what i did in april ♣️
moments of change, my friend got married in okinawa, dragon boating in hong kong, fukuoka art book fair + NPB baseball game, lots of food
1. moments of change
another month, another 6000+ word newsletter, another observation about how time, and how “fast” life seems to hurtle forward, even though i have been there every step of the way experiencing it. not just experiencing it, i’m an active participant, shaping my own circumstances and exerting my will, yet it still somehow feels like life is passing me by. isn’t that funny?
what continues to amaze me in the course of ordinary life and day to day living is how fast physical and emotional circumstances can change, whether the inciting incident is seemingly random or within the realm of expectation. it’s not just the speed at which things change, but how fast we are able to process that change — it’s literally an instant. and the range of feelings that occur within that moment, the immediate dampening of an emotion and the large swell of another, a displacement so fast and furious, that the previous feels like a distant memory. the past is immediately past, your mind shifts to accommodate a new reality, thanks to the elasticity of the human brain.
i am aware that the only constant in life is change (i used to laugh at the “ambiguous and fast moving” description in job listings, but it is genuinely an accurate statement in most areas of life). and still, when change happens, it sometimes shocks. this includes experiencing big events with far reaching consequences, but also the small moments of heightened physical or emotional charge that may be inconsequential in the long run but are so consuming when they’re happening. like the agony of being on a long haul flight in the middle seat, maybe a redeye, and you cant fall asleep. then the plane touches down, and like magic, you are released from the physical confines, you can stand, walk, leave. some other examples:
you’re at your desk, having given up all hope of a text back after being anxious about it the entire day today and yesterday and unable to focus on anything else so you’re just scrolling and scrolling as you have been for too long, when your phone gives a short vibrate and a notification hangs at the top of your screen. a response! it immediately dispels the anxiety, replaced with peace of mind, fully brightens your 心情 (mood), and gives you your concentration back.
you’re at a baseball game, at the 8th inning almost 3 hours in, and one hit turns into a grand slam, bringing in 4 home runs to break the tie. you’re a fan, so tension turns into elation as soon as you see that ball land in the stands, your stress relieved by the comfortable lead, secure in your team’s victory.
you’re on holiday, and go to bed excited, with a plan to spend your last morning grabbing breakfast at a nearby cafe and taking a stroll. instead, you wake up at 4am in debilitating pain, and spend the next 5 hours alternated between curling up in bed (even this is painful, there is no comfortable position to take) and at the toilet retching stomach acid and dispelling other bodily fluids. it seems unfathomable that you can make your flight in the afternoon. there is no respite, the only comfort is listening to artificially generated voices reading articles out loud about the next terrorist attack and whether a Military Coup is Unfolding at the Pentagon. but, somehow, by 10am, the uncontrolled hurling has stopped, you can lie on your back comfortably, your muscles no longer feel soft, and you are well enough to get into a taxi, sit at the airport, and then on a plane to land in a different country, when just hours ago it seemed impossible to even sit upright for over a minute. (this is a true story.)
these moments can be helpful reminders that how i feel right now likely won’t last forever, that change is possible and within reach, and it can happen in the time it takes to read a short text. things can always get better. but then again, things can also take a turn for the worst.
i find it terribly difficult to make decisions beyond the day or week or month, and to take a long term view. it’s hard for me to see past the state i’m in now, knowing that how i’m feeling now, what i’m interested in now, may not extend to that far away moment. all plans are made as a best guess, acts of faith. it makes me think that planners must have such a surety in themselves. or, maybe it’s just the discipline to make themselves follow through on a commitment.
2. Okinawa
In April, I went to Okinawa, Japan, for a close friend’s wedding. (I also stopped by Fukuoka, and Hong Kong to see family.) I had never been before, but I love the beach, and was so looking forward to it. We spent a day in Naha, and most of the time between the towns of Onna/Seragaki, staying at the BEB5 Okinawa Seragaki (highly recommended).
