Relationship Update

Don’t call me the boy/girl who cried wolf but I just wanted to tell you that my boyfriend is going to nursery school!

On another note, just as I posted my Miss Independent post, The Cut published a wonderful piece called 25 Famous Women on Being Alone. You can check out the full article HERE or just read my favourites below:

(Illustrations by Mitsuie Yusaku)

People sometimes seem surprised when I say this, because I’m a pretty friendly person. This is one of the greatest misconceptions about introversion. We are not anti-social; we’re differently social. I can’t live without my family and close friends, but I also crave solitude. I feel incredibly lucky that my work as a writer affords me hours a day alone with my laptop. I also have a lot of other introvert characteristics, like thinking before I speak, disliking conflict, and concentrating easily … introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals — we are constantly exhorting people to ‘come out of their shells’ — but there’s a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go. (Susan Cain)

I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person … and also I feel like it builds a sense of self confidence and a sureness that you know that you can venture out into experiences without the crutch of other people. Like, you’re not doing it because you feel lonely or isolated, but because it generates a new kind of experience. (Carrie Brownstein)

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. (Cheryl Strayed)

I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel. (Audrey Hepburn)

The precious part of my day is when I’m alone. When everybody goes home and (son) Sean’s asleep and I’m just watching the night lights out of my window or something. I like silence, you see. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s all right to be alone. (Yoko Ono)

Miss Independent

Proof that compliments are so important: when it comes to past compliments, I have IMMACULATE memory. Do you remember Bebo? The social-media site before Facebook and Myspace came to town? Well, I can still clearly remember my first boyfriend posting the lyrics to Ne-yo’s She Got Her Own on his Bebo profile for me. Looking back, I think he only liked that I had a job because it meant he didn’t have to pay for his bubble tea, but regardless of his intentions that gesture stuck with me.

Ten years later, I don’t always enjoy being Miss Independent but when I do, I love celebrating me.

My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude. (Warsan Shire)

Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you’re pretty sexy and you’re taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with. (Sex and the City)

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself. (Anais Nin)

Discover why you’re important, then refuse to settle for anyone who doesn’t completely agree. (Fisher Amelie)
When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings. (Elizabeth Gilbert)

(Shout-out to Haifa, my beautiful 11 year old cousin for letting me read one of her many young-adult novels)

I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.
(Warsan Shire)

The More I Live The Less I Fear

Do you remember Yasu? My ex-neighbour that was too shy to talk to me for a year but then became my best friend? Well, she came to visit me in the big city and we had a blast together and I showed her my new favorite places. In saying that, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of this (see below picture) which made me think… (don’t say I told you so!) that the countryside does have its benefits. For one, I am spending a lot of unnecessary money here. Mostly on over-priced drinks (oops) and it’s hard to walk past a top that’s been reduced by 80%! I also can’t help but feel body conscious with the crazy amount of advertisements everywhere. However, I still believe the more I live the less I fear.

Make A List

If you haven’t heard of Dallas Clayton, you’re missing out (big time!) so please check him out here right NOW!

Welcome back! Isn’t he an unfairly talented guy? To me, he is a huge inspiration. I only wish to inspire like he does. Last night, when I was pondering my new found smile, I came across Clayton’s latest work of art:

How could I have missed something so simple? I mean, I was trying my best to live a good life, the countryside was so beautiful. I’d started new hobbies including cycling and yoga and made unexpected friends like this ojichan (old man) and yasu. But that didn’t mean I was actively engaging in activities I knew I loved. I know this sounds vain, I really do, but in this city, I am happy because I am filling my day with activities I know that I like. I am exercising (not sitting on my bottom for 8 hours straight in a suffocating room), walking walking walking (not driving for one hour to get groceries, alone), eating healthy, dressing pretty, writing in artsy cafes, appreciating diversity, purchasing freshly-made green smoothies and enjoying the odd glance from a boy. My new life makes me feel alive and it makes me feel young!

So how about you? What makes you happy? Painting? Drawing? The ocean? Cooking? Dining out? Road-trips? Building Lego? Dancing to the Beatles? Collecting fruit-stamps, watching old movies?

Are you doing it? Could you be doing it more?

Honesty Is Such A Lonely Word

Until right now, only my immediate family has known this. Because I live super rural with no cafes, restaurants or humans around, I usually have nothing to do in the week-day evenings. As in, really nothing. When it isn’t raining I can go for a bike ride but after the sun sets about 7pm it becomes too dangerous to stay outside (bears).

Also, using my computer isn’t  much fun. This is because I’ve been on the damn thing and on my ass all day long. Don’t get me wrong, I do teach (sometimes) but it’s usually 2-3 classes which are only about 45 minutes long. Leaving me a good 6 hours of Facebook time. Joking, I mean research. Educational stuff. As for Japanese TV, I don’t understand it much. Also, it’s really weird (to me).

So back to the thing you don’t know and my parents do, for the past 7 or so months, I have been going to bed at 8.30 and waking up at 5. This has been my mechanism to stop myself from getting even more homesick during the lonely and quiet nights. As for the mornings, I always go for an hour or two walk or bike ride which is where I take these naturey photographs.

