Creeply

Dear JapanSoc community,

I am currently a student attempting to learn Japanese. It has become evident that I am falling behind my class. Starting this week I am going to write a short post each week in Japanese with the intended English meaning. As part of this community I am asking for help in correcting my Japanese. I know JapanSoc had a recent crash and some of the members are gone but I have faith in the remaining Japanese speaking community at JapanSoc. I have utilized quite a ton of the learning resources that have been mentioned on JapanSoc through its history and just need a little extra help.

Thank you all so much for creating a wonderful community!

Sincerely Michael Perna (Kuroshirohaiiro)

So I went to Japan for the first time this year to observe to New Year. I experienced Quite a ton, much too much to talk about in one post. I have selected some things I found to be relevant and interesting and will just continue to write about them. Here is me in front of Tokyo Tower on New Year’s Eve.

The first thing I want to say about Japan is that the New Year is an incredible time to visit. I decided to go to Tokyo Tower because I come across a video of the celebration there. I took a video myself. I had a pretty hard time with video because there were like a bazillion people there and I was struggling with a balloon.  I got there around 8pm and waited in lines until around 11. I got a piece of paper to write my New Year wish on and then a balloon to tie that piece of paper to. The experience was amazing. Hundreds of cheap food kiosks lined the paths in the shrine and hundreds of people elbowed you wherever you went.

My New Year experience in Japan only began at Tokyo Tower though. The next day I went to Osaka and stayed with a friend and her family who graciously let us celebrate the New Year with them. Look for my next post to read about osechi-ryori (traditional New Year food).

So, Monday I leave for Japan. I will be there for two weeks. It seems I have everything I need for the trip. My last post about my trip got quite a bit of negative feed back, which I expected because I exaggerated the numbers a bit. It turns out I will probably complete my entire trip on around 2500 USD. AWESOME!

I have one other thing to address though… I am a family friend of this girl who is very attractive. I have purposely put myself in the friend zone because she has a boy friend and it is an excuse to hang out with her like we did as children. The catch is that we were brought up together. I have and unexplainable comfort with her, and unexplainable understanding, and we thing in exactly the same way. We went people watching together once and it was better than having sex. We both ran parallel on every thought about every person ending with an interminable fit of laughter. I struggle to find a way to push in the direction of realizing our bred connection.

Three A.M. on a fall night. Location: irrelevant. No wind, no clouds, no noise. The highway is even absent of vehicles at this hour. Pure bliss. Maybe there is a distant sound of some power plant or a lone car in a neighborhood street but still silence. The temperature is cold but not freezing and the dull street lamp is still despite its fluctuating brightness. The night is a guilty pleasure of mine because it is so desolate. I imagine the streets empty during the day, as if no life were there. Being apart from society is refreshing. When you are the only thing on Earth you can’t do anything but appreciate yourself. Your existence defines all that exists and you are seemingly happy. I wish all a good night. Enjoy the moments when you can feel alone because in a society as this the true definition of alone escapes us. When all you know is relative to others, is alone comforting? It is to me.

Phasers set to kill and goals set to achievable. In this ultimate quest called life I have chosen to just keep moving. There is no time and no blog worthy of writing that can encompass my life’s philosophy but the short story is that I have the will to change, thus, change. I am going to life in Japan at some point in my life, for w hile, ten years at the least. I give off a vibe, apperently, that says, “I will achieve my dreams no matter the cost.” I have yet to meet a girl willing to accept that. I have come to the conclusion that my dating life in the U.S. should probably end now, before I make a very nice girl very unhappy. Unfortunatley Its killing me. If there is a girl out there who likes to play videogames in her underware, enjoys pointless banter, can appreciate nature and technology, likes to be abnoxiousley different, can kick ass at a game of duck duck goose, is attracted to artists, can appreciate tea and self motivated men, has a good taste in film, and has no like what so ever for country music or anything else in the main stream of pop culture, let me know.

