#(it's so easy to rhyme things in japanese)

[buffintruder]

Here's my very amateur Japanese translation of the cow lik poem

牛だモー 夜なら 夜星は キラキラ みんなが 寝ている そのうち パンなめる

Gyuu da moo Yoru nara Yoboshi wa Kirakira Minna ga Neteiru Sono uchi Pan nameru

I am a cow When it's night And the stars Are twinkling Everybody Is fast asleep During that time I lick the bread

[prophbuilds]

Buying through Buyee

OR!

How I Found a Pair of Unobtainium Kits and used a Proxy Service to Increase My Backlog by Two

First and foremost, this is not sponsored. I don’t even take sponsors for my comic – the thing that is effectively my career – so there’s no way I’d do so for the thing I do as a fun hobby. This is all me and my personal experience using a proxy service to buy stuff from Japan.

Anyhoo! What follows is my experience using the proxy buying service called Buyee to purchase a pair of Catsith kits on the Japanese version of the Mercari website. I went into this knowing that many a Retro Tech and Gunpla YouTuber I’ve watched has used it to get stuff. Figured I’d give it shot.

I have had on my old “Kits to Buy” list the HG Catsith – a cute looking grunt suit from the series Mobile Suit Gundam: Reconguista in G (G-Reco for short) – for a while now. It's been sitting on one of my Amazon Wish Lists for so long it’s kind of become a marker for old stuff that never really comes up for a decent price. I say “Decent" because the lowest price it’s ever popped up at was around like $40? It usually runs around $60 or more if it ever pops up for sale.

This is a kit that's Supposed to be priced between $15 to $24 give or take where it's coming from.

Unlike the Hero suit, the G-Self, the Catsith is stuck in relative obscurity thanks to Bandai never reprinting the thing. It may be a Grunt suit but it’s not like a GM or a Zaku. Most of the other characters ended up with fancier mechs that got their own kits. That and G-Reco isn’t all that popular compared to some other Gundam series so you don’t end up with random reprints for the toy hungry fanbase.

Time passed and I’d recently found that it’s harder to find neat stuff for my various family members and myself for the holidays and whatnot. My getting the younger folks into Anime and video games is proving to be double-edged sword. Now… I've known about proxy services like Buyee for a while now. They tend to be talked up in Retro Tech and Gunpla videos as a place through which the various YouTubers have purchased stuff. Having seen their results so many times, I figured it was time to give it a try.

Setting up an account was easy enough. Nothing really too different from setting one up at any other online shop. The one thing that’s really different is it's more akin to the old Metacrawler search engine. You can select the shop you want to search but I kinda’ just winged it and tried out Mercari. No rhyme or reason to it. Just the one I though might have something neat that wasn’t a straight up auction site.

At first, I just kinda’ popped in “Gundam" and saw what dropped. Then I remembered something important: It's searching Japanese sites. It makes more sense to use the language of the folks who post things there. So I took a leap and looked up the Catsith’s Japanese name and BAM! I got a whole bunch of hits. Not just the usual “This is a Gundam Kit” results that I normally get searching English language sites but actual kits – both prebuilt and unbuilt kits. It was here I found a listing for two unbuilt kits.

Needless to say, I bought it as soon as I could.

Now things get fun.

Whenever I do something like this (buy something through a site I’m personally unsure of), I use my PayPal account. It acts as a buffer between my personal bank account and the site if things get squirrelly and, if it works, acts as a buffer between my personal bank account and the site if I decide to go on a spending spree. The more steps I put between myself and buying things, the better I am at not putting myself into debt.

I say this because I’m kinda’ to blame for the added time on getting these into my grubby little hands. It took a bit to transfer funds into my PayPal account to use on both buying the items and paying for shipping. -.-

The price for the two kit bundle came out to 4300 Yen or $30.50 at the time of purchase. That’s 3800 Yen for the item, 300 Yen to Buyee to buy the item, 500 Yen for their in-house checking and a 300 Yen coupon to save a Little bit of money on the whole dealie. This all gets the package to Buyee’s warehouse. They can hold stuff there free of charge for 30 days. You can also buy more and consolidate it later… but this time I did a single package.

After some doing and some waiting on money transfers on my end, we get to the hardest part of any international buying: Shipping!

Buyee gives a Bunch of options for shipping. Everything from fairly quick choices to ocean shipping that will take months. Needless to say, I took them up on their Buyee Air service that would take around a week to get here. It cost me 5188 Yen or $37.05 for the one package. Again, Proxy Services (or just international shops that let you consolidate items) tend to work best when you buy multiple items. That’s when shipping gets low enough to not be more than the original item.

All in all, I’m in $67.55 for two kits that would’ve run me about $7 less if I could find and buy just the one on a site like Amazon. The time from start to finish was a little under two weeks. I ended up with not one but Two unobtainium kits and a way for me to shop for the Holidays when my nieces and nephews ask for items that just never come to or came stateside. = )

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

The Moments of Happiness and the Meaning of Rhyming

Yeah, weird title, I know.

Also, I know I don't post much here anymore. I have other hyperfixations. But, I still occasionally have Cats-related things to say.

I have some things to say about The Moments of Happiness, the number that opens the second act of the show. Since it's not a dance number and not very catchy, it's often ignored. Some people find it boring. Strangely, I think the fact that it's slow, not catchy, and hard to follow is kind of the point.

What's happening in the story here is that, after the Jellicle Ball at the end of act one, Grizabella shows up and gets rejected by the tribe again. Everyone runs away and hides for a bit, except for Old Deuteronomy, who sits on his throne in the back while Grizabella sings the first part of Memory. Being the Big Good of the show, Old D already likes Griz and wants the tribe to be nice to her. As the leader, you'd think he could just tell the others to behave, but he wants them to understand why they should except Grizabella. A lot of the respect the tribe has for him probably comes from the fact that he doesn't just tell them what to do.

So, after intermission, all the cats come out of hiding and gather around Old Deuteronomy and he tries to explain the themes of Grizabella's role in the story. You experience moments of happiness throughout your life, but your memories of them are something else, and that something has value and...it actually doesn't really matter if the human audience gets it or not. The lecture isn't for us.

But, nobody's getting it. Well, it kind of depends on the production and interpretation here. In replica productions, the way the story usually goes, nobody's getting it. Old D knows that he needs to simplify the message somehow, but it's not really what he does. Honestly, he's just been thinking out loud this whole time and has no idea what he's doing. He basically simplifies the message by sending it through a simpler brain. Coricopat and Tantomile, the most telepathic of cats, help him out here. They sort of connect his mind to Jemima's mind. Jemima is the youngest cat in the tribe. Her mind is not complicated and very open, so it's easy to speak through her. She falls into a trance and delivers Old D's message in her own words, simple words that everyone can understand.

I'm writing this mainly to talk about a detail of the number that sort of allows the audience to feel what the tribe is feeling throughout this, though this isn't exactly universal.

Basically, though not all English language poetry rhymes, it usually does. This is especially true with songs lyrics. Songs in English that were originally written in English almost always rhyme. This is also the case for most European languages. I say that it's not universal because Cats is very popular in Japan and Japanese songs usually don't rhyme. It's just not a priority there. If you listen to Japanese dubs or translations of English songs, you'll notice that the rhyme scheme isn't followed. It's not something Japanese listeners would probably notice. Meanwhile, when Japanese songs are translated into English, you might actually notice that it doesn't rhyme. Listening to the song in Japanese, it sounds normal. But it sounds weird in English. The best English translations of Japanese songs tend to add a rhyme scheme into it to sound more natural in English.

Yeah, I'm getting a little side-tracked here but it's a cool thing I noticed.

So, in English, and a lot of other languages, songs usually rhyme. Why's that important? If you primarily listen to music in a language where songs rhyme, you begin to intuitively expect it. The lack of rhyming starts to mean something. It doesn't mean that the song is bad. There are situations where English song lyrics not rhyming works. The example I usually think of for this is Strawberry Fields Forever. Try to find Beatles songs when explaining music and lyrics. Everyone's listened to the Beatles. Anyway, though the chorus sort of rhymes (fields/real), the verses don't. If you look at the lyrics of the song, this actually makes sense. When you have lyrics like:

I think, I know, I mean...a yes, but it's all wrong

That isn't a coherent sentence. It sounds like someone's thoughts unfiltered. It works as an expression of emotion, but it's not carefully composed. It's raw. It's stream of consciousness. And you're thoughts, raw, unfiltered, don't rhyme. When you're writing rhyming lyrics, you have to think carefully about the words. A lack of rhyme conveys "I'm talking without really thinking through what I'm going to say. This is all off the top of my head."

Old Deuteronomy's part of The Moments of Happiness doesn't rhyme. Every other song in the show rhymes at least a little. Old Deuteronomy is just thinking out loud here. He's still figuring things out as he goes. That's why it's so hard to follow. It's harder to follow the lyrics, so the audience tends to get lost here, which is exactly what's happening to the characters listening.

Then you have Jemima's "Moonlight" bit. We go back to rhyming. There's clarity there that there isn't in the rest of the number. The words have been rephrased in a way that's easier to understand and follow. When you're used to songs rhyming, your brain sort of maps itself onto the rhyme scheme. You follow the lyrics by picking up on and anticipating the rhyme. So we go from something that's hard to follow to something that's easy to follow. Even if you don't get the actual message of what's being said here, the feeling of confusion and clarity is still there.

So, that's pretty cool, I guess.