So, there you have it. From one direction, it is definitely a somewhat lonely life (though sometimes I do get invited to stuff) but from the other, a direction I’ve chosen to peep from, I am living the life. I mean, when else can I have a Persian-style breakfast for dinner at 5pm and wake up at 5am, blending a green-smoothie on super loud? Totes not when future hubby or future babas come around. Am I right? Or am I insane?

Making Japanese Poop One Smoothie Bowl At A Time

Anisa sensei, English sensei by day, nutrition sensei by night, fighting (most-likely induced by over consumption of white rice) constipation (sorry) one green smoothie at a time. Different women, same bowel movements.

A Healthier Potato Salad and Cheesecake

Both recipes inspired by Petite Kitchen 

Potato Salad:
3 large potatoes of choice
1 small-medium cucumber
2-3 medium gherkins/pickles (chopped small)
A handful of dried blackcurrants
1/2 cup of raw pistachios (chopped small)
A large handful of fresh mint (roughly chopped)
Juice of one lemon
4 tbsp natural yoghurt
a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Pepper

Scrub potatoes well then cut in to small cubes. Place in a large saucepan, cover with salted water and bring to the boil. Then simmer, uncovered until just cooked. Be careful not to overcook!

When ready, strain potatoes and set aside to cool.

Once cooled, combine and toss all ingredients in a large bowl.

Cheesecake: 
6 free-range eggs
1 cup natural yoghurt
1 cup of mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup of honey or maple syrup
1/4 cup of almond meal/almond powder
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp vanilla essence

Topping:
Note: alternatively, you can use 100% store-bought fruit jam. 
1 cup of fresh or frozen strawberries
2 tbsp honey
1/4 cup of water

Decoration:
Silvered almonds and flowers

Preheat oven to 180C

Grease a round cake tin then line with baking paper -grease that a little bit too.

Combine all cake ingredients in a food processor and blitz until combined. Since my blender couldn’t fit/handle all the ingredients at once, I managed this part by blending in batches at a time.

Pour batter into a cake tin and bake for about 45-50 min or until set. Note: batter will be very runny, this is normal.

Keep a good eye on the prize, if the top starts prematurely browning because your oven is shit like mine, use a sheet of tin foil to cover the top.

As your cake bakes, add all topping ingredients to a saucepan, bring to the boil then simmer until juicy and thick- set aside to cool.

Once both topping and cake have cooled, bring the two together in the most perfect union using the back of a tablespoon..

Decorate with silvered almonds and small flowers. Last but definitely not least, Instagram it.

A big shout out to Daniel and Mariko for having me over, listening to all my Japan problems and giving me kind brotherly and sisterly advice and my tummy, vegetarian gyoza and perfectly cooked brown rice!

Fancy Bananas

Today is White Day, a Japanese FEMALE exclusive Valentine’s Day, if you will. So to celebrate myself, I took the time to assemble these fancy bananas for my breakfast. Self love 101!

All natural nut butter, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, slivered almonds, raisins and unsweetened dedicated coconut! Surprisingly filling ^.^

Learning to Love Myself With C. JoyBell C. (Not Justin Bieber)

Learning to love myself by making the time to love, to appreciate and to reflect.

How about you? Yes, YOU.

“The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it’s your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who’s not full of hate, who’s able to smile and be carefree. So that’s who I have to be.”

“You can be the most beautiful person in the world and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you, but if you yourself don’t know it, all of that doesn’t even matter. Every second that you spend on doubting your worth, every moment that you use to criticize yourself; is a second of your life wasted, is a moment of your life thrown away. It’s not like you have forever, so don’t waste any of your seconds, don’t throw even one of your moments away.”

“I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don’t want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It’s high time that I accept all the great things about me.”

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”

 

A Note On Japanese Dressing Rooms

Konnichiwa! Currently at Tottori (the least populated prefecture of Japan) Starbucks, sipping on a very-missed soy chai latte, eating a “green vegetables and basil sauce” wrap and writing these very words to you. Since I had nothing planned today, I decided to make it my day and do all the things which I enjoy. I started off by driving to Tottori City but when I saw the incredible snow covered landscape, I thought, gosh, I have to switch to a train to be able to take photos without crashing into a wall. Though, I managed to take one sneaky car shot, too.

Having lived in a super inaka (that’s Japanese for rural) place for the last 10 months, going to a shopping mall and a Starbucks has ironically, become a breath of fresh air for me. Is that weird? Can you relate? Like you need to see some lights? Some colour? Nature is beautiful but I ain’t no bear! Anyways, enough poetry. I want to tell you about Japanese changing rooms. Basically, there’s two things you gotta know. One, the first thing you ought to do is to remove your shoes. Always. Which is another reason why slip-on shoes are so vital in Japan. And two, use a polystyrene mask (found inside every changing room) to cover your face before trying anything on. Which I think is a brilliant idea because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve found a blouse that I’ve wanted to buy but couldn’t because of an oompa loompa foundation mark. Okay, that’s all. Enjoy the photos, like my Facebook page, follow my Instagram and share every one of my posts (tehe).