endings & beginnings. 📷
it's only been a week since i left Japan, and yet being in America for even that short a time makes Japan feel like forever ago... and i not so low key hate that.
QAC 75.5 – Life Update: Leaving Japan?! | Legal Name Change | Goodbye Locs
over 11 years after first leaving America for Japan, the time has come for me to finally try my hand at life back in the States…
Ie Uru Onna Gyakushuu S2E3: “A home that is accepting of all [kinds of] love?!”
the video above is the commercial for season 2 episode 3 of the popular Japanese TV drama 家売るオンナ逆襲 /“Ie Uru Onna Gyakushuu” (”Your Home Is My Business! Counterstrike”), which just aired tonight...
QAC 74 – 1 Year on HRT: Non-Binary Dysphoria | Euphoria | “Passing” || The T Files #010
happy new year…! speaking of new years, i seem to have inadvertently ended up still being on T (nearly) 1 year after having started, despite having never intended to continue HRT for so long…
Sixty-six // Thirty-three
One-third of my life. That's how much of my life I've lived outside of America. My so-called "home country."
QAC 73 – 【Asexuality In JAPAN】An Interview ♠【アセクシャルって？】日本ｘ英語圏 || #AAW2018
Happy Asexual Awareness Week! I hope you, reader, are doing well. Last month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with two activists in Japan to shoot this interview about a topic that is pretty dear to me; that is, about the current state of the asexual community in Japan. It goes without saying that everything that’s said in the video is nothing but the experiences and opinions of three people and should NOT be mistaken as being representative of the experiences or opinions of everyone, but at the same time, who better to ask than two of the most active and dedicated people that I know in what is essentially the current hub for ace activity in Japan (Tokyo)? In this 23-minute and 10-question long (bear with me) interview, I sit down with 21 year old YouTuber, ace activist and friend, Nakaken of Seisei Doudou / 性性堂堂, as well…
「やがて君になる」/ “Yagate Kimi ni Naru”: an aro/ace coded, sapphic ‘love story’…?
cw: non-consensual touch and invasion of personal space this past Friday say the TV premiere of 「やがて君になる」 / “Yagate Kimi ni Naru” (“Bloom Into You”), a new anime based on the on-going manga of the same name by 仲谷鳰 / Nio Nakatani. while those who understand Japanese will benefit from the trailer shown above (and here, have another one), continue reading if you’re able to stomach my rudimentary rendition of the basic premise of the anime and what happened in the first episode that has me clinging to my seat in the hope that this particular series may not be your typical 百合 / yuri (sapphic / lesbian) story, but rather an aro/ace coded, mixed orientation ‘love story’. a story about two girls– one an avid reader of romance manga who struggles with having never once experienced for herself the love she reads about, the other having never experienced attraction…
landscapes and fissures: navigating ace terminology in Japanese & English
the following post was written for the May 2018 Carnival of Aces on the subject of “Nuance & Complexity“. it may or may not be cleaned up and cross-posted to the YouTube channel Queer As Cat in the future. —— some feel that people in (English-speaking, anglophone) ace communities are “overthinking” things. that the amount of words and identities (also referred to as “microlabels”) which have been coined in such communities is not only “overdoing it,” but even potentially harmful. i’d hope that this would go without saying (but understand that it doesn’t), that i disagree with the former and vehemently reject the latter. regardless of whether i or you or that random person over there petting the stray cat that’s out in the street right now feel such terminology to be useful to us personally, the fact remains that others do and there is immense value in that.
it began with locs…
cw: rape apologism …so i just had lunch with someone who is essentially a random woman who chased me down at a train station last week because she admired my locs and wanted me to start locs for her. had this woman not been a black woman, had she not been an older black woman, had she not been literally beaming from ear to ear just looking at my locs, so earnest about wanting to start locs herself and having nowhere to turn– had it not been for all those things AND had we not been in Japan, i wouldn’t have given this lady the time of day. especially since she made me miss my train. but she was and we are and so there i was, meeting this over zealous woman at a cafe for lunch because #AfroHairSolidarityInAsia✊🏾 if only the conversation had steered clear of politics, things would have been fine. i…
Q&A: communication in Japan
anonymous asked: hi, ive sent you a question before about worrying of getting into the jet program and before i could finish my application one of the two big eikawas i applied to wanted to hire me on the spot! im leaving at the start of march im excited and have done my research but im worried about communication between me and my japanese co workers, being american i p much am a really direct person and i know japan isnt like that from living there for a few months, so do you have any advice on communication? ( re: this post ) congrats!! and 久しぶりです。 thanks for coming back and sharing the good news. 🙂 when it comes to advice, as i said to a recent anon, every situation is different. in fact, especially when it comes to advice, your mileage will vary no matter what i tell you,…
