THIS IS WHAT I THOUGHT.

Oh Livejournal, I'm so excited!! Tomorrow is going to be such a fun day! Or at least the itinerary promises great fun!

I meet up with Dennis under the Roppongi Hills spider at noon, have lunch, and then go to watch HARRY POTTER: HALF BLOOD PRINCE!!! I was able to get pretty good seats in the back center so I think, so long as the people sitting in front of us are quiet, small Asians, a sound viewing is secure.

Then, we're off to Disneyland! Starlight pass. Pirates of the Carribean. Dinner at the cajun lagoon. Fireworks. Bound to be fun! :D

What's more, I've got a brand new BABY HOLGA to preserve the memories of tomorrow eternally!! Finally made up my mind and bought it today at the local cafe/bookstore.

I've been debating whether or not to actually get a toy camera but I've been watching lomography for years, and oogling at all the analog photos from all sorts of Japanese camera magazines and I've been yearning so badly to buy at least one. I didn't think I would get the Baby Holga until today. My eyes were set on the 35 mm, but at the store, I suddenly thought about Ecuador and how it would be so much more convenient to have a tiny camera to carry around when my luggage can't afford to hide my big digital Nikon. That rationale was the final push that urged me to make this ¥1,800 purchase. It's cheap already. So I'm just totally excited to go snappity-snappity tomorrow!! :D

Also, I wanted to share with you a special package that I received the other day from Saya Signs, which totally made my week!!



How could it not?!! IT'S A SMILING HAND-KNITTED CORN!!!! Plus the packaging was uber cute. That's kudos to Mr. Signs' laboratory. God, I miss Saya! So I made her this. Shhh it's a secret.

In other news, movies I've watched over the past few days: Howl's Moving Castle, Amelie from Montmartre (again), The Notebook, Dr. Zhivago (1965), and I'm gonna watch Goodbye Lenin! tonight. c: I like having a big big Tsutaya near by.

Oh, and today, I went cycling around my town just to explore (one of my favorite past times to make me feel less of a slob) and I found three vintage antique stores! One had aaaaancient books and furniture and I was even able to make small talk with the store master, who apparently traveled the world himself to collect all those things. He was pretty young, too. What an exciting career!! :D Aaaanyway K, I'll stop bombarding your flist with image heavy posts.

Today marks 6 months of my relationship with Dennis. We'll go and celebrate it on the 15th with an awesome combination of Harry Potter Half Blood Prince at Roppongi Hills and a starlight pass to Tokyo Disneyland in the evening. c:

On another note, I spent the day making this for Saya Signs:

Tomorrow is the big election day. This is a BIG deal in my city, Setagaya. I placed in my first vote yesterday for the Komei candidate, Noriko Kuribayashi, a mother of three kids and daughter of a renowned politician. What makes it tricky this round is that there are 2 candidates from the Komei party for our city this year. Furthermore, 7 out of the 8 seats are already taken at this point and Kuribayashi is fighting against 3 others for the final seat. A mere one thousand votes separates the winner from the losers. So my parents, as well as all of our neighbors and SGI friends are visiting as many people as they can asking for supporting votes. There are even people flying in from other prefectures (even way up north from Hokkaido) trying to summon a couple more votes. My dad was able to get 60+ people to vote for Kuribayashi by meeting strangers at the NHK hall lobby and treating them to some tea, making friends, and asking for their vote. It's that intense. Despite the desperation for votes, I haven't contributed much, if at all, to this election. I feel extremely guilty and the excuse that I really have no one I know who lives in this city is getting too old. But alas that's the truth. :/

In other news, I got my passport back today with a brand new Brazilian visa. It looks pretty next to my Ecuadorian and American visas. :D

Aaaand my typhoid pills and Malaria pills arrived in a fancy package from Holland. I forgot it in the fridge at the B&B in Amsterdam. Krystal, the host, generously sent it to me. c: Now I can be full on Malaria and Yellow Fever proof!!

Last week I finally bought the DVD of Amelie of Montmartre, and--being bedridden and all--I have seen it three times. I confidently proclaim that it is my favorite film in all eternity. From the first time I saw it in 2001, I was certain that had I been raised in Europe with a caucasian complexion, I would've been living Amelie's life. I admire and adore everything about her--from the simplicity of her daily routine activities, her appearance, her creativity and wild imagination to even the way she decorates her apartment (AND HOW I'D DIE TWICE, EVEN THRICE, TO HAVE SO MANY MICHAEL SOWA PAINTINGS HANGING ON MY WALLS!!!).

