Twitter selfies taken before heading out the door on Saturday (5/7) & Sunday (5/8). wearing recycled shirts from previous Prides along with some of my newly acquired flags. sucks that i only really get to sport this stuff once a year, but oh well. actual non-binary (maverique) pan / bi asexual pride is year-round. 🙂
Nijiiro Komachi kicking ass again, handmaking flags on the spot to meet demand in their booth– GAH! why are you so amazing, Nijiiro Komachi?!?! i might as well be throwing money at you. ugh, 明日はホンマに大変になってしまったね。 tomorrow’s parade is going to be crazy. hopefully in a good way.
Yokohama recently hosted its first Pride event, Yokohama Rainbow Festa! i decided to go and bring you all along for the fun. 🙂 it’s super rare that i find things for ace, non-binary and other lesser-known orientations at a Pride event, especially in Japan, but this year i found quite a bit made by local artists. after Yokohama i headed to Tokyo where i met a new friend and fellow non-binary ace. we had yummy vegan food before heading to Shibuya where things got a bit…. Halloween-mob-crazy. Only In Tokyo, i swear. the video is long, but there’s a 14hr day crammed into those 17mins. 😛 obviously this jvlogger type of video is outside the norm for this channel, but if you like what you see give it a thumbs up! literally 2 full days worth of work went into this video, so this wont ever become a regular thing,…
today’s haul from Yokohama Rainbow Festa. 🙂 got a good selection of ace stuff, a non-binary necklace, a pair of aromantic earrings and the latest editions of Novia Novia (lesbian/bi womens’ mag) and LapH (FTM mag). everything aside from the magazines is from にじいろ小町/Nijiiro Komachi, a shop that gives artists a place to sell their goods. there was non-binary, genderqueer, aromantic, pansexual and asexual stuff that i didn’t buy even buy! it’s great to see artists being more inclusive when they make things. i’m pretty sure some of the artists who are making the ace things are ace themselves. i even met one of them today! 🙂 thinking about doing a giveaway at some point in the future as i really don’t need nor want all of this stuff… D; tomorrow i’ll be editing the crazy amount of video that i took in Yokohama and Tokyo zzz…
this is a long shot, but i ended up meeting someone at Tokyo Rainbow Pride through Tumblr earlier this year, so i might as well try again. Yokohama will be hosting its first major LGBT event, Yokohama Rainbow Festa 2015, this month. it won’t be anywhere near as big at TRP, but i know that at least one local shop will be selling ace-inclusive things and at the very least it should make for an interest day in Yokohama. i’m thinking about going on 10/31 (Sat) and making a halfassed video out of it… anyone else going???
my ace friends and i had a great time again this year at TRP! photo notes: the black & white photo is from the “OUT IN JAPAN” photo exhibition by Leslie Kee inside Harajuku GAP, which was also running a #rainbowgap photo booth campaign. the writing on the trans flag says 「色んな性の在り方を認め合おう！」/ “Let’s acknowledge the existence of various sexes/genders!” (in Japanese the same word is used to refer to both sex & gender) the meerkat, its human and its friend on the human’s shoulder deserve to be included for showing up to both last year’s and this year’s TRP in style. and yes, meerkats, among numerous other wild animals, are imported and sold as pets in Japan. i hope you are as outraged about that as i am, even if this meerkat is cute. ;(
like last year, a handful of us gaijin aces went to Tokyo Rainbow Pride and walked in the parade with Stonewall Japan. this year, i personally decided to raise non-binary / Xジェンダー awareness at the same time. 🙂 also like last year, we started out small with there being only three of us, then we ran into an old friend from last year, becoming four. THEN while lounging around someone on Tumblr messaged me that they were there and had seen us walking in the parade, so we meetup with that person and became five! w00t! we even ran into the-shynamites again this year, but i wasn’t able to get a photo of their awesome ace pride sign. ;( i even ran into the author of the forthcoming, crowd-funded book about Xジェンダー / non-binary people in Japan!! D; the asshat that we ran into later aside, we had a great…
#TRP2014 was awesome! met lots of awesome people and had an all around great time. 🙂 as seems to generally be the case at Prides, there seemed to be a huge under representation of everything but the L, the G and cross dressers, but what representation i did find made me extremely happy. above is a shot of the one non-rainbow flag that i saw (..ok, i did see a huge bear flag, but that doesn’t count) and i was lucky enough to meet and get a photo of a fellow non-binary ace! also, a couple of friends and i added to the diversity and inclusiveness of the event with our Asexual Pride sign, which we held with pride in the parade. ( see also: #TRP2014 photo gallery )
