Arawareru

あらわ

現れる

This is the phrase I have selected for my kakizome this year. Or, rather, we have selected to work together and to spend much time together this year. The fist kanji (Chinese character used in Japanese) is made of two separate kanji. One, 王, means “king; rule; magnate”. The other, 見, means “see; hopes; chances; idea; opinion; visible”. Together as they are, they mean, “present; existing; actual,” and this kanji is pronounced “arawa”. Now, combined with the two kana that follow this kanji, the whole pronunciation is “arawareru,” and it means, “to embody; to appear; to come into sight; to materialize/materialise; to become visible; to come out”. This year, I am all about embodiment in my life – I want to cause to happen all of these wonderful things towards which I have been called and for which I have been longing in my life. God, please, give me the grace this year to embody Your love through manifesting clearly and materializing fully my dreams. In Your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

(Almost missed it! ^)

Tomorrow

“Remind me in the morning to get the newspaper from the mailbox for the practice writing”

“Done,” replied Siri.

We are doing a Secret Santa gift exchange at work, right? $10 limit. My person loves Pocky and Anime, so I got a Costco box of Pocky for $9, and I will be writing her name in katakana and in kanji on separate calligraphy papers, along with the katakana of the company where we work together on a third page. However, I need to practice a bit before doing the official pages. I don’t live near an Asian grocer, so I couldn’t easily pick up a handful of free newspapers like everyone usually does. However, I saw in the mailbox yesterday – no, I don’t bring in the mail daily, because there is not often mail, so I am not in the habit – the neighborhood newspaper. It is smaller than a regular paper, but its texture and consistency is quite similar to that of regular newsprint, making it a fine substitute for practicing calligraphy. Therefore, in order to do the gift tomorrow, I need first to practice. And, in order to practice, I need first to acquire some newsprint. Alas, I have a reminder in my phone to go grab the newsprint accessible to me and get started, first thing in the morning (after the early workout, of course). I look forward to it greatly.

(Today has felt wonderful. Also, we found a place to live! Well, a place we want and hope to live in the near future… We have submitted an application. We shall see what happens. Fingers crossed, and God, bless us, please, with this beautiful apartment and beautiful deal. Thank you for all. Amen.)

Post-a-day 2021

Blah-blah-blah, hai!

Well, I made it through today. And I even got in a quick walk outside in the direct sunlight. That part was especially awesome (and beneficial). I’ll need to be sure I do the same tomorrow. Our lunch break is even longer tomorrow, though, so I likely can get a much longer walk in there.

It has been interesting doing this all today. I’m working with Japanese folks, talking about Japan. I do this every so often, yet it still surprises me each time how much I find that I want more of it in my life. I have no official reason, yet I want to pursue a certification in Japanese. I want to be at a higher level of conversing. Half the time, I don’t even necessarily want to say anything myself, but it would be nice to have a fuller understanding of all of the conversations and chit-chat and everything. I usually get the general gist of it all, and often understand almost every word. However, there are definitely times when I have understood only a word or few, and have no real idea of what is being said. I know I can survive in Japanese, but I keep finding more and more so that I want to thrive in it.

Man…

Post-a-day 2021

^Only took minor consideration this time

Exercising and Sharing

I really slept in today, but I woke up the second (or fourth) time around 7:30, and then got up and dressed and went downstairs and did the workout from yesterday. Yay!

I had to make modifications, of course, because I do not have all the tools the gym has, and the workout was supposed to be used at the gym this week (but it has to close for the week for COVID-related safety). But it was still a great and a tough workout, and I felt very pushed, and in a positive way.

And I was grateful that I did the workout first thing today. That probably felt better than the workout itself.

I then taught an outdoor workshop for kakizome 書き初め, as part of an Art & Yoga class, and it was awesome to do! Sure, the people involved had their varied life issues that arose, but it still was a great experience, and I am glad and grateful that I was able to share kakizome with more people. And that is despite the fact that they do not see it as I see it. It also gave me an odd sense of reaffirmation for myself, that I am looking at things and approaching things in my life in a very good-for-me-and-the-world way, and that I am perfect being right here, right now, all the uncertainties and unknowns included. I am grateful for this life and for this particular piece of it – thank you, Universe. My ball of energy is rolling beautifully, and I am loving being at its center.

