Day in the Life of an Idiot

 OMG, this is a long convention. However! My part in it is now, officially, over.

I was once again up at the crack of dawn in order to Zoom into a panel live in Glasgow. So, I'm probably going to be a crispy critter for the rest of the day. 

So, okay, let's see. Yesterday, I had one panel at 4 pm locally, which put it directly in conflict with the end of the Hugo Awards Ceremony. Because I wanted to see how naomikritzer would do, I had my iPad open to the YouTube channel next to me on the table while I was in the online green room. I am happy to report that she won NOT ONE, but TWO Hugos Sunday night!  Well done, Naomi!!  (And all before I had to go live and  concentrate on my panel, so thank you Powers That Be for that little gift.)

Anyway, because it was Sunday and because I'd had a Star Trek: Adventures game the night before, I will admit that I didn't attend a lot of paneling beyond my own. I did watch on Replay in the CircleCentral hub "Through an African Lens" (panelists:  Lauren Beukes, T.L. Huchu, Wole Talabi -- Yvette Lisa Ndlovu was also supposed to be there, but either had unsurmountable tech issues or, like some folks, miscalculated the time difference.)  It was interesting because they talked a lot about something I didn't know about, but have always suspected. According to the panelists, there is a real, if possibly unconscious, attempt to curate the kinds of stories that come out of The Continent. Some of these authors more speculative and city-centric work was considered "not marketable," in part because the Western audience doesn't tend to remember that some of the largest and most modern cities in the world are on The Continent. The West is still very much attached to the rural, giraffe roaming monolithic image of Africa. Which is just insane to me in 2024, but there you have it. 

I mentally bookmarked a panel about Solarpunk that I'm hoping to catch before they close down the member portal. I should probably watch it today sometime, since I don't know how long they intend to keep any of our various features functional. 

Before my Sunday afternoon panel started, I got some homemade pizza dough rising, so that, once I was finished with my panel at five (local time, 'natch), I could pop a deep dish into the oven for all of us, which was a very delicious choice on my part, I must say. (It turned out really well!)

The Sunday panel itself was not my best performance. I will take full responsibility here. If I am willing to yell at the clouds in the direction of Big Name yesterday, I do the same to myself: I should have prepared better. As far as I'm concerned a panelist as two jobs: show up on time and be fully prepared to talk about the subject at hand. I was on time. I failed the other one. Not spectacularly? But enough.

The title was "Help! I Was Reincarnated as a Worldcon Panel!" and was about a type of Japanese portal or another world fantasy manga and anime called isekai. I am, admittedly, a casual fan of isekai--but it turns out there were only three of us on that panel and NONE of us were fully prepped to do the heavy lifting. I feel pretty embarrassed about that. I had about a half-dozen titles ready, which might have been fine in a panel of four or five? Honestly, had I remembered there were only three of us, I would have had a bigger list of names of anime and manga ready and at hand. I probably should have just opened up Wikipedia to "manga type: isekai" in the middle of the panel, you know? But, I didn't.

And so we did flounder a bit.

On top of that, it never helps that, on any given anime/manga panel (unless it's about a single title), the Venn Diagram of "what I've seen" and "what the other panelist are familiar with" often has ZERO overlap. Anime is just too huge a category even when you narrow it down to a single "type" like "anime about food" or "anime about life in another world." Thus one of the big points I had been hoping to make about how difficult it is to actually define isekai fell flat because *gasp* (but also no surprise) I was the only panelist familiar enough with Bleach to make the point I wanted to argue... which is that this fighting manga, Bleach, goes to another world very often and has lots of other markers in common with isekai as a genre, but it is decidedly NOT isekai by anyone's definition. Why, right?  So, obviously, I'd been hoping to go from there to spark a deeper discussion... but instead I was met with, "Huh, I don't know Bleach well enough to say one way or another." Well, okay, that might be true, but that reply doesn't exactly foster the conversation I was hoping for because explaining the entire plot of Bleach is not only off-topic, but also, in my case, likely to go WAY off into the weeds. So we just sort of let my thought hang there awkwardly. At this point, something happened to the panel's chemistry. Like, it became clear that we weren't picking up with others were putting down. If you were to watch it, you would definitely see me doing that thing that happens when there's no clicking between panelists were I say, "Did that actually answer your question?"

It was just generally like that.

Again, this probably felt WAY worse to me as a panelist than how it "read" to the audience. 

This morning I Zoomed into to "If I'm Not Kira and You're Not Kira, Who is Writing in the Death Note?" which was a celebration of the fact that last year marked the 20th anniversary of the debut of Death Note's serialization in Weekly Shounen Jump Magazine (December 2003). I was initially quite worried about this panel because I had not heard much from the moderator other than receiving an invite to a Google Group and, honestly, I had to wonder what is there left to say about Death Note that hasn't already been discussed to death?  But, I think it actually went very well. I mean, maybe if you watched it, you'd be like, "Why does Lyda think THIS is a better performance from her than what she did on the isekai one??" But, I think it really is about panel chemistry--at least from the inside. The people on this panel all had very good, thought-provoking ideas. Yeah, it's true that I was kind of just along for the ride in many ways, but it was a good ride. 

That's a wrap, folks!

I would say that, generally, I found the Glasgow WorldCON online experience to be a good one. I am a bit disappointed that I only managed one hangout in RingCentral with people I didn't know very well. I did only try to recruit twice, however (and if you look at it that way my success rate was 50%!)  Maybe if I'd had more energy on Sunday, I might have been able to drum up another meet-up. But, for whatever reason, people just weren't checking in there.

Even so, given that the majority of this conference was in-person, I felt surprisingly well-connected to the whole thing. It was BY FAR the best hybrid experience I've ever had as a panelist. I might feel differently about all of this if I didn't have quite so many panels, (It's insane that I, a relative nobody, got 5 panels. There were people way more famous than me with far fewer.)  Although, I don't know. The day I had nothing on, Friday, I really enjoyed watching the livestreams and the RePlay panels. I'm sometimes really terrible about attending other people's panels when I'm physically at a con, so I guess this is one of the benefits for online for me. Also, because it's not "appointment TV," as it were, I can catch panels that were scheduled opposite things I was on or each other. So, that's just kind of nifty, I guess.