The island was beautiful, the colours full and glossy and vibrant. It is exactly the kind of place I love to photograph on film. The local cuisine was a treat, every meal was so good, the restaurants down to earth and homey. (many more photos and details are included later in this newsletter, and in the looping gif!)
The American influence was strange and immediately noticed through the ears. In a shuttle bus from the airport to the car rentals, a local radio channel relayed details about the upcoming LA Warriors basketball game details in English, then played English pop music. In an independent ceramic shop, we heard a Japanese cover of Take Me Home, Country Roads, a song about the state of West Virgina, play over the speaker the verses in Japanese and the chorus in accented English. Walking past a bar after dinner, loud voices in practiced unison singing Never Gonna Give You Up spilled out onto the street. The roar of American military fighter jets flying low, heard sporadically overhead. There were other signs of global influence, seen, literally, in the restaurant menus and road signs and other written materials translated to Korean and Chinese alongside the Japanese.
3. my friend’s wedding
It was lovely to explore Okinawa with friends also here for the wedding. There were only a handful of us, I’ve known many of them since primary school, but we live at least a 6 hour plane ride apart, so I only see them about once a year now.
The thing about these friends is that they are so incredibly sweet and attentive, caring and warm. It’s a special thing, the way they make you feel in their company — light, seen, interesting. It’s very humbling. They made me think of the quote: "people may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” This uplifting energy is something I’ve valued more and more in my adult years, and being conscious of how I make people feel; not in a people pleasing way, and not in a “this will make people like me more” kind of way, but in a “I genuinely want to be a positive presence in people’s life and in our interactions together, as much as I can” way. Making more effort to be inclusive, kind, because I value that more in myself, and in others. It’s especially poignant to realize this in interactions with people I’ve known for so long; while those aspects of them may not have changed much, it shows how I have. I feel like that’s a bit of me growing up.
I’ve attended many weddings, but this is the first where I was a “part of” the wedding. It didn’t have official bridesmaids, but I helped with some of the classic bridesmaid duties, including at the tea ceremony. The tea ceremony is a Chinese tradition, often done before the formal ceremony, where the bridegroom serve tea to all their relatives, while auspicious sayings and good wishes are exchanged. We only had so many cups, so my task was to wash the cups between servings. We also performed a dance at the afterparty, a request from the bride. It was out of my comfort zone and I was initially resistant to the idea, but practicing and performing and seeing how it came together and how happy it made the bride and party was really heartwarming. I didn’t expect to feel any sort of way about either of these activities, but it ended up a highlight for me — being able to contribute, to be relied upon, is a nice thing. Another sign of growth and maturity, I think.
A wedding is also a moment of change, but one that is built up over many years, to culminate in this milestone. I remember talking to my friend about her now-husband when they first met, eventually meeting him and slowly getting to know him over several years, then accompanying her to try on the wedding dress when I visited last year. But the knowledge and anticipation of something does not mean you will not still be surprised or have a visceral reaction when you encounter it!
I teared up several times during the ceremony: when the doors to the church first opened and the bride (my friend) stepped out with her dad, when the bride gave her speech during the exchanging of vows (this usually gets me; in this particular instance the speech was just so her and the devotion was really touching), when the maid of honour gave her speech (I cried when she cried, at the end).
creative projects
writing
dragonboating !!: last year, i set myself a goal to write a novel, and i did it. it was just a crappy “zero draft”, but for someone who really struggles with large scale and long term projects, and the novel the first piece of creative writing i’d done in over a decade, i was proud to have completed it at all. the story was about a corporate dragon boating team in hong kong, a sport that i had personally never tried. to research, i read books, coaching manual(s), forums, interviewed people who had been on dragon boat teams, watched sports anime and read sports novels and watched sporting events. i had been planning to try dragon boating myself, i thought it essential for a final draft of the novel, but due to timing and weather it just never happened. well! this month, i was back in hong kong for the start of dragon boat season, my sister was on a team, and i got the opportunity to follow her to one of their practices. the plan was just for me to observe on land stretching and warming up, but they actually let me on the boat (i was in jeans and totally not prepared). i got to learn and try the basic paddle technique, listen to the coach’s instructions and observe what a 2 hour practice looks like, experience the team dynamics, and have the tactile experience of holding a paddle and sitting on the boat and being splashed and feeling the cadence and momentum of the boat and you moving along with it. it was a beautiful day, and the weather was perfect. im very grateful to my sister’s team for letting me join! it was a cool life experience, but also a critical piece of research that i needed to fill in details in my story. TBD when i start working on the draft again though, i didn’t end up making those edits yet, maybe later this year.