[tobikau-buzzword]

Alice Nine - CASTLE OF THE NINE: Translation

The star falls and finally arrives

Oh light, shine upon this dawn

Even though you’re shivering from the cold

Awaken your Fire of soul

After stepping out into the wind

surrender yourself now and run, Runaway

Raise your voice

Let’s make progress, even starting from zero

Failure is the mother of success

Fight against your fate and free yourself of it

Seize the now, today and tomorrow

“Starlight like that of the Milky Way¹

I looked up at the night sky, blue planet² a a a

Connect all the dots³ and it becomes a Sentence

Start with A, the thing that’s conveyed is karma

Create a Joint Fantasy

Let’s walk together across 9th history

Oh flower, bloom copiously

Notice this trap

The H.O.G⁴ is carved out by the rhyme”

The stardust falling from the Milky Way

We will guide it towards this brilliant world

We will come to escort you, no matter where you are

Yeah, we will Go straight to our castle

[Are you ready?]⁵

“This summit towers over all others

If you think you can climb it, I dare you to try

No one will ever reach it

Nose Mountain⁶”

We’ll transcend the Moon that shines so blue

We’ll go far beyond the stars

We won’t let go until we’ve realized our dreams

CASTLE OF THE NINE

We’re not even holding the wheel

Let’s dive into this masked ball

CASTLE OF THE MOON

CASTLE OF THE MARS

CASTLE OF THE SATURN

CASTLE OF THE A9

Are you ready

We’ll transcend Mars, which shines so red

We’ll go far beyond the stars

We won’t let go until we’ve realized our dreams

CASTLE OF THE NINE

We’ll take those feelings that set your heart ablaze

And take them beyond your wildest dreams

As long as we can hear your voice

We’ll take you with us

CASTLE OF THE NINE

----------------------------------------------------------------

1. One of the words to say Milky Way in Japanese is "ama no gawa" literally "the river of the heavens", but as perhaps some of you know, Tora's legal last name is Amano. In this sentence, they used the kanji for Tora's last name instead of the kanji for Milky Way. So it has a double meaning.

2. The lyrics here are just "BURU PURA" in katakana. I think they mean "blue planet", but I can't be sure. Rap lyrics tend to be creative and hard to decipher.

3. The kanji used here are 點線. I'd expect 点線 instead, because this combination means "dotted line". Not sure why they chose the obscure kanji.

4. This might refer to Heart of Gold? Not sure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. This line is not in the official lyrics, but it's clearly spoken and easy to understand, so I decided to include it anyway.

6. This is a reference to Saga's big nose, lmao. They wrote it phonetically in kanji 能頭魔雲天 "nouzumaunten" (talent, head, magic, cloud, heaven).

As an aside, I adore this song. I love to hear all of them sing and the lyrics have really beautiful parts as well as inside jokes. Just... 10/10 will listen to on repeat and sing and dance along to.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Hello, I've been hooked up with Bleach since 2008 but still there are things that don't sit well with me. I hope your thought would bring me into the light lol. Like.. Didn't Masaki stay in Soul Society? I mean, is Ichigo able to meet her somewhere in SS since he now could easily travel between two worlds. Same question with, can Orihime meet Sora? Chad meet Abuelo? Uryuu meet his mommy, etc etc. Do you thonk Gotei 13 have the updated data of each residence of Soul Society? When I think it over, I hope it's not that easy for them to meet their late relatives since it wouldn't be special to be seperated by death 😅 Waiting for your amazing explanation! Thanks

As far as how the nature of souls and memory and the slippage between worlds works, I feel like canonically, different characters have offered several different explanations, which is a multiplicity I appreciate. But as to why people aren't meeting up, we get one fairly straightforward explanation:

[Bleach 076]

(Lol that woman doing her hair while standing in line. An icon)

That is, why don't people meet up with their dead loved ones in Soul Society? Because it's statistically hideously unlikely and logistically a nightmare. People are punted off all over the place and there's some implication that memories fade over time, though at what rate and for what reason may not have rhyme nor reason.

But I think that explanation also invites two additional interesting questions:

If each soul is numbered, why can't these numbers be used to locate souls?

Why wouldn't you expect reunions in an afterlife?

Ways of Knowing

You'd think that naming and numbering districts and giving souls numbers would suggest that there's some kind of great ledger of souls that the Gotei keeps and they know where everyone is. We know that the Gotei has enough Rukongai census data to know when fucktons of souls suddenly go missing, after all. But we also know that they don't know what number goes to which soul and which souls are where; if they did Byakuya probably could've reunited his dying wife with her baby sister, even if it were still logistically a nightmare to do so. What are logistics in the face of limitless money?

And I mean, most people living in the United States have a social security number. But even though there's a billion more ways that number comes into play when you're trying to live in the US than your soul ticket number is likely to bear on your Rukongai life--taxes, mandatory K-12, digital footprints, bills, etc.--it's still hard to keep track of people. And I say this living in a very modern, surveillance-state era. At 331 million-ish, does the US have more or fewer people living in it than Rukongai, making it easier or more difficult to keep track of them all? Who knows.

To use an example that's dealing with a smaller number of people--and therefore, one might think, a more manageable dataset--during World War II, the US forcibly removed and incarcerated Japanese Americans at 10 incarceration camps and a number of DOJ prison camps. Every Japanese American family was given a number and sent off to X or Y camp. Despite the fact that this is recent history, was a literal federal operation, and concerned a population of 125,000 (much smaller than 331 million, and much smaller than the number of souls in Rukongai), and multiple call numbers for related documents housed at the National Archives, there is no complete, official record of who was incarcerated where, when, or for how long. Only this year is any of that narrative-through-information beginning to take shape, and notably not through the labor of the federal government.

So do I think Soul Society has complete, updated, or remotely useable records of all the souls in Rukongai? Hell no. No, I do not! Just thinking about how straightforward such a task seems on paper in our world and how utterly apart it is in practice, it doesn't surprise me at all that there aren't records for these things, nor assumptions that locating lost family members would be possible. And that's just the practical aspect of it.

Ways of Being

One thing that separates the historical example I used from whatever it is Soul Society is doing is, if a federal government is going to forcibly remove and incarcerate people, they better not lose (or never create) the damn receipts. To do otherwise is a failing atop a failing.

By contrast, at the thematic and/or spiritual level, I think it's understood--it is an existential belief--that Soul Society/Rukongai is not a place of reunion. It is a place of passage and of wandering, and to arrive in Soul Society is usually not helped along by shinigami. Konsou, the tickets, the numbered districts--those are all accoutrements that now exist, they are things that created Soul Society, but they are not this afterlife. This afterlife was not a place of reunion before it was any of those things, and is remains one even after their creation.

I think it's possible to trigger a kernel panic if your soul was briefly housed by a bird and some very-much-alive guy wandered into the afterlife through a secret trapdoor, and then you get to reunite. But I think it's not necessarily something you come into the situation seeking.

Souls get stuck in the Living World because they snare on this or that element of what was once their life, so I think it makes sense that in Soul Society, those same holds are not part of what it means to be or feel as a soul in Rukongai (particularly as memories fade, but not necessarily because memories fade).

And to return to the practical, I think the churn of souls is unpredictable enough to help the mindset that Rukongai is not a place of reunion. Your soul could be in Rukongai for three days before you die and return to new form in the Living World. You could be there for centuries. If you were to enter Soul Society with the expectation of finding one specific soul, you could spend a frenzied, obsessive lifetime searching for a soul that has already lived seven different cycles, back and forth between the realms, further and further away from you, without you.

And then who's the hungry ghost?

--

For further reading, @unohanadaydreams has some awesome recent posts on the Rukongai Ticket Fiasco here and here!

[pacificovertures]

top five Sondheim shows

doing this one first bc it’s easy peasy

company: it’s the show that made me fall in love with sondheim’s work and its just so fucking good?? like it’s funny but it also breaks your heart every time. the amount that i quote company to myself on a daily basis is insane. like, “you have to want to marry SOMEBODY, not just SOME BODY” just makes me sooooo crazy thanks steve and george.

pacific overtures: sorry passion girlies but the number 2 spot goes to povertures. i mean being a huge fan of japanese history, especially the latter part of the 19th century (meiji era) helps a lot. it’s also just another phenomenal work from steve (the rhymes are so tight) and the way the musical and lyrical style evolves to match the dance between east and west is just so 👌👌👌

passion: we all love to clown on passion, but after putting my soul through the meat grinder, it really changed me as a person in a way that i can’t say about many other media. it speaks to a lot of really really deep seated emotional issues i have and have had. particularly feelings about love and what it means to “deserve” love and to have desire. that thing that we call “love”, which had always seemed like such an impossibility for me now seemed like something attainable. it also released a lot of my fears about trying to be a more likable/desirable/“normal” person. like actually, i don’t have to be… *gestures vaguely* anything at all.

follies: tough choice after the top 3, but i put follies here because it’s sad and i love sad shit. no it’s actually because the tragedy of follies is comes from the characters’ humanity. every mistake, every regret is just so deeply human. i always listen to the 1971 album compared to the more complete versions since i think the orchestrations are truly incredible. played on vinyl this album is sooooo crazy.

a little night music: uhhhhhhhhhhh it’s funnie… it serves its purpose well? but what makes me pick night music over some of the more popular options (sunday, sweeney, etc) is my attraction to sad things in the end. because night music is funny but there’s a lot of tragedy to it as well, similar to follies it’s a very human tragedy. i have a particular love for “the miller’s son”, especially when reading it as a resignation to the mundane… (ask me about this if you want ig)

[everygame]

Star Soldier (NES)

Developed/Published by: Hudson Soft Released: 13/06/1986 Completed: 10/07/2024 Completion: Beat it using all warps, saving at the start of each level (and before each boss. I’ll admit it!)

The Star Soldier series is an interesting one–or rather, its position in the pantheon is interesting. If you’re a Japanese gamer, it’s legendary–the core franchise in Hudson’s yearly “All-Japan Caravan Festival” where the company toured its games across Japan and players took part in timed score-attack challenges. For everyone else, it’s… a shooter series that is barely remembered and not especially highly rated.