For me it was worth the cost, I guess.

Anybody else attend virtually? How was your experience?

 I had no paneling today, so I just attended panels and such.

The first panel I watched live in RingCentral was "Faeries in Fantasy Literature," with Amal El-Mohtar (mod), Frances Hardinge, Holly Black, Jo Walton, Terri Windling. A vey star-studded panel, though I didn't know that when I jumped in (the Glasgow folks are really expecting online members to mainly use their member portal, I think. That seems to be where all the pertinent information is, and they don't repeat it elsewhere.) At any rate, it was an interesting panel. I have perhaps never confessed this here, but I've long had an intellectual crush on Frances Hardinge ever since I read Cuckoo Nest and The Lie Tree, the later of which is my favorite. She did not disappoint by explaining that one of the reasons she writes about changelings is because for whatever reason she had a childhood anxiety around doppelgangers and copies. She then proceeded to recount an amazing dream in which she was in her house, playing with her sister, when the phone rings. Naturally, she got up to answer it, and when she did she discovered it was her sister on the line, saying, "Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you!" And of course, she would wake up then wondering, if that was her sister, who had she been playing with all this time???

TERRIFYING.

And, of course, told much better by her. 

It sort of stopped the panelists for a while, because everyone was sort of processing the images she's brought up. 

After that panel ended, I cast around for stuff to do. I tried out connecting to the RingCentral hangout rooms, but no one was ever in them. My schedule reminded me that I had wanted to maybe watch, "Watching, Playing, Performing TTRPG Play." I really thought this one would be right up my alley, but it wasn't. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the topic or the panelists, but I just wasn't feeling it. 

So, I went back to those hangout rooms at RingCentral. I tried popping into one and sitting around, hoping that the (1) under Books might bring people in, but it did not. So, I left and went over to the WorldCON Discord and on the meet-up channel just said, "Does anyone want to virtually hangout with me in RingCentral's Book channel?" And An Gry from my Food in Anime panel right away showed up to say. "Oh! Pick me!" so I quick hopped back in and we chatted for a good half an hour about her life in Bangkok, Pacific Rim fandom and fanfic, and other rambling bits of each other's lives.  After a while, C. L. Polk also joined us for a bit, but before we could get too much into it with C.L., Mason came down stairs and I realized it was noon and I hadn't eaten anything at ALL yet. So, I begged off to go make lunch. 

After lunch, I had much worse luck. I hopped into "Gods and Faith in Fantasy (Online)."  There seemed to be some technical difficulties with it, however, because only two of the four panelists showed up. I'm not sure if people are having trouble processing the time differences or if there's something wonky about Steamyard. I mean, I suppose it could be both? I am deeply concerned that people are having issues with Steamyard because three out of my five panels are fully online, on Steamyard, including the one I'm somewhat nervous about moderating. I guess we'll see how it all works out! It certainly didn't seem all that difficult to me when I went to the training, but maybe not everyone managed to make it to a training session? C.L. Polk said that if she had any advice about Steamyard, it was that you need to be very careful logging in, because once you choose your options, you can't un-choose them. Which is good advice!  The written instructions do suggest that you test all of your equipment before accepting the invitation and that was NOT mentioned in the training, so perhaps this is part of the problem.

Anyway, the content of the panel was a bit weird since it wasn't entirely clear if the two panelist could hear each other, either? I was interested in listening to Sonia Salaiman because she writes fiction based on Palestinian folklore, which I know absolutely nothing about. She only told a couple of stories, however. I did learn that in certain folktales in Palestine, jinni are ifrits who were banished by Eve from the Garden of Eden, but prayed for by Adam, and so they aren't fully only spiritual beings, but more like an underground magical race. I was, like, dang, yes this urban fantasy basically writes itself, doesn't it?

That was pretty much my day? I poked around at a few other things, but nothing excited me, and I checked through the Discord for other meet-up possibilities, but nothing much materialized.

Still, it felt like a day at the con, you know? I'm always glad when there are some spontaneous and personal interactions that happen in online spaces, because that really ads to the feeling of really being at a convention.

There were a number of factors in my decision to go to WisCON virtually this year, but the main one was that I'd have to turn around almost immediately after returning home from a road trip to do another one. Even for someone like me who loves to road trip, that was too much.

However, as I've reported in the past, WisCON has run a good virtual con, so I had no hesitation dropping the very cheap virtual membership ($25) last minute in order to attend online. This year the virtual track consisted of a Discord with multiple channels, hybrid panels (basically in-person, but streamed to Zoom), and Zoom-only panels. 

I didn't do much of anything at the con on Friday because I was busy doing things with my family. However, I got a taste of Wiscon via an email from naomikritzer in which we chatted about the workshop critique group that she'd facilitated. Emailing with her reminded me of the one time I did the workshop as a facilitator... (I remember it well because davidlevine  was in my group and he was already so sufficiently advanced that the sum of my critique consisted of where to send "Tale of the Golden Eagle.")  I think I also did the workshop as a nascent writer being critiqued, but I have no idea when that might have been--sometime in the 1990s?? I was just browsing the list of GoHs, wondering if seeing a particular name would jog my memory and the only one that did was Melissa Scott, because I interviewed her for the local gay paper, focusPOINT, and sold the unabridged interview to Science Fiction Chronicle that year, which, according to the website was 1997. Not my first WisCON, I actually attended WisCON for the first year in 1984, because Elizabeth A. Lynn was a guest and I talked my father into driving me and my then-boyfriend, Ben K., down to Madison for a day, just so I could see this lesbian writer FOR REASONS (Sorry, Ben!)

The thing is, I also remember deciding to see if I could sell that Melissa Scott interview because a friend of mine who was working at the gay paper as a reporter said, "Since you're going anyway...." so I'm sure I was attending fairly regularly before this, but when exactly I started going regularly, I have no idea. I should ask Laurie Winter if she remembers, because I used to hitch a ride with her, Terry Garey, Rebecca M., and Eleanor Arnason. 

