I'm Falling in Love

You know that feeling when you're falling in love? The butterflies in the belly, the can't stop thinking about the object of your affections, the listening to songs that remind you of them? That's me right now. Except, it's for dance. Yeah, that's right, I'm falling for salsa and bachata. Like seriously though, that's the closest way I can explain this feeling.

So, on Halloween, me and husband went to see our actor friend's show in Ebisu. It was all in Japanese and covered some difficult topics, such as racism, fast fashion and wastefulness, etc. After the show, I wasn't sure how much of it I really understood. We met up with our friend in the show for drinks after and talked about it in English, and I apparently really did get the meaning! Like, some of the small conversational details and jokes I missed, but I actually understood the most important parts of the story! This is the second fully in-Japanese theatre performance I've witnessed. The other was of another amazing actor friend, and it was more comedy and slightly easier to follow. 

I was already planning to meet my best friend who made me try salsa after this. He taught me some of the basics so he could practice with me, and the first event I went to, he performed at. His salsa people were having their weekly lesson and biweekly social dance on Halloween. Husband isn't into dance like me, so he was on the fence about going, but we got a free trial lesson, as it was our first time, so he ended up trying it out. Our actor friend also gave it a try! 

They learned the basics, and then as soon as the social dance part came around, I was ready to dance all night! They both left to grab drinks, and I hit the dance floor. About 3 dances in, they came back, and they were like...already itching to leave. Luckily our actor friend had to meet up with his cast for drinks too, because this was their last performance, and husband wanted to get to know them too, so he made his escape and tagged along! Meanwhile, I danced with some amazing dancers, some of whom I'd already met and danced with a bit at the other event I went to and it was SO FUN! So, both me and my husband ended up partying and missing our last train together in Ebisu, while Shibuya Halloween insanity happened one train stop away.

At around 11:25, after some kind of cuban salsa dance circle thingy that confused both me and my friend, the dancers started talking about their last trains, which I had completely ignored. I grabbed my phone (also ignored) right when husband called, and told him I'd been dancing and wanted to continue, and he said he was having fun and also wanted to continue XD Buuuut then the dancing stared to fizzle, and so did husband's group, so we met up (I got to meet the actors, and it was cool seeing what they were really like as people), and walked as far as we could which was a little beyond Yoyogi park before giving up and ¥5000 taxi-ing it home.

Now, I am constantly thinking and talking about dancing, listening to bachata music, and plotting and planning the next event I can go to. I tried west coast swing recently which seems to be kind of like the bachata of the swing dance world, but while I loooooove bachata, I just can't figure out west coast swing, and I'm not entirely sure yet if I want to... Everyone I met at the 2 west coast swing events I tried was SUPER nice and welcoming and a lot knew pretty good English too. 

My favorite dances in order, right now are maybe bachata, salsa, then Lindy hop/east coast swing. I looked up a bit of background info about salsa and bachata, because I knew that they are Latin dances, but not much beyond that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that bachata is originally Dominican. I am half-Dominican, but never really had a chance to connect with that half of me since I was a child. Divorce, moving from New York to West Virginia, I forgot the little I did know.

This Sunday after my play rehearsal, there is an event with the west coast swing people that has a west coast swing lesson AND bachata lesson, and social dance, so I'm thinking to give west coast swing another (3rd) chance, and if I still don't get it, at least I can bachata!

Karaoke, Rehearsal, and Swing Dancing - Dancing and Singing all Day!

Saturday, October 14

After I finished work on Saturday night, my husband came to meet me, and went to karaoke after a longish time of not going. You can set it up where it rates how well you do a song and gives you a percentage, along with showing your previous percentage to compare (if you have an account login). I often get 90 and up, never 100 because it's pretty strict, particularly DAM. Anyway, all of my songs were worse than last time and it bothered me! Singing is one of the only things I truly feel confident that I am good at, but I just wasn't that night. So instead of revisiting old favorites, I tried to learn a new song and technique, a Japanese enka song called "Tsugaru Kaikyou Fuyugeshiki". The Japanese itself is hard enough, but to sing enka, there's this type of technique called kobushi in Japanese, and the closest I could find to what it is in English is either warbling, melisma, or tremolo. I found that none of these seemed to truly directly translate to kobushi. Anyway, I couldn't do it, but I improved a little, and I'm glad to have a singing technique to practice and a new song to learn!