Without an equivalent caravan–and the series not being released in arcades–there would have been little chance for western audiences to get exposed to Star Soldier, so unlike your Gradiuses or your R-Types, where you would be thrilled by it in arcades and then want whatever home version you could get your hands on, with Star Soldier you were taking a gamble on something that didn’t look like much of anything–especially when this wasn’t released until 1989 in North America!

And, to be honest, such a gamble would have been… ill-advised. It’s not that Star Soldier is bad as such, it’s just that in 1986–never mind 1989–it’s just a bit… underwhelming. Coming just two months after Konami’s superb port of Gradius, it already feels like a throwback to the immediate post-Xevious era as a visually simple vertical shooter with an emphasis on enemy patterns and hidden tiles that feels undoubtedly workman-like, with little variety from stage to stage.

It does have its quirks, however. The power-up system offers some risk-reward in that after a few power-ups you’re quickly given full multi-directional firing and a shield that protects you from basic enemy shots, but as soon as you take a hit you lose the multi-directional firing for a straight double shot, but you can’t get it back until you’ve lost your shield completely. Every power-up you pick-up instead works as a smart bomb, meaning that you have to either endanger yourself for later gains or rely on the occasional power ups as pressure releases (trusting, of course, that you can navigate to them on screen when they’re at their most useful.)

The secret tiles also offer more than just points and extra lives–at the cost of obscurity that is often worse than The Tower of Druaga. In fact, unless you’re playing on an actual Famicom, you can’t access one of the tiles at all (as it requires shouting into the second controller’s microphone.) That one is “Takahashi’s Expert Thumb” which allows you to get 16 shots on screen at one time, but there’s also a laser power-up that only shows up once(?) that requires you to press select at the right moment, and then of course there’s the new, post-Super Mario Bros. essential, warps, which can get you through the game skipping half the levels if you’re able to ensure your score matches digits at the hundreds and thousands, which is not easy to do.

So far, fair enough, but not every quirk is to the game’s benefit. The biggest and most baffling thing that any player of Star Soldier will immediately experience is that sometimes your ship goes under the stage. While that’s happening, you can’t shoot or be shot, which sounds like it would be good if you could control it, but as far as I could work out–and I’ve spent ages searching for information on this–it is close to random. 

It feels like it doesn’t happen if you try and cross over tiles from the side, but there are many situations where you have to approach them from the front, and it doesn’t always result in you going under. If there’s any true rhyme or reason to it it’s locked away in some ancient Japanese strategy guide that’s never been digitised–but I wouldn’t be surprised if that also threw its hands up.

All that really matters is that any time it happens, you don’t want it to. Because you can’t control it, you can never think “oh, I’ll pop under this bit of the stage and chill out while I’m being swarmed” instead it’s usually “gotta get that power up!” [goes under stage, misses power up] or popping out from under directly into enemy fire or straight into an enemy.

Additionally, the game is seriously punishing when it comes to the bosses. There are only two–which I can’t be too hard on, I mean Gradius really only has the one–but if you can’t defeat them within a harsh time limit the game throws you back quite a bit through the level and demands you try again! You’ve got just ten seconds to defeat the Star Brain, and thirty to defeat the Big Star Brain.

The sneaky trick here is that the game offers you auto-fire once you’re powered up, but in order to defeat in particular the Big Star Brain using it you have to be perfect. My own experience is ultimately anecdotal, here, but you are actually expected to do your best Takahashi Meijin impression by hammering the fire button to fire faster than the auto-fire–and even at that, defeating the bosses is probably more efficiently done with the double shot.

It feels a touch cruel and probably a reaction to the fact that the game honestly doesn’t feel that difficult outside of that. It’s not something you’d breeze through–and I definitely didn’t attempt to master its intricacies–but most of my deaths during the levels seemed to come from frustration with dipping under the stage, meaning that the bosses feel like the major issue (though if my anecdotal evidence is correct, you might be able to breeze through them with a good autofire.)

Ultimately? The fact is that nothing Star Soldier does is all that interesting–apart from the things that are annoying about it.

Will I ever play it again? The value in any shooter really is in how much you’d like to play it from the beginning and see how far you can get or how high you can score. I feel no interest in that here.

Final Thought: Not only were North American players who were unfortunate enough to buy this denied Takahashi’s Expert Thumb, Taxan’s release was so lazy that they missed that the game features an entire second, increased difficulty mode that can also only be unlocked by using a code that involves shouting into the second controller. It’s even got different graphics!

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[fragiledewdrop]

Hello, and sorry in advance for the long post, but this is really interesting to me :)

Based on my own experience and that of those who study English at university with me, it tends to be phrasal verbs and prepositions. By a mile. Even people who could almost pass for native speakers mess them up, and learning them is really hard because there's no rhyme or reason to them , so either you a) straight up memorize endless lists (rarely effective), or b) listen to and read so much material in English that you eventually pick most of them up by osmosis. Either way, you will still make mistakes.

English grammar is fairly easy, though, especially the verb system. I speak a Romance language. Irregular verbs in English have only three forms each, sometimes two. Irregular verbs in my language, or in Spanish, or in French? They can have six different forms just for the basic present tense. I feel your pain, OP, because I am learning French too, and I would take the whole of English morphology over the French Indicative any day with zero hesitation.

Plus, irregular verbs in English were mostly formed through vowel alternation, which was the productive morphological process before you switched to adding -ed (I think it was in Early Modern English? I have to check.) That means it's not actually random. There are patterns: swim/swam/swum, sing/sang/sung, run/ran/run; bring/brought, teach/taught, catch/caught, think/thought.

They sound very similar, even to someone who knows knows nothing about linguistics. Once you figure it out, they are not that difficult to remember. Same with adding -en to some participles. There are still a few wild cards, but it's not that overwhelming.

What is hard, on the other hand, is figuring out aspect: do you use the Simple Past or the Present Perfect? The Future Simple or the Future Continuous? I have given English lessons, and this is what they are about, mostly, especially in high school. Then again, this is a problem when learning any language that is not very closely related to your own. My brother has a Master's degree in Japanese, and he had very, very similar issues there.

One thing that often gets overlooked, but is really hard to get into your head when you are an Italian speaker, is that English is a non-pro-drop language. It means you cannot omit the subject, even if you have to use the same pronoun five times in the same sentence. That is difficult for us, because not only is that not the case at all in our language (we can form whole sentences where the subject is implied; we do it all the time) but we absolutely abhore repetition. It feels extremely weird at the beginning. As I have been told, repeatedly, "it sounds wrong".

Also, in English you never put the verb before the subject. The order is strictly Subject Verb Object, except for questions, where Verb and Subject are switched. Our language is way more flexible about that (it still has nothing on fusional languages that use cases, which know no fear of man nor god when it comes to word order. Think German, Latin, or-lord help us- Ancient Greek.) In Italian we might say "è finita la partita", but in English you can't say "is over the football match". You have to switch the order of the components to put the subject first: "the football match is over". This becomes a recurring, pesky issue with longer sentences, especially when writing long texts.

Lastly, well, spelling and pronunciation, obvioulsy. I think a lot of native speakers are in a bit of a pickle there too. It's just the way the etymological cookie crumbled. At least you don’t have random accents on your vowels xD

That's it, mostly. There are a million different things to say about this, but I really need to go to bed. I hope it was interesting, and not extremely boring🌸

Native English speaker here who thinks learning French is hard so I was curious

Bonus points for tagging your native language

[nearly-wonderland]

アンデッドアリス Undead Alice - DECO*27 - English Translyrics

Undead, Oh Alice, darling "Just live your life on like a parasite, Feeding away on me since you can't seem to die." They're crazy, mad, except for you and me Your voice, it still resounds, but they don't hear a thing.

A way to hurt myself, I try to ask By breathing happiness, breathing out poison gas A junkie drunk can't see the irony Abnormal, all of them, except for you and me.

Brain rotting, rotten wants to see you Separation giving me this LOW mood I'm breathing it all the same It'll drive me insane Fluttering my heart, crushing butterflies Begging please, will you die, hurry before I'm Taking your life.

So live for yourself, so live or give out It’s fine to break and, to find you’re afraid This love we hate, nothing but cowardice, shame Forget these feelings, put to sleep, and bury it all away

We hate so easy, the hate that you see Your love still chains me, I can’t seem to break free And your smile’s still vanishing, Undead, Oh Alice, darling

It's no surprise, my aspirations last They cloud your mind and turn our will to live to ash My sacrifice the price of carrying The weight I try to turn with hands stained red with grief.

I want to save you, wanna set you free But now the more I want, the more you're out of reach Our love preserved in ice, a blink in time I try to melt it, but, "Is this still really fine?"

Mind rampage trying to be good, see The decay, BAD taking over instincts I'm breathing it all the same It'll drive me insane Thinking never meaning in the end, why Is it killing me, just kill me please now, before I'm Taking my life.

So live for yourself, so live or give out It’s fine to break and, to find you’re afraid This love we hate, nothing but cowardice, shame Forget these feelings, put to sleep and bury it all away

We hate so easy, the hate that you see Your love still chains me, I can’t seem to break free And your smile’s still vanishing, Undead, Oh Alice, darling

I thought together we'd Push through the night and take on all of our dreams Is this reality? A world I can't remember why your smile binds me

In a delusion we Could just repeat our lives after this bye-bye The pain is killing me Just take the heart you tore out of my chest and set it free

So live for yourself, so live or give out It’s fine to break and, to find you’re afraid This love we hate, nothing but cowardice shame Forget these feelings, put to sleep and bury it all away

We hate so easy, the hate that you see Your love still chains me, I can’t seem to break free And your smile’s still vanishing, Undead, oh Alice, WE- Still couldn't do a thing!

It hurts so bad but I won't slip away yet It's been so long but I'll still be here in the end Apologize, but I just can't do the same, You want a, "Let's forget it all, and laugh at it anyways"?