Her life made such an enormous impression on me that though I had long forgotten the plot to the movie, I had subconsciously arranged my own life to mirror hers. Now that I watch the film again, I realize just how similar we are. Absorbed in a world of imagination and hypothetical reveries, eager to want to make a difference in other people's lives though at the same time, frightened shitless of face to face confrontation. I guess what I like most about her, though, is that she is so distinctly her. What with her social awkwardness and all, nonetheless she still lives in her own skin, confronting nothing but her own shortcomings. Amelie has her own flavor, and even as she grows to cross her previous boundaries, and finds herself a new kind of life to share with Nino, she doesn't lose her flavor.

Well, I want a flavor! Right now, I can't tell what the hell I am. A mixture of soy sauce and ketchup, a bit of guacamole and margarine... I feel that, with the diversity of my heritage, my identity is like a multi-cultural jambalaya. It's not just ethnicity. By character I'm neither completely reserved or extremely outgoing, neither confident nor timid, both hardworking and lazy, sometimes quixotic, sometimes pragmatic... worst of all, while on the one hand I want nothing more than to carve a life grounded on the propagation of peace and humanistic education, on the other I simply want to explore and fill my days with the aesthetic pleasures of the arts: a simple job in the city that makes decent money, a small but stylish apartment, internet cafes, home-made soups, gallery hopping in the evenings, subway trains and yellow rain boots... but I'll still do my best to spread happiness, just not in such a glorified manner. Rather, through small gestures to close relations, just like Amelie.

I'm a split person... so what is my real identity? All of them? What if I don't want to be all of them? Can I choose an identity for myself? Does that make me a fraud?

What's the verdict?

EDIT: I just read this in wurds:
"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

Hello Livejournal.

So the other day, I had a surgery to remove my right wisdom tooth because my jaw is quite small compared to average and it's grown in a way that pushes my teeth askew. So they jabbed novocaine all throughout my mouth and drilled my molar into pieces and tugged it out. Thus, for the past three days I've been bedridden and bored shitless, waiting for my chipmunkafied face to deflate. I've finished a heap of Disney/Pixar films, read the first two chapters of a good number of books (couldn't get through any of them without being distracted by the pain) and bought a whole chain of songs using itunes genius.

Here's what I've been listening to lately (aka recent favorites):

Hello Livejournal

I'm afraid I've been away for a while.. a very long while. I apologize for my absence.

Here, help yourself to a few pictures from Amsterdam.

 OH god I was being painfully optimistic thinking I could somehow get this paper done on the very last day of spring break. Not that I didn't try to get it done earlier! Just... after the fourth day of staring at a blank word document, I figured, fuck it my brain refuses to work. So here I am, Sunday night at 10:15, on livejournal. D: D: D:

Uhmmm.... NEW LAYOUT!! :D Actually, just new background and altered coloring. It's pretty though. I still wanna edit some more, but I'll get to that when it's not a means of my procrastination. 

I SAW CORALINE IN THREE-DEE!!!
It was soooo awe-inspiring and beautiful, I just don't know what to do with myself. I wish I could live in that garden. I'm hooked on the soundtrack, too. I bought it two days before I actually saw it, which had me more pumped prior to the movie.  John Linnell's voice is gorgeous--that 30-second snippet of the Other Father on the piano is simply delicious. 

Ok, I need to resume my paper. Be back.

EDIT: Whooops. Almost forgot to mention. I saw Orlando Bloom yesterday!  He was up there sharing his experience for the Tap Project in Nepal for the UNICEF Tap with a Beat benefit concert in Santa Monica. He is goooorgeous. He probably smells gorgeous, too. 

I just spent 4 hours with Natalie Kauppi! It's been over two years since we last met in D.C! It was great going over brilliant memories from Cambridge--such as our Harry Potter fiasco when the 6th book was released. It's amazing how, though we hadn't been in touch for a long while, the moment we get together, it's as though we never even parted. I cherish friendships such as these and I'm truly blessed to have a few. 

I see people struggling around me with the mid-term crunch and the rush to get Capstone drafts in before trips to Japan. I also see the first half of the spring semester taking a toll on people. And with the elections going on, I think many people are simply overwhelmed. Fortunately, I've been able to concentrate on my own stability to find the resilience to maintain a positive outlook despite the daunting nature of the current predicament. This week is, simply put, crazy, but I'm rather enjoying it--and quite frankly, feeling at ease. I like it--I feel I'm making steady steps to becoming more self-reliant in my temperament. My goal now is to be able to support those around me and find a healthy means of sharing this happiness with my environment. I need to focus on my immediate surroundings, as I've shamefully disregarded some of my closest friends over the past month, desperate to salvage my own sanity. It's frightful how easily I can forget the true purpose of my being here--these true friendships, I cannot dispose. 

I need to prepare now for the SSU elections. The candidates of the Executive Council will be having their Q&A sessions tonight--how exciting!

 I had forgotten how much I loved blogging. And painting.

It's all coming back to me now.