5 years

After all these years, I still think EVERY DAY about what a luxury it is to walk around my own home in bare feet and feel the wooden floor beneath me. It's not something I ever thought I'd miss while I was in the hospital, but months of not being able to walk anywhere without hard slippers on is an odd, cold, constant reminder of the odd, cold, sterile and uncomfortable environment you're imprisoned in while you're an in-patient--one that I had never previously anticipated. There's a Björk song called 5 Years. In it, she sings the lyrics "You think you're denying me of something....You're the one who's missing out But you won't notice, til after five years, if you'll live that long. You'll wake up all loveless." Why yes Björk, I did indeed live that long (and will hopefully live many years--nay, decades--longer!), but I haven't woken up all loveless. More like...all cancerless! HA! Take that, leukemia. "You think you're denying me of something." Can I sing those words to cancer? hahaha...

According to Facebook Memories, on this day 5 years ago I was being quarantined in isolation at the hospital because I had woken up with the sniffles. I was also happy because I wasn't nauseous that day. (Chemo is such a bitch!)
Forward 5 years later to today, I woke up coughing and achey. My throat is sore and my head hurts. But I'm sick in the coziness of my own home so I'm happy. :)
I'm EXTRA happy that it's been 5 years! 5 years post-transplant is considered full remission. That will be in August. I'm excited!

I celebrated my 4-year anniversary last year by going to Greece. What should I do this year, now that I'll be gaining the official remission title?
I have a lot in mind, but the one thing I want to do more than anything is return to Japan. The main obstacle in my way is lack of funds (as usual), so we'll see.... I need to make this happen though. My plan is to look for a 2nd job...or more likely, to do some freelancing on the side. :)

Sayumi Michishige has OCD

I can’t tell you how I feel when someone famous and/or someone I admire announces they have OCD. It’s such a unique type of hell. It’s always good to know you’re not alone, but it’s a whole other level of comfort when someone who seems “bigger than life” suffers from the same thing.

It’s yet a whole other level when it’s someone from Japan, considering how incredibly conservative Japanese society is compared to the west, and considering how getting help for illness is so deeply frowned upon, especially when that illness can be classified as “mental”. 

It’s yet a whole OTHER level when it’s someone from MORNING MUSUME.
And this is SAYUMI MICHISHIGE we’re talking about here. Queen Sayu! The one & only.

Sayumi Michishige has gone public with her struggles with OCD. 

Her OCD is so bad that she needs to take a break from the public eye to deal with it.
As if I didn’t love & adore her & flat-out obsess over her enough already, now there’s this?
Not only am I so proud of her for being public about this, but now I feel, like, a special kind “bond” with her, if that makes sense?
I swear I don’t mean that in a creepy way! Hopefully, what I'm trying to say is clear--knowing someone has gone through the same type of struggles as you makes you feel more of "kinship" with that person, even though you don't know them personally, and it's just someone in the public eye whom you admire from afar. 

It’s horrible, though, some of the comments poor Sayumi has been getting on socials--as you might imagine. There are men out there who have been saying that she just needs a man in her life to cure the OCD. Misogyny & grossness aside (is it possible to put those things aside?), I don’t know how ignorant you have to be to not realize that getting a partner will most likely make the OCD much worse, not the other way around. 

I mean, it’s OK to not know things, but it’s definitely not OK to use your ignorance to spread hateful, incredibly gross sexist comments.  

It’s definitely not OK to think mental illness can be cured by having a sexual partner. 

“This woman needs a man in her life to cure her COVID!”
“If she actually got a boyfriend, her IBS would be cured.”
That’s about how much sense that makes. Except with the added caveat that dating or being in a relationship will likely exacerbate OCD!

(Not to mention…I believe (or rather assume) that Sayumi is gay. I think she’d prefer a girlfriend or wife, not a boyfriend. But that’s a whole other topic for another time. )

All about rage

 ....yeah, I'm not good at coming up with snappy titles for my blog entries. :P 

Anyway, this post is about rage and why and how different people express it, and what their reasons are.
I was just writing about this on Facebook, making multiple posts about it as there was just too much to say, and finally I gave up and decided to just make one centralized big blog post about it, because hey, that's exactly what blogs are for. 