 Sunday, October 15th

This morning began with Midsummer rehearsal. This is not meant to be a musical, but we have some songs and dances, especially for the fairies (which includes me). Lately these dance we've had to learn for the play, I feel like I'm doing sub-par. I mean I always felt like I wasn't that great at dancing when I was young and taking lessons, but I'm with other people who also haven't taken lessons and dance isn't like their main focus, but they get the dances quickly and I feel like I'm struggling and just ungraceful. It's probably not actually that bad, but I feel like it is. I'm just feel like I'm old and I've gained a bit of weight and feel blah about it. And I don't wanna, so I need to work harder! I want to make my body stronger.

This morning, we went straight into the finale song and dance. Oh that's another thing, singing and dancing at the same time WHILE wearing a mask, I feel like I can't breathe, and I either forget to sing or mess up the dance in the process. But anyway, I totally messed up everything and felt awful. Later when practicing the more difficult Lullaby song and dance (mostly focussing on the dance though) I felt like I was a little better. 

After rehearsal, I had to quickly catch a train and head to a swing dance event located between Yoga and Futakotamagawa stations. I went to this one before, and it was really chill and lots of fun! This time there weren't so many people and about an equal number of leads and follows, so I was dancing non-stop for a while. One guy came who I guess used to come often, but hadn't for a while. I've found that (me included) a lot of the long time swing crew and slowly trickling back into dance after covid. We chatted for a bit because he knew English well and lived in both the US and Australia.

Then I went to meet my friend in Kawagoe for a festival, but that will be in a separate blog post because I took so many pictures!

Fun with Choom, Rehearsal, Swing Dancing and Friend-Making

 Monday October 3rd

I got to see Choom! We walked by the salon she get's her hair done at and saw another friend there getting her hair done, so we dropped in to say hi. What are the chances?? Also, one time I was randomly walking by there alone, and the hairdresser literally ran out and told me my hair was cool and he wanted to have me hair model sometime, and I was like OK, actually my friend is one of your regulars 😄 Anyway, Choom came to my place, helped me organize my disaster of a room a little more, and then we wandered around and did a mini photo shoot, and had a long chat about life while on the swings at at park. The kinmokusei were just past their peak of full bloom.

 Sunday October 10

This was quite an eventful, fun Sunday! Husband was in Osaka with his band, so I tried to have fun anyway. It started out with rehearsal for Midsummer, and I helped our new fairy learn her part in the songs, and we practiced the dances a bit. After that, we went for lunch and drinks at a nearby Izakaya with lots of fish. I was in a really good mood, and I was having so much fun I didn't want to go, even though I had a swing dance event from 3. 

Tomato hai

Table charge food. The fish is shishamo which I have gotten used to eating, even though it has a head and eyes

It just landed like this. Lucky, right?

I ended up leaving right on time to make it to swing dance!  I went to this monthly event before, recently. In fact, I think that this event, pre-covid, is where I met my best friend Mo! Anyway, I was a bit self conscious about smelling like izakaya, but since I was a bit tipsy at that point, I was fine, and jumped right into that prime dancing mode without the awkward warm up time. 

There was a jam session for people who came from afar for this event. There were a few people from Tochigi, other parts of Japan, one guy from abroad. I figured swing people already knew me, so I was safe, but the cute blue-haired, super amazing lead girl pushed me forward, because it ended up being kind of a foreigner jam, so I didn't argue, cuz I'm a Leo and get to be the center of attention, and then I get to dance with everyone 😁 Right before this, I was asked to dance by a Japanese swing-dancer guy I hadn't met before. After the jam, we danced, and he was amazing! Then, he asked for a second dance, which my proud self was glad to accept, that this super awesome dancer actually wanted a second dance with me?! I talked to another guy after, and then we danced and he could kick so high when we did Charleston, I was like, my old ballerina skills better come back and beat this man's kick! The funniest thing was we were all speaking only Japanese during the event, but actually, they both knew really good English! I didn't find that out until later, when I met another cool Canadian girl who was new to Japan. I am glad that they spoke Japanese to me at first though! I want to have more chances to actually use Japanese, you know living in Japan and all, and most people are very quick and eager to try to speak whatever English they know, which often is not a lot, so it makes it hard to get to really get to know people. For me, personally, at least. I'd rather that you dive in with Japanese, I follow the best I can, which is pretty decent, and getting better, then if I'm reeeeeally lost, I will let you know, and then, we can try to figure out the English. I don't want to just be an English language partner, I want friendship, no matter what language we do it in!

Anyway, after the event, one of the guys finally invited me to the after party! I finally had my chance to break into the swing friend group. They now knew I know enough Japanese to communicate, and that I'm truly interested in swing and permanently gonna be in Japan. It all starts here, and man, was it a good start! We went to grab some craft beers at a local brewery. I talked a lot more deeply to everyone in English and Japanese.  After the brewery served their last orders, we ended up on the way to the event leaders' home after stopping to grab some drinks to bring with us. They cooked us dinner, and I talked and listened and learned a lot about the swing community.

