東京レインボープライド２０１３ / Tokyo Rainbow Pride 2013

It took me seven months to visit Yoyogi Park, but I finally did—which means I got to check out the Tokyo Rainbow Pride 2013 events on Sunday, April 28. I admit, I missed the actual parade—but I did get to see a whole lot of people checking out the booths and also see some of the performances, including the one by Harp and Soul (pictured).

The events seemed to attract an unusually high number of non-Japanese people, though I guess it's hard to measure that accurately. (That, I suppose, is the reality of "standing out" in a foreign country—you're just more noticeable than the others.) There were also an impressive number of booths at the event, including those from Change.org, Department H, Google, Greenpeace Japan, TENGA, and the embassies of Brazil, France, Germany, and Sweden, among others. The collection did seem somewhat haphazard, but when we're acting for a common cause, who really cares?

What did strike me was the reality that the movement to raise awareness about LGBTQ issues is very much an import from the West, as so much of the organizing force behind the event seemed to take its cue from similar events seen in cities like San Francisco. That's not a bad thing, of course—anything to get people to talk about these issues helps. In that sense, it'll be exciting to see how Tokyo Rainbow Pride develops in the coming years.

日本での発見 / Discoveries in Japan #27: 着物 / Kimono

It has taken a trip across the ocean, away from a house full of kimonos, for me to become interested in them.

A kimono is literally a thing to be worn—and once upon a time people wore it on a daily basis. Modernization and westernization changed much of that practice, but the art and craft of making—wearing, enjoying—kimonos lives on. The details and intricacies of the designs, weaved and dyed in the same way for hundreds of years, the richness of the textiles, the attention paid to the seasons, the startling combinations of colors, the layers, the layers...

Except now there are too many layers, and so few people have any reason to learn how to wear them. It's like a 한복 (hanbok)—people only wear them on special occasions. A kimono—kimono, 着物—so stately, so weigty—it's like driving a car, an unwritten rule that says the "right" way to learn is from your dad. That's how I feel about wearing a kimono: I wished my mother were here so that I could learn from her. But calling California is free, and friends save me from expensive kitsuke lessons.

でも、やっぱり呉服屋の敷居は高すぎる気がする・・・

日本での発見 / Discoveries in Japan #26: 仙台 / Sendai

My restlessness, I realized, is the result of me not having written anything for over a week—but my trip this past weekend to Sendai is a good enough reason why not, I think.

This was my first trip to the Sister City of (what is now) my hometown—and two years after the quake, it was as good a time as any. Plus the trip changed my life, so there are many good things to go around.

今考えると、ちょっと信じられない旅だった。仏舎利塔やら秘宝館やら、イナゴの佃煮やら牛タンやら。蛇藤も見たし、道の駅にも行った。仕舞には（勿論）良い人達に囲まれてちょっとばっかし飲み過ぎて······仙台を出る日には、もう東京では見られない桜を見ながら、ちょっちばっかし将来について考えたりもした。

お〜し、今日頭を整理整頓したら、次は読書感想文フェスタだぜ！

MR. LONELILY

今日は髪洗いながらずっと玉置浩二の「MR. LONELY」を歌ってた。風呂から上がってもやっぱり聴きたくて、ダウンロードして聴いてたら今度は無性に Damien Rice の "Lonelily" が聴きたくなった。一体なんなんや······

昨日はよく訳が分からないまま夜が過ぎて行った。メール書いたり、ノート整理したり、音楽聴いたり······

Last night I understood that living with just enough is enough. Maybe "just enough" includes a trip to Korea or the Netherlands to hear Damien Rice live...

欲しがりません / I Shall Not Want

I was drawn to Tanabe Seiko's (田辺聖子) memoir for its title—『欲しがりません勝つまでは』。I've been fascinated by that phrase ever since I first heard it several years ago, from a friend that I worked with at our gift shop in San Francisco. (At the time I didn't hear him right, and I thought he said「星がありません勝つまでは」。And I'd thought, man, Japanese people must have had it rough if they didn't even have stars until the end of the war. (OK, I'm stupid.))