So, how is your ball of energy, your life, doing today? I hope it is helping you to roll onward powerfully, whatever that May mean for you and your life. 🙂

P.S. Just before bed last night, I saw an e-mail that my flight in a couple months – fingers crossed on that trip – was changed dramatically in terms of timing. I was very annoyed, as it was the second such e-mail of the day, and this was a huge change. I checked the website to see if there were a different flight I preferred. The prices were almost half what they had been when I initially booked a few weeks ago! So, what did I do? I promptly canceled my original booking, and I rebooked with the new prices. It had been with points, but I gladly will make the effort in order to spend 5,000 points instead of 8,500! Cha-ching!! And thank you, airline, for allowing such a possibility. Much gratitude from here.

Post-a-day 2021

^That one was oddly easy for me

Oishii yo!

I discovered myself suddenly longing for udon tonight… kitsune… niku… tamago…. all together. It was funny when I was staying with my old supervisor back in January. I told her that one Japanese food I really, really liked was udon. She thought it was surprising and funny, because udon is one of the easiest Japanese dishes to make (in Japan, anyway). So, she said we definitely could have udon for dinner, and she would make it for the four of us. And then, as we talked about the different types of udon, it came out that, really, I would like to have a combination of all of them, please. She and her daughters thought it was a really funny idea – almost like if someone said she wanted all the ice cream flavors mixed together or something – but they allowed me to have it… and boy, did I praise that dinner! They thought it was funny how much I couldn’t get over the amazingness of that dish, but it was one of the best and most satisfying meals I have ever had. It was spectacular – just what I had always wanted with udon.

And now I want some more. 😛

Please send soon. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Swirlytop

I don’t have much to say right now, tonight. Except that I feel a lot of that old hurricane season waiting for the next 24-48 hours. It could be disaster, and it could be simply some winds and rain and no biggie whatsoever. It could not even do that much – the storm could turn elsewhere entirely, or dissipate immediately upon landfall. They all have happened in my lifetime, and more than once. I guess that, in a way, growing up in such a place, I find myself calmly in the middle of the total and extreme fear and concern, and of, its polar opposite, utter chill and calm and unconcern – it shall pass. Because they always do pass. Like final exams, next week, they will be over and done with, but there is a huge hurdle to get through them to next week. And all we can do is just prepare and then wait.

As I was saying recently to someone, having grown up in southeast Texas, hurricane season, somehow, always gives me a sense of at-home-ness. I guess it is kind of how I felt so comfortable with all of the earthquakes in Japan, because they happened so often (weekly, was the average where I lived). In a way, they were representative of my home there. So, I have this odd sort of affinity for earthquakes now. (In fact, when still living in Japan, it am earthquake didn’t happen for a couple weeks, I would feel so out of sorts, it seemed nuts. When finally one happened again, I felt like I could breathe more easily, more freely again.) And I think the link between hurricanes and my childhood, being with my family through them (and through their aftermaths), has me feel this sense of homeyness and comfort around hurricane season now.

Also, I am rather fascinated with the powerful display of this planet’s abilities of power. Air and water, two things we need to be alive, are the exact things that can take away this life via a hurricane. Yet there is beauty in their power, both figuratively and literally.

Funny: I just realized that I even felt incredibly at-home when we had typhoons in Japan. Just like home, I suppose was the feeling. Haha. How odd this all is…, but that doesn’t make it so any less.

Over the next couple or few days, there is a potential of two hurricanes to pass this way. We shall see what happens, I pray.