I've been trying to express my feelings on this matter a lot over the years, as I constantly have people saying to me "oh, no one will listen to you if you express things to angrily"; "tone it down"; and "if you get mad nicely, people might listen." 
I'm tired of being subjected to these comments that do have some truth to them, but don't apply to my situation, as I don't rant to inform or educate people, or even to get anyone to change their minds. 

I rant to get things off my chest and feel better. I rant to -- quite literally -- vent. 

I don't expect to change anyone's minds. If I wanted to, I'd definitely take a different approach to doing so. I wouldn't rage at them. No, that's just something I do for my own sanity. It's emotion. It needs to come out somehow. The same can be said of sadness and anxiety. 

Would you say "oh, you'll never get anyone to understand if you say things so sadly" if someone's crying too hard because they're sad? 

Or "oh, you'll never get anyone to understand if you say things so strangely/excitedly" if someone's freaking out because they're anxious? 

No, because that would be absurd. You know they're just feeling emotion and not necessarily trying to debate or argue or make a point. 

It's just emotion. That's it. 

Anger is the same. When I lose my temper or need to get something off my chest, it's not necessarily because I think I'm "right". It's most certainly not because I want to debate*. It's just an emotion I need to express, something that I can't hold in any longer. 
(*On that note, a lot of people need to stop conflating "I don't want to debate" with "no one is allowed to disagree with me." Come on, folks. This should be socializing 101!)

Like, for example, imagine it this way. You're carrying a very full, heavy box. You can't carry it forever! At one point your arms will buckle, and you'll drop the box, spilling the contents whether it's "appropriate" or not. You can't make the contents spill out "nicely" or in the "right way"; they're just going spill out as they will. You're physically incapable of holding them in any longer. 

All that being said, of course--there are toooons of people who use anger as a way to attempt to inform/educate others, and this is something I really try to distance myself from. I know when I get yelled at constantly, I eventually mute or unfollow.

If you truly want to change people's minds (and if you're being honest with yourself here, and that's what you REALLY want to do, as opposed to just wanting to vent like I do), you also need to remember that--wildly hot take here, but--people don't like being yelled at!

I know, I know. Neither change nor progress are made through being nice. Obviously. You know, when it became really trendy for awhile to say "don't tone police me!" I was really happy because I finally felt validated in my (very vocal) anger about important issues.
But you can't be that way all the time about everything, then act shocked when people (very justifiably) walk away. Everyone's dealing with enough shit as it is. NO ONE needs people screaming at them on top of it all. It's one thing if you're ranting to let off steam, but expecting people to listen to you while you do so is rather tone-deaf, if you asked me. I mean, do you expect people to nod their heads and be like, "Yeah! You know what? You're right! Thanks for yelling at me in a blind rage, you really helped me see the light."

Like, for sure that's going to work sometimes--hell, it's worked on me in the past. Just in general, I think, the reality is that people are going to pay attention if you make a fuss. 
But, that only goes so far. Not everyone is going to be persuaded by you if pure fury is the road you take, and you have to learn to be OK with that. What's really important, I think, is to not dismiss these unfollowers as lazy, disinterested, or bad. And I see a lot of this. It's just completely unreasonable. How can you blame people for wanting to walk away from you when you're constantly being unpleasant? It's one thing if you don't care what they think, but so many of you do. You get so mad when people choose to distant themselves from just constant negativity, and it's totally absurd and flat-out irrational of you to do so. 

People aren't "apathetic" just because they don't want to listen to you rage and insult them. 

Time for Suggoi FEVER!