wedding speech: attending weddings and listening to the speeches (i love the speeches) always gets me thinking about what i’d say if i was giving a speech. (this is how i usually start making things, it’s always in reaction to something!) my friend’s dad gave a speech, and there was one line that i keep thinking about because it was so good: “for the first three days of her life, my daughter was starving.” i started putting down notes for a speech if my sister gets married, and it might be an interesting exercise to fully draft sometime this year. i’m attending two more weddings in may, so i’ll probably be thinking about this again soon!
feedback day:
and i met at the center for fiction for a little writing feedback session, our very first! we each had hard copies of something we wanted to talk through; jess brought two completed, more research-based essays she had previously published on substack for retroactive feedback, i brought one super early draft of a personal essay that ive been trying to move beyond a journal entry. it was interesting the variation in the material we each brought, not so much the content, but the differing stages of maturity. it was a really great time! so helpful to get her comments, to discuss our intentions and approach. i’ve always felt that im a better editor than i am writer (having something to react to, and suggestions around structure / clarity, comes pretty naturally to me, and i enjoy it. putting together something from scratch, on the other hand…), so it was fun to do some editing outside of work. im excited for our next one!
my dad’s encouragement: as my dad was driving me to the airport at 5am, he told me how much he enjoys reading this newsletter, and how he sees it as growth and a show of self confidence that i “don’t mind sharing with others what you’re thinking in your heart.” the fact that i am “revealing what’s on [my] mind” was surprising to him. as it is to me! i’ve always been a strangely secretive person. i think it was an accurate assessment, and it was nice to hear it from his perspective.
substack
reaching 100 subscribers: is craaaaazy! i have been looking toward 100 as a goal because that’s when i think they start auto-generating an audio option for the post (how i consume many substack newsletters). i was at 95 subscribers before my last post, which got shared by some lovely people and reached a bunch of other people through the algo, and now i’m at 159. it’s exciting but also stressful! the more people there are reading, the more nervous i get about sharing, but just gotta keep hitting publish and not let the numbers intimidate me.
prioritisation: my goal this year was to publish at least two things a month on substack – an essay, and a monthly wrapup. for april, i was only able to complete the wrap up (this post, which is almost three weeks late). i’ve been taking notes but not forming them into broader narratives, or i’ve been writing out the first draft of something but not given it enough revs to feel comfortable publishing. it is an issue of prioritisation; i could have chosen to work on an essay rather than the wrap up. i’ve heard from friends how much they enjoy the monthly wrap ups, and they always do “well” on substack too. and i like doing them! it’s a great form of documentation, and forces me to reflect on and acknowledge my progress and how i spend my time. but it’s not exactly exercising the skill i set out to practice with this newsletter, which is to complete and share personal essays / criticism. that makes me a little disappointed in myself, since i feel like i’m defaulting to the “easier” (to me) visual and diaristic work (though, still extremely time consuming, because i’m condensing and structuring so many disparate experiences, and the multimedia part of it requires much prep and editing and is hard to do on the go). i’m a bit conflicted as to how to approach and prioritize going forward. but after may, i dont anticipate anymore long stretches of travel, so i think (i hope!) i should be able to get back to my planned cadence.
audio recordings: sometimes i take recordings of the soundscape around me on my phone, and i’ve embedded a couple at the end of this post, which i’ve never done before! like i talked about last month, i love how multimedia formats give you the ability to show so many dimensions of an experience or idea, so i thought i’d try this out.