It's wrong, it's not right, it can't be, right? Between belief and grief, which is it keeping you alive? Is your smile still vanishing? Undead, Oh Alice darling

———————————————————————— [This song is a cute little logistical nightmare to translate, mostly due to the chorus; In Japanese, it flows very nicely using near-rhymes and altering one syllable to change the meaning of each line, but that's difficult to achieve in English..... I did the best I could to convey the same feeling while keeping the intended message intact!]

[digitalsatyr23]

Was trying to come up with a way to easily memorize the days of the week in Spanish and I remembered this weird nursery rhyme song from a Japanese air conditioner commercial. The song goes like this: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday comes again. I was struggling to translate it and keep to the general tune but I THINK I GOT IT. “Otra vez” literally means “again” and has the same syllable count as “comes again” in English and roughly means the same thing, so you could write it like this: Domingo, Lunes, Martes Miercoles, Jueves Jueves, Viernes, Sabado Domingo otra vez.

I’m a little iffy on the second line, but I think it more or less works for purpose of the song. It’s silly but this is going to be a really easy way for me to remember this stuff.

[poipoipoi-2016]

So re: Wages, I recommend

Caption: To put this in perspective, the 2008 crisis was 5% of US GDP. So you did 6 of those continuously for 20 years.

but I also notice the Plaza Accords (The guy who did those was Trump's head trade guy. Broken clock, right twice a day. Him and Mnuchin. So of course, neither of them are returning to a second term.)

From Google:

Accordingly, it triggered an exceptionally large appreciation of the yen, amount- ing to 46 percent against the dollar and 30 percent in real effective terms by the end of 1986. (The deutsche mark appreciated similarly.)

Every single loan the Japanese had made in dollars just lost a third of its value in yen and also their wages went up by half. Yoink! So... what were they doing before the Plaza Accords?

Re the pile of dollars:

So a couple of ways this goes down, noticing that that float is actually a loan and has interest payments.

Greece existed because Germans drove a VW down, stayed on the beach for a month, handed the car keys to the guy running the beach resort, and flew home. I'd rather be in the car factories than running the beach resort, but it works (On that note, America has some lovely national parks and a surprising number of tour buses).

At which point Germans were suddenly too poor to afford Greek beach vacations, but were quite happy to keep shipping them the cars in exchange for theoretical, and nicer because interest, beach vacations down the line... right as the beach resorts were falling into disrepair because no one was taking a beach vacation. You understand the issue yes?

So:

You now have a pile of dollars and so you invest in things in America (or literally buy British Rail and run it into the ground) which is why you occasionally hear freakouts about Chinese land ownership or Japan buying up Hollywood. This is particularly the case if we actually made that loan in Euro instead because I can't play currency games. These are usually very stupid projects partly because you have too much money and partly because of the very serious impacts of the trade deficit on actually doing anything in the trade deficit country. So eventually, I miss a payment and those investments get written down to zero because you overpaid for things you were actively destroying at the time. https://www.reddit.com/r/TopGear/comments/3idn5b/why_was_that_airport_completely_abandoned/

2. The loans are denominated in my currency and I can't stop you, but I can do a bunch of inflation on my side and give you a much worse beach vacation in 5 years or a very nice one today hint hint Germany. Which is basically how Greece dealt with Germany pre-Euro. There were consequences to that and you can be 1980s Greece or you can 2020s Greece and that's a very easy choice yes.

3. I run insane government deficits because the government holds the printing press and if you're willing to subsidize an extra couple trillion of Earned Income Tax Credit and cover the decade of suck while we do eldercare, see above about point 2 at some point.

I am not totally thrilled about the USA's current $2 Trillion deficits, but they are the least bad option particularly when rhymes with Mnuchin is running Treasury and we respond to COVID by literally printing $8 Trillion and monetizing an entire presidential term of debt.

How we got out of that with maybe 15% inflation when they printed 80% more money I do not know.

Stumbled on this 1992 interview with Michael Crichton about his 90's Japan Scare novel Rising Sun, which is very fun. For one, Crichton is a Perotist!

Question: “Rising Sun” makes a strong argument that Japanese business is unfairly aggressive and Americans are foolish to have tolerated this unfairness for so long. Is that a decent synopsis? Answer: Not exactly. Let me just restate it. In the immortal words of my hero, Ross Perot: “It’s not a two-way street. It never has been a two-way street. It’s not their fault.” It’s our fault.

His 90's "Declinist America Needs Protectionism" vibe really comes through in the whole interview, you forget these days due to Trump how much of a Type of Guy that was and how intellectual-coded it could be in that era of dominant "unreflective" neoliberalism.

Anyway, we certainly did talk about race in the 90's!

Q: Do you consider the Japanese racist? A: [...] We’re talking about a historically inward-looking nation, an island nation, largely monoracial. That’s a good structure in which to have the rise of feelings of superiority about your own people as opposed to other people in the world. Of course, these broad statements can’t be applied to the individual Japanese person. One of the things that Americans, as a multiracial society, feel is a tremendous sensitivity to racial comments of all kinds. In the book, one of the things I tried to say to Americans was: Hey, while you’re tiptoeing around the race issue, your competitors are a monoracial country, very much aligned, and tend to hold in common beliefs that would astound you.

Narrator: America did not, in fact, "tiptoe" around the race issue.

But to be clear it isn't like this is super wrong or anything - 90's Japan absolutely was a "racist country" if such a thing is possible, most countries are, and its geographic isolation and relative lack of modern immigrants at that time certainly did contribute to that. What I instead find amusing is the idea that this is a threat to the US; the implication is that, because Japan is a racist country, when they rule the world economically they will in some way impose that racist worldview upon us. Which, I don't really think that is how free trade works? Might have watched too much Gunbuster on this one buddy.

We of course have the classics of Japan Scare:

Q: Has the continued decline in the Japanese stock market, their falling real-estate value and shrinking foreign investment caused you to rethink your views of Japanese-American business dealings? A: No, not at all. I’ve not seen figures on what the growth of the Japanese GNP will be this year. You hear stories about economic distress in Japan, but you see that the growth rate is going down to 4% from 5%. If this country had a 4% growth rate, we’d all feel like we were pumped full of testosterone.

-😬😬😬-

Narrator: it did not stop going down at 4%.

What i love most is how you see the same exact arguments about American "economic weakness" you see today, but with the dates/countries swapped around:

Q: What allowed us to contribute so willingly to our own weakening? Greed? Altruism? Shortsightedness? Arrogance? A: (following a large sigh) You have to look back at broad time periods. It’s possible now to argue that Americans have had no increase in real earnings power since 1962. Some economists would dispute that, and set the date at 1973. Either way, the country is in a steady, consistent and ongoing decline. Why? That’s an extended conversation. 

Obviously since then US living standards have gone up quite a lot! You definitely *cannot* argue that they did not go up since 1962, that is in fact an insane claim. You can't argue they haven't gone up since the 90's either. Even in Japan they have, they definitely have in Europe, economies grow in general. And of course the classic "American companies are all gambling now":

No one invests in a company anymore, in the way it was done in the ‘50s, say, because they believe the company is good. They buy because they think the price of the stock will rise or fall. What this means is that American managers are obliged to manage in the short term. There’s no incentive for an investor to hang on with a company for the long term. In Japan, savings--up to a certain point--are tax free. Why is that not also true in America? You want savings? Then don’t tax it as ordinary income.

I will leave posting a list of the most high-value companies over the past 30 years as an exercise for the reader; you don't need it, you already know them. But I certainly see versions of this dancing around today, and you definitely saw it in 2008 all over the place.

No real skin off Crichton's back, to be clear - prediction is hard, he isn't an economist, most will be wrong. Just funny how the ideological churn keeps spinning.

[faeryqueenwitch]

🧚🎉Fairy Festivals🎉🧚

🎉 Fairy festivals take place at crossover points in the seasons. Equinoxes and solstices are determined by the position of the Sun, but the other four festivals are celebrated when the time feels right, so the dates given below are approximate.

🎉 There are other festivals too,such as Christmas Eve,Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. Any human festival that touches on old traditions,from Ramadan to a Japanese Flower Festival, is a fairy feast. If you celebrate these festivals and make the effort to tune into what concerns the fairies, you will draw closer to their world. If you celebrate a special meal, remember to leave a little outside afterward for the fairies

1.  🌷 Imbolic - 🌷

February 2 in the Northern Hemisphere/July 31 in the Southern Hemisphere

Imbolc means “in the belly,” and this is the time when life stirs in the belly of the earth. Frost sparkles and the pale light lingers each evening,bringing the message that spring is on the horizon. Imbolc is the delicate crossover point from winter’s depths into the New Year. It is a feast of lightness and brightness,but also a time of cleansing,to make way for the new. The Hag, who is Dark Goddess or Dark Fairy, gives way now to the Maiden, who is young and radiant.

Fairies love neatness and good housekeeping,so it is a good idea to have a late-winter sort-out,in preparation for fresh activity. While the fairies are busy coaxing snowdrops and crocuses out of the winter-hard earth,do something creative of your own,such as knitting,painting,or writing poetry. Ask the fairies to lend you a little of their magic by leaving them an offering,such as a piece of wool or a verse written just for them.

This feast is also called candlemas,sacred to St.Bridget,who was the successor to the pagan goddess Bride (pronounced “Breed”). Bride was the keeper of the sacred flame,which represents eternal life. She is the patroness of poetry,smithcraft,child birth, and healing, and is a very powerful fairy indeed. Invite her into your home by lighting as many candles as you like, in your windows and around your house. Ask her to bless your projects for the coming year,and pledge a special act of caring for the natural world in return,to seal your pact as the year waxes.

2. 🌼 Spring Equinox- 🌼

March 21 in the Northern Hemisphere/September 21 in the Southern Hemisphere

The fairies are very busy at the Spring Equinox,looking after all the flowers that are newly blooming.Scandinavian fairies become active now: the Russian cellar fairy,The Domoviyr,casts off its skin and grows a lighter one for summer; and the Russian Rusalki,or river fairies are glimpsed by lakes swollen with melted snow.

