I met a Japanese person today, and we used Japanese together, and it was spectacular.
When I called to my mom to have her come over at one point, I even used the Japanese version of “Mom” accidentally, I was so engrossed in the Japanese conversation.
It was really good.
Post-a-day 2018
My mom, my oldest brother, and I had a semi-spontaneous sleepover last night, when my brother was visiting Texas for work (but about three hours away from Houston), and we decided to make a miniature event of his being drastically closer than Wisconsin.
After spending the evening together and with a couple other family members, the three of us stayed up talking for another two hours after the lights were out…
It was a really good night. 🙂
Love family.
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If ever you feel sad, lonely, and/or unworthy, take a visit to small town Texas family.
On more levels than I could express, you will be warmed to your core, and overflowing with abundant love and kindness.
❤ Texas, ❤ Family
P.S. Because it really is okay to leave the big city from time to time.
Post-a-day 2018
Walking through Target tonight, I found myself moving in a sort of comfortable, meditative state… It was late, and I was rather tired from the day… I took several times over the usual time it takes me to obtain an equal number and variety of items at the store… and I somehow didn’t mind it… I guess this just supports my theory that I secretly – read ‘subconsciously’ – want to be a homemaker-housewife. When I first moved into my own apartment several years ago, and then again in Japan (when I had to start from, basically, scratch), I felt a certain flow of mental chemicals that delighted me through and through, in a comfortable, this is where I belong sort of way whenever I was shopping for apartment-related items, house items. And it isn’t to say that I belong only as a homemaker or anything, but simply that it is somewhere of many somewheres where I do belong.
Tonight was no exception. I moved into a new home and with a new person yesterday, you see. She has most everything that goes in a house, and I have very little of that sort of stuff, so the match-up is rather good on that front (not to mention that we actually get along really well in the first place, because that isn’t the point). However, my whole OCD compulsions have me need my own cleaning supplies. —You see, it isn’t enough just to have cleaning supplies. They must also be nice to the planet, nice to the nose and eyes, and themselves clean (their containers), while kept in a clean space. Show me a bottle of cleaner that has been under a cabinet and has a thin layer of dust on it, and I won’t even touch it until you have cleaned the bottle. I probably also with have slight inner daytime terrors of the fact that the bottle is dirty. Anyway, back to the main point of this all… —- So, I was at Target, seeking out these cleaning supplies for me for my new home.
I walked calmly, despite the inward thought of how late it must be. I felt confidence every time I set down the basket and gave a once-over to a certain type of product. I gracefully selected bottles whose scents I wanted to test, and euphorically sampled their natural essential oil-filled smells. I smiled at each, and even mmm-ed a few, closing my eyes to embrace the scent. I usually take my time with scents – I even stop to smell flowers much more often than is common, just to smell them and to indulge myself. It’s alway sa bit of a bummer whenever I find flower bunches at stores that don’t even smell (or don’t smell good). Whole Foods is one of those stores.
Anyway, so I take my time with (good) smells, enjoying them, allowing my brain to do any work it feels appropriate whenever it crosses a familiar scent. I was told when I was quite young that scent was the strongest sense for recalling memory, and I’ve always kept that in mind for some reason, delighting in the silly scents that bring back memories. (Like how the hand soap in this one bathroom in the house where I once nannied smelled like my grandmother on my dad’s side. She hadn’t been alive for years at that point, and yet I had no doubt that it was the same smell that was usually on her, though I never seemed consciously to have noticed her having a specific scent before that moment.)
So, I was smelling slowly and comfortably, and enjoying all the familiar and new scents. One in particular, though I definitely didn’t want it as a cleaning supply, was the replication of some regular smell from some point in my childhood. I took a picture and sent it to my mom, telling her to go find one and to sniff it, so she could help me figure out why the scent is so specifically familiar. It was labeled as being scented “radish”, however it was not merely the scent of radishes that was familiar – it was that specific combination. Perhaps my mother had used that cleaning supply brand and scent at some point. Though, I’m not too sure of that being very likely, because it seems to be a newer scent from this brand, and because it relates to a specific summer-type memory for me, as opposed to just lots of childhood cleaning days. I’m looking forward to figuring out that one. It might take me a little while, a few months’ even, but I am confident that, as with others in the past, I will figure it out.
Post-a-day 2018
I received some delightful news today, but I wasn’t jumping for joy at learning it.
However, I have, since learning about that, been giddily delighted about something else entirely…
I think that the news today gave my whole being such a sense of relief that I suddenly was able to enjoy fully the something else I’ve been pondering lately (but hadn’t really been able to enjoy yet).