community
fukuoka art book fair (pages) — i made it to the fukuoka art book fair right after the wedding in okinawa, which was the first ive attended in asia !! it was held at Dazaifu Tenmangu, a pretty big shinto shrine, which was a really cool venue. i also made friends (!) with some of the vendors, which is uncommon for me but makes me very happy in my quest to be more proactive in connecting with more people, especially creative people. it was really cool to meet kiko from bad student, and learning about how their studio is a family affair, including their siblings and parents. (i’m a big fan of families creating together, like the singapore based rubbish FAMzine, so this was v exciting to me.) my parents also joined me, and they came with me to the brooklyn art book fair last year, so it was amusing to hear my mom’s comments comparing the two. I found out about this event from ao hata bookstore, and i also got to visit them too!
fav cafe closed — a truly devastating update, but my favorite neighborhood cafe closed at the end of april 😭 my bank transactions show that i’d gone 50+ times in 2024, and spent hours there each time. this space was truly transformative for my creative life, and helped me do so much with my mornings; i made my first zines here, so much journaling, wrote my novel, drafted essays. I’ve been friendly with the barista (it’s the same one every morning!), and have always admired his style and illustrations and taste in books, so i did the scary thing and asked if i could follow him on IG (we now follow each other) and i gave him a zine i made last year in this cafe. yay for being brave and extending myself to connection! now onto the hunt for another neighborhood cafe. my criteria: uncrowded (i have to be able to find a table and not be stressed about people hovering around because they want my seat), has a bathroom, natural light, has at least one food or drink i like.
photography
i shot two rolls of 35mm film while i was traveling! okinawa was a dream, so lush and saturated. and then at home in hong kong, i got to take photos of my grandma, who i love photographing so much. was super excited to get them developed, but ended up being pretty disappointed with the output, specifically the focus, grain, colors, but it is what it is. some of my favorites below (and more throughout this post):
shisas, or okinawan dragons, are a cross between dogs and lions, and believed to be guardians in okinawan mythology. they usually come as a pair, one male and one female – “the male shisa is often depicted with his mouth wide open and is said to scare off evil spirits. The female shisa typically has her mouth closed and is believed to keep good spirits on the premises” (source). shisa statues are all over the island, usually in front of people’s houses and storefronts, noticed as soon as you drive in from the airport. i loved them, and my friends and i would point them out to each other. some of the placements were so fun, like on the slant in the middle of a roof or stuck on the walls, and there was such a variety of form and size. i took a lot of photos on my phone, and was thinking it could be fun to turn them into a mini zine! (note: while most of my pictures depict only one shisa in frame, most of them came as a pair, i just didn’t capture both in the shot!)
what i read
this was a disappointing reading month. sampled some widely loved authors, some read for the first time, but i don’t think i could say i enjoyed any of these books. also started and dropped a few other books along the way.
it’s been strangely affective of my mental state, which i find curious, that it’s able to dampen my mood even amongst all the happenings and good things (see above.) finishing all of these books made me feel a bit despondent, a mild feeling of despair built up and trapped inside me. theoretically “it’s not that deep,” but i also think maybe it’s like having experienced a string of long, unfulfilling real life events, after trying very hard to curate the selection.
play it as it lays by joan didion [novel] — 3/5. i started reading this the morning of my friend’s wedding ceremony, on a beach in okinawa. i really dont think that was the right time or place for me to be reading this. spoiler: this is not a beach read. it was jarring to have my head split suddenly with such awful imagery, events, stunted interactions and dialogue. (that’s a me problem, not the book.) i liked the short chapters, the sparseness of the language, the short sentences. the prose was nice and sharp, but the conversations made me want to cry. do people really talk like that (so empty, saying the same things over and over)? even though many things happened, and the chapters were very readable, the book still felt like it dragged, maybe because i just did not care at all for the characters; its not that i disliked them, i just was not curious about them at all.
eki stamp from cap manzomo in my copy of play it as it lays ! 
