New Glasses! And sound recording mishaps.

On Thursday one of the nose pads on  my purple PC glasses broke off. They did this once before but I was able to repair them with tweezers to tighten the screw. This time the pad fell off completely when I was unaware and was lost in the mists of the carpet.

So I took the glasses into the Alook shop in Hondori and the guy was all, sure I can repair these easy--no problem. Unfortunately in the process of repair he inadvertently snapped the base of the nose pad clean off. And since last year the purple glasses had been discontinued.

Luckily, he offered to let me choose a new pair as long as it was the same price. By then I had been looking at all the other PC glasses for the last five minutes and was actually rather elated that I would be able to switch up my frames for no cost at all.

At first I wanted to get a pair in red, but the only red pair was the sample so I chose brown instead. It's exactly the color of my hair, so maybe that was the best choice in the end.



These glasses are slightly larger than my old ones, but as that makes it slightly easier to look through the frames I don't mind so much. It would be tiring if I had to wear hipster glasses everywhere, but as it's only at work (which is actually a good chunk of my waking time...but still) I don't really care.

The new pair doesn't have adjustable pads at all, so maybe they will last longer without breaking. The clerk doubted they would fit me because 鼻高い but actually they did, thank you very much.  As always I vaguely nodded to agree that, yes, I acknowledged the truth of the statement that my nose was big. Meanwhile I wilted inside and felt self-conscious for the rest of the evening. I know my nose is too big, it is in the center of my face after all, but that should be more reason why I don't need a stranger to inform me of the fact.

The next day I told my coworker that I had replaced my glasses she said that no, no, no, 鼻高い is neutral or positive, while 鼻デカイ or 鼻大きい is always rude. I can sort of appreciate her Japanese-style discretion to realize that I really was bummed about what some random shop person told me. Most Americans would have just laughed and chimed in with some story of their own when they were singled out.

Today was exciting in general because not only did I have new glasses, we spent the morning recording sound in an actual sound studio. And one of my coworkers kept making an idiot of himself, which was entertaining in sort of morbid way.

First, he forgot his umbrella and had to go back to the 14th floor to get it while we waited outside. And then our Japanese boss got nervous because of course it's a recording studio and we have to get there on time. When we got there, the same coworker kept screwing up his lines over and over again. To be fair the section he had to read was newspaper articles that we had cut down to the bare minimum, so it was a bit unnatural. But when our other boss asked me a grammar question, I was able to read perfectly off the cuff a line that my coworker had butchered at least three times already. In fact, my boss sort of looked over at the other guy was like "Like that!"

When the bumbling coworker finally left we all sort of gave this sigh of relief. And my boss started repeating sentences over and over with false starts in a sort of "Thank God he's gone that was the weirdest thing ever" cathartic outburst.

Then we noticed that the copy of the script was gone. We three readers were supposed to share one, but this same guy decided randomly to put it in his bag. So in fact I was the only one who didn't get to read the script in the office before work (same guy hogged it and didn't hand it over to me) and then my two bosses had to share one script while I read from the other one.

Did I mention this guy and I don't get on so well?

Now, I goofed up a bunch of times during my reading as well. But I did have by far the longest section (a good 90 minutes) and a large part was numbers. Part 1-1 through Part 6-30. And then numbers 1-90. Which is a lot harder than it looks! However, once I started reading actual sentences it got much easier. And I had some weird phrasing to get through too since my boss who wrote the script has a particularly Japanese way of phrasing everything.

"I came to understand the beauty and richness of the Japanese spirit..."

But still I managed to finish my part 10 minutes before time was up, so I feel really accomplished today. I got to record in a real studio and did some hard stuff.

Health and So On

On Saturday, I met an old friend I hadn't seen in a year. Two things were obvious: One, my Japanese had gotten dramatically better. Two, my health had gotten worse.

Even from this time last year, I've gotten thinner. Also, my face always seems haggard to me now. My friend looked pretty much the same and very bright and genki, but I think I look older.

This spring I hiked up to the Peace Pagoda, and even though it was only a 40 minute hike, and maybe 40 minutes on the road going back, it was really difficult to me. I just couldn't breathe that well. And afterward I just felt dazed the rest of the day.

Then recently, little things give me problems. Like I carried a folding chair up five flights of stairs and got out of breath and my heart was pounding. Or I ran for a light and noticed my heart was pounding after only a short distance.

For a long time, I've hated carrying heavy things. My backpack keeps getting lighter but it still feels like deadweight.

Why is it that I woke up this morning at 9:00, did nothing for two hours (beside house stuff and walking to the library) and I already felt tired????

I'm going to Tokyo on the 13th but I'm worried now because if I get a bad night's sleep the night before it could take me out for the entire day. If I could just save up a bit of energy each day and then use it all at once...

Lately I've been taking vitamins and trying to exercise my shoulders a bit more. Maybe that will help. I don't want to gain weight from empty calories because that's just more fat to carry around. bleh

Expert Level

It's been said that life is like a game where the difficulty levels are portioned out unequally. If you're born into good circumstances it's like playing on easy mode, but if you're born with disadvantages (i.e. a physical handicap or if you're a "minority") it's like playing on a more difficult level. This compounds if you differ from the norm in more than one aspect.

Mostly, I'm pretty lucky. Although I think living in a foreign country is like playing life on expert level. For example, a few weeks ago I tried to repair my shoes. In America, I could just walk up to the shop, describe my problem and ask if they could fix it. However, since I wasn't confident in my ability to describe the problem in Japanese I waited to approach the shop until I could come with the shoes and show the shop people the broken strap.

Everything is just more complicated. I can't do things on the spur of the moment. In this case, I had to plan a time to take my shoes in when I wasn't busy because there was a good chance I could get stuck carrying shoes around for the rest of my time. And I also had to look up vocabulary words to explain the problem. It's just harder when you have to review sentences two or three times before you even start talking because you have to be sure your vocabulary is right--or mostly right.

So being a foreigner is hard, and though I can't compare I've heard being female is especially hard. It's certainly hard living on my own. Because you always know in the back of your mind that when the shit hits the fan, no one is obligated to help you. Either you save yourself, or you don't get saved. You can pull yourself back up by your bootstraps, or you can go down alone, and either way it doesn't make much difference. But that's part of growing up.

Sometimes it would just be nice to have someone to text at the end of the day to say "so bored" or "it's hot" or "how are you." To know that someone is interested in your life, even if your life is not that interesting. However, maybe it's also good to acknowledge that one's life is pretty boring.

That is my experience playing life on a high difficulty level. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but I also have gotten much stronger in the past few months than I would have if I wasn't on my own.