 OK, I'm watching a Hello Project playlist right now and Suggoi FEVER! just popped up, so how could I not write about it?! Look how cool and wonderful this music video is! Riley has the best close-ups! And I love that it's an actual SET and not an overly-CG'd confusing mess like Wake Up Call's MV is. (More on that next time.) Nah, this is an actual physical set (you can even spot shoe marks on the floor!), and it makes allll the difference. 

Of course, one of the greatest part of this video is after the dance break, when all the Morning Musume members get down and worship--err, present the graduating queen herself, Fuku-chan! And then she gets some great moments with 17ki. Of course, all the close-ups everyone gets in this MV are awesome, cute, and fun. Riley's really such a scene-stealer though! 

And the song itself? It's fantastic, of course. I could do without that creepy voice yelling "SUGGOI!" over everyone (I think more or less everyone feels that way? lol), but it doesn't distract too much from the song, imho. The very first time I heard a preview of this song on Twitter, I thought of Rasputin. It's absolutely got one of those 70s-era Eurvision vibes to it, but mixed with some of the typical "cool" and "disco-y" HP songs (Seishun Night! and Sukatto My Heart immediately come to mind, but Suggoi FEVER! is so much cooler than both those songs!). 

Also, going back to the MV, I love how they're all wearing pink, the member colour of the great leader herself. 
Soon to be former leader. 
I can't believe her graduation is so soon! It's....*checks date* It's in 2 weeks! 

City? In the SKY? This was supposed to be about Suggoi Fever!

The other songs on Mizuki's graduation single, other than her solo Neverending Shine, are Suggoi FEVER! and Wake-up Call ~Mezameru Toki~.
I love both these songs. A lot.

Morning Musume's singles have been much better lately. For me, the weakest of the more recent singles (15ki+ onward) was Lovepedia. Even though I thought it was a great song, it wasn't *amazing*, and I ended up not being entertained by there being two arrangements of the same melody. They're both all right songs, though Lovepedia is the far better of the two, only because Ningen Kankei No Way Way samples TURKEY IN THE DAMN STRAW in the middle, and that makes me automatically dislike it quite a bit, no matter how hard I try to ignore that part. In fact, the more I try to remind myself that it's truly only, like, 5 seconds of the entire song, the more I can't stop noticing it and allowing it to ruin things for me. 

It's kind of like the OG Morning Musume album song, Harajuku 6:00 Shuugou. I freakin' looooove that song, and it's honestly and genuinely one of my very favourite non-single Morning Musume songs of all time, and yup, that includes everything in the Platinum, Colourful, and Mizuki eras. That being said, I can never let myself full enjoy it because of that stupid T-rex sound at the beginning and middle. 

Why is there a T-rex roaring in the song? It makes no sense whatsoever. I'd understand if it were, like, a Hyokkori Hyoutanjima-style song where they were hunting for dinosaur bones instead of being pirates, but no, it's a song about picking a way-too-busy spot (Harajuku station) to meet a date at 6pm. It's all about crowds and cool/hip young people hanging out in Harajuku, and nothing to do with dinosaurs or dinosaur movies. It's just so out-of-place and increeeeedibly annoying and impossible to ignore. It's really really too bad, because it is such a fabulously good song otherwise. I really, really wish there were a "non-dinosaur" version (doesn't that already sound like something Hello Project would totally do anyway?). 

That being said, there's some music where I'm totally able to filter out the parts or sounds I don't like. I don't know why. Why is brain (and my ears!) able to do that with some music, but not others? What determines that? It can't be the level of annoyance or intrusiveness, as a certain piece of Zelda music from Twilight Princess debunks that. I'm thinking of City in the Sky. Not only is it easily by favourite piece of music from Twilight Princess (and yes, that includes Midna's Lament...yeah, I know I'm weird); it's also one of my favourite pieces of Zelda music of all time, across the entire franchise. 
The thing is though, is that it's got a really annoying "honking" sound throughout. I don't know how to describe it; the first word that came to mind was "honk", but it's even odder than that. Should anyone else be reading this, here. Check it out for yourself: 

See? Isn't it really annoying? It's super intrusive, I find, yet I can somehow ignore it and just focus on the synth-y string-like melody that makes up the piece instead. And to say I adore that part of the composition is really an understatement, and it really does transport me to another place, and works as the soundtrack to the City in the Sky so unbelievably perfectly.  I remember reading a description of City in the Sky's music by someone who wrote that it sounded like a beautiful palace that you didn't belong in, it was pretty but not for you...not a place for humans (or Hylians) to step foot in. If you've every played through City in the Sky in Twilight Princess, you know that's spot-on! Or at least, I feel that it is. 