slouching towards bethlehem by joan didion [essays] — 1.5/5. im afraid to be seen as the village idiot after putting this on the internet, but here you go: generally, i love essays, so thought this would be where i understood the didion hype, but this book was a lowpoint, it truly lost me. i dont know if there was a single essay in here that i enjoyed from start to end. maybe im not smart enough or american enough to enjoy joan didion essays. there were constant references, proper nouns, name drops, that i was unfamiliar with and were never explained. (im pretty sure i didn’t understand like 90% of the mentions in this book. id assume that this would be disruptive to most contemporary readers, but she is so beloved, so maybe not.) i found her sentences long winded and convoluted (so different to her novel), and her self-inserts (not sure what to call these: "what i mean to say is," "what i want to tell you," "this is what i want to say,") grating and disruptive of the flow. most of her insights and observations were not interesting to me (didnt realize how much i could dislike reading about california lmao), and her POV/conclusions on things often felt like an unsupported stretch, like it was all just vibes, she did not give enough about why she thought something for me to try to dis/agree. hot take! i know! but here it is, i have bared my soul.
sea of tranquility by emily st. john mandel [novel] — 2.5/5. i finished this in one day, so it was pretty readable, but forgettable and incredibly underwhelming. there were some interesting reveals and ideas, but overall no aspect stood out to me as esp compelling, the prose, the characters, the way the mystery was “solved”, even the concept, felt basic. i didnt feel a sense of tension or stakes, either. i didn’t love the author’s other super popular book (station eleven), so maybe her books just are not for me.
me talk pretty one day by david sedaris [essays] — 2.5/5. picked this up after watching his masterclass on the plane last month. i would still recommend the masterclass, but not this book. we don’t have the same sense of humor, he’s very quippy (not my thing), tone feels a little smug. the essays are fully formed thoughts without much breathing room or exploration, and oftentimes i just didn't understand why we were being told this information.
essays
Where'd You Get That? "Curating", Laziness, and Erasure on Substack by
ive been thinking about this since i first noticed it on substack !! the biggest red flag is someone who cites “pinterest” as a source for an image, it induces immediate rage
The power of showing up anyway by
it's ok to write about the same thing over and over by
how to have a body in summer by
love in the time of bed rotting by
"how can i feel hot when men don't approach me irl?" your confidence can't come from men, that's how by maddie dragsbaek (video)
🗞️
Is a Military Coup Unfolding at the Pentagon? by
the retired JP morgan executive tracking trump's deportation flights (the atlantic on IG)
In Europe we're being told to prepare a World War lll "survival kit". In Australia? Crickets. by
history behind deir yassin village (@letstalkaboutpalestine on IG)
what does my detention by ICE say about america? by mahmoud khalil
What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get by Xochitl Gonzalez (the atlantic)
what i watched
adolescence [tv] - watched at home with my parents. as other reviewers have noted, episode 3 was intense, and the highlight of the series. i was disappointed by the finale, i found the first half boring, and i was left wanting more insight/POV/exploration into the cultural issues that the crime is centered around. i still dont understand why jamie did what he did, and also wouldn’t admit that he did the thing. (i found my dad’s final comment on this show funny: “My 心情 was already bad, and now it’s even worse”)
skip and loafer [anime] - i’ve heard some great things about this manga, so decided to check out the anime on the plane. i’m not a big shojo person, but i did enjoy this! it’s very wholesome, hopeful, and the characters are sincere and trying their best. has a very “dedication and hard work” and “friendship” type lesson to it, a stark contrast to the portrayals of friendship and romance in shows like girls or insecure (different target audience, but these are the things i’m watching). it’s saccharine, but i like it. sometimes you need the feel good and slightly fantastical to give you a bit of courage.
need this sugarcane (2024) [documentary] - the number of times i’ve cried while eating an airplane meal is many. rather than a comprehensive look into the issue (investigation into abuse and missing children at an indian residential school in vancouver), this documentary felt more like the story of a family and the impact of such abuse on the family across generations, showing only fragments and focusing on emotion, leaving many more questions than answers about what actually happened. the soundscape was stunning. (i also previously watched the the woman in the wall on the plane, about the magdalene laundries, which felt a little similar in subject matter of abuse from the catholic church.)