At any rate, on Saturday my first panel was a hybrid one, which I wanted to catch because Naomi was on it. It was called "What I Wish I'd Known When I'd Started" (Writing is implied.)  I have to say kudos to whoever set up their hybrid panel room, because the camera was positioned close enough that I could see everyone--including read their names on the table tents!--and I could hear everything in the room, even the un-mic'ed audience members (even though the moderator very carefully repeated questions from the audience.) I did miss the beginning of this panel because I was figuring out where and when and how, but someone also took abridged notes (like, while it was happening, a kind of live-stream) in the Discord Channel, so I could easily catch up. Naomi and I have been talking a lot about normalizing mid-career slumps and, apparently in the part I missed, she talked about her own. Two of the other panelists were self-published and so the topics hopped all over the place between trad, self-, and hybrid publishing. It was a good panel. Because the tech was so slick, I really felt like I was there.

The next panel I attended was Zoom-only and that one was "The Trans History of WisCON," which I wanted to see because my friend bcholmes was on that. Speaking of nostalgia, the other reason I wanted to go is because I was on a very early trans panel about trans representation in SF/F because my Archangel Protocol books feature a character who is a trans woman (one of the four archangels, actually.) But, this panel has become rather infamous (or famous?) because Charlie Jane Anders, myself, BC, and Elizabeth Bear were on it--and Charlie Jane now talks about it as though it was her and Bear and "some other people." (<--a direct quote from a panel she was on later in the con.) But, I remember it well for a number of reasons, but mostly because of a really profoundly pointed (in a good way) comment from the audience from jiawen in response to Bear's "Well, if you're lacking the right kind of representation, you should write what you want to read!" And jiawen rightly pointed out that not everyone wants to be a writer, but readers still want to see themselves reflected in their fiction. That stayed with me for years and years and years, and I strove to live up to that directive in everything I wrote.

My memories aside, the "Trans History of WisCON" panel was very good, although they had one woman who skirted right up to the edge of being a little bit behind the times, but she was self-aware of her lack of understanding, and that made a huge difference, you know? The rest of the panel was supper fascinating and full of a lot of things I was not obviously privy to throughout WisCON's history. BC suggested that 2000 was the first year she'd attended and that seems unreal to me, because I can hardly remember WisCON without imagining both BC and jiawen there. 

At some point in here, jiawen and I jumped on to jitsi to do our version of barcon, where we hang out and gossip about the con and talk about life, the universe, and everything. It's become a tradition for us at Virtual WisCON and it's surprising how much those kind of things really help a person feel like they're there, at the con, and not just spectating from a vast distance.

Also, later on Saturday evening, I also attended "Tell Us About Your Virtual RPG" for obvious reasons. As anyone who reads my blog regularly knows, I'm in an RPG that has been virtual from the start, some four years ago, with a bunch of folks here on DW.  As I told jiawen later, the panel was interesting (in the non-Minnesotan sense) but not mind-blowing. I find that Zoom panels are often very 101? Like today, I attended a Zoom-only panel called, "Writers Groups and Gaming Groups" because my friend Kristy was on that (and it's something that jiawen proposed based on things that she and I have talked about) and I asked a question about problematic members and what to do with them. And this isn't meant as shade on the panelists, but they all just talked about the easiest solution (which also assumes that all members are expendable, and unteachable which isn't actually always true) which is "just kick them out." Also, as someone who has been the facilitator of a number of writers' groups over the decades that I've been writing, there is no "JUST" in kicking someone out. It's actually always a hard and painful process, especially if your group is full of peers (which mine always are. I don't set myself up in an "instructor" roll, even when I'm the one organizing a group.) If I had been on the panel, I would have liked some frank discussion about how in writers groups (less so in gaming groups,) there are members who have elevated status in the group because they have more publications and that complicates "just kick them out." I mean, in gaming, this is akin to "what if your GM is the problematic one?" 

At any rate, I felt like the Virtual RPG panel also operated on this level, which was kind of Virtual RPGs 101. Which didn't make it a bad panel, I just didn't feel like I'd learned much or heard anything fully new attending it. Although, the Virtual RPG panel did have an interesting discussion about how to deal with maps, mini figs, and the like, virtually, but it got more technical than I was interested in since I'm (so far) never the GM in these games. 

On Sunday, today, the only thing I did was attend the Gaming Groups/Writers Groups panel, which, as I note above, did not knock my socks off, but neither was it a complete waste of time. I'm trying to decide right now if I will go to the streamed GoH speeches. Rivers Solomon and Martha Wells have not been, so far as I could determine on any of the streamed or Zoom-only panels (nope, I just missed "Healing from Cispremacy"/Rivers and "Intersectional Robots"/Wells), so I may want to go to at least say that I've seen them/heard them talk. There is one gaming-related Zoom-only panel tomorrow, Monday, that I might check out, but probably this it for me?  

I realize that milage varies substantially with Virtual Cons, but I have always loved them. I wish they would continue more robustly than I suspect they will?  I really love not having to leave my house to attend. I can afford SO MANY more cons this way, just in general, and when done right I don't really miss the in-person experience. Like, Discord (which, to be fair, I am deeply comfortable with) can feel like those random hallway conversations and they almost always have channels labelled "bar" or "lobby con" so you can "hang out" there and get something akin to the in-person experience. I say this as an extrovert, who likes people?  So, I don't know. Like, I say, obviously, this is very subjective. I'm a big proponent.

 The cats, which are normally constantly bugging me for food and attention are asleep. I think the entire household is reacting to the fact that we are buried in snow.  The official snow fall for Minneapolis/St. Paul is 13 inches, I think? (Those of you local to me can feel free to correct me.) It was a lot, though less than predicted. 

Even so, I spent a huge amount of time this morning unburying my car. In St. Paul, they wanted all of us to move to the day plow side of the street regardless of whether or not a snow plow had come down our street yet. No plow had come. There was 10-13 inches of snow in the street. My car... did not like trying to even go down the street towards the roundabout. In fact, it refused to even attempt the roundabout. Our neighbor, a guy named Pete who we met before because he was anxiously looking for his cat, Mr. McMuffin (he's in my contacts as Peter McMuffin), helped me basically back down the street, make a Y-turn, and throw myself into the snow on the opposite side. It was RIDICULOUS. Especially since we almost ended up shoveling the entire street ourselves, by hand, in order to do it. 