P.S. While this has never happened in my lifetime, I think there has never in known history been two such storms developing in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. She’s kind of a one-storm-at-a-time kind of Gulf. ;P

Post-a-day 2020

Disney repeats

I’ve been considering the film version of the Disney musical “The Little Mermaid” tonight. As I found myself not only singing “Poor, Unfortunate Souls” while readying myself for bed, cleaning my teeth and putting in my retainers, but also saying with accurate intonation all the dialogue that exists throughout it and directly after it, I began to wonder if I knew more than I had passively considered. I hadn’t much thought about it, but I was a little bit surprised at my having known even that little bit of dialogue outside of the one song. Once I truly considered it, though, it seemed silly that I would be surprised at this knowledge, for the simple fact that I very likely could dialogue my way through almost the entire film, and with minimal error. The fact is: I know that era of Disney films quite well.

A Japanese friend once asked me, as I sang along to a Lion King song that was playing over a speaker at a Harajuku outdoor shop, why all Americans know the words to Disney songs. I laughed rather hard at her question before answering. My initial thought was, ‘Well, duh – how could we not?’ But I found the reasoning for such an automatic thought, and explained it to her, how Disney films were such a huge part of US culture in the 90s and early 2000s especially, so kJ so that their music became big parts of pop culture, so even people who didn’t watch much of the movies still knew the main songs from them.

That being said, I was one of the people who watched the films over and over again. When I find a movie I love, I tend to watch it regularly and somewhat often (when I’m in a movie phase or mood, anyway). Only the really amazing movies that actually are sad movies or depressing ones are the ones that I tend not to rewatch. The rest of the ones I love, I probably have seen them loads of times, up to dozens, perhaps. And certain Disney films fall into that category of films I have watched an absurd number of times, “The Little Mermaid” being among them. That and “Aladdin” probably have the highest number of viewings for me among the Disney animated films.

And so, it should come as little to no surprise that I would know so many lines from the film, and possibly could recite the whole darn thing. 🙂

Though, that makes it no less absurd that I can do that in the first place… 😛

Post-a-day 2020

The best way to move

Japanese moving companies…?

Baller.

Need I say more?

Just watch this video.

I’ve been in the receiving end before, though without knowing the standard of how they worked, and so I was quite confused as to why they kept asking me where specifically I wanted everything placed in the apartment, and how they set up the furniture that had shown up in pieces for moving…

I wasn’t planning to keep most of what my predecessor was giving me, so I didn’t really care where most of it went…, proving for an extra-odd interaction about where to place everything… It was kind of great, due to the fact that it was so comical.

Anyway, the US would do well to learn from Japanese moving companies… very well.

Just saying.

Post-a-day 2020

Germs

Tonight, my concerns about bathroom germs were solidified.

In talking with a very experienced and well-read and well-informed nurse, I learned of clear studies that established absurd levels of germage 1) being forced upward (into the air and the flusher’s face) from toilets when they are flushed, and 2) being blasted onto one’s hands and around the bathroom via high-powered air dryers (mostly because a rather high percentage of people do not wash their hands properly or thoroughly [naturally, Japan comes to mind, with the typical quick rinse of water onto the fingertips being as much as most women ever seemed to do]).

Crazy, it is.

And very unsurprising… as I mentioned, I had suspected as much.

It just reaffirms my desire to have toilets more like in Japan, where you wash your hands over the back of the toilet – dual flow toilets – as the faucet pours water into a basin that drains into the tank that holds the water in preparation for the next flush.

That way, you don’t get your dirty hands on the same surfaces where you brush your teeth.

Just saying…

These things I dream… haha 😛

P.S. I have been awake the past 19 and a half hours… Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all!

Post-a-day 2020

To write love on her arms

Well, it isn’t on my arms, but it is on my hand!

I hadn’t exactly intended to put the words on my hands when I started out, but they somehow happened anyway… I still find it an odd place to place them, but it does well to remind me constantly, because I always see the palms of my hands… which I’m not sure I knew before this week, and my constantly seeing the words on my palms.

People always use the phrase of knowing someone/something “like the back of my hand,” but I never understood it fully, because I don’t know the backs of my hands very well.

But I do know my palms, it turns out… I see them all the time. 😛

Also, this: The San Jacinto Monument, marking the location of the Battle of San Jacinto, which gave Texas its independence from Mexico in 1836.

Post-a-day 2020