fight night (59E59 Theaters) [play] - this was a very cool one man play, basically no set and minimal props, an hour long. my friend and i checked it out on opening night. reminded me how much i enjoy watching smaller shows like this, and would do often when i lived in london.
what i ate
other notes
google maps as a discovery tool - so, earlier i talked about how my favorite neighborhood cafe closed. ive on the hunt for another cafe via google maps, and i think i found one!1 but i wanted to take a minute to talk about how frequently i’ve found new places to try through opening google maps and searching key words or categories (restaurants, bars) near my current location. this also came up as a point of discussion in okinawa, when my friends and i were talking about how we were finding and deciding on places to go there. it made me curious how many people actually use google maps as a discovery tool, or other use cases that aren’t figuring out directions to a known destination.
你，好不好？is a banger, especially at karaoke. my sister and cousin would pick it at karaokes in the past, but it wasn’t until this month that i noted it down and started listening to it on my own. could not recommend enough.
coldplay is huge in hong kong and i don’t really understand why. they’re known globally, have some pretty famous songs, but i’ve never known them to have either a worldwide cult / notable mainstream popularity. none of my friends (who are very into music) in other countries have ever talked about coldplay or going to a coldplay concert, and its not really the subject of think pieces. they were performing in hong kong the week I visited, and they had like 4 nights of performances, it seemed like it was all anyone was talking about and everyone went to them. my sister, who lives in hong kong, said all of the IG stories she was seeing were of the concert, and people writing about how much coldplay songs meant to them. way back in middle school, attending a coldplay concert in hong kong was one of the defining moments of a close friend’s teenage years, and that impact is seared into my brain even now. it’s very curious to me this band is still so culturally relevant with such a chokehold on the people of hong kong.
i’ve been collecting pressed penny souvenir coins since i was small, and i was very happy to find one in okinawa (at cape manzamo) and one in fukuoka (the jump store!), it’s a small joy to hold the new warm coin in your hand. see this footnote2 for other notable souvenirs i collected.
a good month for SHOES – i’m very much about comfort and function since i like to walk everywhere and i’m not careful with my person or belongings, so i basically wear the same shoes everyday (white velcro sneakers). but this month, i got to wear two new pairs of shoes, that i adore! gold heels that i bought at the end of march from two older twin sisters in their brooklyn brownstone, which they open every other week to sell a bunch of vintage clothes — i had been on the hunt for metallic gold / silver heels to match my wedding guest dress, so this was perfect. the second pair are platform mary janes, a dream shoe from childhood, i’m obsessed. catch me wearing them everywhere this summer.
comme de garcons x salomon platform mary janes / vintage lanvin 
japanese baseball: fun fact about myself, i really enjoy watching MLB games live, and first got interested in baseball many years ago through baseball anime (my ultimate bucket list item is to see the koushien summer high school championship tournament.) it very cool to see the fukuoka hawks play the orix buffaloes at pay pay dome in fukuoka, my first NPB game !! i bought the tickets a couple months in advance, and it was a core part of our fukuoka itinerary, along with the art book fair. some notes and highlights:
it was surreal to hear phrases like “yoban” (4th batter), “loku ban” (6th batter) said IRL, announced on the loudspeaker, because i’ve heard these phrases so many times in anime games !!
compared to the NY stadiums, the seating in this stadium was much lower and closer to the field, and the field feels much smaller, the outfield feels so close, even sitting close behind the plate.
bunts: feature pretty heavily in anime (high school) baseball, in strategy discussions and big moments in the game. so i was sad to learn that nobody really bunts in MLB, everyone’s trying to hit a homerun. and then i was super happy to see that bunts are still live and well in the NPB! i got to see three successful bunts in this game! they’re so satisfying to watch! i 💛 bunts!
