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...
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…
…..annnd look what i randomly* stumbled across at the bookstore tonight. Ash Hardell’s “The ABC’s of LGBT+” in Japanese! even Amazon Japan doesn’t seem to have it yet, but somehow Kinokuniya has it? which makes absolutely no sense, but hey! not complaining. it’s a complete translation of Ash Hardell’s book, including a lot of ace and non-binary terminology such as aceflex, quoiromantic, genderfluid and maverique transliterated phonetically into Japanese approximates.** even the [English] pronouns section is translated into Japanese, which i kinda have feelings about as to how helpful that and / or phonetic translations will be for Japanese people who will be approaching this book from a cultural and linguistic context that is not the same as that of a native English / germanic or romance language speaker. that said, at a glance, there does seem to be added explaination of English grammar to help non-English speakers better understand gender…
anonymous said: i know yokohama has SHIP, an ngo which mostly does hangout type stuff, but they probably know someone ( re: this post ) !!!!! anon, thank you!! i already know of SHIPにじいろキャビン and have no idea why i didn’t even think of them at the time of answering the other ask… just further proof that i need more sleep, i guess… *sigh* anyway, as you said, SHIP is an NPO that runs the only LGBTQIA community center that i know of in Yokohama and hosts an assortment of monthly LGBTQIA events. i went to one event and checked out their community center once, but then work and finances got hectic and i haven’t been back since, sadly…. they seemed like good people, though. upon getting this ask, i immediately thought about dropping by there after work sometime to ask about counseling services, but then i went to their website…
※ cw: dysphoria, genitalia mention ….so, in typical me fashion, i ended up coming out as non-binary to my psychiatrist the other day. i’d had no intention of coming out to him, but at the same time i had no intention of making any effort to not come out to him, so. *shrugs* i’d already come out to him as queer / bi / ace during my first appointment, so i already had some means of gauging what his reaction might be like. also, this is the same guy who is overly focused on “results” and “remission” to the point of being laughable / uncomfortable at times, so i already had reservations about the guy from the start.
anonymous said: Vesper, do you know of any LGBTQ (or LGBTQ-competent) counseling services in Japan? Specifically in the Yokohama/Tokyo area, but online resources would also be appreciated. anon, you must be psychic, because you have impeccable timing. i just had a discussion with my psychiatrist about this the other day and was going to keep on procrastinating writing about how it went, but your ask was the nudge i needed to get off my ass and write The Thing. you may be interested in reading The Thing, but in the interest of saving you some time, here’s a spoiler alert: my psychiatrist wasn’t all that helpful. if you’re looking for counseling services in English, he seems skeptical about there being anyone in the Yokohama / Tokyo area (in so far as he knows) who offer services specifically dealing with LGBTQIA people or the issues that we face. as for counseling…
anonymous said: Heya! Sorry to bother you, but what does Xジェンダー mean? Is it literally the Japanese translation of non-binary? Or has the same meaning? Thanks according to 「Xジェンダーって何?」, Xジェンダー (”x gender”) is: 性自認を表す言葉の一種で、出産時に割り当てられた男性もしくは女性の性別のいずれに二分された性の自覚を持たず、自己の性別に関し、男女どちらでもない、あるいは男女どちらでもある、さらにはそれすらもどちらでもないっといった認識を自己の性に対してもっている人々のことを指す日本独自の呼称です。 a word that refers to a gender identity; a term unique to Japan to refer to people who do not identify as either of the two genders, male and female, that are assigned at birth, but rather self-identifies as neither male nor female, both male and female or as a different gender entirely. while i don’t have any sources to link to at the moment, i’m fairly certain that Xジェンダー was coined in Japan completely independent of “non-binary” in the English language. in fact, i’m also fairly certain that it was coined before usage of “non-binary” in reference to gender in English, but again, no source links because i’m too tired to dig for them. either way, Xジェンダー is…
anonymous said: Hi. I just saw the ask you answered about how to say you’re non-binary in Japanese and it was super exciting for me to see. I’m a non-binary teen living in Japan, and it’s amazing to see that because it’s a sign that there is an active community of non-binary people that is large enough for these words to exist. It’s wonderful. ( re: this post ) hello, anon. thanks for stopping by to drop me this ask because it’s exciting for me to hear that my post was able to reach someone like you. awesome! while awareness of Xジェンダー people still has a long way to go in Japan (as it does for non-binary people around the world), there definitely are active Xジェンダー people in Japan. in Japanese, many describe themself as MtX, FtX, Xジェンダー or any of the other terms i mentioned in the post that you…
anonymous said: i was wondering, do people in japan know about asexuality or intersex , graysexuals , aromantics…? they know about lgbt but what about these? is there any kind of awareness to it? ( i discovered that im ace flux and still questioning whether demisexual or graysexual, but also that im biromantic seemingly and was wondering if it would be a problem there? are people accepting or aware of them or just lgbt?) it’s hard to make a broad generalization about an entire country of people, but generally speaking, i’d say that awareness of intersex people, the ace spectrum and the aro spectrum– and indeed, LGBT everything– is behind where it is in, say, the US. at the same time, Japan is a very diverse place. within the same country, even among the same demographic of people, awareness can vary greatly. everything i’m saying and about to say is…
hush-hush-little-heart said: Hi! I just found out about your blog, and I’d like to ask you something. I’m part of the LGBT community, and next year I’m going to study a Japanese Philology at the university. Would you mind telling me some basic LGBT vocabulary in Japanese? Just so I can understand and talk a bit about it, please ♡ (I’m a trans boy, and pansexual btw :3) oh also! (sorry i forgot to write it in the other ask) Do you know anything about getting hormones (testosterone, in my case) in Japan? Is it easy? Just in case, because I’d like to have a job/live there in a future, at least for some time hi. 🙂 sorry for taking so long to get to your asks. regarding LGBT terminology in Japanese, it’s a little hard to answer that question because it’s so broad…. so instead, i’m going to…