I am normally a fan of big snowfalls like this BECAUSE of the silence that falls in their wake. I like having a day where I am expected to do nothing, other than shovel my sidewalk and move my car from one side of the street to another.  But, did I mention I did all this shoveling and car moving before I even had my first cup of coffee? Yes! Because St. Paul wants us on the day plow side by 8 am. 

So, here's a picture from Hiroshima. I went on a HeyGo last night to a lovely park in Hiroshima, Japan, where we walked around and looked at plum blossoms.


Somewhere in the world, plum trees are blooming. (Hiroshima, Japan.)

Of course, one of my Facebook friends is in Japan right now. Reggie Bicha, a guy I briefly dated in high school, is off in Japan with his son on a tour.  They just visited the giant Buddha in Kamakura City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamakura.  I have been following his posted pictures with great interested because I'm never going to be able to go, and it make me deeply sad. At least I have Heygo? Although, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, they seem to have lost a lot of their regular guides. 

Anyway, I should probably go shovel again. Although I do think that the snow stopped some time ago.

 My last day of Virtual Chicon was actually Saturday, which is two days ago now, but I'll my do my best to recap for those that are interested. 

I had a great couple of panels on Thursday, despite being ten minutes late to the panel I was most excited about "Satoshi Kon: a Retrospective." The panel moderator was Alina Sidorova and she was very kind in that, despite my late arrival, she gave me an opportunity right away to dig into my theories about the transness of some of the reflective images in Kon's work. This sparked a very lively conversation. I think, generally, this was a really great group of individual fans, each with their own unique perspective. I wish, in fact, we'd had more time to explore Osawa Hirotaka's point that Kon, himself, has said that he was deeply influenced by music, and that there is often a connection between art and music. I know nothing at all about music, since I'm not actually much of a fan (I always dread the classic author interview question which is: What kind of music do you listen to when you create? My answer: none, are you nuts? How can I hear my characters talking over someone else's lyrics??? But  NO ONE likes that answer. I'm supposed to have a playlist. I fail playlists.) So, I mean I would like to hear from people for whom music and their art are intrinsically linked, and we ran out of time before we could go deep on that. I was also on that panel with Nick Mamatas, who was also on my later, much more chaotic panel "Noir and SF/F."

The Noir panel was rough for me for a couple of reasons. First, my internet decided to be deeply unstable. Second, while I wrote a noir cyberpunk, I don't actually read or watch a lot of it otherwise. So, every time there was a question like, "What are you reading now in the noir genre that you would recommend?" or "Are there noir SF stories with alien detectives?" I had no clue how to answer. But, luckily, both the moderator T.C. Weber and Nick had a lot to say on pretty much everything (<--I say that with a smile, I really liked the both of them a lot.) Marissa James and I stayed out more often than not, though me more intentionally that she, I think. 

Virtual panels seem to come in a lot of varieties. I actually saw at least part of one "Cyberpunk in Different Cultures" that was set up like an Academic presentation, where each expert actually ran a power point presentation. Then, after each person gave their separate speech, they would come together and discuss as a group. I am not a super fan of this? I mean, I feel it can be quite good if it's a survey topic, like "Cyberpunk in Different Cultures," where what the viewer wants at the end is a list of books or materials to consume.

There are others, like the "Noir" panel where everyone talks whenever they feel like it and it's in constant danger of devolving into chaos, albeit a fun chaos. 

I actually thought that our "Satoshi Kon" panel was a good hybrid in that, while we didn't have a power point prepared, it was clear that each of us had a THING that we wanted to say about Kon's work. But, instead of waiting until the end to discuss, when ideas might get lost, we would each say our piece, have some excited cross talk, and then it would be the next person's turn. I absolutely credit the moderator for being able to orchestrate this kind of discussion. Alina was really good, too, at making sure everyone had an equal voice and ample time to speak. 

It's really hard to make an online panel as fun and informative as an in-person one, but I feel like I had two really decent experiences, even the more chaotic "Noir" one. 

I will say that I find that there's something about video conferencing that makes a lot of panelists into expressionless robots. I don't know what causes this, but some people go really flat, like they're staring into a TV screen. I notice that very few people smile or nod along and that brings the energy down. In an effort to counteract that I always make it my habit to smile, nod, and turn off my mic so that I can say the "uh-huh" noises to myself without breaking up their audio. It's an effort to stay engaged, but it's not that much more of an effort than it is in Real Life (tm) in my opinion. 

I watched the Hugo Award ceremony on YouTube and I have opinions on that, too, but they're probably not for public consumption. The only thing I can say about it is that I think there's something very insular that happened this year. Same people, different award happened more than once. That being said, I was so happy to see Neil Clarke get a Hugo this year. I also want to be clear that I feel everyone nominated was very deserving, winner or not, it's just that... well, I had to wonder this year how much "ah, I know that name!" went into the voting decisions of WorldCon members.  Though who knows what happened given that the Hugo's are decided with the run-off ballot style. Perhaps what I noticed was a matter of people winning a majority in the number 2 ranking. Who knows?

Anyway, it was still lovely to watch. Someone's speech always makes me tear up a little, and this year was no exception.

In other news, I spent far too much time today debating with a reader of my fan work about why I was not writing their favorite character the way they saw them. I tried to answer with the simple, "Because I'm writing my vision of the same character." To which they responded, "But why, though," and then dropped me a (and I kid you not) THREE PAGE GOOGLE DOC letter. The letter might have been more useful to me, but it seemed to mostly be comprised of "Why did you write him this way, when he's obviously this other way?" without any supporting documentation. This is fan fic, show me where you get this idea from canon. I want page number and panel, so I can reconstruct your thought process and reasonably discuss our differing takes on the same moment in canon. I am always, 100% up for that.

Me, discussing Bleach canon:

Image: The red string conspiracy guy from "Sherlock," I believe.