Preparing a trip to Japan on a student budget is harder than I expected. There is a story to be told about my decision to visit Japan first. My roommate and I decided, spur of the moment, we were going to go to Japan. We are both studying Japanese at university and were simply browsing ticket prices out of boredom. We were astonished at how affordable they were if we booked them months in advance. So about six month ago we decided, “What the hell.” So we both dropped $800 USD each on round trip tickets to Narita International Airport for a two weeks stay. As it begins to boil down to our departure we are a little bothered by all the preparation we have to do. Initially I heard about JAL’s troubles and second guessed going but as it is we are both following through. The following is a list of things we have to do to prepare:

• Pass our third level of elementary Japanese – Free with price of tuition at Univiersity
• Buy plane tickets – $801.90 USD
• Buy 14-day JR pass – ~$550 USD
• Find a place to stay because our friends are all going home for the New Year – ~$500 USD
• Pay January rent early – $375 USD
• Pay electric bill early – $72.83 USD
• Book press passes for New Years Eve Pillows concert – FREE
• Buy camera for photos at Pillows concert – $400-700 USD
• Rent a SoftBank cell phone – $300 USD (for 2 weeks)
• Anticipate food costs in travelers checks (including alcohol) – $1000+ USD

Total= aproxomatley $4149.73 USD or 369222.23 JPY

It seems this trip is going to cost quite a bit more than we anticipated. I welcome suggestions. Please note we are already planning on finding a MangaKissa for one night around Ropongi or Shinjuku, so don’t suggest staying there the whole trip, YUCK. If anyone wants to help us out while were in the Tokyo area let me know! We are also visiting Osaka/Kobe for a few days in the New Year but will be in the ginormous city of Tokyo for most of our trip. Cheep thrills are good suggestions. Maybe good bars to visit or temples/parks/touristy things/anything worth seeing on a first visit to Japan. THANKS!

College is supposed to be the best time of some one’s life. Unfortunately its a lie. The experience is full of reality checks and full of becoming part of the real world. I am at  a point in my life where I cannot let my dream escape me for the sake of my mental health. My ultimate goal in life is to experience the world, starting with Japan. I want to go and just be away from America. I am tired of this life. I am an explorer. It is in my blood to escape.

Escape. I stick by life’s view. I stick by my life’s goal. I will escape. I will escape from this industrial madness. I will escape from this language, this culture, this lifestyle, this underachievement, this torture, this America. I will rewrite the American dream. To those of you destined to become housewives, destined to be politicians, destined to be suburban community lovers, destined to be helicopter parents, destined to be coffee drinkers, destined to be xenophobic, and destined to settle for less; this is for you.

I have grown up in middle class America, arguable upper class. I have discovered that in the United States it is impossible to have feelings of your own. To move through this society you have to keep no secrets. It is seen everywhere. In order to get by on the bare minimum you must be everyone. This leaves no room for self. I dream of a place where seclusion is widely accepted, where feelings are allowed to be kept inside, and where everyone recognizes the hidden aspect of others as private. The only culture in the  world that entertains this non-conforming absurdest lifestyle is the one I love with great passion, Japan.

I cannot lose sight of that. I need to keep motivated to keep moving, to keep my sights on Japan. I will end there, no doubt. Just now, there is significant doubt in my life. My abilities are curtailed by my want for the American stereotype. As much I can notice through meta thinking, the need to fulfill the American prophecy, I must escape. I know a relationship is impossible in the midst of this escape but yet I long so much for it. After all, it is a basic human need. The girl I like will never like me back, I am convinced. At this point the only relationship I can be involved in is one where the woman would be willing to go with me, to share my dreams of another world. I am close with this one, unfortunately I need a woman who is motivated in her own sense. She is motivated yet motivated in a direction I am not. I need to be in Japan as soon as possible and well, she is beyond that. To her, experiencing the world is through herself. I need to escape to find the world that has been hiding beneath me for what seems like a lifetime now. The endless search for a life partner continues. If only biology could step off me for a while just so I can achieve my dreams first. Maybe I’m supposed to let it get complicated and do everything at once.

Imagine a time when those plastic covers on electrical sockets did not exist, a time before car seats, a time when a sling shot was considered a safe plaything, a time when secondhand smoke was still a myth, and a time when bell bottom jeans and John Travolta defined the world. I know this all seems like a fantasy but don’t kid yourself, it is the 70’s. Those few in number to actually survive the human catastrophe of “unsafe” kitchen ware and pogo sticks are probably your parents. They were hardened by the roughs of the world. They probably made it through the summer of 69 relatively unscathed and to tell truth they fixed all the things they screwed up. We now have car seats, plastic covers for our electrical outlets, we still have pogo sticks but now we have helmets, we replaced bellbottoms with skinny jeans and now we all idolize Robert Patenson, god forbid we mention the miracle called the I-phone or maybe the fall of the Berlin wall. Our parents raised us in a relatively safe world compared to theirs and what do we have to show for it? We have done nothing but copied all of the cool things from the past. We have stolen our parent’s dignity by destroying rock music, destroying fashion trends, destroying the coveted world of swing sets and parks in exchanged for our satanic video games and social networking sites, we have destroyed the world of pop culture by drooling over vampires instead of really manly idols like the greaser. I propose we take action! Let’s make this world a better place just as our parents did. We shattered social status quos in the United States by complete ignorance of past generations. Louis CK said, “We live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots.” I hate to say it but it he is right. We live in a society ruled by convenience and it has done nothing but caused us to cry when Twitter’s server crashes. Is this the kind of technology dependent pretentious world suitable for our children? I think not. There is a simple solution. Go camping, stop buying things online the store isn’t that far away, spend your money before Florida get too full of idiots with retirement funds, don’t get an i-phone no matter the convenience, think before you speak your mind…kanye, use correct grammar, look both ways before crossing the street, and above all respect your parents and the world they have brought you into.

