Livestreaming for the Win!

This morning I crawled out of bed early, expecting to talk to a friend, play some Minecraft, avoid cleaning my house-- the normal Sunday morning routine. Then I saw that The Dresden Dolls were having a free livestream at a time when  I would both be awake and at a computer. Yay!

The show is just about to start now. I love this medium! Introverts Abroad should sponsor live webcasts like this. If there is such a thing. If not there should be and they should do this.
This will be my first Dresden Dolls concert, and I can hear other fans, yankees*, in ,my head telling me this isn't the same as seeing them in person and I agree. Of course it isn't. But unless the magic money fairy flies them to Japan and helps them play a free concert mid-day in Sendai, this is the closest I am likely to come.
So shut up, internalized yankees* of negativity.

And now, I will enjoy a strange/fun/random affair.

Join me?
https://huzza.io/amandapalmer/live-stream/the-dresden-dolls-live-from-coney-island

* A Yankee by Texas definition: Anyone from New England. Anywhere in New England. Really anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Hey! C'mon, Get Awkward!

So I am slowly getting used to this expat blogging business. Kind of awesome. Not paying-my-student-loans awesome, but still a lot of fun and at least a little helpful in procuring entertainment for the toddler.
I've written 6 pieces in about 10 days plus a handful of reviews for the next campaign-- in which the blogger with the most reviews within the time period wins super fancy grapes. The next three most active reviewers win (less fancy but still) nice Japanese grapes. The next three get a small crate of apples each. Given Julia's love for fruit that is both red and crunchy, it seems I'm aiming for winning on the low end here. Honestly, it would be awesome to win fruit of any kind. That's just a really fun way to encourage me to keep writing, and the reviews I share might help other foreigners when they come to my area. I think other foreign wives of Japanese people probably have their own methods of sending money home, but knowing that the people at Travelex in the shopping arcade will not accept your partner's name, even if it is on your passport, might save someone else some time, embarrassment, and rage.

I'm also reviewing things I like! I am mostly reviewing things I would want a friend who came to the area to see or know about. That's how I am engaging with this most of the time.
In addition, I am slowly figuring out how I am supposed to engage with city-cost and the other bloggers there. I asked them about the presence of statues on their ceremonial mailboxes in their towns and the responses were not what I had expected. Apparently our fish in Shiogama is even more special than I thought.

The point is that I am engaging with the people on the website and not hiding away all of my weirdness, and not getting actively shunned for it either. The Owl Cafe post now has over 600 views. More people are following me on twitter, and some of them are even famous, which freaks me out in the best possible way but also makes me constantly rethink all of my tweets until I turn into that geeky chick at the cool kids party who makes a joke no one gets and tries to lean next to the punch bowl all cool-like but instead tips the whole table over and winds up looking like a the soaked skeletal dog body hidden beneath the layers of every fluff breed. She would laugh then of course, at it would be punctuated with a loud snort. Poor awkward girl.

Yeah, I should probably get back into novel writing again soon, too. I plan to spend the next two months editing last year's Nano novel to get me ready for this November. We'll see how that goes in combination with the non-fiction writing I am doing so much of these days.



Julia's actually told me twice today that she had to potty. Verbally. In words. It was amazing.

We've had a rough couple of days and I haven't been getting a lot of sleep, but this morning she slept in while I got to play (and really enjoy) Minecraft with some friends, and it was awesome. No one died this time!

I've come to the conclusion that I have acquired too much fabric and need to quilt the living hell out of it, which means buying a bunch of 100 yen store batting and just having at it, but when?

In other news, typhoons seem to be wanting to come hang out over here. It was windy with small amounts of slap-you-in-the-face droplets last night, but this morning was clear and sunny, until I tried to leave the house. Then it was overcast completely, the clouds overhead so dark and dense that the only sign that daylight hours were still upon us was the rim of whiter clouds around the horizon.
After a childhood in Texas, I have learned to regard dark skies with a respectful fear. Even without a drop of rain and knowing that tornadoes are pretty freaking unlikely didn't make me want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary outside. We scampered to the store and back.

After we came home, it rained a bunch but the cloud cover has not abated.

It is my understanding that parenthood with a 3 year old is essentially intermittent spurts of joy, pain, anger, fear, frustration, exhaustion, and grief, all while varying between becoming a monster and melting your heart.

Maybe that's just me.
I am trying not to be awful, but I do lose my temper more than I'd like. I'm working on it.

Once I can get us on a sleep schedule, this will be easier for all of us.
Until then, ganbatte imasu.

Expat Blogging Success and Small Town Grudges: Yay for the internet!

As you probably know by now, this is my personal blog, dedicated to all the craziness that makes up my day-to-day existence.

Recently I ran across a cool looking campaign for expat bloggers living in Japan and figured, what the heck? There's a decent enough financial incentive and I love having the opportunity to: a) get more attention for Tohoku from travelling foreigners, b) get more of my writing out there, and c) have a reason to go and explore to keep me away from the post-GISH funk.

Also, if I play my cards right, I can make enough money in Amazon Japan vouchers to buy a copy of Inside Out for my daughter.
Good times, right?