It's that, or accept that you just like Soft!Aizen and there isn't canon support for your preference and you don't care (but then don't argue with people who write Hard!Aizen.) 

This person also seemed upset that my story had "an agenda." "You were trying to paint the villain as a good guy!" I had to break it to this fan that every story has an "agenda." It's called a "theme," in your English class. If a writer doesn't have something they're trying to say, they probably will run out of steam before it's finished. But, the theme or agenda it doesn't have to be as big as my exploration of "What if Aizen was evil, but also not wrong about the Soul Society and Ichigo helped him win?" It can be, "What if Ichigo really liked knitting?"

Both of these are "agendas," because the fic writer is probably also saying something about why Ichigo might like knitting or why knitting is cool. In the story, they'll PROBABLY CENTER KNITTING. (This person was really upset that I centered Aizen, and I was like, well, that's because to make the case that Aizen is evil but also not wrong, I have to let him talk about it???) But, the point is, all writing is about SOMETHING. It's also not illegal or wrong for me to want to make a political statement in my fan fic, even if canon doesn't support it. Fic writing, for me at least, is about the exploration. You've got this world you want to play in for some reason, often because you find something gnarly or toothsome in it and you want to chew on it. That, I explained to them, is the point of it all, and what that might end up feeling like is an "agenda."

I have a very bad feeling that I, at 55, might be arguing with someone who is, in point of fact, 12. I am trying to be emphatic, but not rude. Twelve or twenty or two hundred, I felt really compelled to explain that I don't owe anyone their vision of this character we have in common by the happenstance of fandom. This is fan fic. 

If I want to write non-canonical, out-of-character stuff in my fan fiction, I'm actually allowed? I actually prefer to write as in character as possible, but that's my preference. It's not a requirement of the format. 

Image: Hello Kitty wishing us a nice trip on the Hello Kitty Shinkansen / Bullet Train

For Children's Day in Japan, Dave (our Canadian ex-pat) took the Hello Kitty Bullet train. I was annoyed by this HeyGo because all of the material for it sad BE ON TIME, leaving promptly when the train departs!! And the time the tour started in Central Time (where I am) was listed as 9:30 pm. I was in the tour ten minutes early and they were clearly well on their way. I checked and double checked because I did not want to miss seeing the exterior. The next HeyGo of interest was with Yusuke. I went along on his Golden Week trip to Nagasaki. Nagasaki is on the Kyushuu Island. As his tour notes say, "Because of its location, rather closer to China than Tokyo, Nagasaki has played an essential role in connecting the nation to the outside world. Especially during the Edo (Tokyo) period (1603 – 1867), the government closed the country from outside the world to prevent the country from foreign influence, except Korea, China, and Holland." So part of what we looked while we were walking around was Oranda-zaka, the Dutch Slope.  

There are several Western-style mansions (that survived the atomic bomb)  that are open to the public. 


Image: Western enclave in Nagasaki

I was not able to stay for the whole tour, but apparently they also visited Japan's oldest Christian church. As I learned from watching Samurai Champloo, Christianity was outlawed in Japan and was a crime you could be, of all ironic things, crucified for.  The secret history of Christianity in Japan is something that shows up periodically in anime. It also featured strongly in an anime series that I adored (but had some issues with at the end) called Kids on the Slope, which I reviewed here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/kids-on-the-slope-anime-review-and-thought-about-josei/ (This is one of the very few times that I reviewed an anime as an anime, without a corresponding manga on my site.)

Anyway, this tour was fascinating for its history. As you can see from the above, it was not really a "postcard" friendly tour. 

But, speaking of postcard friendly... the last tour I took was to the Nagamineyama rest stop/observation area.


The snow caped  Northern Alps as viewed from the Nagamineyama rest stop near Azumino City, Nagano Prefecture.

What was fun about last week, of course, is that a lot of the Japanese HeyGo-ers were just taking us along to the places that they'd decided to visit as part of the Japanese Holiday known as Golden Week. Many hardcore manga fans know Golden Week because it is often the ONLY week (often two week period depending on the serialized manga) when JUMP does not publish. I don't know if it's still true, but, in the past, there was much bemoaning here in the West when the next chapter of Bleach was delayed due to this fairly baffling holiday (it's generally described as "The Emperor's Birthday," but there are actually several holidays that make up Golden Week, including Children's Day.) 

Anyway, because it is a full week off, a LOT of Japanese folks will take advantage of the time and go on a vacation. It follows so closely on Hanami that a lot of people will take a couple of weeks, the first to go view the cherry blossoms and then to see whatever else. Clearly, Toshi just wanted to see the Northern Alps and so we went along with him. He was the guy who tried to give us the spectacular ocean view of this mountain range, but we were rained out.

It was a good week for virtual travel. 

Image: May Basket in a tea cup.

Sunday was Beltane (and/or May Day for you international Workers of the world,) and so Shawn and I celebrated by having a couple of friends over for tea. Tea in this case actually being more of a dinner, as it was a early midday meal that was actually fairly large... although it was made up of nibble-ly, finger foods, so lunch? Regardless of what it was called, it was an absolutely amazing time shared with Haddayr C-W and naomikritzer

We sent them both home with "May Basket" teacups, seen above. (Yes, they got to keep the cups. We picked them up thrifting on Saturday, just for this purpose.)

I took a ton of pictures, but all I really want to say about it was that the watercress and egg sandwiches are surprisingly good, it was not as much hassle as I thought it might be to go largely gluten free, and I was really bummed that I could not adequately make Beltane wreathes or fill the May baskets with flowers blooming in our garden BECAUSE NO FLOWERS ARE BLOOMING YET IN THIS HIDEOUS WEATHER.

I mean, seriously, it looks like early April out there in my yard. Only a few crocuses and brave snowdrops have poked up out of the frozen ground to bloom. 

Otherwise, since it is Monday, I thought I would show off the much nicer (though also rainy) weather in Japan. My first trip this last week was with Erika and we went to Ashikaga Flower Park in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. We were actually here before, in the winter, to see a light show. (https://lydamorehouse.dreamwidth.org/597654.html.)  It's quite a bit different, as you might imagine, in late April.