Here's to some more fun theatre rehearsal and swing dance adventures!

Which will be this weekend...and a festival...will be posted here! 😉

Swing Dancing in Tokyo Again!

 Hey! So after yet another dancing hiatus (thanks, covid), I've jumped back into the swing dance scene!

My summer break this year was shorter than usual because I had to make up time from my previous, uhhhh...covid vacation last winter. I can't complain too much because at least I didn't lose money, but it sucked working on my birthday. Anyway, I decided to look up swing dance events going on during my week off. I'd been occasionally checking the Facebook events, but they always fall on Saturdays when I work, or Sundays when I have play rehearsal, but can only maybe make it later in the day. During summer vacation, I was able to go to 3 events!

Event Number 1 Aug 11

First one was on the Odakyu line, Soshigaya in Setagaya. I chugged a 5% chu-hi for a bit of liquid courage on the way from the station and followed Google maps. It lead me to some neighborhood house's parking lot. That couldn't be right, so I tried looking it up again and changing it a bit, but then I got a different address about an hour away! I could make it in time for the dance, but I wanted to go to the lesson first to meet people and brush up on my dancing. I wandered a few minutes trying to figure out what to do, when an older man came up to me and asked me in Japanese if I was heading to this swing dance event, and I was like yes! Yay, so I'm not the only one who ended up confused in front of someone's parking lot. So we (he) asked a neighborhood person where the hall was, and it was actually one street down, right behind the parking lot!

We went in and were just on-time. I was hoping to see at least some people I met years ago when I was dancing before, but I did not. The teacher spoke some English and asked me if I'd danced before, and I told him yeah, but not for a while. Then, the man I met outside previously started speaking to me in perfect English! It turns out he wasn't Japanese, as I'd assumed he was, with his mask on and good Japanese language ability. He is also from America! 

The lesson went well, I realized I remembered a lot more than I thought. Dancing came right back to me. Me and me new friend hit it off, not only conversationally, but dance-wise. We have good dance chemistry! His specialty is west coast swing, but most circles in Tokyo tend to be east coast focused. We had a shortage of leads, but still I was dancing quite a bit. I met another few foreigner people, a girl and 2 guys who were nice. I wanted to try to break into the Japanese group and speak more Japanese, but I was too shy.  

At the end of the dance when it was me and the Japanese girls cleaning up, I lingered a bit to help out hoping to connect with someone, and one comment kinda bothered me. Maybe I am overthinking or misunderstanding something, but one girl complained something along the lines of all the leads being "gaijin". The word "gaijin" can be taken or meant in a negative way. The kanji literally translates to "outside person", while the true word for foreigner is "gaikokujin" which is "outside country person". The word gaijin is short and sweet, and we even call each other that, no hard feelings. I have no problem with any "bad" words on their own, but I got the feeling her meaning behind them was a bit stronger. Idk... It bothered me as the only obvious foreigner in the room who lingered behind offering to help, and like she just assumed I had no idea what she was saying and acted like I was invisible. 

Anyway, I still was hopeful that someone would try to include me or talk to me or something. One girl was talking about getting drinks together after, and I was there, but at that point I really felt invisible. Whatever, I don't wanna be negative, but I wanna be honest, and this was how I felt at that time... Maybe they need to get used to me and realize I wanna be there and be friends. I gotta speak more Japanese and overcome my shyness? I am glad I went. I met a couple of cool people along with a person who makes me look forward to and feel passionate about dancing again.  I also learned that here's a lot I need to learn dance-wise. A lot of the Japanese women there were EXTREMELY good dancers. As leads, follows, everything. Like, I'm ok. I'm a good enough follow, but I learned that there's so much more I need to learn! I left this day feeling inspired and slightly sad. 

Event number 2 Aug 14

Zoshigaya in Toshima-ku. This one seems to have a monthly, same location. I decided to skip the lesson, but I came early enough to watch some of it. They were doing a solo jazz routine thingy, and my new swing friend dude was there. Also when I checked in, I recognized the check-in guy and he did me too! He said "hisashiburi" which is "Long time, no see!". That was nice. Then, me and my friend started dancing as soon as the lesson ended, and I got a little video for you! We danced A LOT, and I saw some people from the previous dance too.

Event number 3 Aug 20

This one was near Futakotamagawa. I was lucky that my work location this day was nearby. I could take a quick bus to get there. I, again, grabbed a quick chu-hi before-hand. It was so much fun! I met a girl who had her own drink, and was planning to hop onto another dance event after this one and she was a GREAT lead when she'd asked me to dance. The teacher knew English really well, and my new friend was there too. I danced until my whole body was sore! 

