One Piece; Monkī Dī Rufi

otherwise known as Monkey D. Luffy of the Mugiwara Pirates, or "麦わら海賊団" or Straw Hat Pirates.
He has a lot of friends, and this manga is about how much he'll do for them. He's sort of brainless and goofy and falls asleep at serious times, but his rage when his friends are threatened is sort of primordial and weird, but sweet.

Shout out to my Guatemala crew, my rugby family, to tequila sundays, to "how lucky we are", to taranga ji and brut and the ever-strong baobab, to mosques, and the call to prayer, to Model U.N. to Children's Day and the Solidarity Movement and all the strangers that have put me on a train or lent me a cell phone or laughed when I wiped out on the street.

Manga has a weird role here in Japanese culture, it's like the animated versions of Japanese selves that can never be. Fascinating, for sure. Definitely another weird side of Japaneaziness. But I'd be lying if I said America doesn't have it's own "manga fantasies". (Bad Girl's Club, America's Next Top Whatever, Real Life: I'm on crack, whatever whatever)

To pirates! :D


To the longevity of friendships started in dire circumstances, and what friendship isn't !?

Olivia

This is the way I live.

you know why time moves so strangely in japan, like so fast, and so slow, is because i can't read anything on the streets. it's all kanji symbols and katakana and slashes and dots, and so it's like i live on a sim city grid, and it's amazing and it's like a gift, as if time isn't happening for me this year....or rather, it's as if time is finally functioning as i need it to....without me in it.

it takes me two hours at the grocery store in the tomato aisle, thinking, today do i buy local or do i buy organic--organic: they say they don't use pesticides, but the trucks that transported them here caused enough air pollution to make bad their organic promise. BAM. do i choose water pollution or air pollution today, plus local farmers tend to have higher attention to social consciousness, so do i support them even if they used some OFF on the vines this year? Or should I just pick the tomatoes with the least packaging, because styrofoam is disasterous and embarassing to use....
but here it takes me a bewildered 30 seconds--to pick some tomatoes that are less than 100 yen and are probably genetically modified as is the japanese fashion--incessant genetic modification; everything modification.

it's not a good way to live, it's not the way i want to live, guessing, living, being, chillin. but it's a break, and i need it, and I'm grateful to pollute and be wasteful and a non-functioning slob of an idealist that lost her way.

it's like a day trip, this year. wholly intended to have no purpose, other than to fertilize the seed of the other side of this day.

and while I'm here, I'm learning how to buy tupperware and keep paper in folders, and have cool pencil cases and highlighters that erase, and manage a phone bill, and to buy too many shoes and talk less, and sing more, and more badly, and be at work 15 minutes early, and wear a white collar for a little while. those aren't the most important things I'm learning....I guess that would be learning how to live quietly, silently even, conversing constantly and amiably with myself. In short, my lack of input in this kanji world of rose blush and digitally magnified eyeballs makes for an exotic and revolutionary output in myself that is teaching me to breath and make decisions, and THAT is the most important thing I am learning in Japan. It's the land of not making decisions, of not having an opinion, and of not foresaking thy families or the clock.

And for me, someone living in the bloodied shadow of contrition, I am thankful to learn the little Japanese things, like a love for compartmentalization and efficiency.

And I shall be the most organized sociopath in the whole world, am I right, Maggie? :) Che started off in medical school. Malcolm X worked in an ice cream shop in Harlem. And even Chelsea Handler was a virgin once.

With much love and attention,
This is the way I live,

what and when will be my motorcycle diaries?

today i watched the motorcycle diaries, not indie, i know, but all the same, i quietly wept in my bed (my futon) for a people of chile that were thrown out landless into desperate means and baseless lives on which to feed their children in the 60's.
i then thought about, and wept more, quietly, about a people in afghanistan numbed by bombs and then i realized i was really weeping that im not seeing and meeting them, but instead, a muted and bored civilization alienated by their island life.





so you see, im weeping for me, that i am not there but here and as always, the tragedy is lost on a girl whose biggest luxury is reckless travel.

"how is it I feel nostalgia for a world I never knew"

Japaneazy queezy!

Moved from Senegal to Champaign to Chicago to Japan since I've last blogged. Expect more ideas from Suwa-shi coming up!