A tree planting project is a very fairy-friendly activity at this time. A seasonal blitz on the garden is also called for. While you are hard at work, digging and pulling away at dead winter twigs, it is easy to go into a kind of trance. This, coupled with the spell of the natural world around you,can create the perfect state of mind to catch a glimpse of fairies.You can be sure they are near you,helping you with their energies.Plant some seeds of your choice and, as you put them in the earth, close your eyes and make a special request for fairy help. Visualize the fairies tending your seeds,giving them their love and care. Ask out loud for the fairies to help you,and sing or hum and you plant. Touch the soft soil with your bare hands and make real contact with the earth.

Place water in a pottery or glass jug (plastic or metal is best avoided) and leave it out in the noon sunshine. Ask the fairies to bless it. Imagine them dancing around it and coming up to touch it with their glimmering fingers. Use the water to give your houseplants a special spring blessing.

The Green Man is a powerful nature spirit that has been sensed by many people. He is represented in numerous churches as the Foliate Mask (a face made up of leaves),and one theory about his presence is that the masons who fabricated him had hidden sympathies with the old nature- worship. He is making his appearance now on some new park benches and monuments. However, you can make contact with the real Green Man out alone walking through the woodland. Ancient and wise,he is watching you. Catch a glimpse of him behind tree trunks or in the lacework of budding branches. Hear his footfalls behind you as you walk. He is the very breath of Nature, and his strength is bursting forth in springtime.

3. 💐 Beltane - 💐

April 30 in the Northern Hemisphere/October 31 in the Southern Hemisphere

Of all the festivals, Beltane is the most flagrantly joyful and sensuous as Nature is bursting forth with beauty and excitement. This was the Celtic beginning of summer, and also marked an important transition for the people of Fairy, for it was the time when the Milesian Celts landed on the shores of south-west Ireland. With this, the last of the magical peoples,the Tuatha de Danann, receded from the the world of humans into the Hollow Hills and became the people of the Sidhe.

However, they and the other fairy folk have not gone very far. You will find them dancing in a bluebell wood or skipping in the sunshine,sheltered by a greening hedge. Beltane is the time when good fairies reign supreme and bad fairies retreat. Fairies are very active now and may try to steal butter,or some of the ritual fire that used to be ignited on hilltops and is still lit by modern pagans.

This is the maypole season, but instead you can always dance around a friendly tree. Link hands with friends, and you may find yourselves spontaneously re-creating the kind of things people used to to do when seeing fairies was commonplace:lingering,walking,and talking, in the open air, away from television,computers,and other modern distractions.

There are many tales of beautiful fairies marrying mortals. Such tales usually end in tragedy, for fairy and human can never truly be joined. Better to borrow some of the fairy enchantment by performing a little magic of your own! Rise early on May Day and wash your face in the dew or simply walk in it. As the rhyme says: “The fairy maid who, the first of May Goes to the fields at break of day, And walk in dew from the hawthorn tree, Will ever handsome be.”

Welsh legend tells how the hero Pwll saw the Lady Rhiannon riding past him at Beltane and, after pursuing her, he eventually won her. Rhiannon is one aspect of the Fairy Queen,riding on her white horse between the worlds. As you sit quietly outside,on a bank in the late spring dusk,listen for the sounds of her horse’s hooves,and open your eyes to the shimmer of her sea-blue cloak. When Rhiannon touches your heart, she will fill it with love and inspiration.

4. 🌹 Midsummer -  🌹

June 22 in the Northern Hemisphere/December 22 in the Southern Hemisphere

This is one of the most magical times of the year, when fairies are very active and visible, playing pranks and even, it is said, stealing away the young and beautiful to join them in the Hollow Hills. The sun is now at the height of its strength and this is an important crossover point,such as the fairies love. For at the Midsummer Solstice the sun stands still, before beginning to recede as we move into the waning half of the year.

Flowers are colorful and luxuriant, and one radiant day seems to merge into another, as late dusk meets early dawn. At no time is the natural world more inviting. Take part in it by going on quests -long walks to sacred spots,evening camping out with the minimum of equipment,to draw close to the mystery that is all around, and to the Fair Folk in particular.

The rose is possibly the most sensuous bloom of all, and at midsummer it is often at its most gorgeous. Roses in the garden are especially likely to attract fairies. Distil water from rose petals and add it to your bath, asking the fairies to lend you some of their enchantment and to help you attract love. Brew tea from rosebuds and drink it,to increase your psychic powers.Plant a rose bush with a friend, to affirm the loving bound between you and invite the fairies into your life.

St.John’s wort is a herb known to break any negative fairy enchantment and drive away depression. Pluck some on Midsummer’s Day and carry it, to keep cheerful.

Look out for water nymphs by streams, or for undines for water elementals on the seashore- or for even the Lady of the Lake herself,rising from the luminous depths.In olden times, these beings were said to have no souls. It is closer to the truth to say that they do not have human morals. Conventions often conceal or feelings, but the beauty of the water fairies opens us to our unconscious tides; see them and let yourself be transformed.

5. 🌾Lammas- 🌾

July 31 in the Northern Hemisphere/February 2 in the Southern Hemisphere

Lammas is “Loaf Mass,” a christian version of a much older festival known as Lughnasadh, or the “Feast of Lugh.” Lugh was a Celtic god,lord of the Tuatha de Danann, and his name means “bright one.” Lughnasadh is a major fairy festival, and many fairies become active during this period,such as the Russian Polevik, who kicks sleepy harvesters awake. It is also a time when fairies move about in preparation for winter,and processions of them may be seen as a line of twinkling lights moving between the hills in the countryside.

At Lammas, the fields are golden with corn and splashed with red poppies. It is hazy,lazy time of holidays and abundance,but there is an underlying theme of death,for the Corn Spirit must be sacrificed in order to reap the harvest. If you walk out into a field of ripe wheat, you may sense the anger of the nature spirits as what is to be taken from the earth,even thought that is a part of the natural cycle of life.Gather up some ears of wheat and tie them into a bunch with red thread,to make a charm for the coming winter to hang over your hearth. At the same time,pledge an act of caring for the earth,such as clearing a derelict site in your neighborhood or garden, or planting and tending a herb, as payment for what you-and all of us- take from it.

At home, bake your own bread, using the rising of the dough as a spell to ensure that everything prospers in your life. While you are kneading the bread dough, say to yourself “As this dough swells, so may my fortunes increase.” Ask for your own personal Brownie, or house fairy, to come and help your bread rise- and remember to leave some breadcrumbs outside afterward,for the fairies.

Some say that Lugh is lord of the waning year, and his dance- through the waving,whispering corn- is a dance of death. If so, it is a reminder that all things come in cycles,and that everything is united in love and beauty. Stand at the edge of a sun-kissed wheat field and see the shimmer and sway that betrays the presence of Lugh. Take a few moments to feel respect for the earth in your heart, and understand the meaning of the Wheel of Life.

6. 🍁 Autumn Equinox (Mabon) - 🍁

September 21 in the Northern Hemisphere/March 21 in the Southern Hemisphere

At the Autumn Equinox, Nature stands poised between light and dark,but darkness is gaining. The veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest, and all manner of spirit visitations are more frequent now.

The hedgerows are beaded with berries,and mist lingers in the hollows. Sometimes the wind whistles in from nowhere and tosses baring branches. On other says, the mellow sun caresses the fields with slanting fingers. It is a time for reflection, but also for industry. In days gone by, preserves would be made for winter store and the help of the Good Folk would be sought by country people.

Absorb the atmosphere of the season by going blackberrying. In Celtic countries, there may be a taboo on eating blackberries, because these belong especially to fairies. However, as long as you gather them with respect and do not denude the bramble bushes, they will hardly object. Better still,leave out some of your homemade blackberry pie or wine for them,so that they will bless you. When this month ends, leave the blackberries alone and move on. Also look out for a bramble bush that forms an arch-so much the better if it faces east/west, for that mirrors the passage of the sun. Crawl through this three times on a sunny day to be healed of physical ills, especially rheumatism and skin troubles.

At this mysterious time, pay honor to Queen Mab. Her special gift is to bring dreams and visions to birth within us. She is really one of many manifestations of the Goddess, in her autumnal guise of wise-woman and Lady of Magic, and she is linked with ancient ideas of sovereignty- for the king drew his power from the land, and Mab presided.

Preferably at the Full Moon closest to the equinox,place good-quality wine in a stemmed glass or chalice,and take it into the garden or a secluded place.Raise the glass to the Moon,say, “Mab, I honor you”and pour some of the wine onto the earth. Drink a little and say, “Mab, I drink with you,” Then return home,light a bright-green candle beside your bed,gaze at the flame and say, “Mab,give me wisdom,” Place some jasmine or rose oil on your pillow,extinguish the candle-and drift into Fairyland. This is a little ritual that you can repeat during any Full Moon if you wish.

7. 🎃 Samhain - 🎃

October 31 in the Northern Hemisphere/April 30 in the Southern Hemisphere

Samhain means “summer’s end” and is pronounced “sa-wen.” This ancient Celtic festival at the official start of the winter was later Christianized as Halloween- a time when the dead were remembered. There was always a sinister aspect to Samhain,because certain sacrifices had to be made in order to survive the coming cold weather. Animals had to be slaughtered,and some say that human sacrifice took place to propitiate the spirits. Sacrifice,however, is a corruption of nature worship,for life is hard enough as it is and all we have to do is show respect.

Barrow mounds,shrouded in mist,are particularly eerie places at Samhain. Draw close,if you dare,and sit quietly.Do you hear the strange,far-off noise of fairy music,or the sound of knocking? Maybe the mound will open for you and unearthly light will stream over the barren fields.After Samhain,the earth is given over to the powers of darkness and decay.No crops or berries may be harvested after this time,because the Phooka, a malevolent Irish Fairy,blights them. The true meaning here,of course,is that death and decay have a place in the natural order,requiring due honor and respect lest they get out of hand.

