Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Ugh I meant to get more of these done before my contract was up, but here we are.

30th April-3rd May: I attended Tokyo Dyke Weekend. I was nervous: in any Anglophone country I would avoid something called 'Dyke Weekend' like the plague, but their website seemed promisingly trans-inclusive, which suggests a likely status of bi-inclusion. I was correct! There were many non-binary people present, at least among the anglophones, and at least one trans woman, who was scheduled to be my roommate for the first night but didn't show up (she'd been ill, and, from the brief words we exchanged on the following day, was probably *also* nervous about room-sharing with a stranger).

I met a bunch of really cool people at DWE, some of whom I added on facebook, and absolutely zero of whom I have interacted with since. It's... I dunno, I've never been good at transitioning 'friend you met in a structured space' to 'real life friend', and the available ongoing social events where I could hang with these people, like Kings of Tokyo drag nights, always ended up seeming like an Expensive Reason To Travel All The Way Into Tokyo And Back.

Conversely I was *infuriated* by a personal safety workshop lead by a US Marine that focused on, basically, don't leave your drink alone, and act confident. Aside from being victim-blamey advice, it was *shockingly* and amazingly clueless of the specific risks posed to queer people by US forces. I was doing crowd control for Sydney Mardi Gras once, on a year when there happened to be a US ship docked in Sydney port the same weekend. We got *special training* on the safety risks they might pose.

A highlight of DWE: I made a bow-tie.

5th May: I went to Yokohama with my colleague T, which was... hmm, mostly a good day out, although his impatience and my food issues are ill-matched. I rapidly decided I love Yokohama, probably because it reminds me of Sydney.

14th May: I succeeded in going to Feminist SFF book club in Shinagawa! We discussed Garth Nix and I got over-enthusiastic and over-Australian. K arrived in Japan, but I didn't see her until Thursday, because work and travel and whatnot.

16th May: met K in Yokohama, found Indian near Minatomirai. It was great but expensive. Yokohama's harbour boardwalk at night was pretty, and, as we unanimously agreed, The Most Darling Harbour Place we had ever seen that wasn't Darling Harbour.

17th May: K stayed overnight with me. I think I made okonomiyaki.

18-19 May: K and I went down to Hakone for the weekend. We stayed at 'K's House', a former riyokan turned into a youth hostel. It has its own onsen, and it was lovely. Also I have now got over the hurdle of Not Having Done Nude Saunas Before (the hurdle isn't that I am embarrassed of being naked: it is a. that there are social expectations about being nude around other people, and b. there are social expectations that women demonstrate a certain level of embarrassment around situations like that, along with 'choosing to see male or female doctors' and so on, and I have had bad experiences with getting the latter wrong, such that I am more afraid of being judged for not being sufficiently embarrassed than I am of actually being embarrassed).

Hakone has a nice lake, and a pretty temple, and a steep mountain switchback train. There was volcanic activity, so we didn't get to take the télépherique over the volcanic mud pools. We did discover that 'cable car' can refer to a funicular in American English, and we agreed this was stupid, and I have now added 'cable-assisted means of ascending mountains in a car, box or train' to the list of things I will only be referring to in French henceforth.

Another amusing feature of Hakone is that when you get off the funiculaire, there is (or was? I couldn't figure out if it was an homage or an ad campaign) a giant backdrop showing an SBB train, and a replica SBB sign saying 'St-Mauritz'. Deeply disconcerting! There were also Obviously Ads, the same ones the SBB were displaying last time I was in Geneva, for the sights you can see in Switzerland by rail. I applaud 'MySwitzerland', who I think are a national tourism agency, for correctly identifying where in Asia they can find people who are a. rich and b. interested in trains and c. fond of hot springs and other things that Switzerland can provide.

20-24 May: nothing remarkable, except that I had my employer observation, and I was Very Anxious. It was fine, but I was way more anxious about it than I ever have been about a work feedback thing before.

26 May: explored Shibuya with K. We were to meet at the Scramble, but I arrived early and, although not jam-packed, it was baking hot and there was no shade to wait in. Accordingly I decamped to the Starbucks in the shopping mall across from the Disney Store (*not* the Scramble Starbucks, that's worse than the Scramble itself), which has 199 seats and is a glorious refuge.

K and I ate at Noodle Stand Ethical Ramen, near Harajuku station, which was good, but their gluten-free option is not as good as the one at Soranoiro. We went to the Meiji shrine, which is under renovation - not that you'd know it, the demountable shrine is Very Impressive in its own right. There were several wedding parties of obviously wealthy people, which were impressive to see. We then wandered through the Meiji Jingu gardens, which used to be an imperial fishing spot. Very cool, very green, very lovely, and also we met a very fancy caterpillar. We finished by wandering out to FLOTO gelato, which is in a very residential area. Gelato good, if small in serving sizes.

AFAIK I did nothing interesting the following working week.

This has been a list of things I did in Japan.

I cooked and ate *two whole meals* today. And hard-boiled some eggs for breakfast/snacking purposes. Between the basic 'foreign supermarkets' problem, the gluten issues, and the tiny kitchen I'm working with (two hot plates, no bench space), all of my spare brainpower is going on food right now.

1. The coffee from vending machines is cold, but the tea is usually hot.

2. Coco-ichi, a chain curry house, have some 'allergen-free' curry options. I did not personally discover this: I declined a lunch invite from someone at the orientation on Saturday, on account of betaking myself and my packed rice salad lunch to the park where there are no glutens. He helpfully came back to report that the place he'd ended up going with a group of other teachers had marked allergen-free options.

3. My mental image of Tokyo is pretty much entirely drawn from the neighbourhood of Shibuya (which was apparently the reference for the setting in Bladerunner. For some reason I'd thought it was Beijing). The quiet outer suburb I'm living in is nothing like that, and that is Okay By Me.
3b. My Shibuya-based mental image of Tokyo did not include 'The Aldgate', a British style pub in the second floor of one of the narrow buildings. They win points by virtue of having more gluten-free options than most UK pubs in the actual UK do.

4. Honey lives between the japanese teas and the western-style teas. I discovered this after three laps of the supermarket. On initially finding it, I thought perhaps it was because honey is a sweetener for tea, but then I realised the Nutella also lives in that section. I'm FAIRLY sure no one puts nutella in tea (although... there is hot chocolate powder in that aisle too. You could make some pretty great nutella hot chocolate if you wanted).

5. There's a national park type thing about fifteen minutes walk from here, with gentle walking trails and a 'sakura hill'. A++, good work, Machida-shi.

6. It's much easier to serve up vietnamese style rice noodles if you use chopsticks as your serving utensil. (This discovery really courtesy of bedlamsbard, who mentioned 'cooking chopsticks' on one platform or another. Otherwise I would never have thought of turning to my new hello kitty chopsticks in absence of a spaghetti lifter or salad fork.)

I've set up some photos from this week (plus another cache of Darkest Lancashire photos that I found on my camera, left from last year) in my Tumblr queue. They probably won't feed through to speculumannorum, though, because that relies on a bunch of IFTTT scripts, and google are blocking IFTTT from accessing google email accounts from 31 March. I will, I guess, eventually set up IFTTT to route through something else, but the whole system i have going involves two different IFTTT accounts and three gmail accounts, so. It will take a while to repair. In the meantime, speculumannorum_feed will keep working, I assume.