Wisteria at the flower park in Japan.

It was drizzling a bit this day, which is why there are not a lot of other tourists in these shots. Also, of course, in order to make these live tours even vaguely available for North American tourists, the tour guides often have to be early birds. I think this tour happened around my 5 pm, but it was her 8 am (the next day.)


Brilliant red, pink, and white azaleas against a stormy sky.

We used to have an azalea bush in our front yard and I kind of miss it. I was not good at taking care of it and it was in a very difficult spot to keep well watered. Perhaps I'll try again, because looking at these makes me really miss how brilliant these bushes can be in the early spring. 

I could fill this post with pictures of the pretty flowers and the famous wisteria tree, but I feel slightly compelled to show you the more unusual sites. I will say that I have realized with these HeyGo tours that I am much more fond than I would have thought of strolling through random, out of the way gardens. Perhaps because I am not on any kind of schedule. I suspect that if I were actually paying to travel to Japan right now, I would be desperately trying to chose what to go see and a lot of these odd, quiet, out-of-the way places would not make the list. I honestly think that this is the strongest case for HeyGo. It's a great way to "travel" to the places you would never make time for if you only had two weeks (or however long) to spend in Japan.

So, in keeping with the theme of "places I would probably never put on an itinerary," I next visited Tomonoura in the Hiroshima Prefecture with Toshi.


View from inside the temple...

For anime fans, apparently the town of Tomonoura was an inspiration for Miyazaki's Ponyo.  The Wolverine with Hugh Jackman was also filmed here.  It is a quaint little port town that I would probably never visit in a million years. There is an old lighthouse there and an amazing hillside shrine with a cemetery I would have loved Toshi to explore more, but we were already over time at that point.

The only other picture that I want to share from this HeyGo was the picture of the suge-dama outside of the sake brewery we passed in town. 


Image: an odd twiggy, brown ball hanging off of a second story awning.

I honestly live for information like this. So, the suge-dama (杉玉) is a ball of cedar branches that signals the freshness of the sake. Sake, though we refer to it as "rice wine" here in the West, is really more like beer. Most sake does need a maturation period of about a year, I guess, but the brewers will put out a green ball when the newest batch is ready/fresh for the season. This one is obviously past its prime. :-) Although, I found another article that suggests that the brown might be an indication that the sake is actually ready: https://sake-world.com/sugidama-sake-lore-of-olde-cryptomeria-balls/

At any rate, I found this little detail very fascinating. 

I went on another tour in hopes of another spectacular view, but the clouds conspired to rob us of a good picture of Mount Tsurugi from Himi City. (If you go to this site and scroll down to the second picture, that was what we were hoping for: https://www.snowmonkeyresorts.com/activities/tateyama-mountains-top-3-viewing-spots/)

Instead, the best we got was a close up of that little island:

Image: a cool little island in the sea.

So there's your weekly dose of Japan, if you are interested. I did not do any vintage lunch recipes today because I got caught up working on my novel instead.

 
Image: A torii gate surrounded by cherry blossoms (near the Ayato-kunaka-jinja Shrine, Minami Ward, Kyoto.)

I will probably tire of these some day, but, right now, I'm still finding a lot to enjoy. 

First up this week, the demon tour guide, Makoon, took us to a World Heritage site, Tenryū Shiseizen-ji  at sunrise. This was a very special tour, because the monks at the temple allowed Makoon in hours before the gates officially opened, so it was just us (really just Makoon and his livestreaming gear.) 

I've talked about this guide before, because he has distractingly long fingernails. In an anime, this would totally be a clue to the big reveal that he is secretly a demon or part-demon (or a demon working a part time job!!)  I spent a weird amount of the time trying to get a good shot of this man's amazingly demonic fingernails and I do think I managed to get a decent one.


Image: Not the best, but you can see a bit of the sharpness on the nails on the bottom left hand side.

His hands are lovely? He's a great guide? It's just that the fic writer in me really would love a universe where, you know, this nice young man is living an alternate life as a demon. Is that too much to ask?? I mean, it does add a certain something to the tour to imagine that at any minute a Hell Gate could open and Makoon would be forced to transform into his True Self in order to protect the universe from the denizens of hell, aka his colleagues. Meanwhile, he's just living his best life pretending to be human. 

I would read the f*ck out of this manga, honestly.

Anyway, back to what REALLY happened on the tour, which was that we walked around a very serene garden of the temple, which is located in Susukinobaba-chō, Ukyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. 


Image: a classic scene of a stone lantern perched on a moss hill, framed in light pink cherry blossoms.



Image: The tahou-den constructed in 1934 (though built in the Kamakura Period style.)

The thing that was funniest to me was the amount of time that Makoon explaining to us the purpose of meditating and then sitting in front of a crystal clear lake encouraging us to do the same. I mean, I was eating dinner? 


Image: The Sōgen Pond with a reflection of the mountains on the still waters.

The next HeyGo tour I went on last week was to Hiroshima with a new guide: JJ (Joy) Walsh. Joy is an interesting tour guide. She is another expat, who is apparently (if I understood correctly) originally from Hawaii. English is her first language, but she speaks at least some Japanese. She also has a YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JJWalshInboundAmbassador/videos in which she focuses on sustainability issues in Japan. As part of this she interviews a lot of people (in English, though in at least one video she also hired/has on a translator.) I have to respect this a lot.

She lives in Hiroshima with her family and she took us for a lovely riverside walk among the cherry blossoms.


Image: a lovely path among the cherry blossoms in Hiroshima.

I took a TON of postcard pictures of this walk, but it seems silly to try to share them all here, since they are variations on what you see above. 

Joy also took us over the Miyajima Island, also known as Itsukushima. You have probably seen pictures of this particular temple complex, because of the famous red, "floating" torii gate in the sea. Unfortunately, the gate itself is under construction, but we did wander around the rest of the floating temple. Because so many of the tours have to be in the early morning in order to catch North American and European viewers, the tide had no entirely come up yet, which was kind of fascinating in its own right. You never think of the fact that you could walk up to that Tori gate when the tide was out.

At any rate, her is a picture of the Five Story Pagoda which is also on the island.


