I got new hair! I’m a bit slow, I know, but I jumped on the ombre hipster bandwagon. I will likely have to get my hair dyed back to at least a reasonably natural colour before I go to Japan, so this was kind of my last hurrah. Hurrah! It took three and a half hours, it was an amazingly decent price, and I made the giant mistake of wearing a white jacket afterwards, which now has a ginger collar. Whoops!
I finally found out where I’ll be living when I move to Japan in July!
I will be living in the smallest prefecture in Kyūshū – Saga!
That little red dot is going to be home…
Saga is bordered by the Genkai Sea and the Tsushima Strait to the north, and the Ariake Sea to the south. It’s a pretty rural prefecture, with over 68% of the prefecture being agricultural or forested land. I think it’s going to be nice being in a rural place, and it looks like Saga is not lacking in beautiful scenery – it also looks like it’s got pretty good transport, and isn’t too far away from Nagasaki or Fukuoka for when I do need a big city. Saga is the largest producer of sticky rice and mandarins in Japan, and is apparently famous for it’s beef, onions, and strawberries.
These creepy mudskippers (mutsugoroo) are apparently also a delicacy! Grilled, as sashimi, or simmered in sweet soy sauce. Yum, hey?
Saga’s proximity to mainland Asia has made it an historically important place for trade and cultural engagement. This will also make it handy for me to do a bit of sightseeing outside of Japan if I have some spare time. Saga has 20 municipalities, and in 2002 it had a population of over 870,000. Saga has it’s own widely-spoken dialect, Saga-ben, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem for me seeing as I can’t (yet) speak much Japanese of any form!
The prefecture has some pretty awesome events throughout the year, like the Gatalympics held on the mudflats of the Ariake Sea, the Karatsu Kunchi festival, and the Saga International Balloon Fiesta.
How can you not love balloons?!
I’m not going to lie, I’m really excited about going to Saga – I got really lucky with my placement, and everything I read about it just makes me more excited.
IN HONOR OF MEMORIAL DAY: During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt pledged that Filipinos who fight for the United States will be granted citizenship and military benefits. As a result, over 200,000 Filipinos fought side by side with American soldiers during World War II. Shortly after the war ended, that promise was taken back with the Recission Act of 1946. It was not until 2009 when President Obama signed a bill that would give Filipino World War II veterans a lump sum compensation of $15K ($9K for those living in the Philippines) to the less than 18,000 veterans who are still alive today. Yes, such an amount is not commensurate to the benefits they missed out on for over 50 years, but yet to this day a majority of them still have not received such meager compensation. So, LET US REMEMBER THE FILIPINO VETERANS WHO WERE NOT ONLY VICTIMS OF WORLD WAR II, BUT ALSO VICTIMS OF INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM.
Ignore how silly I look with no makeup and my failing attempts to stay warm, and focus instead on how freakin’ cute my dog is. HER LITTLE FACE. She helps me internet!
I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can’t make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one2pac, decades (or maybe centuries, sadly) ahead from 90% of the humankind.
(Source: transinboots)
As defined by urban dictionary, the friendzone is…
“When you are expected to support a girl you really like while she searches for a smarter, richer, and more handsome boyfriend. There is little you can do without feeling like a dick. All in all, one of the meanest things a girl can do, whether they mean it or not.”
and ”The perennial location of nice guys everywhere.”
Although this hypothetical situation could work both ways, friendzone is almost always applied to a man who is rejected by a woman. Therefore, there is something inherently unequal, something inherently sexist about the term “friendzone”. But what and why?
From my experience, this is what friend zone is. A “nice guy” pursues a woman, but isn’t forward with his intentions from the get-go like, say, a “jerk”. The woman is pleased to see a man who is interested in her not as a sexual object but as a human being and wishes for things to stay that way. The man is not satisfied with seeing the woman as a human being because being “expected to support a girl” is a bad deal if she’s not putting out.
Before I delve into the sociological aspects of this, I just want to point out that ”friendzone” is no more pleasant for a woman than it is a man. First, that is to say unrequited love works both ways, but the person who doesn’t return affections is considered mean only when she’s a woman. And second, what option does the woman have in a traditional “friendzone” situation? Just stop talking to a close friend to avoid “leading him on”? In high school, I found out my best friend of 2 years liked me. Having to tell him I didn’t feel the same way and being immediately ex-communicated via Facebook status (“Thanks for wasting my time”) was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Were our two years of friendship invalid because I didn’t want anything more? Was all our time together really wasted because there was no hypothetical pay off?
Guys who do this and claim to be “nice guys” are the worst misogynists because of their sense of entitlement toward a woman. They make investments in property and expect their dividends. They are fake friends. They are selfish. And they will jump at the chance to vilify you and victimize themselves when their attempts at manipulation don’t work. Clearly, “friendzone” is the remnant of a phenomenon that has plagued women since the beginning of time: women are not independent creatures. Our love lives exist only in the context of a man’s desire. When we make independent decisions, we are subject to a host of derogatory terms. “Slut” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “yes”. “Friendzone” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “no”
(Source: angels-and-angles)
“A Japanese soldier walks through a leveled area in Hiroshima, Japan in September of 1945, one month after the detonation of a nuclear bomb above the city.”
Hiroshima is now such a beautiful city, it’s history breaks my heart.