Anyway, weird how the brain works when it comes to listening to music and absorbing it as part of our listening experience and/or our gaming experience--and movie experiences too, but that's another post for another day. On that note, my actual thoughts on Suggoi FEVER! and Wake-up Call will also have to wait for another post on another day! This post was supposed to be about them, but it looks like I got side-tracked--something that happens to all of us, I think. The beauty of writing a blog for oneself is that it simply doesn't matter. Freedom! :) 

Mizupon's graduation single

So it's the end of an era--the Mizuki era. MIZU-KI/ミズ期 (if you speak Japanese, you probably get the word play here--with the キ in 聖 being replaced by 期, as it's been her era). Her graduation single is pretty awesome, with her getting her own solo (Neverending Shine) written by Tsunku, which is all any of us could hope for. Unfortunately, I'm not big on ballads, so maybe I can't really appreciate it the way everyone else can--not that I can't appreciate it all, though. That would be unfair to say, especially as there are, quite specifically, some Tsunku-penned ballads that I actually really, really like, such as The Vision and Tsumetai Kaze to Kataomoi, to name a few (also both from graduation singles).

Anyway, regardless of my music tastes, I feel like there's something missing about Neverending Shine. I'm not good at describing music--or perhaps more accurately, I sound like a fool describing music--because I don't know any of the proper terms to use. So I do my best. (But also, who cares, as this blog is something I write for myself for fun, and not for a specific audience as work or any kind of professional capacity, so...HA!). But yeah. What I can say about Neverending Shine is that the chorus is just so unsatisfying. I feel like there's going to be this interesting kind of half-note up,  but instead it just goes kind of flat. I feel like I'm getting blue-balled here, which is particularly frustrating considering it's a graduation ballad for FUKUCHAN, of all people. The one & only Mizupon! But everyone else seems to like it, so that's good, at least. I just wish it were more interesting. More musically,,,,complex, I guess. It just feels too ordinary in general, let alone as a graduation song for someone like Mizuki Fukumura.

But the rest of the single? It's awesome! Wake Up Call and Suggoi FEVER!. I love them both. 
Did you know that Suggoi FEVER!'s orignal title was Fever Anytime Joutou? (Yeah, the same lyric they repeatedly say throughout the chorus.) Apparently Tsunku forgot he had already submitted the song under that name, and titled it Suggoi FEVER!. Ha! 

Anyway, I'll talk about that song (and Wake Up Call) another time. 

Can't wait to watch Mizuki's graduation, though I'll have to wait a day or so afterward, as I'll be out of town. 

And before that...the double Tsubaki grad for Riko & Yumeno! It's gonna be crazy!

The kanji of the day is: 
期

EURKEA! ^_^

Ahhh, I'm so excited! I found my blog! I want to update again, and journal my thoughts, and write movie reviews because I spend so much time watching movies and thinking about them. Well, the ones that move me, anyway. Which isn't that many of them. But the ones that do, do. Like, a lot. Ahhh! 

Yay for writing. 

I've been working on so many short stories since I last updated here (apparently 3 years ago?!). I'm still working on them and tackling new ones. I finished one and hated it, but it was just a skeleton, and not an actual story. But it hurt to look at. One day, I'll be brave enough to revisit it and modify it into the story it's supposed to be. 

I *did* start off another story that I'm REALLY happy with, but I got stuck. I'll be back to it, though. 

Just like I came back to this blog! :)