Funny how that happens. 🙂
Post-a-day 2018
I did dinner and a baseball game with my dad tonight. It was really good. Spending such a good chunk of time together, just the two of us, has been something that I have missed greatly in recent years. We do the occasional quick meal, or trip to the store, but it is never for very long at once, and it has become a rather rare occurrence this past year (and, naturally, nonexistent last year, when I didn’t live in the USA). Tonight was exactly the kind of thing we both enjoy doing, and especially together. I think this would be a good something to pursue, finding more circumstances that are similar to tonight’s events, so that my dad and I can hang out comfortably and casually (yet with a specific sort of activity at the source of our time, so that he’s permitted to be out for so long without hassle).
Tonight was good, and there was nothing specific that made it awesome. It was just good time, and good for our relationship, too.
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I asked someone if she likes kolaches, and she responded, “What is that?”
After a brief moment of being unable to breathe, I experienced a feeling of pure gratitude for having grown up in Texas.Post-a-day 2018
Walking around the Japanese garden, I stop when I come to the take. I stop of just a moment, envisioning myself in Japan, in the real Japanese gardens of the world. Tears come to my eyes, and I wonder Why? What’s going on? Why am I suddenly crying? Why am I shaking inside from my sternum, as though panic is coming up?
And I realize: I miss Japan. Not so much for the whole experience, but for some of the experience, and, especially, for the part where I fit in appropriately, in the right way. I was expected to stand out and not to do exactly as others did. I was expected to turn heads and to surprise and shock those around me. And I did. And I was comforted by the feeling of ‘fitting in’ in that odd sense of it, fitting into the expectations my surroundings had of me.
But it is different being here, where I am expected to fit in one way, but I don’t fit in that way. I am American, but I am multi-cultural. I used to think those two a little more synonymous with one another. But, based on how I look on the outside, – my skin and hair and eyes – I am expected to be on a similar ground with those around me here. Perhaps we have visited other countries, but that was for vacation. Living there, being truly part of the culture, is not in the books for most of those around me, unless they specifically came from that country directly, through their heritage, and moved here after having lived there in the earliest years of their lives (as is the case with one in four people in Houston, actually). However, I am not expected to know how to dress someone in a kimono or yukata better than someone my own age back in Japan. I’m not even expected to know the difference, unless I am what would be considered a sort of geek of Anime and Manga (at which point one still might not know the difference between them, but it is less surprising for them to know such things). I don’t fit into that category, and yet I know so much about Japanese culture and life in Japan, and I have experienced so much of it, that I often find no need to talk about it – it’s become so a part of me and my life, it is similar to putting on shoes or brushing teeth. Sure, we do them both all the time, but hardly ever do we consciously ponder on them and share about them with others. They’re just part of our subconscious and our mostly-daily lives.
Anyway, that was what I was feeling today at the festival in town celebrating Japan and Japanese culture. When I ran into a friend who had spent even more time than I had in Japan, I mentioned to him how I wasn’t quite sure what I was feeling, but I felt as though I was about to cry. Something about feeling like I belong, but then not belonging after all. ‘It’s your first “Japanese culture” experience post-Japan.’ I confirmed his questioning declaration. It was, in fact, the first time I had experienced something that was all about Japan from this country’s perspective since I had actually spent time in Japan. If I had attended the same festival before going, I likely would have felt quite wonderfully walking around the festival. I had a different view of Japanese culture in Japan back then.
This was something like seeing a “Mexican Restaurant” in northern France that time, and feeling a giddy sense of hilarity at what kind of food could possibly be served in there. Or the “American Restaurant” (that was it’s name) in northern Spain, where the “american hamburgers” were nothing like our actual hamburgers. (Think meatloaf, with a slice of thin ham, on fluffy, dense bread.) But now, instead of it being Texas and US culture, it is Japanese culture. And so it was also weird to be relating to Japanese culture – a culture with which I struggled greatly at times, and still do – in the same sort of protective way as I traditionally have related to my original home culture. It kind of added this whole extra layer to my identity semi-crisis. And all that just because I went to a festival.
Post-a-day 2018
Tonight, we saw a Taiko performance, we wore kimono (again), I spoke Japanese, and I bowed some (with bows in return).
It was a spectacular night.
I am incredibly happy and grateful to be living in Houston (the most diverse city in the USA, with one in four people having been born abroad).
Hashtag diversity, divercity
Post-a-day 2018
I did it! Officially turned an idea into a photo shoot and into a means of sharing it with the world! Check it out!
You can also check out https://kimonomiss.wordpress.com for the website I made. It’s not great yet, but I’m working on it!
Post-a-day 2018
hannah ananas 