a season, a reason, or a lifetime

so my friend the big H forwarded a friendship email around that said that there are 3 types of friendships out there: friends who come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. lifetime friends are easy to decipher. seasonal friends are people who come into your life for a particular span of time, usually brought together by geography or something like that. a reason friend is a person who is in your life to fulfill a particular purpose and then is gone. i read this email and then promptly erased it due to the forwarded nature of it and my thinking forwards are pretty much bullshit most of the time anyways. but my friend Julie brought the email up in conversation a couple of weeks ago and i thought about it again. the words ring true, but i feel like it's missing something. the forward makes it sound like these friends are all over the place and perhaps they are, but certainly not in proportion. and friendship changes a lot and there are often time when i think i have one of those lifetime friends and it turns out that it's nothing more than an ephemeral fart in the wind.

this year has been particularly tough and there's a part of me that knows i couldn't have gotten this far without some of my so called "friends". however, i've lost quite a few friends this year (lost in that we are no longer friends, or they have passed away, or the dynamic has completely changed to where the friendship is no longer recognizable) and the one lesson i keep coming back to is that i need to be more guarded. i like to wear my heart on my sleeve; i'm bad at hiding my emotions, but i find that whenever i'm honest, i find myself getting kicked in the proverbial nuts. and i feel like all of this is culminating to a huge god-like sign or intervention where a greater power than myself will kick the shit out of me to teach me a lesson about letting people in. now, i know a lot of this has to do with the fact that i'm feeling hurt, disappointed, lonely, and for the fact that i have a bottle of very cheap tokyo wine in me but i still felt this way before the wine earlier today and will probably feel this way in the morning. why are the lifetime friends so hard to find? why do so many friendships seem like more than they are? is it because i want them to be? could it be that i'm a lot needier than i imagine myself to be?

my other rant has to do with friends who compartmentalize their lives. i had a bit of a fight/argument with my japanese friend the other night because he is a huge fan of compartmentalizing his lie. i'd asked him why none of us hadn't met his girlfriend before despite the fact that they had been seeing each other for at least four years and known each other since they were children. he said it was because he didn't want to blend different aspects of his life together. so i said that it seems to me that people who feel the need to compartmentalize their lives that way tend to be limited friends, or that i see them as limited friends. he got very upset with this and demanded to know why he had to share his entire life with me. now, this is certainly blowing the whole issue out of proportion. i don't think that people need to share all aspects of their lives with their friends but i do think that friends who feel the need to create strict bifurcations in their lives tend to be limited friends. if a person compartmentalizes me into one aspect of their lives not to bleed into the other aspects, then i'm not sure that i want that person in the other aspects of my life. this friend has already bled into other part of my life. he used to be my student, now he's my friend, and he knows things about me that i other people don't know. but upon inspection of his contribution to this friendship (after my realization that i am simply just one part of his compartmentalized lifestyle), i've come to see that he shares very little of himself compared to me and that makes me wholly uncomfortable. i am a firm believer in the grade school tit-for-tat dynamic which is why i do not confide in friends who don't confide in me. a balance needs to be kept. and i don't believe in the double standard. given this new information, does that mean my friend really isn't my friend? was he a season that is now over?

all of this over-analyzing gives me a headache. so much of how i deal with people comes from my gut instinct but i find my gut failing me in the long run these days. but perhaps i shouldn't blame it on my GI system. maybe it's just that i ignore the signs even when they're there. i know i ignored quite a bit with the recent loss of a person i considered to be a good friend. i know there are times when denial really is my best friend. it just sucks that it has to hurt so badly. i wish it was easier. but i know that is an overly-simplistic view of life. that's life my compartmentalizing friends outlook. life isn't a neat, easily divisible pie that you can store into different ziplock containers. life is messy and painful and disproportionate and dramatic and sad and wonderful and frightening. it's not supposed to be simple and manageable. that's not life. and i know that's not what i want. and perhaps i just need to grow a thicker skin to realize that a season or reason friend is just as important as a lifetime one, their impact is just for a much shorter amount of time. and by taking these relationships and integrating them into my life (even if it's just for the past or some memories), i value and cherish them in the only way that's important, my way. it's time to cue the sinatra.