…

Received: Everything is good! I’m stressing on finals a bit? How about you???!

Sent: bord at work…hows that boy…and his job…lol?

Received: He’s good haha and this job is always the best! I miss you tho

Sent: yeh?…rly?…why

Received: I dunno bc I liked you and I thought you were really cool

Sent: awesome…i gues i am…when u gonna come visit me?

Received: Ill come when ever you want me to

Sent: next week some time?

Received: Yeah sure as long as you fuck me

Sent: wow…way to be foreward…i suppose things arent going so well with that boy?

Received: Things are going ok I just think ur really hot and I want you to fuck me are you down

…

I would like to use that conversation to segway into a discussion about how saying what you are thinking is a little absurd. Who in their right mind comes out directly and asks for sex. This can mean one of two things; either she is a slut or she is obnoxiously desperate. I rule out the second hypothesis because she is really hot.

*A side note*: There is no way in hell I will act on this solicitation simply because she has a boyfriend. I refuse to be that guy who you cheated on your boyfriend with. I for one would never cheat if I had a girlfriend, it is just unacceptable. So, why should I promote cheating by being the object of some one’s lust. FAIL on her part

Okay so, this is crazy. I’m flattered that I am that attractive but also royally offended that I attract such idiots. Can someone with intellect please take me 500 times around the bush to get me to bed PLEASE?! What dumbass says shit like that. Trust me, the first thing a boy human being learns about others is that you can never speak your mind completely, god forbid in a sexual context where it is unneeded. She could have just as easily used innuendo and seduced me a little. My stomach dropped when I got first text and my first instinct was not, “hell yeah” it was “WTF”. And I am till WTFing my mind right now. Some people are idiots and everyone needs to take this text thread to heart and just shut the fuck up before speaking your mind.

Received: Dec 2, 10:00 pm: dads leaving…dont fucking call mom or dad…he keeps on saying im going im going

Sent: yeh apperently he says that alot…hes just freekin shit…dnt worry

Received: Dec 2, 10:03 pm: no hes packing right now. he was crying

Sent: fuck my life….its wutever …he’ll b bak

Received: Dec 2, 10:04 pm: i know

Received: Dec 2, 10:04 pm: how was your birthday?

Sent: aight

Reveived: Dec 2, 10:05 om: what did you get?

Sent: …nothing…

I tried to be upset. I really did but all this shit has been happening for such a long time I just can’t bring myself to do it. I tried to be pissed off once and it did nothing but make me feel worthless. Anger works for some people but not me, i guess. Thousands of young men and women, boys and girls, have gone through this shit. I turned 20 years old today. I am an adult; I have a job; I have friend, but still I am considerably bothered by my parents relationship. I once did research on the subject and it seems that my age group is most susceptible to psychological issues from a situation like this. My sister is 15 going on 16 in a few weeks. Apparently she will be just fine. Unfortunatley I am still considerably bothered. She has to be home while I am off at college. She has to be home in the midst of this crumbling home and for what? So that my unorthidox family can become another fucking statistic? So my mother can truly experience empty nest? So my father can find a mistress? So my grandparents can be the first parents in over 100 years to feel shame? So the chaos can be served by the systematic, automatic, automated, robotic, lifestyle of philandering Americans? I cannot sleep knowing that the world that created me, molded me, motivated me, supported me, is disintegrating at my finger tips. There is nothing I can do.

On this day, my birthday, I have nothing but disappointment for the world. I never look forward to my birthday. This year I was having a relatively good day until now. The truth of the matter is that days with significance importance never turn out the way you want them. In rare occasions you get that one perfect Christmas or that one unforgettable birthday but that is just fantasy. Welcome to life. I suppose I just have to keep moving forward. Thanks.