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…
from YouTube: (more than) two months has passed since my last T update and a lot has happened…? increased acne, continued voice dropping; increasing body hair, fat redistribution; adjusting to having a libido, enjoying no longer being anemic; a failed health check, stopping T– wait, what?
anonymous asked: Hey! Since you’re living in Japan and are a Lgbt Person of colour, do you get discriminated or something like that? (Cuz You’re not white (asian) or because you’re lgbt+?) I want to move to Japan (or south korea) and I’m also a poc and Trans*, so I wanna know how it is to live there as a Lgbt+ Person of colour. (Sry for my english haha it’s not my first language~) hi. 🙂 ahhh, this is a complicated question with complicated answers, but the short of it is “yes” regarding discrimination / prejudice based on race and “yes and no” regarding discrimination / prejudice based on sexuality / gender. you might be interested in checking out my #black in japan tag and / or #LGBTQIA in Japan page for more information, but generally speaking… life for me in Japan may or may not be anything like what life for you…
it’s only been 48 hours, but i’m finally on T! 62.5 mg/ml of Enarmon Depot (エナルモンデポー) every two weeks, to be specific. The T Files is a series of videos documenting my journey to get testosterone in Japan and wherever i may end up with it from there. while this series may be helpful for those who are interested in the process of getting HRT (more specifically, testosterone) in Japan, it’s also just my personal playlist of [shit]videos about my adventures with T for my own future reference. watch at your own digression. :p more like 72+ hours on T now, but who’s counting. only YouTube, who immediately flagged this video as inappropriate for some advertisers, presumably just because it had “testosterone” and “HRT” in it. sigh.
posted with the permission of a friend, the above gem is but one of many examples of antiblack racism, transphobia and binarism that my friend is subjected to regularly on Grindr in Osaka and Tokyo. sharing it here as i often hear of this kind of thing happening on Grindr in English speaking countries, but see little about it beyond that. antiblackness is not unique to America or other English speaking countries, it is universal. and least there be any false assumptions made based on the above example being in English, my friend receives similar messages from non-English speakers in Japanese and has also received such messages during their time living in South Korea. this is Old News that is apparently Breaking News to some, but rest assured it most certainly is not Fake News.
…..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…
※ 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…