Image: Miyajima Island's Goju-no-to (Five story) Pagoda through the cherry blossoms

Here is a shot of the floating shrine at low tide:


Image: Floating shrine at Miyajima Island

The island apparently has a lot of lovely hiking trails, as well. Joy recommended that if we ever decided that we wanted to see this place that we should actually find a hotel on the island somewhere. Even just walking up to the pagoda, Joy ran into one of the locals.


Miyajima Island deer.

Apparently, they used to sell crackers you could feed the deer at the train station and so visitors used be mobbed by the hopeful deer. A few still come looking for handouts, even though they stopped selling the crackers some time ago.

Then, I went on another cherry viewing walk, near the Lake Biwa canals of The Philosopher's Walk, Tetsugaku-no-michi.  

Image: the cherry blossoms in Kyoto

This is a tourist destination. It's called The Philosopher's Walk because two 20th century university professors, Nishida Kitaro and Hajime Tanabe, apparently took this path as part of their daily exercise. But, it just a lovely path that walks along the canal and past a number of shrines. This was another walk where I took a ton of postcards, but they really basically all look exactly like this. I mean, we did see a couple of ducks swimming in the canal, but, you know, I will not bore you with that.

I suspect this is already a LOT, as the kids used to say.

Fortunately, we have reached the end of last week's various tours. I have a lot of other stuff I want to tell you all about that happened over the weekend, not the least of which is that I got my hearing tested. I passed with the caveat of "for someone my age," which means I have lost a bit of the upper register, which was pretty much as expected. I went in because I am turning 55, and because there is a lot of "did you hear me?" at this point in out lives in this house of aging women. But, that's not what I wanted to tell you. The whole test was so weird. I mean there were beeps and such, like I remembered, but then there were bits that had me half expecting to have my inner Winter Soldier awaken, since, as part of it, they have you repeat these very unrelated words. Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak... I mean, obviously not those exact words, but it was totally like this!  Then there was a section where I had to repeat a very odd phrase that was long and complex, as best as I could, but with louder and louder "cafe babble" happening in the other ear. That one was straight out of Blade Runner, because the phrases were like, "In a dry, lonely desert, the man came across a turtle on his back." I was tempted to start shouting, "My mother? I'll tell you about my mother!!" *table flip*  But, the audiologist said I did better than a lot of people, and I think that was entirely due to the fact that I found the phrases like weird little story prompts and so they stuck in my head.

The other thing I want to share is that I was able to attend a livestream of a theater play in Portland, that stars my god(dess) daughter, Naomi. So much fun! But, I want to give that one a bit more context so I will save it for tomorrow.

See you all then!

Image: illuminated plum blossoms in Suzuka Forest Garden, Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, Japan.

Because I injured my back awhile ago, I have been sleeping less well. (No worries, though, I am very clearly on the mend and I'm supplementing with some rest during the day and exercises to keep limber.) Rather than let that time go to 'waste' and to distract myself, I've been going a lot more HeyGo tours than I normally do. (Again, just for the new folks, HeyGo is a livestream touring company which I recently discovered.) By chance, last night I was up at 4:30 am CST / 6:30 pm in Japan. Erika was touring The Suzuka Forest Garden.

Because Suzuka is in a mountain range, Erika's signal was a bit choppier than usual, but we had a lovely half hour stroll among the illuminated plum trees. By chance, we came across a wedding photo shoot in progress.


Image: The bride in white and groom in hakama among the plum blossoms.

Going backwards in time, on Sunday, I went with the new tour guide, David, who is a Canadian who has been living in Japan for the last twenty years. He took us to Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. You may recognize it from this iconic shot.


Image: Kiyomizu's main temple on an overcast day, through the not-yet-blooming cherry trees. 

One of the cool, "did you know?" facts about Kiyomizu Temple is that not a single nail was used in its construction. Dave suggested that the construction method was an import from Korean, which I have not independently verified. A quick internet search brings up mixed results, so I will take that with a grain of salt. 

Regardless, the thing I found the most fascinating about Kiyomizu was that despite this being a Buddhist temple, there is a love shrine (a Shinto shrine) on the same grounds. 


Image: Torii gate INSIDE the temple grounds... the old god cohabitating with the new

This is Jishu Shrine is dedicated to the god Okuninushi no Mikoto, sometimes called "The Cupid of Japan." While we were there we watched several high school girls attempting to walk with their eyes shut between the two sacred stones. The idea being if you can do this, your true love will become yours. You are allowed to have guidance, but if a friend aids you, they have to pledge to help guide the love between the two people involved as well. 


Image: the sacred stone of Jishu shrine

I find this fascinating, because I feel like having a Shinto shrine inside a Buddhist Temple is generally fascinating. I doubt the Kiyomizu Temple is alone in sharing its grounds with an old, indigenous god, but I feel like the Western equivalent would be wandering into a high Catholic church and finding a section randomly dedicated to Cernunnos, complete with an altar and offerings--which I mean.... I have told you about the white stag in my grandparent's Catholic church right? This is an actual stain glass window,, just to the left of the main altar, with the whole Christ as white, horned stag that kind of gave me pause when I looked at it while watching the priest circle my grandmother's coffin THREE times, with incense.  (Three being the trinity, but of course also a very pagan number, being the Maiden, Mother, Crone.)

I mean, yes, back to my point. This might be the most apt metaphor, since there is no question that when the Roman church proselytized to the Britons and the Irish, they clearly sort of looked the other way when the newly converted pagans insisted on continuing the maypole tradition. Likewise the church actively adopted the idea the rabbits were somehow related to Christ's return and not say, a longstanding symbol, of the Goddess and fertility.  Likewise, they just straight up let Jesus be the Horned God.

And so, I imagine it is, with Shintoism and Buddhism in Japan.  Still, it feels kind of brazen? Like, the popularity of this love shrine was fascinating to me, coming from a place here in the West that is far more insistent that we separate our pagan roots from our dominant, far more modern religions. I had long known that many Japanese folks consider themselves a combination of Shinto and Buddhist, but this was the first time I saw just how COMBINED that practice has been from the beginning. 