Jews, Jackasses, and Tacos

having grown up in southern California, i have had the priviledge of coming in contact with people of all races, creeds, and backgrounds. and where i'm from, there are plenty of Jews so i never thought anything about it. afterall, the media is saturated with them. Seinfeld, Spielberg, Adam Sandler: all Jews. To hear about passover and Chanukah and study them was part of our curriculum. so you can imagine my surprise on Sunday when i found out that two people i know (both of them Australian, mind you) said that they had never seen or known one jew in their entire lives! as the japanese would say, "Eeeeehhhh?!" i found it astaunding that in this day and age (not to mention how small the world keeps getting) that there are people out there who still haven't met any jews. but at the same time, i suppose i've never met a native antarctican so that makes me a bit of a weirdo in some circles as well. i guess i wasn't prepared for such a shock.

now if it just ended there, that would be one thing but now that this asshole has met the only jew he's ever known, he's making all kinds of jew jokes which is making this poor girl very uncomfortable. it reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where that dentist converted to judaism just for the jokes. what an asshole.

this same asshole came to Taco nite (one of the most expensive dinners to host) despite the fact that he invited himself and no one wanted him there. i don't mind putting forth the time and money for my FRIENDS but for other assholes? no thanks.

and even more on the asshole front and Taco Nite, so it wasn't just the one guy but there were some others who weren't invited who came as well. and they invited other undesirables! where does it say that a party at yoko's is a free for all? that's balls not to mention very rude. i thought we coveredx this in the lesson about party invitations . . . .

Summer in Japan

It sucks. it's hot, sticky, wet, and miserable. but all the agony makes us appreciate the small reprives from the heat as we step into (gulp!) work, a department store, or anywhere else that uses air conditioning. it is also the time for summer festivals as you can see here. this is a picture of me and my friends on sunday when we went to the Ueno Park Summer Festival after work. i was so impressed and proud that everyone wore their japanese garb (i personnally dressed all but one of the girls and the boys). and despite the heat and the confininf nature of the yukatas, we still had a great time. Ueno park has a beautiful lake which we walked around after consuming some terrible festival food from the concessions stand (sidebar: festival food is actually quite bad. it's grilled corn on a stick, octopus balls, giant wieners on sticks, yakisoba, etc which is food that is actually good when it doesn't come from a festival stand. but the awful nature of the festival food is part of what makes the festival, the festival. bad festival food reminds me of my dad for some reason. consequences of a warped mind.) the walk way was lined with antique dealers and other vendors which made the stroll around the park fun.

my friends and i always end up at some dodgy izakaya and i get plastered and it makes for an embarassing nite for me (albeit a funny one for them). so when i read about this festival, i thought it would be great to actually get a bunch of us together to do something together rather than just get drunk. my friends and i do things when we're one on one (see movies, make dinner, go shopping, bowling, etc.) but it's tough when we're in a group. so we decided that it would be good to try to hit a festival every week if we can (no sense in letting our yukatas go to waste) and certainly we can wear them in september when the obon festivals start! now that will be fun (and hopefully a bit cooler . . . .)

summer also means fireworks. last year i went to the very famous Sumida River fireworks display. it was hands down, the WORST fireworks show i'd ever been to. the sheer number of people, the way it took me 2 hours to get home, the way we all got separated from each other, the madness! AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!! so never again. i'd rather watch it on TV or go to a smaller show. that would be better. maybe we can go to the park and do our own fireworks this year. that would be fun too! picnic and fireworks!

hopefully, that wasn't too boring. i'm trying this thing where i'm attempting to be less negative (i just read on the internet that pessimists die a lot earlier than optimists. not that i want to live forever or even too long, especially at the rate i'm going now but it can't hurt to try new stuff from time to time). we'll see how long this lasts.

Friends Who Marry

damn it! people are getting married again. don't get me wrong, it's all happiness and flowers and romance and crap but geez! does everyone have to be getting hitched? ok, so that's an exaggeration. my dear friends Joel and Rika and getting married (thank god cuz i love them both and i love them together and when i first heard that they had news, i thought they were breaking up). well, they've already gotten married (on paper) but there will be a wedding in Guam come september and if yokes can swing the money and the time, she's going (and hopefully she will be invited as well).

Joel enlisted my help to find his bride a ring (he reckons that i wanted her to have one as much as she wanted one) but i haven't the first clue about rings. i've never been shopping for one and have never really considered what i would want (never been close enough to a situation where anyone wopuld propose). you may recall that i had this ring dilemma a while back when i surveyed a bunch of people about rings. is it really that important? joel and rika will be apart for a month or more for the first part of their marriage and the ring shows their commitment to each other so i suppose that's ok. i question though, is the ring idea ok now beacause the issue at hand is a wedding ring instead of an engagement one? i feel like yes, it is different. my question now is, why is an engagement ring more expensive and more of a serious undertaking than a wedding ring? should not the actual marriage be more important than the promise of marriage? afterall, promises are broken all the time. sometimes they're not broken intentionally but they just are. people can promise a lot but making a promise is different from delivering on it. being engaged is different from being married. BIG DIFFERENT. GIANOURMOUS DIFFERENT. i think being married means putting your partner first, even when you have kids. and that's why i think getting married is such a huge deal. as a single parent, i'd have no problem putting my kid first. but putting my husband first and knowing he'd have to do the same for me? that's huge. and i don't think i could marry someone that wasn't prepared to do the same for me.

