Step Back and Smile

I am living in japan right now and let me tell ya:

There are people here who can’t speak or understand English who play nothing but Missy elliot and ludacris, even in businesses like housing offices and restaurants.

There are people who have cowboy hats and dead cow skulls in their home because they idolize what they assume American homes are like.

There are people who learn English strictly through music videos and American television shows.

There are entire karaoke bars with english songs often sung by people who have no idea what the lyrics mean.

Japan often takes American shows like the powerpuff girls and make japanese versions of them.

They often mistake common Americans for celebrities. I have been mistaken for Micheal jordan, tiger woods, Shaquille o'neal, Tyler perry, and saddest of all: queen latifa.

The act of sprinkling English into your japanese sentences is considered cute and cool and is popular with teenagers. Bonus points if you happen to use it correctly.

Japanese stores sell shirts with english on them and people buy them not knowing that most of those word combinations are nonsense.

My Chinese relatives buy me shirts from China with English letters on them hoping I think it’s cool

I have a shirt that says “Hi Quality Uality”

I should not be hearing an unsensored ‘Magic Stick’ playing at a family restaurant.

                never met you

      TOUCH             MY              BUTT

then there would be mo need to imprese you

  o need to want you.No naed for. loring you

    No need tar crying over you.Noneed for

  heartbreaks.No nead for paln oru tears.No

I still remember when I was a young teen and he was playing a Nirvana song and he stopped it at this one line: “I miss the comfort of being sad”

He told me that when you start to get better, there’s a part of you that misses being sad and that if you start feeling that way you have to be extra extra aware and careful because if you indulge the feeling you’ll go down a self-destructive spiral

And even though that was years and years ago, I think about it all the time. Especially when I’m reading discourse on the idea of getting so attached to mental illness as an identity that you don’t want to improve things because you feel safe in it and don’t know who you are without it

Or is she just being friendly?

Golden Shepherd - a mix breed between a German Shepherd and a Golden Retriever 

If the tag says “Dry Clean” it’s safe to machine wash but the designer thinks it looks better if you get it dry cleaned 

Alright, so. Coffee. I don’t drink coffee. I have no desire to drink coffee. I find people who enthusiastically go on about the flavor differences of lattes, espressos, and french press brews, both amusing and mildly baffling. All the coffee ads. Coffee jokes. Bustling coffee shops. To me, all coffee is similarly bitter and unpleasant. I have been through so many “Try this, it’s sweet! You can’t even taste the coffee!”  Alas, I always can. And I’m  sensitive to caffeine anyway. So, I don’t really think about drinking it when I wake up or am tired.

 Yet I love the smell of coffee. I love the idea of coffee. The feeling of a warm cup taking the chill from my fingers, the cozy ritual of having a drink and chat. I might try someone’s coffee. If they ask, if I want to please them and share in something they enjoy. I am also perfectly capable of learning the preferences of those I care about and creating a cup for their pleasure. 

But I don’t want coffee, generally speaking. I will probably make a face after trying their coffee and wash the taste out with something else. They may rush to reassure me that it is an acquired taste. And I’ll have to reply that it’s a taste I don’t particularly care about acquiring in the way they did. ‘Drink it till you like it’ will never work for me.