Traditionally, this is the start of the story telling season. While the wind whistles around the eaves or the mist comes down outside,gather family or friends around your hearth- preferably with a real fire burning in it. If you do not have an open hearth,substitute a collection of large,burning candles. Sit round and speak of times gone by and people who have passed over to the other side.Ask the Beloved Dead to be present, if you wish(but note that this is not a seance,and the Beloved Dead are invited,not summoned). Laugh,share funny stories,feast,and drink.

Cerridwen is the Underworld Goddess and the Fairy Hag most associated with this time. In her magic cauldron,she stirs a brew that confers inspiration and transformation. Simmer up a hearty soup of root vegetables or pumpkin, to share with friends,then light a black candle and ask Cerridwen to guide you through the darkness into the light. You will  be both safe and wise.

8.  ❄️ Yule - ❄️

December 22 in the Northern Hemisphere/June 22 in the Southern Hemisphere

Yule is the Midwinter Solstice, when the sun again appears to stand still,as it did at midsummer,but the season is poised for the return of light. Celebrations of Christ’s birth were moved to coincide with the much more ancient solstice.

As you deck your Christmas tree,remember that the evergreen is a powerful symbol of the enduring life in Nature. Of course,is has a fairy on top of it,confirming that it is a festival of the Fair Folk,who also rejoice in the sun’s rebirth. Decorating your tree is an important magical act,for the decorations are fairy charms. Each member of the family should hang at least one special charm of their own,to enable a wish to come true.

Jack Frost is an active fairy in the cold weather,painting windows with intricate lacework. In Russia he is called Father Frost,the soul of winter,covering the trees in ice. Do not shrink from the frost fairy-go out and wonder at his works and he will reward you with hope and joy,just as in Russia Father Frost brings presents for the children on New Year’s Day.

By far the best-known and most powerful fairy at Yule is Father Christmas himself. Today we know him by his robes of red and white, but in the past he also wore green and other colors. As we have seen,red is the color both of life and death, and many fairies wear red caps. The hearty red of Father Christmas is a sign that he is an Otherworld being-very much alive,but not of this earth. He is recognized all over the world, as Kris Kringle in Germany and Pere Noel in France. In Brazil he is Papa Noel,and in China Dun Che Loa. He is the essence of Yuletide mystery,joy and renewal,and like many traditional fairies, he comes in and out via the hearth.

When all is quiet on Christmas Eve, get ready to welcome Father Christmas- light a candle and look at the stars. Pledge a gift for a friend and one for the world, and ask for a special gift to answer your heart’s desire. Write your wish on a piece of paper and “post” it up the chimney if you have an open fire. If not, burn it in the candle flame. Can you hear those sleigh bells?

(Art By: IrenHorrors On Deviantart -Link)

[imaginethebeautifulworld]

Hello! I hope you are having a good day/night. May I ask for axis and allies plus spain, romano and prussia speaking to their s/o in their native language? Thank you very much! -Humble Anon💕

A very good morning/afternoon/evening to you as well, lovely!

When I began brainstorming these, I kept approaching this ask with the thought in mind that the S/O's first language is not the same as that of the Nation's, and aren't quite completely fluent as of yet. It made it a little bit easier for me to write, and offered me just a little more leeway to daydream. ^_^;

America:

Alfred really only does so when he's super tired, stumbling into the kitchen with bedhead to grab his first five cups of coffee, half-flopping on you as he greets you with a kiss to the cheek- ruined by his yawn- accent stronger than normal as he rumbles out a good morning, asks how you slept. He rambles lightly about his weird-ass dreams, making you smile just from his annunciations. At some point, he remembers to start translating, swapping over to the dialect you're most familiar with mid-sentence.

Canada:

Oddly enough, Matthew plays Language Tag more frequently than Al, but more often than not, it's usually an unrefined Franglish that has always irritated Francis and Arthur. (He enjoys this fact, just a little.) Around you, however, it really only flares up in moments where he's just so overwhelmed and in awe, taken aback by how much he's in love with you. Most of his petnames for you are in English, but those moments where you're both spending a lazy evening in bed, he'll happily shower you with all kinds of cheesey compliments in French, teasingly poking your nose every time you try to get him to translate.

China:

Yao has a habit of slipping back to Chinese on a whim, honestly oblivious to the fact most of the time. You've noticed it gets significantly worse whenever he's stressed, and you've learnt some very colourful nicknames for the Others over the years because of it. Despite his seemingly incessant need to pace while venting, you always manage to coax him into your arms, steadily working your fingers across his back, easy out the knots that had been plaguing him. Meetings always brought him stress, but after a good rant and a few moments of your grounding touch, he's sighing away all remaining agitation, slowly bringing himself back to you and apologising for the slip.

England:

One of Arthur's greater strengths comes in linguistics. While he would much rather prefer a courtship with an English speaker, he's not going to deny himself happiness just because of a silly little language barrier. He generally tries to keep everything on common ground, but his nicknames for you, and some of his more scandalising compliments, are murmurred in English. He always keeps it quiet, an intimacy reserved only for you. There's many a "dearest" and "darling" when first waking up in the morning, a languid greeting for the coming day. (Also, he swears mostly in English, so be careful if you decide to borrow any of his vocabulary.)

France:

Francis never hesitates to prattle in French; it's second nature to him. Sometimes, he'll hop between both yours and his preferred dialects several times in a single sentence. You know it's just part of who he is, and while it can be annoying some days, it is helping you improve your own fluency. There are also moments when he makes you weak, his expression uncharacteristically sincere, hands carefully clasping your own. He hums out a soft phrase, one you still haven't fully translated, leaning closer to caress your jaw, thumb brushing against your cheek, any number of praises passing his lips.

Germany:

Ludvig, since Day One, has tried his best to make sure you're comfortable around him, and part of that is him keeping firmly to the language you are most familiar with. When coming across words he may not be entirely familiar with, or saying a more complicated phrase, his accent may sometimes come out a bit thicker than would be normal. The only time he really slips into German is when he's on the phone with folks from his government. You don't mean to eavesdrop on the latter, but you do enjoy how much deeper his voice tends to get when he's being "professional." Secretly though, you have to admit his voice when he sleeptalks is your favourite of them all. 

Japan:

Kiku constantly, and often unnecessarily, goes out of his way to make sure that you're comfortable, and despite your arguing against it, one of his ways of trying to do so is to only stick the language you both share. Frankly, you love hearing him speak Japanese, even though you really only hear it when he's at the store, and sometimes to the servers during date night. You love how gentle his voice is, his accent adding almost a sweetness to his words. Lately, you've been debating how to tell him that you'd like to hear it more, but for now you savour the little pieces you've collected over the past few months.

Prussia:

You learnt some time ago that Gilbert quietly speaking in German actually helped you fall asleep significantly easier. For that reason, he primarily only does so while either headed to bed, or whenever you're spending an afternoon together in the library. He'll sometimes read to you, but mostly he tends to ramble. You only understand a handful of the things he's saying and assume that he's regaling you with tales of days long past. In reality, he's running through his checklist for car parts he wants to fix, complaining about something stupid Roderich did back in 1648, and most often- when you're on the cusp of sleep, breathing deep and relaxed, his hand resting on your back- he's listing off every single thing he's come to love about you, not as afraid of his vulnerability when you're hardly conscious enough to hear it.

Romano:

Lovino spent too long relearning Italian to ever abandon it, even for your sake. He casually weaves it into regular conversation, the endearments, greetings, exclamations, and nicknames fluidly blending into the ordinary. He figured out quite a while ago that you actually enjoyed his "slip ups," so he's especially generous on date nights, about half of the words he's saying falling around you in his unique dialect. He once told you that you should be grateful, that he was blessing you with "the most beautiful language in the world." And begrudgingly, lost in his smile and the way the candlelight makes his eyes spark, you have to agree.

Russia:

Over time, one of your favourite pastimes with Ivan has becoming hunkering down on a settee by the fireplace, where he'll work on his knitting. The best part of these moments, especially on particularly frigid mornings where you've no obligations, is that Ivan will start to sing to himself, always pieces in Russian. Sometimes they're lullabies he's picked up from the royal families over the years, sometimes they're peasant rhymes he's known since childhood, and on some rare occasions, he'll sing something from an opera he fell in love with back in 1872. He'll often pepper in a few casual words here and there, always with a lightness to it, but you're absolutely addicted to how full his voice sounds when he sings.

Spain:

Antonio is actually the worst of the bunch. He can and will ramble in Spanish, a lot, so much so that some of it has permanently rooted itself into your own vocabulary, some of your replies slipping out without pause these days. He tends to catch onto his slip-ups quickly at least, quickly sliding back into your shared venacular with a quick apology. Still, you'll often hear him singing in Spanish, greeting the plants in Spanish, talking to the cats in Spanish. He's particullarly bad at losing himself whenever he's invested in a football match, or if you happen to catch him irritated about politics. Tonio has taught you quite a few colourful curses over the years, smattered with some day-to-day phrases you've both come to recite by default.

Veneziano:

Feliciano is surprisingly good at sticking to the language you feel most comfortable with, though he's notorious at mucking up the number of syllables in certain words. You have a strong suspicion he does this intentionally, this elongation solely designed to annoy you, especially as he always seems slightly bemused each time he does it. Regardless of how annoying he can be in your language, you do love eavesdropping on his conversations with his brothers, chattering away in Italian, his words and hands moving far too quickly for you to even hope to follow along. There's something so soothing in listening to him speak, even if he is producing 500 words per minute.

Thanks for the ask, Anon! I hope you enjoyed~

[skyhopedango]

while I'm on the topic of flowers...

This is as good a time as any to point out something fun that may not be obvious to non-Japanese speakers.