At the same time, i wonder though, am i placing too much importance on an institution that most people regard as not that sacred anymore? am i not changing with the times? is my thinking too old fashioned? perhaps. marriage seems like sport these days. women seem to chase strong, rich, handsome men. men chase skinny, pretty things that will cook their meals, wash their clothes, raise their kids and clean their houses. and if you look at a person and think, "hmmm, i bet i could live very comfortably with this person for a good few years," what's wrong with that? am i looking for permanancy in a temporary world? isn't that illogical if not downright moronic?

but i think that's the part of myself that i can't part with. the stupid side of me that i don't want to compromise. we all cling to our dreams, our fantasies. and perhaps this one's mine. i want to get married. i want to have kids. i want the whole nine yards. and if it doesn't happen, it will be but one bead in a string of dissapointments that i am to experience during my time on this planet. but if it does happen, it will be on my terms; not on the terms dictated by a transient, faceless, and jaded society.

So with that, i toast to my dear friends who i have lost to marital abyss. Joel and Rika, may you love with all abandon.

Rainy Rainy Rainy Okinawa

Knowing that we would be headed out to okinawa, i started tracking the weather out there for at least a week before i went. the forecasts got worse and worse so i knew there would be rain while we were there. little did i know how much.

getting to the airport was no problem but once we were there, the flight was delayed for at least an hour. this gave us a slow start to the day. the flight took about 2 hours during which time the Brits (adam and clare) sitting behind me and julie kept complaining about how the crossword in the paper was catered to Americans while stealing our answers. we got revenge by taking bad photos of them while they slept.

finally got to okinawa and picked up our rental car. of course the car navigator is all in japanese (although we could change the "voice" so she "spoke" in english. weird) which despite adam's level two japanese and my years of not studying japanese, we found a bit difficult to use.

the hotel was nice but damp (this becomes a running theme throughout this trip), the four of us got our own little bed in each corner of the room, and we headed out to Kokusai Dori where there are lots of shops and restaurants.

we met up with julie's cousin who lives out there and we had some lunner (lunch/dinner)and did a bit of window shopping. this was pretty much all we had time for the first day as most of us were quite tired from the flight. we had a couple drinks up in the revolving restaurant/bar on the top of our hotel where julie and clare tried to figure out adam's riddles (being uninterested in activities that require me to flex my brain muscles after 3 pm, i contributed by sitting back and asking stupid questions).

the next day, it was raining (and i mean raining HARD. buckets and buckets of pelting rain) so we headed out to the top of the main island to get to the Ocean Park Expo that has the Churaumi aquarium which houses the largest single tank in the world. This was super cool. the aquarium is massive with tons of different exhibitions and cool fish and animals. we took tons of photos! the big ass tank had 3 whale sharks and manta rays and whole bunch of other stuff. the park also had a sea turtle house, a manatee house, and a dolphin studio. very cool. afterwards we drove by some old castle ruins but there wasn't much to see. the problem with all the damn rain is that it made it very difficult to do a lot of things. Okinawa is like Los Angeles in that way. when the weather is good, there is plenty to see and do. when it rains, it sucks.

later that night, we met up with john and david on what john calls "cocks eye" dori for dinner and drinks. then we went back to the hotel and passed out.

our last day. we checked out after breakfast and went down to the bottom of the island to Okinawa World which is supposed to show us all things okinawa. Again with the downpour so we didn't get to see much of the stalagtite/mite caves. we only got to go into 1/3 of it cuz the rest of it was flooded! saw the habu snakes and the snake show and the snake alcohol brewing factory complete with the vats of sake with the snakes inside. saw some pottery and glass blowing. interesting but somehow expected more. came back and did a bit more shopping and then just headed back to the airport early. i think we were all a bit tired. AN HOUR before we head back, the rain lets up!!!! can you believe it?! aaaarrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!

the flight home was delayed as well for 2 hours which meant that when we got back to haneda, there were no more trains left for us to take to our various destinations. i complained like the mad woman i am and got us vouchers for taxis instead of having to fillout reimbursment forms for later which is a pain in the ass.

all in all, a fun but tiring and RAINY vacation. had a great time with my friends though, which reminds me why i love them so much. despite our snoring, sleeptalking disclaimers, we all seemed to sleep well and we had fun in our own way though we would've liked to have done more stuff outside like laying on the beach and seeing shuri castle and stuff. maybe next time!