As we left Kiyomizu Temple, Dave took us through a massive graveyard.


Image: a cemetery in Kyoto, just outside of Kiyomizu Temple.

This was also relevant to my interests because my Japanese pen pal recently asked me about family graves in America. I had to explain that we kind of do, but we kind of don't have family graves. They don't look like these, that's for sure. There are some? Here in America, if you do a lot of hanging out in graveyards, like I do, one can see the occasional monument in the US with some family name on it, surrounded by smaller plaques of various individuals.

Each one of these slabs that you see above is likely a whole family since the majority of bodies are cremated in Japan. We also don't rent our graves; we buy the land, the plot, outright. This came up because Eiko and her husband are considering abandoning their family grave because it is getting too expensive to maintain and with her daughter (who I believe is her only child) in America, there's no reasonable expectation of passing the costs to the next generation. 

I also had to explain that my personal ethnic culture doesn't really do grave visits, either. At least nothing codified, like Bon.  I did explain that there are some Americans, however, who do have traditional holidays where grave visitation is part of the celebration, like The Day of the Dead and others. 

And, of course, let's not lie. The first place I saw a cemetery like this was in Bleach. 

Earlier on the same day, Sunday, I visited Hiraoka Shrine in Higashiosaka, Japan with another "new" tour guide, Kendra. Kendra is a lovely young woman from the UK. 


Image: Hiraoka Shrine, Osaka Prefecture, Higashiosaka, Japan

This walk was nice because it had just rained and so everything was so very green, a color that crave this time of year. Legend has it that this shrine is so old that it was dedicated before the first Emperor of Japan took the throne.  There are apparently three gods associated with this shrine, including Ame-no-Koyane who seems to have been instrumental in folktale reminiscent of Persephone, in which a storm god frightened Amaterasu into a cave and her light disappeared from the world. He performed a ritual of prayer to the sun that brought her back. So, seems like an important guy this time of year.

Then on Thursday, we took a nice stroll through Kiba Park in Tokyo with Erika just to look at some early blooming cherry trees. 


Early blooming cherry trees along the canal in Tokyo

On Wednesday, I was with Dave in Kyoto again, looking at the plum blossoms in a park with a view of Osaka Castle. 


Image: plum trees with Osaka Castle in the far distance.

And, finally a nice close up of the plums in bloom...


Image: plum blossoms

All and all a great bunch of trips. It was just what my body needed to help heal.  
 

Image: Wisteria bridge in Ashikaga Flower Park, Asikaga City, Tochigi, Japan

Like a crazy-person, I got myself up out of my warm, snuggly bed at 2:15 pm Central Standard Time (aka -6 GMT) to join a live-stream in Tochigi, Japan of the light show in Ashikaga Flower Park. The best part of this foolishness is that I THOUGHT that the tour started at 2:30, but it actually started at 2 am, and so I missed the first fifteen minutes. On top of that, our guide, Erika, had a shaky connection and so much of the tour was me refreshing and/or squinting at pixelated shots.

But when things were clear, it was a pretty nice trip.


Image: blue (at the moment) color-changing tulip lights along a park path.

Ashikaga Flower Park is known for its 150-some year old wisteria tree. Of course, it is not blooming in the winter, but they apparently decorate the park with millions of LED lights and put on a walking show. An American on the tour complained that she wished that there was something like this here in the US, and a bunch of us hopped into the chat to say that, well, depending where you live, there often is. Here in Saint Paul, there's something like this (for driving through) in the State Fair Grounds. In LaCrosse, where I grew up, there are lights put up by people like the Rotary Club for walking through (and driving through) in one of the larger parks.

There isn't, of course, anything quite like this....

Image: A truly Japanese smiling... Marigold... flotilla? (It rotated.) Those are real marigolds.

...because: Japan.

Like the tall building tour, this is one of those things I signed up for where I thought to myself, "Would I put this on my itinerary if I were in Japan right now?" and the answer is, "Probably not." YET, that's actually a big part of the appeal? These folks are going places that I probably wouldn't. They're not hitting all the spots everyone sees (maybe with the exception of Mount Fuji;) they're going places they think are appealing.

Like, Eriko brought her mom.

They both waved at us during the long goodbye (so designed so that people have time to tip) and her mom just patiently waved along, and I thought, "I suddenly love everything about this." Like, suddenly I imagined Erika being all, "Come on, Mom. It's a thing we can do together while I work!" and then Mom finding out that Erika has booked not one, but two of these--hours apart. I went on the 2 am one, and then discovered that there was another one at 5:00 am, which might have been easier to wake up to. Anyway, I wonder if Mom hung around for the second tour or if she bailed and took the train back to wherever home is. The other thing is that while it was pretty, the whole park had a very Disney vibe going on that... I'm not sure I always find attractive? Like, it can feel over the top.

\
Image: Gaudy or fun or gaudy AND fun.... you decide!

The thing that is kind of cool about Ashikaga Flower Park is that a section of it was built on a wetland, so there are these kind of bog walks around reflectively clear pools of water. Erika gave us some information about how much charcoal was used to filter the water, but kind of tuned her out because it sounded a bit like environmental destruction to me and I didn't want to be THAT person on this tour, especially without coffee (and plus, what do I know?) There was something about moving the wisteria tree too that kind of made my head hurt, but, again, it was two o'clock in the morning. With all the technical glitches, I'm not even entirely sure what all was said.

The funny part was that when I got up for the second time that morning, I started to show Shawn the pictures from this trip and she spotted that a tour happening right then of the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton, UK. She'd been wanting to see how the tours worked, so I pressed the go and off we went, following our insanely knowledgeable--could've passed for David Attenborough--tour guide named Ian.



Image: Rollright Standing Stone Circle, Little Rollright, UK.

Some of the stones in this collection are older than Stonehenge. Ian walked us between a collection of three standing stones, the Whispering Knights, the King's Stone, and the King's Soldiers' Circle (which is the picture above.)



Image: Whispering Knights standing stones.

In one day, I travelled 9,482 km, between Asikaga, Japan and Rollright, UK... and was live at each. This is the power of the internet, my friends. Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.