#erinyanko

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“WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!” “hasebe would have done it anyway so,”

✨taken from the author’s notes of the most recent chapter update of at the center, to be posted today:✨

it's almost been a full year since the last update, which---for anyone who has been following my life journey on tumblr or snapchat and so on---knows isn’t such a crazy thing, considering how i have spent the last year and three months living in japan.

it's been an incredible experience. i will be finishing my last day of work here on may 17th, and moving back to the united states at the end of may! but i wont' be moving back to boston just yet---i'm going to return to the US by joining my fiancé in seattle, which is a new city for me. onto the next ADVENTURE, YES?

here's some of the crazy things i've been doing this year, aside from loving my job as an english teacher and eating my weight in ramen: i met my good tumblr friend @erinyanko in-person THREE TIMES. together we gallivanted around osaka, kyoto, nara, USJ, tokyo disney land, tokyo disney sea, the studio ghibli museum, scandalous bars and shops in shibuya, and of course she did what she does best---which is to drag me down into new fandoms with her. i've met two other tumblr friends as well ( @likeabirdinflight and @quibblerindex​ )---one of whom actually was hired at my company, and now lives 15 minutes away from me on the rapid line! and it should be mentioned that, with both rhi and erika, we've finally been able to achieve our life dream of drinking wine together, lol. ♡♡♡ (with rhi, it’s already been at least one 飲み放題🍻🍻🍻✨)

i've done more all-nighter karaoke nights than i can count, drank all-you-can-drink like nowhere else, met new friends and made new one-night bathroom/bar/tax office friendships. saw pikachu festival parades and learned some basic survival japanese (and rude words), started drinking green tea everyday, made myself at home in the local starbucks, developed an obsession with rilakkuma, learned how to cook yakisoba.  finally decided on my favorite type of ramen (spicy tsukemen), explored at least six different prefectures... and i still have three months to go! next month i'll finally be visiting okinawa!

i've also been job hunting, recently. i accepted two teaching jobs to hold me over for the summer once i land in seattle. my true pursuit is for teaching positions in the universities, and i'm steadily working on that application process! between preparations for returning to the US, transitioning out of my japanese job and apartment and lifestyle, not to mention enjoying time with friends and food and the culture that i will say goodbye to in only a few short months, it's been especially busy the last few weeks.

(it should come as no surprise, then, that i haven't been writing jelsa as much, lol.)

As we launch into our creation period, we’d like the chance for you to get to know the creators and contributors involved in making this zine happen. For that reason, we will be posting bi-weekly Contributor Spotlights, which will showcase the past works of Limitless Zine contributors.

They’re all amazing creators with amazing talent, so please show them your support!

✽✽ Erinyanko

@erinyanko | Twitter | Instagram

“Erika or Eri (whichever floats your boat) is a fine art and language studies double major currently based in Japan. I love rival ships but also ships that are cavity inducing fluff and I have an uncanny habit of loving morally ambiguous & minor side characters. Nothing tugs at my heart strings more than a good sports anime and the fist bump of love and friendship.”

Original picture here

SWEET BUDDHA LOOK AT ALL THAT IMPROVEMENT!!!! ( O U O)b I WANT TO SCREAM AT THE SUNSET AND BACKFLIP INTO A VOLCANO ON JUST HOW MUCH YOUR ART HAS CHANGE SINCE OUR TAHNORRA DAYS!!!!<3<3<3<3<3

Tonbokiri only made aware of it when being called elsewhere and taking the first steps before looking behind on instinct seconds later

I HAVE BEEN WAITING 500 BILLION YEARS FOR THIS.

i jest, but, actualy---it’s five: FIVE SUMMERS (of tahno), five years of mutual tumblr friendship, five years overall. THREE years of penpalship and postcards and care packages and xmas cards. PLENTY of headcanons, tumblr chats, fics, fan arts, updates, and fandoms—AND @erinyanko AND I FINALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO MEET. IN-PERSON. 

AFTER FIVE YEARS.

and!!! not only that, but!!! WE GOT TO HANG OUT TOGETHER FOR AN ENTIRE GODDAMN WEEEEEEEk. including, but not limited to:

MOTHERFUCKING HARRY POTTER WORLD. MOTHERFUCKING. HARRY POTTER WORLD. HARRY POTTER WORLD. WE WENT. WE WENT TO HARRY POTTER WORLD. IF YOU WATCHED MY SNAP STORY, it’s literally just me laugh-crying. it’s fine. we went. we went to harry potter world. it happened. i was inside the CASTLE. the CASTLE. i was inside it. erika let me borrow her SLYTHERIN SCARF BECAUSE MINE IS STILL IN AMERICA. we went to harry potter world. we went there.

STARBUCKS. STARBUCKS ALL THE TIME. matcha frappuccinos and hazelnut iced coffee and BLACK ICED COFFEE (and BARISTA’S BLACK from the conveni). erika has now personally seen the differences between “before coffee!kris” vs. the “during! and after coffee!kris.”

CAT CAFE. erika, UNSURPRISINGLY, IS A REGULAR PATRON OF THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY AND ADORABLY LOVELY CAT CAFE IN HER NEIGHBORHOOD. we showered love upon many lovely kitties (and FED them) and now i have a sticker of my favorite cat (“cheese”), who i have adopted in my heart.