lucky 7: sometime in the second half of the game, i noticed almost everyone in the crowd was holding or blowing up a long ballon. it was a sea of yellow, and very visually striking. then seemingly without any specific instruction, everyone in the stadium released their balloons into the air with a cheer. i had no idea what was happening, but it was really festive and such a fun atmosphere. i searched it up after, found that it’s a tradition called “lucky 7” – “the seventh-inning stretch where fans celebrate their team’s fight song and release “jet balloons” in the air,” and hawks games are known for their particularly lively lucky 7s. HOW FUN, for fans to be able to participate like that! how cute! this is not a thing in MLB, and not in anime (high school) baseball either, so it was my first exposure, but i definitely want to participate the next NPB game i go to.
happened to capture the lucky 7 (right) because i was trying to photograph the stadium full of waving balloons (left) cheering squads: they really have cheering squads (always a thing in anime, not a thing in MLB) !! the opponent’s cheering squad was behind the third base line, and the hawks’ cheering squad was in the outfield. we were sitting behind the first base line, almost behind the plate, and the cheering was still so LOUD. and it was nonstop – once the game started, there was never silence. it went on for 12 innings (we went into overtime). it was crazy. in anime baseball, the characters often talk about how much pressure a big cheering squad from the opposing team can put on the players, but i didn’t realize the toll that it takes even on the other spectators. because of the cheering squad, i was in state of heightened excitement for 180+ minutes, which was kind of miserable and tiring. it’s like, you never get a break. unlike background music played over speakers, knowing that the cheering is happening live, and a whole big group of people are actively making these noises, means that i can’t just tune it out, almost out of respect for the effort, like I need to be fully focused on what’s happening. so that was really interesting to experience, very memorable, not in a pleasant way. here are audio clips of the cheering (note again that i was very far away from the cheering squads, and the second clip is from the 12th inning):
thanks for reading 🖤
questions i’ll leave you with:
what makes a wedding speech memorable to you?
do you have any relatively mundane examples of moments of change you’ve recently experienced?
do you use google maps as a discovery tool (i.e., to find new places to go)?
do you get despondent after a long string of unfulfilling reads (or watches)?
lots of stuff happened, and I’ve crammed it all into one post. i’m conflicted about whether i should separate components out, especially if travel is involved. i could do shorter parts, i could do a separate travel “guide” (here is one i wrote about tokyo and hakone a few months ago). thoughts?
since i’ve lived in NYC, i’ve been a regular at two neighborhood cafes so far, and both have closed down. the one that just closed down, referenced here, was already a replacement for the very first one that closed. it’s very sad. but wht’s interesting is that the new one i’ve scoped out (neighborhood cafe number 3) is on the same street as and only a few doors down from the first original neighborhood cafe that i was a regular at. (neighborhood cafe 2 was in the other direction.)
other notable souvenirs from japan:
the jump store merch goes crazy. the designs are way cooler than any of the official merch popups ive seen for anime anywhere else. (sometimes i feel forced to be a one piece fan bc they have the most and some of the best merch, both fan-made and official.) i purchased six Hunter x Hunter mystery sticker packs, three for me and three for my sister, and we opened them together at home, playing a yes/no question to guess which character was featured in each pack.
we found this very cute vintage knick-knack (?) store in okinawa, and spent some time looking over their cabinets of old stamps and other paper ephemera. shout out to alex and avery, who also love this stuff (niche), and vincent for waiting as we browsed :-)
i also love collecting eki stamps in japan, and cape manzamo had one – i wasn’t prepared and didn’t bring my journal, but had my copy of play it as it lays, so stamped it in there instead.
last but not least, i got a SPAM in okinawa shirt and orion beer coaster from good ol lawson (a convenience store all over okinawa). People love the SPAM shirt, and i love it too, unexpectedly got so many compliments and questions about where its from. i’m wearing this to hawaii.
In reply to your questions, I really enjoy your "what I did in a month" posts. And yes, Google Maps is a great tool to discover new places! I even do this thing of saving the places I like to a list that has an emoji as its title, so they show as that emoji when you look at the map, it's really cool :)
What a beautiful post! A collection of life experiences, memories, media and thoughts!! Saving to revisit it again and again and I’m very honored for the shoutout 🫶🏻🥹🐌