Top 5 Not-Obvious Things I Love About Japan

I started this list in 2008, but only got two down on the list. With a little 20/20 hindsight, I've found it much easier to finish now. I guess I'm starting to get a little nostalgic about my Tokyo life and those lenses are becoming slightly rose-tinted. :)

1. When you push the "close" button in an elevator, the doors really close right away, just like on TV. It's all very dramatic. 
2. My toilet paper holder - just click in, click out. If/when, I ever own my own place, you can be sure that there will be Japanese toilet paper holders throughout. Japanese technology innovation at its finest.
   
3. The "bidet" function on the toilets. This took me a couple years to get the hang of and get used to. My apartment came with one of these kinds of toilets, but, like I said, it took some getting used to, but once I did, well, all I can say is that these do the job they claim to. Squeaky clean! (Sorry if that's just too TMI for some people.)
4. The scotch bars. Thanks to my friend, JP, I started learning about different scotches and now consider myself an official scotch drinker. He started me slowly with Johnnie Walker Black and soda and we worked our way up to drinking scotch on the rocks in cool, small bars around Tokyo with impressively large and diverse collections of bottles. Tokyo is where I learned how a scotch on the rocks should be served--in a glass with one big chunk of ice (ideally hand-shaped into a sphere) freshly picked off the block so the drink doesn't get watered down too quickly. 
5. Aluminum screw-top bottlecans. Perfect for times when you want a cold drink, but just a sip at a time. Isn't it annoying when you buy a can of soda and only want a taste and then have to throw the rest out because you don't want to carry it around all day. Enter The Bottlecan. I definitely prefer this to plastic bottles, which aren't as cold and I don't like the idea of putting more plastic into the world. At least the aluminum is cheaper and easier to recycle (I think).

no idea where i took this picture, but i'm thinking it might have been at the miyako odori in kyoto

poor bastard

Or, how I draft a blog post.

Going through these old drafts is pretty entertaining. This post was titled and in my drafts and yet there was nothing written in the body. Now, even I am super curious as to what the hell I was planning to write about!! I started this post in 2007, so the idea is now lost forever and we'll never know what I intended, but knowing Tokyo, this could've been about any number of weirdos I encountered on the streets.

I've learned from mistakes like this so, now, when I've got something I want to write about but maybe don't have time to do all the "research" (i.e., hunt for funny and/or relevant links) and thinking about what I want to say, I'll at least write a few lines or bullets into the text area to remind me when I come back to the post. Then, later, I'll come fill the rest in. Sometimes I've got just enough of the writing juice in me to knock out a whole post in a short amount of time and will get it ready right away. Like this one. :)

What's up with all the old posts?

I'm cleaning house.

At least, in terms of my blog (I don't even want to think about what my room looks like these days... let's just say moving again will be easy because most of what I own is still in boxes). I just realized that Blogger makes it possible to see all my outstanding drafts... and I have half- or mostly written posts from as far back as 2006! I'm going to get to work on these, probably in no particular chronological order, and see if/how I can revamp them to be less time sensitive. Considering that most of these posts were begun while I was in Japan, there will likely be a Japanese-y spin on a lot of the topics, but we'll see if I can wrangle any of them into more broad-reaching topics. There are also A LOT of travel-related posts that are waiting to go. I haven't detailed anything from my super awesome SE Asia backpacking trip last fall and I'll be sprinkling in new posts as well as my upcoming summer plans promise to bring adventure as well.

The difference between a writer and someone who's got a writing hobby is that a writer writes... everyday... and, well, I guess probably gets published and paid for her writing every once in a while. Sign me up! I want to get this whole writing thing back on track. So, this may not be me writing every day on the blog, but at least working on some form of writing project most days of the week (that's how that whole job thing works, right?).


Dolly Parton - 9 To 5 by jpdc11

Sayonara, 日本, for reals... :(

Well, it seems there was at least one casualty of my frenetic travels and mental paralysis: this blog post!! I just came across it today and I don't know why I didn't publish it before--it was all completed, with links and everything already done! Ah, well, it's just in time, sort of, for Father's Day. Enjoy!