FOOD. how do i even begin to describe how much i loved “fox udon.” which, fortunately, contains no actual traces of “fox.” also, pork buns. (first time!!) also, KATSUDON. also, a different piece of cake, like, EVERY SINGLE DAY, i am not joking. SO MUCH GOOD FOOD. including my very first ever in-japan pizza delivery!!! PIZZA AND WINE. WITH ERIKA. THIS IS THE STUFF OF DREAMS, PEOPLE.

WINE. can you see how many bottles of wine are visible down in that bottom-left corner? this photo was taken the first night of our week-long adventure. it did not include our trip to the convenience store to stock up on cider and strong zero. it was a wine-filled week. it was the wine-week of DREAMS. of DREAMS. five years’ worth of DREAMS.

GHIBLI. wine and ghibli movies, this is literally what we have been looking forward to for YEARS, for YEARS, I TELL YOU. erika had rented thirteen ghibli movies in preparation for our week, and we watched seven of them, which was an incredible feat that would have been even HIGHER, if not for the fact that erika, THE TRAITOR, got me completely hooked on—

HAIKYUU!! i should have fucking known that i would leave that goddamn apartment with a new fandom, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, but i was naive, and now here i am, with seventeen new children characters to love and two more seasons to binge-watch as soon as i can justify the time, plus an entire category of fanfiction on ao3 to devour, plus—

ADVENTURES, SO MANY ADVENTURES. temples and shrines and climbing and hiking and (getting lost) in the mountains of kyoto (for the better!!!) and walking through ancient bamboo forests and wearing beauty face masks and erika’s star wars bandaids (assorted!! characters!!!) (THANKS AGAIN) and bowing to the ancient mountain-shrines’ local friendly neighborhood deer-protectors (deer!! who bow back at you!!) and FEEDING THE FRIENDLY DEER and trying to tell the deer that YOU ARE OUT OF CRACKERS AND HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO FEED THEM, PLEASE GO BACK TO YOUR DEER-NAP WITH YOUR DEER-FRIENDS and wearing bright-ass sneakers around osaka and kyoto and nara and UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN and TEA CEREMONY MUSEUMS and WISTERIA GARDENS (and subsequently discussing the jeanmarco fic, NATURALLY), and, also, of course, spending an entire day recovering from the adventures by doing practically nothing except watching anime and stage adaptations of anime and recommending fan fictions to each other, y’know, IN FUCKING PERSON.

so, clearly, the only thing that could possibly be better than us having had a chance to meet up at her abode (in japan) for golden week, of course, is the fact that we will be meeting up again at my abode (IN JAPAN) sometime in the not-so-distant future. isn’t that fucking NUTS. ONLINE- and PAPER-ONLY/TUMBLR-BASED/PENPAL-FRIENDSHIP FOR FIVE YEARS, AND NOW HERE WE ARE.

IS THIS REAL LIFE. 

life is ridiculously busy because my fiancé’s brother and his girlfriend are staying with me for the week, so we have been busy gallivanting around tokyo and catching up and exploring and drinking and all sorts of other lovely, crazy things. did i ever think i would be drinking kirin with my future brother-in-law in my japanese apartment? nope, but HERE WE ARE, and it’s grand.

almost done with the next chapter of the trapped in an elevator au! i had some time to work on it today because the guests traveled to kyoto and osaka for a few days. i won’t have time to work on it for another few days, but i’m hoping to have it ready for beta-time by the weekend!

also, perhaps most importantly:

JUST BARELY UNDER TWO WEEKS UNTIL I GO VISIT MISS @erinyanko AND MEET ERIKA FOR THE FIRST TIME AND WE GO GALLIVANTING THROUGH OSAKA AND KYOTO AND MOUNTAINS AND TEMPLES AND SHRINES AND DRINK PLUM WINE AND WATCH ALLLLLLLLL THE STUDIO GHIBLI MOVIES i literally cannot contain myself i literally CANNOT WAIT

thanks for asking, nonny!! actually though, i have a question: do you currently know hiragana and katakana? i think most people might agree that this is definitely the place to start—learning the kana! 

if you’re still looking to learn the kana syllabaries, let me know, and i’ll send the resources i know of, which my co-workers are using to practice. 

ultimately, trying to learn kanji without having a clear understanding of hiragana and katakana….??? i am having a hard time imagining it. but! if you have kana under your belt and feel ready for digging into some kanji, here is a bit about what i’ve gleaned so far…

(attn: tumblr friends of japan! if you have additional notes, please feel free to reblog and add!!!)

KANJI and how i am (sort of) starting to understand what the hell is happening:

tbh, something that has surprised me most since arriving in japan is realizing more and more about how kanji is (and isn’t) used. 

now that i’ve been here for two months, i am starting to understand how, within each kanji character, there are specific puzzle pieces and building blocks that compose the kanji character itself (radicals), so that the single overall character can tell its own story alone… and also how kanji can be combined together like even greater pieces of a puzzle to tell a different story. (and how pronunciation changes for, like, FUCKING EVERYTHING.)

and that how much kanji you “know” (can recognize, read, understand, write) is all very dependent.

example: it gives me hope, honestly, when i point to a set of kanji while i am out and about in the city with my 28-year-old native, born-and-raised, professional, university-graduated, japanese friend and ask, “what’s that?” and they respond with, “i have no idea.”