Why flowers?

(from the insta acc)

Why do the HanaDoll* idols have flowers in particular? Why not like, gemstones or precious metals or something equally fancy?

The answer, as is often a case with HanaDoll*, may just be a play on words. :D

The franchise name HanaDoll* (華Doll* that is) is composed of the words "hana" (華/flower) and "doll" (...doll). The "doll" part is fairly straightforward, it means "doll", is also a play on "idol" (aidoru/アイドル), and references the franchise's tagline: "Are they humans or dolls?" (彼らは「人間」か「人形」か。)** It’s also apparent in the in-universe name of the project: 華人形プロジェクト - literally “flower doll project”.

The fun part comes with the word "hana". The kanji used here is 華 "hana" which yes, means flower, but also has a more abstract meaning of glamour, splendor, that sort of thing. (English has a similar word in "florid" but the two are not really the same.) When applied to humans it basically means being glamorous, having a sort of natural charm. An easy way to understand is being like a flower in full bloom, if you know what I mean? It's a quality that idols are supposed to have, a sort of natural charm/radiance, that's what makes them attractive.

So the part about the HanaDoll* idols being implanted with a flower seed, making it grow, bloom, etc. is analogous of them being... well, implanted? with skills and talents, cultivating them, to reach their full potential. Amagiri Prod. taking regular humans - young dudes who are vulnerable, even "damaged" in one way or another - literally "upgrading" them using shady science and body horror, with the idea that when the flower is in full bloom they reach their full potential as an idol... well, we don't even need to take a step back and stop taking it literally to see the parallels with the RL idol industry, the word "flower"/華 kind of speaks for itself.

Anyway, yeah, so that's why it's flowers. :D Maybe.

.

**By the way, here's a smaller play on 人間 (ningen/human) and 人形 (ningyou/doll), which is not a huge pun or anything, but the two words are visually kind of similar - they sort of “rhyme” - so that adds another dimension to the slogan. It's the same kind of visual pun used in say, Mairimashita! Iruma-kun, where Iruma's name (入間) is visually very similar to the word "human" (人間) - what with him being a human in the world of demons and so on and so forth.

[limenysnocket]

Japanese Denim

Summary: You're free to travel with Taika again. Where to go? Think about it. For the past year, Taika has been bingeing anime non-stop, and his closet is full of the Japanese culture. What better place... Japan.

Pairing: Taika Waititi x Reader

Warnings: Baecation- fluff, swearing.

Words: 2.1k

A/N: This is for @fineanddandy 's lovely little challenge, and I've always wanted to go to Okinawa so this is an opportunity to do some research for fun and for my amusement.

@olyvoyl @honorarytenenbaum @dandywaititi @mrtommyshelby @whatwememeintheshadows​

•○●•○●•○●•

"Thank you! And enjoy your stay at the Henn na Hotel!"

"How many times a day do you get served by a fucking dinosaur? Are you kidding me?" Taika was bouncing all the way to your room. His hand gestures only got wider by the second. "And this place is desolate. I'm starting to think the robots killed everyone for fuel."

"This isn't a Y2K situation, dumbass. It's like... the aftermath of that. And if robots actually needed to travel places," you shrugged, rolling your suitcase away from divots in the carpet.

This is where you chose to stay in Nagasaki. They called it the Henn na Hotel, where everything (absolutely everything) was ran by robots. No living staff, except for the maintenance crew. Nothing. They even gave you a little robot companion in your room that was like a moving Alexa with glowing eyes and an eerie, childish voice. It would even sing nursery rhymes if you asked it politely. But as Taika had exclaimed about when he was first booking his stay at the hotel, you had the choice to check in with a robotic raptor at the front desk. Of course, there were perfectly normal human robots, but those didn’t excite him as much.

And what could make this better? It was in the middle of a makeshift Dutch theme park called Huis Ten Bosch with nightly live performances and a walk of lights that would make you think you're on some sort of drug trip.

A lot of this was weird to you. Immediately, as soon as you got off the plane, both you and Taika had to take a safety course with a few other men and women. From earthquakes, to fires, to emergency evacuations. You were thinking your jet lag was going to be the worst part of your trip. You didn't get to go to sleep until you reached your hotel room. Which was hours later.

You woke back up at seven o'clock at night with Taika passed out right beside you. Dusk was just beginning to creep along the horizon. You walked to your window and pulled open the curtains. The sight amazed you. You gathered yourself up, throwing on some clothes, then tossing a pair at your sleeping boyfriend.

Taika woke up, completely disgruntled and still very sleepy. "Babe, what the fuck," he murmured, rubbing his eyes with a palm and clearly not ready to get up yet.

“Just shut up and get your clothes on. We’re going to have fun,” you whispered through the thin air of your hotel room. Begrudgingly, he got up and started to get dressed. Just a pair of shorts, his chucks, and a plain t-shirt. Nothing too eccentric since you did not want to draw in attention. Once he was ready, you were dragging him downstairs. Outside of your building, there was a slew of people walking around. Not too much to suffocate, but enough to know that humanity was thriving outside of your little robot-ran hotel room.

Passed all the people, Taika saw what excited you. It was dark now, and the throngs of lights coating each building you saw, were now on. The virtual reality merry-go-round was up and running, and live performances went on the little stage. People were gathered around every attraction, but Taika went to the performance first.

It was all bright dancing and wild colors. People were in front of the stage, doing the dances too with some kind of glee on their faces. It really was bizarre, since you and Taika seemed to be the only ones without eye masks on.

Taika tried his best to join in with the dancing, but really couldn’t catch on. Unless it was Michael Jackson’s, “Thriller,” or something he made up on the spot, the man cannot dance in sync. But, it was still fun to watch him try, so, you kept encouraging him, even though he was a mess. It was payback for all the times he messed with you. Like stealing your favorite hoodie.

He was ready for more of the tour when he was finished, and what you figured might be your night of taking him around, turned into his. You didn’t mind. He was taking you to the places you wanted to go anyway. Through the forest of lights, down the glowing river, and you enjoyed the night water shows that were also lit up with bright techno colors. As a treat... you even let him have a look at the One Piece ship they have floating in the harbor.

Finishing up your night, you decided to take a stroll on Umbrella street. They were lit up in a lovely blue and pink color. All the stores that lounged on the sides were closing up, and there weren’t many people left lingering around the lights. Eventually, you and Taika were the only ones left. Your arm was wrapped around Taika’s, and all you could stare at was the lights. He had one hand in his pocket, and he let you lean most of your weight on him. It had only been a couple of hours since you started to take a look around, but you were tired again. The jet lag still hadn’t completely wore off, you supposed, and it showed.

“Come on,” Taika murmured into your ear, “Let’s get back to our room.”

It was another fifteen minutes before the park was totally shut down and was no longer accepting guests. You both drowsily made your way up to your hotel room, where your tiny robot friend was waiting for you, asking what time you were going to wake up. It was annoying, but the exhaustion made it easy to ignore. You got back into your pajamas, crawled into bed with Taika, and went to sleep.

The next morning, you were up bright ad early. The little robot friend on your desk still asked what time you were going to wake up. It would take care of itself, hopefully. The park was getting ready to open, by the time you left with Taika on your arm. From Nagasaki’s airport, you took a small plane over to Naha, Okinawa, where you would spend the rest of your day, walking about in your swimsuit, until the sun set.

White sand, beautiful beaches, exquisite sushi, and odd looking statues that you had to ask the locals about. From shrines, to snakes, to boardwalks, it was all here, and you were going to take in all of it. 

Instead of staying in a lavish resort for the day, you and Taika just walked, took the monorail, or took a bike cab everywhere. Most of the time you were there, however, you spent on the beach. The crystalline waters called to you from a distance, and it just looked so blue! You couldn’t help yourself.

Taika went searching for shellfish, but he liked to spend time with you in the water. It was about twenty or so minutes in when he splashed a large amount of water at you. You spluttered, since most of it landed in your face. You wiped your eyes and caught him, holding his hands behind his back and carelessly looking around as if he had done nothing wrong. You didn’t buy his act, obviously, and you splashed back at him. To him, you had just declared war, and things were going to get serious.

Waves and waves of water were sent flying through the air, and both of you were drenched in battle. With how much you were moving, you were sure you scared all the fish away from the water.

At the very end, neither of you were sure who won, but you were both happy and tired. You took the opportunity to rest on the beach, laying on your stomach on a towel and enjoying the warm sunlight while it lasted. Taika sat beside you once he was satisfied with his search for shells. You took your time to go through some of his little collection and ended up being thoroughly impressed with his find. You found a few conch shells, but your favorite by far had to be the spider conch that he found. It was small, and could fit in the palm of your hand, but you still enjoyed the shape and color. He let you keep it.

After a long day, you decided to stop in a restaurant to grab something to eat. It was a lovely mom and pop shop that was based on soba noodles and sea food. There was floor seating, or there were tables and chairs. Taika picked fast and it was right to the floor seating. Tatami matts and plush cushions provided a much cozier atmosphere than first suggested. When the time to order food came around, you both had a lot to cover. Playing at the beach worked up an appetite. The people working were more than happy to oblige to your needs and would feed you the best food anyone could make.

With your food came traditional Sake and two tiny teacups of herbal teas. With a table covered in food, and alcohol thrown into the mix, the night would last a very long time. Yet, you still had a plane to catch by the end of it. You stayed as long as possible, ate as much as you could stomach, and drank a lot more Sake than you would like to admit, but hey, you still had an amazing time. Not to mention how much attention Taika was getting from passers by. He could get quite loud, and those who could understand or speak English were drawn to his boisterous aura.

You left the restaurant, fat and happy, as well as Taika. After gathering up your shoes and changing out of your wet clothes, you took a plane to Osaka, then took the train the rest of the way to the small town of Karuizawa. Taika had booked a pension for the night, and it would be capping off your small vacation with him in Japan.