Event number 4 Sept 11

After work started up again, and my friend wasn't able to come, but I met some new interesting people. I had rehearsal for Midsummer Night's Dream with my company that morning, went to eat Yakiniku nearby, then left. At the event, I got to join only the last bit of the lesson. One girl was one of the leads, and she was really nice and complemented my outfit. This event also included a Balboa circle, which I don't know at all, so some of the leads were I guess newish to the swing crew or at least new to me. Anyway, after the lesson, I found out that that girl was really good at English, so I'd asked her why she joined swing and she said she was into musical theatre, so I told her about my theatre/English job and the show I was working on that morning, and she was like wait, I know your job.... she had been a student at my company for years up until right before I started! She knew the people I was with that morning! What a small world!

Anyway, after that, I was a bit shy because there wasn't anyone else I knew well, and then she left. I think everyone there thought I was totally new and only learned what we did at the lesson which was suuuuuuper basic Charleston, so every lead I met at the lesson who asked me to dance assumed that was all I could do and didn't try anything else with me. All the others who came later didn't ask me to dance, and I don't ask people, I wait to be asked. So, I didn't dance much. But then I made another friend who was from Colombia, but unfortunately doesn't live in Tokyo. She likes Japanese fashion, music, and has been into swing dance for years!! How is it possible to meet someone so interested in these specific things like me? XD She is a student and lives far away, so I just hope our paths line up again someday. She seemed to have found and liked every cool place in Tokyo I also frequent after only being here for a short trip.

Anyway, those ar my recent swing dance adventures! I've got some more coming up again this weekend and later in October 😉

Getting Back in the Swing of Things - Swing Dancing in Tokyo!

Here's the link to my Youtube video (viewable from March 10th)

If you guys have been following any of my social media for a while, especially during college, you'll know I was very involved in swing dancing for a few years! I did it all throughout college, even dabbled in it a bit when I studied abroad in Nagoya. 

After I graduated college, I kind of went on a dancing hiatus. I was focusing on other hobbies, work, and job hunting in Japan, and my previous boyfriend was very much in the swing dancing community where I was, so it became a bit awkward for me to continue. Of course I share many wonderful hobbies with my boyfriend now, but dancing is NOT one of them for him, and that's totally ok!

So, it's been a bit intimidating for me to try to break into Tokyo's swing dancing scene completely on my own. But, I knew there WAS one at least. I remember vividly while I was living in Kumagaya, one weekend (Sun/Mon) I was in Tokyo visiting my boyfriend, and saw through the many Tokyo swing dance Facebook groups and pages I'd followed that there was an event one station away from where I’d be meeting my boyfriend when he finished work to drive me back to Kumagaya that night. I went up to the outside of the venue and was too scared to go in! I wandered around, and kept coming back, but couldn’t muster up the courage to go inside. This was about 2 years ago? (Fast forward to last weekend, I went there with my friend Mo and had an amazing time XD)

So here’s how I finally dove in! Dancing Bus was hosting a Christmas party in Tamagawa. It was my first day of my winter New Year work break, and my original plans that I was so excited about got cancelled. I woke up really early bursting with energy to go out and do as much as I could while I had the free time, and a bit upset that my original plans failed, so I was scrolling through Facebook and Twitter and found:

1. There was a Harajuku Fashion Walk going on that afternoon, which I'd been wanting to go to again, and

2. This swing dance event that I'd clicked "maybe" attending.

So I decided to do both in the same day!
(There'll be another post for the fashion walk here, and a video here once they're completed!)

I showed up to the venue early, suuuuper nervous, and a lovely Japanese woman started talking to me in English. Just basic stuff like how long have you been dancing and all that, but I felt a little bit more at ease, and gained a friend. I went in, there was wine and some snacks. I had some wine to calm down, and the dancing began. I sat out the first to get an idea of what kinds of dancers were around, and because I hadn't danced in a few years, I was nervous if I even remembered how! There was another not-Japanese person, and I asked my friend about her (and after a few dances and realizing I do kind of remember how to dance!).

I think I speak for most foreigners in Japan when I say we are a bit nervous meeting other foreigners. Or is it just me? There's a possibility that they could understand you so well and become your new best friend, which is exactly what happened! My Japanese friend introduced me, because I was too shy to introduce myself. This is the lovely Mo who has inspired my recent jump back into blogging.