- Miki

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Hey, Japan, it's been swell; thanks for the memories. With you I experienced great writing, great fun, great food, great friends, incomparable confusion (for better or worse), OIJ moments (also for better or for worse), and perhaps most valuable of all, the chance to connect with family in a way I never would have had the chance to do otherwise. It seems like it'd take a book (or a blog ;) ) to really sum up everything that's happened here and how I feel about my time here and leaving now. Suffice it to say, I've learned a lot (though, sadly, this is not evident in my Japanese language skills, though my French skills have never been better! Merci, les filles!).

One person deserves a very special mention though: my dad (aka DadEx; aka Bank of Dad; aka that super great guy that let me hang out at his fancy schmance hotel every month, even though it meant he had a roommate and someone mooching dinner and breakfast off him several times a month for the last four years).

Dad, you're great and I could not have handled this country for this long without your monthly visits and emotional support. Also, I couldn't have had any number of super amazing, one-of-a-kind, OWD (only with [my 日本人] dad) moments that you let me tag along for. To name just a few highlights: a split-second but forever memorable view of Mt. Fuji (why climb the thing when you can see this from the comfort of a warm hotel room??), hanging out with real maiko-san at a real ochaya (not this one, but similar idea) in Kyoto, great onsen in Hakone, silly onsen in Hakone (ramen-scented hot springs and fish that nibble on your feet, oh my!), and just all around good father-daughter quality time at izakaya, hanami in Chuo koen, .

Along the way, there have been so many other truly important people, too many to list and too many to worry about hurting should I forgot to mention them--you know who you are, my dears. So, to my brethren and sistren in Japan, I say to you, ハッピトレールズ！I'll miss you crazy kids!

What's next?

Oh the ups and downs, rights and lefts of my life since last fall. That sounds dramatic, but there has been a lot of change in my life since then. I moved several times last summer/fall, then I took of for four weeks of backpacking through what was originally supposed to have been three but then turned into four countries, then back to Tokyo to assemble the rest of my packing, some final farewells and teary goodbyes, some soul-soothing in Hawaii for a couple weeks (really, is there any place better suited to soul-soothing??), and the final step of moving back to America, settling back into SoCal life, even if it's also only a temporary thing.


I've traveled a ton since coming back to the States (Florida, DC, NYC, Grand Canyon, Palm Desert, San Francisco--I'm making the road trip rounds here out west), had some quality mother-daughter Harry Potter nerd time (hence, Florida to the new Harry Potter Land amusement park), caught up with a lot of old friends I hadn't seen since high school or college (shout out to my fellow Trojans and Eagles), and gotten back into writing a bit (I'm working on some short stories and a book idea right now). In the meantime, I've been freelance editing to keep my skills up and income in coming. 


Any feedback on the new look/colors/layout of the blog? I need to find another photo for the header because the one that's up there now wasn't shot in widescreen. The beach shot that's up there right now is from my trip to New Caledonia a couple years ago--truly paradise. 

Changes Are Afoot

I'm slowly but surely peeking out from the state of mental paralysis I've been hiding (hibernating?) in for the last several months. My paralysis certainly did not extend, however, to the physical because I have been a busy girl-on-the-go this year (not to mention my travels from last fall, a post on which I've got in the works), with a DC-NYC reunion tour (I met up with several old college friends I hadn't seen in years), a visionquest roadtrip to the Grand Canyon with another college friend, a trip to the desert to commune less with nature and more with resort, pool-side living with my old roommie, and another roadtrip this weekend to San Francisco with my first roommie ever from my Berkely summer. Now, I'm gearing up for a move east, at least for the summer, with a possible jaunt to Greece (and a quickie stop in Paris) in July. Grad school apps, GRE tests, job hunts, and finding great scotch bars and dance spots in NYC are all in the works for the summer. This time last year, I was certainly in a less sunny place emotionally and geographically (there was snow in Tokyo in April last year!!). I'm looking forward to seeing what the next few months bring.

p.s. I was in the middle of drafting this post when my mom called to tell me Osama bin Laden had been killed. Whaaaaaat?? Whoa!! Weird how things like this have a way of resembling each other. The last time I heard about an event related to OBL, it was a friend who called me in Paris while I was cleaning my apartment to tell me that a plane had just flown into one of the WTC building; last night I was sitting in a Starbucks and no one else around me seemed to have heard the news--even in the information age, good ol' word of mouth still seems to be one of the fastest and most reliable news sources.