Actually, BEYOND yes. I thought through lists of places I've been and pictures I have, places I want more foreigners in Japan to enjoy, regardless of their status as visitors just to my area or to the country at large.
I got my first post online on August 13th, guiding the audience through a bunch of pics from the Sendai Owl Cafe in the arcade. You can find it here.
It worked out fine so I spent the next afternoon walking to Shiogama Shrine, playing tour guide to an imagines audience via pictures and videos. This morning, Julia and Tomo slept in so I got that post put together, too.

This evening, we come home from my in-laws house (at sleepy Julia's insistence, which was kind of awesome) to find these statistics:

What?! Almost 500 people have read about the owl cafe? And over a hundred have virtually followed me to Shiogama Shrine since this morning? Have I stepped into an alternate dimension where I am actually allowed to be successful at more than one thing at a time?
I'm joking. And elated. I hope these people liked what they saw, because I'm not anywhere near stopping this train.

Plans for potential future city-cost blog posts include:
A Walk through Matsushima
How to get to: Marine Gate, the ferry-port
What to bring to a Japanese Beach
Entsuuin, The Buddhist Temple in Matsushima
How to Murder Gnats

And that's just for the Summer in Japan campaign!
Afterward, I'd really like to explain the insane cleaning regimen dictated to Japanese housewives, starting with How to Clean a Japanese Bathtub (from the inside out, removing the facing), Did You Know You're Supposed to Clean your AC?, and How to Kill Mold on Curtains.

I could actually be helping other expats figure out what is going on. I could be slowly changing the world.

Something large and strange has just begun.

But don't worry, blogger readers. My personal life still belongs here, with you.

It is necessary to have a place where I don't have to be productive and helpful in that sense, where it is enough just to be me.

That's what Jenny Lawson taught me. Love that woman. That wonderfully crazy woman.

In other news, a girl who once won a Judo tournament by having her older sister threaten to beat me up if I didn't throw the match (and my overly sensitive butt cried instead of fighting because that's how threats work when you're already paranoid) and went on to the Olympics now is a police officer in my home town. Her dad is a (really inadequate) constable, so this isn't exactly shocking, and cops in my home town kid of suck. I will not forget the one who slammed my 120 pound mother into a wall (after she had dual whiplash) trying to get information regarding a non-crime. I was a teenager and we were at a bowling alley. Seriously all I remember is this guy, easily half a foot taller with twice the body weight, getting physically aggressive with a woman he did not properly gauge the age of.

So I am absolutely sure that the Girl who Threatened will fit right in.

In other weird small-town-li-ness, I sat next to her older sister, the one who was going to beat me up, in Japanese Culture and Civilization class at TCU. She didn't remember me and I didn't hold any of it against her, really. Honestly even holding a grudge against her sister for 25 years seems pretty ridiculous.

But it did change the course of my life, not that judo wouldn't have eventually fallen out of our lives anyway. A few years later, we left the dojo for a multitude of reasons mostly stemming from the sensei showing inadequacy and favoritism.

The funny thing is this thing made the papers, and came across my facebook feed, and made me snarl. Now I laugh, because it's all so damned inconsequential.

Now, I live abroad, with no real plan of living anywhere else any time soon, but instead with the ability to help others, whether they've been here for a day or a month or a year. I remember how scary some of it is, especially if you're in a city without a large foreign collective.

In conclusion, yay for the internet!

GISH and Beating the Post-GISH Funk

GISHWHES was amazing. My team pulled together despite several members getting new jobs, moving across the world, having job-related distress, and a number of other small calamities to produce some crazy times and fun art.

I personally performed at least 24 tasks by my own tally, which is way more than I probably should have.

We had a great time and I don't have a lot of regrets this year, mostly just a couple of tweaks to make sure things are even better next year.
Also, I am glad I opted to skip the items that required 10-15 people when I can't even get 5 together at one time. Those ones are not for me, obviously.

And now, just like after any big marathon of mental stress (GISHWHES, Nanowrimo, any huge project), part of me wants to take a break and relax for a minute while another part wants to sleep the sleep of the dead.

My daughter has fallen asleep. my husband is working overnight tonight. It's just us. I could do anything. I could write or edit or stream whatever I want. I could study or sew or stuff a sock monkey. There are a thousand things that I can do but the biggest flashing sign in my head is SLEEP.
Yet I am reluctant. I know I need the rest, but I know the sleep that looms ahead of me and it is the sleep of depression. It's the wake-up-at-noon-and-hate-yourself sleep that I just do not need today. Or ever.

A thousand things to do, but I can't pick one.
Except sleep.
And I watched a stupid creepy show so now my subconscious is convinced sleep will lure voodoo witches out from whatever nether-realm, despite the fact that voodoo in Shiogama is not really a thing. It is not unlike the paranoia of my childhood self, taking poorly construed re-enactments from Unsolved Mysteries as nightmare fuel.
So maybe I will stay up making crafts and watching Netflix things my husband has no interest in.

Until dawn.
Then I will sleep the short sleep of the winded woman.

Yay.