So after dancing quite a bit, we had a break and a few announcements, along with some amazing cake made by one of the dancers, and then they announced that they were gonna do a jam. I remembered having birthday jams at my previous swing circle. They were having a new person jam...WHICH WAS ME. I was like "whaaaattttt noooooooooo whyyyy???????" but, it was so much fun, and since I'm a Leo, I actually like being the center of attention, even if I slightly don't at first XD After that, we did the Shim Sham which I need to brush up on.

Some nights of swing dancing are just lazy and you want to watch and socialize. Some are ok, you can dance a bit and relax a bit. Some, you get to that point where every dance is amazing and you could just keep dancing without ever tiring. This was one of those nights. At first I was a bit rusty, but by the end of the night, I really felt it all come back to me. I spoke lots of Japanese, English, made friends with people who understand me from all over the world.

I'm so glad that I finally had the courage to start dancing again

I think I'm going to start blogging again

Hey guys, long time no blog!

So I've kind of stopped blogging for a few years, shortly after I returned from my study abroad in Japan. I was recently reading my lovely friend Mo's blog, and it sparked my urge to blog again!

 I’ve been working a lot on YouTube, so I haven’t been totally gone. I’m going to try to post some blog posts about my YouTube videos do you can read more in depth about my adventures, and I can add some photos in. Since I'd started making videos, I kind of didn't so much feel like I needed blogging as an outlet anymore, but I frequently go back here to find stuff and remind myself of my study abroad experience or find old pictures, and I kind of miss it. 

I also want to have a bit more of a diary kind of thing like I used to. It’s kind of nice to type things out than just saying them on video because I can be more clear here. I guess I’ve realized that I may have seasonal depression because every year around this time is when I lose my creative spark, work (which I actually like) starts to get me down, and I can feel the pressure to do more with my life without the time or energy to make it happen! But I remember that there definitely are times where I’m full of energy, seeing friends constantly, photo shooting, going out to see cool Japan stuff and flowers, and I thought, oh that’s because it was warm outside! It doesn’t get as cold here as it did in WV and NY, but I still would rather be sweating in the extreme Tokyo (or even Kumagaya) heat, than even just a little bit cold. I haven’t even been dressing up fashionably very often, and I realized that’s because of the cold too. I hate to be cold, so in the chilly mornings, I always opt for the layers of warm over the cute skirts. 

I’ve been really building my Liz Lisa collection lately using Mercari (Japanese secondhand sales app) and constantly checking out thrift stores (so also I haven’t spent more than ¥2000/$20 on any of my Liz Lisa items) and I really want to wear them, but it’s just not the season yet. When it was still a bit warm in the fall, I really started to dive into modeling, but then the winter hit and I haven’t been so much into it (plus work and shooting outside in cold is hard). I really want to dive back into it in spring with the cherry blossoms! I’m going to see as many flowers as possible, I want to FILL my Instagram feeds with flowers! They make me happy and I am so ridiculously excited for them!

Lately I've been playing around a lot more with photography. My passions I guess change in waves, but always alternate between Youtube vlogging, photography, modeling, fashion, and music related things. Oh, and I started swing dancing again, but that's gonna be its own whole post I think.

Anyway, I think for this blog I’ll just post whatever, whenever. It’ll be less orderly than my YouTube, though I kind of do the same for YouTube anyway. I still have a tiny glimmer of hope that my YouTube might somehow start to make me a little extra side money though XD But that’s not my goal, my goal is to have fun and have my own video diary of my life while possibly helping out someone traveling or moving to Japan in the process! My blog will be more personal, when I can go back and see more of my deeper thoughtful about my day. Then twitter is my quick thought diary!

Anyway, thank you guys for reading if you got this far, and be ready to see more on here in the future!

Halloween! Costumes Around WVU Campus and Swing Dance!

I've been starting to take pictures of fashion around campus, but since yesterday was Halloween, I decided to take pictures of costumes that people wore to class! I think the fashion posts will be a monthly thing, until I start getting a lot of pictures though =]

 One of the first people I saw that morning...definitely a good start to the day!

Of course there were quite a few good costumes in the Creative Arts Centre for the short time I spent there that day.  I'm sure if I wanted to hang out there for awhile I would have gotten MANY more.

One friend dressed as the Joker, and the other as what the Joker is when he isn't dressed up XD

 And here are people I ran into throughout the day before I had my last class

These guys even had their lunch as a tea party!

 It was nice to see people even dressing up for class, from just parts of their costume to full blown complete transformations!

Since I've been low on time and money, I used my favorite steampunk model Kato as my inspiration, and threw this together from my closet!

I also helped out some of my friends with their makeup

Here's some pictures from the dance!

Well, that's it for now!

♡❤♡ ♡❤♡ ♡❤♡ ♡❤♡ ♡❤♡ ♡❤♡ ♡❤♡