since returning to the US from Japan back in March, i haven't been on social media, YouTube, or this blog as much as i'd have liked. the international move itself aside, i've had my hands full juggling emotional / compassion fatigue...
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…
One-third of my life. That's how much of my life I've lived outside of America. My so-called "home country."
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,…
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.
ever tried to come out to someone only to be met with “i already knew that”? before last week, i couldn’t say that i have, but when a coworker thinks their “gaydar” is on-point, but that gaydar ever-so-predictably fails to extend beyond just “GAY”, mental eye rolling, story time and a mini word vomit ensue. what does it mean to be “visibly queer” and why is it that more often than not ‘queer’ is often taken to be synonymous with “gay”? and is there any such thing as “visibly trans” or “visibly non-binary”? don’t expect to find any answers here, as it took me considerable effort just to limit my apathetic word vomit to 5 minutes zzz… two days post-recording and much sleep deprivation later…
after years of whining and moaning about it, i’m finally doing it; i’ll be starting HRT soon– and in Japan, no less. 2014 Vesper, who made an entire video about NOT “transitioning” in Japan, is eating their words. what’s made me change my mind now? how does one start HRT in Japan? as a non-binary person?? Gender Identity Disorder??? in this video, i talk about all the above, as well as recap the “highlights” of my recent appointment with a psychologist to get diagnosed with GID; a necessary first step to [legally] starting HRT from scratch in Japan. [ cw: vague sex mention @ 11:27 ~ 11:55; reproductive body stuff ] …took me long enough to get this video up, geez.
queerascat: so, after going to an appointment with my psychiatrist and blabbering about how much being around my family fucks me up whenever i go “home” for the holidays, which i’d be doing in less than a month’s time, causing him to be like “but what if you relapse??? consider upping your meds before you go???” and me being like “at least i’m on meds at all this time around so lolololol nah”– i felt the need to just…. really DO something yesterday. so i did the something. and the something will happen 4realz for realz tomorrow. so yeah, Anxiety word vomit blogging at 9:35pm at Starbucks. over the past three weeks or so i’ve been emailing a clinic that had been recommended to me by a friend re: starting HRT. after three weeks of no response to said emails, i decided to sneak out of work yesterday (because the clinic is seemingly…