The pension was a small, red roofed building, just outside of the shopping district. Luckily, the lights were still on by the time you made it in. The buzz of the Sake still had quite the grip on you, so you let Taika do most of the talking. It took a minute, since the people running the place had to send out for someone who spoke English, but the waiting wasn’t all that bad. You got the chance to take a look at the beautiful stone garden outside of the window.

Again, the place you were staying wasn’t fancy or as nice as the robotic one you stayed in, but it was still comforting. They gave you a king-sized bed in a big bedroom with circular windows, a living room, large bathroom, and a mini kitchen. The remnants of the complimentary dinner they had served a few hours before you arrived still wafted through the air.

After long showers and setting out clothes for tomorrow (Taika insisted he wear his denim kimono), you both sat in the small living room for some time, trying to make sense of a random game show that played on the television. Taika had his arm wrapped around your shoulders, his body still pleasantly warm from his shower and the rose petal soap he used tickled your sense of smell. His hair was still dripping with water, and little beads of it would fall onto his broad shoulders. Your hands were fiddling with the spider shell he had given you earlier, and you just looked on at the television ahead, struggling to stay awake.

“Doing okay?” Taika muttered to you, sounding quite tired himself. You gave him a low hum in response and tucked your nose into his shirt. You wrapped your arms around him, and he didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Did you have a good time?” He always liked to reassure himself with you, to make sure you were always happy and satisfied with the things he picked out. You gave him another hum, but in a more approving tone than last time. He blew a laugh through his nose and leaned his head back, resting it on the couch and staring at the ceiling for a time.

“Good...” he said again softly, “I’m glad you did...”

[geckosong]

Anime Recommendations

Here lies even more shows that are worth watching

Demon Slayer (2019)

A family is attacked by demons and only two members survive - Tanjiro and his sister Nezuko, who is turning into a demon slowly. Tanjiro sets out to become a demon slayer to avenge his family and cure his sister.

My Rating: 8/10

Death Parade (2015)

After death, there is no heaven or hell, only a bar that stands between reincarnation and oblivion. There the attendant will, one after another, challenge pairs of the recently deceased to a random game in which their fate of either ascending into reincarnation or falling into the void will be wagered. Whether it's bowling, darts, air hockey, or anything in between, each person's true nature will be revealed in a ghastly parade of death and memories, dancing to the whims of the bar's master. Welcome to Quindecim, where Decim, arbiter of the afterlife, awaits! Death Parade expands upon the original one-shot intended to train young animators. It follows yet more people receiving judgment—until a strange, black-haired guest causes Decim to begin questioning his own rulings.

My Rating: 8/10

Noragami (2014)

In times of need, if you look in the right place, you just may see a strange telephone number scrawled in red. If you call this number, you will hear a young man introduce himself as the God Yato. Yato is a minor deity and a self-proclaimed "Delivery God," who dreams of having millions of worshippers. Without a single shrine dedicated to his name, however, his goals are far from being realized. He spends his days doing odd jobs for five yen apiece, until his weapon partner becomes fed up with her useless master and deserts him. Just as things seem to be looking grim for the god, his fortune changes when a middle school girl, Hiyori Iki, supposedly saves Yato from a car accident, taking the hit for him. Remarkably, she survives, but the event has caused her soul to become loose and hence able to leave her body. Hiyori demands that Yato return her to normal, but upon learning that he needs a new partner to do so, reluctantly agrees to help him find one. And with Hiyori's help, Yato's luck may finally be turning around.

My Rating: 9/10

Yona of the Dawn (2014-2015)

Princess Yona lives a life of luxury and ease, completely sheltered from the problems of the seemingly peaceful Kingdom of Kouka; however, the sudden murder of the king and betrayal of her beloved cousin Su-won places Yona's life in mortal peril. Forced to escape only with Son Hak, who is both her childhood friend and bodyguard, the naïve princess soon discovers that Kouka is not the idyllic place she envisioned it to be. Poverty, strife, and corruption run rampant, making reclaiming the throne nothing more than a wishful fantasy given the kingdom's current state. With only a mysterious legend to guide her, Yona must discover a way to restore Kouka to its former glory while being pursued relentlessly by the forces of the new King of Kouka.

My Rating: 8/10

Haikyu! (2014-Present)

Inspired after watching a volleyball ace nicknamed "Little Giant" in action, small-statured Shouyou Hinata revives the volleyball club at his middle school. The newly-formed team even makes it to a tournament; however, their first match turns out to be their last when they are brutally squashed by the "King of the Court," Tobio Kageyama. Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama, and so after graduating from middle school, he joins Karasuno High School's volleyball team—only to find that his sworn rival, Kageyama, is now his teammate. Thanks to his short height, Hinata struggles to find his role on the team, even with his superior jumping power. Surprisingly, Kageyama has his own problems that only Hinata can help with, and learning to work together appears to be the only way for the team to be successful.

My Rating: 9/10

The Devil is a Part-Timer (2013)

Striking fear into the hearts of mortals, the Demon Lord Satan begins to conquer the land of Ente Isla with his vast demon armies. However, while embarking on this brutal quest to take over the continent, his efforts are foiled by the hero Emilia, forcing Satan to make his swift retreat through a dimensional portal only to land in the human world. Along with his loyal general Alsiel, the demon finds himself stranded in modern-day Tokyo and vows to return and complete his subjugation of Ente Isla—that is, if they can find a way back! Powerless in a world without magic, Satan assumes the guise of a human named Sadao Maou and begins working at MgRonald's—a local fast-food restaurant—to make ends meet. He soon realizes that his goal of conquering Ente Isla is just not enough as he grows determined to climb the corporate ladder and become the ruler of Earth, one satisfied customer at a time!

My Rating: 9/10

The Promised Neverland (2019-Present)

Surrounded by a forest and a gated entrance, the Grace Field House is inhabited by orphans happily living together as one big family, looked after by their "Mama," Isabella. Although they are required to take tests daily, the children are free to spend their time as they see fit, usually playing outside, as long as they do not venture too far from the orphanage—a rule they are expected to follow no matter what. However, all good times must come to an end, as every few months, a child is adopted and sent to live with their new family... never to be heard from again. However, the three oldest siblings have their suspicions about what is actually happening at the orphanage, and they are about to discover the cruel fate that awaits the children living at Grace Field, including the twisted nature of their beloved Mama.

My Rating: 8/10

Toradora (2008-2009)

Ryuuji Takasu is a gentle high school student with a love for housework; but in contrast to his kind nature, he has an intimidating face that often gets him labeled as a delinquent. On the other hand is Taiga Aisaka, a small, doll-like student, who is anything but a cute and fragile girl. Equipped with a wooden katana and feisty personality, Taiga is known throughout the school as the "Palmtop Tiger." One day, an embarrassing mistake causes the two students to cross paths. Ryuuji discovers that Taiga actually has a sweet side: she has a crush on the popular vice president, Yuusaku Kitamura, who happens to be his best friend. But things only get crazier when Ryuuji reveals that he has a crush on Minori Kushieda—Taiga's best friend! Toradora! is a romantic comedy that follows this odd duo as they embark on a quest to help each other with their respective crushes, forming an unlikely alliance in the process.

My Rating: 9/10

Hypnosis Microphone: Division Rap Battle - Rhyme Anima (2020)

In a world overtaken by war and conflict, "Hypnosis Microphones"—devices through which a user channels lyrics that can affect the listener's brain and even cause physical damage—were introduced to the masses by the Party of Words. Revolutionizing warfare, Hypnosis Mics have transformed words and music into the sole weapons used by gangsters, terrorists, and the military, with physical weapons having been banned from use. As a result of swooping in during the chaos, the all-female Party of Words rules over the Japanese government. Women in Japan now live in Chuuouku, while men battle over surrounding territories outside the ward through rap battles. With intentions unknown, the Party of Words begins to gather the former members of the now-disbanded legendary rap crew The Dirty Dawg to fight not for territory or war, but for their respective crew's pride and honor in the greatest rap battle of all time. The first Division Rap Battle is about to commence, and practice isn't something these rappers are going to need.

My Rating: 6/10

Kamisama Kiss (2012)

High schooler Nanami Momozono has quite a few problems of late, beginning with her absentee father being in such extreme debt that they lose everything. Downtrodden and homeless, she runs into a man being harassed by a dog. After helping him, she explains her situation, and to her surprise, he offers her his home in gratitude. But when she discovers that said home is a rundown shrine, she tries to leave; however, she is caught by two shrine spirits and a fox familiar named Tomoe. They mistake her for the man Nanami rescued—the land god of the shrine, Mikage. Realizing that Mikage must have sent her there as a replacement god, Tomoe leaves abruptly, refusing to serve a human. Rather than going back to being homeless, Nanami immerses herself in her divine duties. But if she must keep things running smoothly, she will need the help of a certain hot-headed fox. In her fumbling attempt to seek out Tomoe, she lands in trouble and ends up sealing a contract with him. Now the two must traverse the path of godhood together as god and familiar; but it will not be easy, for new threats arise in the form of a youkai who wants to devour the girl, a snake that wants to marry her, and Nanami's own unexpected feelings for her new familiar.

My Rating: 7/10

My Roommate is a Cat (2019)

Subaru Mikazuki is a 23-year-old mystery novel author, major introvert, and an awkwardly shy person. He would much rather stay home to read a book than go outside and interact with others. Further exacerbating this life of solitude, his parents tragically died in an accident many years ago, leaving him alone in the world. One day, while giving offerings at his parents' grave, Subaru runs into a small black and white cat named Haru, which he ends up taking home with him. Subaru, however, has never taken care of anyone else in his life—can he even take care of a cat? Haru is grateful toward Subaru, as he gives her all the food she wants—a luxury for a cat who is used to a rough life on the streets. But she notices that Subaru can't even seem to take care of himself! Will she be okay with this dunce?

My Rating: 7/10