Tanabe's memoir points to the "thing" about an ideology to sacrifice wants for the sake of a war being fought in the name of an emperor, a living god: no matter how much you believe in that ideology, you're still hungry at the end of the day. Now that is rough...

日本での発見 / Discoveries in Japan #25: 桜/ Cherry Blossoms

一昨日は誕生日でした。夕方は雨も止んで、桜の花を見る事ができました。これからの一年、愛する人達を大切にできる大人になれる様、がんばります。そして、未来に希望を抱きながら、目の前の「今」を生きたいです。

日本での発見 / Discoveries in Japan #24: 不味いモン/ Bad Food

I distinctly remember talking about bad wine before, but I don't remember talking about bad food, ever. That's because I don't talk bad about food (often).

No, really. I may turn my head or make funny faces. I may even make an occasional comment or two. ("Hmm, this is interesting.") But rarely do I outright complain about food. (Except for that one time I had that really bad coconut tart at that one Chinese place in Yokohama and I was like WTF.)

And lord knows, since I don't get to eat gluten often, I save my gluten card for special occasions. And I thought that (starting) today was a special occasion.

Why? Because my Yahoo! Horoscope told me that my lucky food today was a 惣菜パン。

And just what is a 惣菜パン (sōzai pan), you may ask? Well, I had no idea myself, so I had to look it up online. (Thank you, Google Images!) Apparently it's bread with a sōzai inside of it. (Ha! Genius. Why did I not think of this before?) In contrast to the 菓子パン (kashi pan), it's...savory. And it's nuts.

My boyfriend said he doesn't understand why so many people think Japanese bread is good. I tried to explain that it was because Japanese people put crazy stuff on their bread and then still call it "bread". Cheese, mayonnaise, corn, shrimp, bacon, parsley, noodles, croquettes. Some of those aren't crazy, but most of them are.

(But this is what I love about Japanese food—it just cannibalizes other countries' foods and then forgets that the stuff they gobbled up ever belonged to other people. It's quite akin to the politics here, really. (See Solt 2009 for ramen example. And also any pizza joint selling you tuna corn eggplant pizza. I love it. (Not in the "I love it so I'm gonna eat it" sense but the "I love it because it's hilarious" sense.)))

Anyway, so. Horoscope. Yeah, so earlier I had finally submitted the paper I was supposed to submit way back on Saturday, so all of a sudden I had the mental luxury to go take a walk—which means I walked through Le Repas and then checked out the bakery inside of Ito Yokado and then finally settled on whatever they were selling in the bread section of the Ito Yokado grocery store.

And for 88 yen, how could I not get their croquette roll? That's like...sōzai pan at its best. (And it was...OK.)

But no, what was so awfully bad today was the other bread I bought—the adorable custard and whip dorayaki called「うさぎのほっぺ」。What?! That is too cute and the idea of it was just too good to pass up. And for 95 yen, I could arguably try it by claiming it was a medical experiment.

My religion states that any food eaten while walking tastes better. So I had this said "rabbit cheek" dorayaki while walking back home. But, but...

Wow. I think this is the last time I am ever eating anything from Pasco (the company that made this impossibility of a pastry). It just...tasted like a mistake. Like a block of clay had hopped into a bag marked "edible" and since no one realized it, they packaged it and sent it to the nearest grocery store. It tasted half-baked and had a chalky texture that I, that I...

Well, look, at least I ate both of the dorayakis that were in the bag, even though by the time I'd gotten through half of the second one I honestly felt like I had done something that I just wasn't supposed to do. But at least if I were going to die, I was going to be able to die merely from a very sharp feeling of regret while standing in front of cherry trees. Now that is what I call 本望。

でも真面目言うて、どうしてこれが「うさぎのほっぺ」なん？！つーか、絶対うさぎが怒るよ、これ見たら。「ウチらのほっぺはこんな不味うございやせん」って感じで。せめて「ぞうのみみ」とかにしたら良かった。