Best Friends Forever

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.” ― Haruki Murakami

I had the most wonderful time last night. I only met Haruka and her family 2 months ago but even so, I feel I’ve known them a lifetime. To say that Haruka’s family treated me like a princess last night is an understatement. They really did so much.

They had prepared a delicious make-your-own sushi dinner featuring avocado (my favorite) and mixed rice (black and white) with ample vegetables. Everything was so healthy and presented so beautifully just for me. We drank homemade plum juice – made sugar-free after I introduced “natural” eating to Emika, H’s sister. For dessert, we had the most divine matcha (green tea) and soy-milk pudding made with kanten (a natural vegan gelatin substitute and a super  ingredient I’ll be hoping to do a Savvy article on). Again, Haruka had made the dessert this way (sugar-free and vegan) just for me.

Last but definitely not least, I was gifted two gorgeous earrings (one with my birthstone) and two bracelets all handmade by Haruka! And, Mommy Mo-chan (H’s mother) gifted me a cute red Japanese cloth for wrapping my lunch. Wow I felt like royalty. What a night. I left their home with a full stomach, a full heart and a full bag of left-overs for today’s lunch. Haruka, Emika, little Ichikia (E’s daughter and my 1st grade student), Mommy Mo-chan and Satozi (H’s father), I want you to know that I will always remember this night and that it will never fade from my heart.

PS the fourth picture is made with kanten too. It is an eggplant jelly flavorured with soy-sauce. Though I admitted to my friends it looked chotto kowai (a little scary) it was soooo yum!

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?

Ponyo Town

Tomonoura (鞆の浦) is a port town at the southern end of Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture. Situated at a bay facing the Seto Inland Sea, the picturesque port town features an endearing old-fashioned fishing townscape, with a calm and laid-back atmosphere. Tomonoura is part of the Setonaikai National Park.

In recent years, Tomonoura has been picked as a filming location for several international and local movies, such as “The Wolverine” starring Hugh Jackman and “Ponyo on the Cliff” by the popular Studio Ghibli. The port town portrayed in the beginning of “Ponyo on the Cliff” was modeled after Tomonoura (from Japan-guide.com).

I went to visit my friends Anees (the male version of my name) and his beautiful wife, Amy this weekend in Fukuyama (about 2.5 hours drive). They took me to Tomonoura the port-town that inspired Miyazaki’s Ponyo and it was unreal. Though I  wish you too could have been there. Or at least, been there for the road-trip. Though I am used to living and travelling alone, I am still human. I wish I could have been there on a romantic date. Speaking of dates, I took them raw truffles. For lunch, we had local snapper (not pictured). For dinner, soba (pictured). I stayed the night. For breakfast, homemade sourdough with natural yeast (made by Anees) and fresh vegetables and herb (basil – homegrown on their balcony).

Soaking Up The Sun

before rainy season hits and all turns to sh^&

I’m Back!

Perhaps Alice
also felt
this freely trapped
and crowdedly alone
in wonderland.

The reason I write is to share my truth. It’s sort of like the philosophy for my blogging, if you will. So I will be honest with you. As I have been and I hope you know I have been through and through. Okay, here goes: leaving NZ a second time was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Period. I didn’t want to leave. NZ is so beautiful and my city, Christchurch is so nice. I wanted to stay in a place with family and friends, where I can drink the tap water and read the restaurant menus. Alas, I am back. Here by my own will (no one forced me). My main intention being that of growth. Growth as a person and as a writer. The former, I am certain has happened, for I am now Wonder Woman. I do everything here when I don’t speak the language. And I see snakes, many snakes everyday. As for the latter.. well, only time will tell. I watched a movie on the plane called 5 to 7 about a French woman having an affair and well, disregarding that, one of the character’s was an ambitious writer who SPOILER ALERT after countless unsuccessful attempts finally had something published for The New Yorker and then something else and something else and again and again…and yeah, I really hope that happens for me too, one day.

