I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it this year, but Sunday night I booked tickets to YaoiCon. If anyone out there would like to meet there and chat for a while, please leave me a note and let me know!
Also, I am working on another Tybalt story. I hope to have it done by con-time, but I’m not completely sure about that. By the end of the year, for sure. Two Tybalt stories in one year… it can happen.
I’ve been in Japan for the past week and change now, and I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to post. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I hope to come back in the future.
A detective stopped me in the Akihabara police station and asked to see my identification, but he seemed to lose interest almost immediately once I took it out, and he only gave it a cursory glance-over. I couldn’t understand why he did that, until later when I was fishing around for my rail pass. If I have a particularly large load in my upper left pockets, I realized, my jacket makes it look a little like I’m wearing a shoulder holster. Handguns are highly illegal in Japan, so naturally I think he felt compelled to investigate. Really that was a very clever trick – he stood off to the side slightly while I did this, enough to get a look into my jacket and see that the bulge was just a pocket full of wallet, papers, and other random bits that tourists pick up. It stayed low-key, he was in full control the whole time, and I didn’t even realize he thought something was wrong until much afterwards.
A few days later, on a much lighter note, I visited an onsen bath, about an hour south of Tokyo proper. The hostess mistook me for a girl at first and nearly handed me a key to the women’s locker room. She caught herself in time. It’s not the first time that’s happened to me, and I’m used to laughing it off (really I think it’s a nice sort of compliment).
It’s been a little bit of a whirlwind overview tour, and I’m still a bit shocked that it’s coming to an end. Right now it’s some ungodly-o-clock and I’ve been traveling all day, so I’ll post more pictures when I get a chance.
Adrian is going to Fanime tomorrow and will be there all weekend.
Track him down and say hello!
(Hint: He is usually sheathed up to the neck in black and wears a lot of leather. Also, he has kitty ears with purple fluff!)
Please do not dry-hump him without asking for permission first. It perturbs him.
I’ve just taken my laundry out of the car when a panicked-looking woman comes up to me. “I’m real sorry, sir, but my daughter’s just been in a car accident, she’s in Oakland General Hospital and I need bus fare to visit her, could you spare five dollars?”
There is no Oakland General Hospital. Oakland is served by Highland General Hospital. It’s 9:00 at night and I don’t know this, not without looking it up. When I lived in the East Bay, I went to the Tang Center on the Berkeley campus. “Five dollars?” It’s the Christmas season. Even if she’s lying, I can afford five dollars. She needs it more than I do. I reach for my wallet.
“Oh, thank you, sir, you know ten dollars would help even more.”
As we sit down to eat today, on this great American day of feasting, I would like to take a moment to remember those who are hard-pressed to join us. Almost every week brings another round of corporate bankruptcies, and even the survivors are shedding jobs. Nearly three million jobs have disappeared in the past year, and more are sure to follow. Food banks are stretching to their limits, even though they do incredible things with their donated funds.
When the things we want are out of reach, we give thanks for the things we need.
Some people are struggling to have even that.