of social faux pas, but what I really was excited to discover was whether anyone would actually do anything to correct this girl’s utterly unfathomable and inappropriate behavior (as it seems to be for them).

This girl, you see, was wearing headphones. They just simply were not plugged into her phone. After the sort of music video ended, I kept an eye on the grill and her phone screen – she was scrolling through some sort of news feed on what looked like a Japanese social media site. I kept waiting for another video, to test my theory that she had no idea that her headphones were unplugged, and that it wasn’t intentional that she play just the one thing out loud, not caring at all what other people thought.

After a few minutes, I got my chance – a video started blaring from her phone again. Oddly enough, it was actually the exact same video as before. So, I’m not so sure what was up with that, but whatever… Perhaps 20 seconds into the video, as I was watching in an attempt to figure out what the video was, the guy sitting facing her right in front of her, who happened to be wearing his own headphones, quickly but casually waved his hand in her frame of view, and then quickly but gently grabbed and handed her the unplugged end of her headphones, which had apparently been just hanging down in front of her the whole time. In a sort of fluttery panic, the girl took her headphone cord from the guy, attempted multiple times to pause her video while turning down the volume, – she did eventually succeed – and then plugged in her headphones cord to her phone. I had a huge smile on my face for not the first time with the incident, and I found it incredibly difficult not to burst into laughter right then and there on the newly silent train. 😛
Post-a-day 2017

The Ice Skating & Smelly Socks Affair

One day last winter (not the one that just ended yesterday, but the one from a year ago), my friend Stephanie and I went ice skating. It was an indoor rink at one of the shopping malls in Houston, and we were both quite excited for the ice skating. In a packed parking lot that seemed like it would never give us a place to park, we somehow landed a magical spot right by he entrance to the ice skating rink… and we hadn’t even known that that was where the rink even was within the mall.

So, we got our rental skates, left everything but our shoes in the car, and headed out into the ice. After an amazing time being scared and silly, gliding around on the ice, we returned our skates. However, upon doing so, we discovered that the skates had clearly not been very clean, as our socks smelled of something awful!

There was no way I was going to put those wretched socks in my shoes, but my feet smelled horrible now, too. So, what do we do? A Hannah plan.

We noticed a Target next door to the skating rink when we were coming in. So, in our socks, we ran across the cold parking lot to the Target. We bought a pack of socks to share, and found our way – this time indoors – back to the skating rink with its bathrooms.

We washed our feet in the sinks, one foot at a time, and carefully dried each one, before donning a new sock and putting on our own clean shoes. The floors in the bathroom weren’t so great, seeing as they were designed for people to use while still in wet ice skates, so this was a very special balancing act. Stephanie in particular struggled just to get her foot up in the sink. I’m not sure, but we might have been laughing the entire time, making it that much harder to balance.

Eventually, we had clean feet in clean new socks, inside our own (clean) shoes, and we put the dirty socks in the Target bag in Stephanie’s trunk, tied tight. I forget how she had worded it exactly, but Stephanie had said something to the effect of, ‘Hannah has the most insane ideas, and she makes me laugh.’ I definitely agreed with her, but couldn’t help but feel these sorts of things were somehow a normalcy for me. 😛
Post-a-day 2017

Speed Runner

Once, when I was little (maybe still in elementary school), my mom let me out of the car near the end of our street. We were heading home, and I don’t know how it came up, but I wanted to know how fast I could run. So she had me get out to run next to the car, and she would measure my speed by driving next to me.

I didn’t even have shoes on, as I recall, but we went for it anyway. Perhaps I made it to 17mph. That number stands in my memory as connected to the incident. Whatever the speed, though, it has always stood as a favorite memory of mine. I love the nonsense that my mom and I get up to, and it hasn’t been until recent years that I have begun to notice how much so we really are ridiculous, and how we have been so all my life. I love my mom.
Post-a-day 2017