Move Move Move

With all the dreadful earthquakes hitting Japan, I’ve been thinking about how important it is to MOVE NOW. I’ve come to realize that if we wait for the “right” time we will be waiting forever. There is no right time. There will always be a better time; when you’re in a better place, more financially stable, healthier, fitter, stronger, with a clearer state of mind etc etc and that is an endless chase. So wear your nice suit and your best skirt, tell your crush/partner/spouse and loved-ones just how much they mean to you or your colleagues, local baker and next-door neighbor, how much you appreciate them. Use your expensive crockery yourself, don’t save them for a special occasion. Today is the special occasion. And if there’s something you’ve always wanted to do, do it. Life is short. So cliche or not, make the most of your life and move NOW. Though your move(s) doesn’t have to be huge nor melodramatic, it doesn’t have to be migrating to a new country or changing your career (though it can be). Movement can also happen in small steps. For each of us these are different. They can be baking a pie, a quiet walk in nature or building a chair. In the words of Miranda July, “don’t wait to be sure. Move, move, move.” To which I want to add: love love love and create create create.

Pictures from top to bottom: morning walks before work in my very rural and very pretty village, Mexican night at Kaori’s with brown rice and slow-cooked boar meat, Persian bento game on point with mayo-free Persian salad olivieh (recipe HERE) and last, a Kiwiana delivery by Anisa sensei for the other senseis.

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.”

 

One Big and Delicious Whole

Everything I am
everything I’ve said
and done and will say
and will do
derives from something
that you’ve said
or did or do.
I am not a single grain
nor darling, are you.
What we are are
crumbs
of one big and delicious
universal
(but here’s hoping, French)
roll.

Dreaming of warm days and sakura carpets

Illustrations by the most talented individual in Japan, Mitsuie Yusaku.

 

Social Media on Valentines Day

I wrote this exactly one year ago and not one person “liked” it. Yes, I do see the irony in that statement. Shush! New followers, let’s change that ;)

By now, we are all aware of the destructive affects of social media: Facebook, Instagram and so on. We all know that our friends only post their happy moments; their crème de la crème times. We know this because we do the exact same. Looking at my own Facebook page, I recently posted a bathroom selfie in my interview dress, a picture of myself holding a “yay” sign at my sister’s wedding and a photo of my best friend and I on my Graduation Day. What I didn’t publicise to the internet world was completely blanking out when asked my first interview question or the horrific wardrobe malfunction I experienced with my Maid of Honor dress (let’s just say the fitting room lighting did a great job at hiding its see-throughness!) nor did I post about bursting into tears when I felt the entire world (weather, time, my own body etc) was acting against my expectations on graduation.

Valentines Day. During my past relationships, I posted pictures of my jumbo sized pooh bear, my actual-velvet box of chocolates, my dozen red roses and my V Day steak. What I didn’t post about was patently hinting for those specific gifts sometimes 2 months prior, the many pointless arguments in between the gifts (always sparked by mundane matters) and the awkward “how would you like to pay? separately or together” moments at the restaurant counter.

Only now, after residing in singleton/town for a some time have I began to understand the damaging potential of such archetypal, seemingly perfect V day posts on social media. The great Theodore Roosevelt’s advises us that, “comparison is the thief of joy”. This we’ve all heard and all know to be true yet still cannot help but do. In fact, I think it’s borderline impossible not to see our lives (and ourselves) as inferior compared to the individuals who’ve just received 100 red roses and/or a surprise getaway to Vanuatu. And even if deep down, we know that that (roses/Vanuatu) is not their complete reality, we cannot help but think so. We compare. I know I do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being cynical. I’m merely sharing my own personal thoughts. For if our significant other gifts/surprises us with or plans for us a (insert romantic gesture here) what is it that drives us to share this particular act with the internet world? We as a generation (myself included) place so much effort in publicising our seemingly flawless moments (not just on V day but undoubtedly, these posts are more prominent during this holiday) that it almost feels as if these precious occasions, these valuable affairs would lose their significance if they’re not “shared”. Put not so politely; how f’d up is that?

Which is why I’ve come to the realisation that it should really be the opposite, shouldn’t it? Maybe our rarest, most unique and intimate moments should be unpublished. Solely reserved to be shared (as in real life shared not FB shared) and treasured between us and our significant others. Isn’t that what makes such moments so special in the first place? I know what you’re thinking, that I’m picking on V day because I’m single and bitter and heck, that may very well be the case but… All I know is, Valentines Day is a couple week away and it wouldn’t hurt if we thought twice before hitting the ‘post’ button. Though there is an exception if I happen to meet my future lover in the next 12 days and he gifts me something awesome.