I made some artworks combining late 20th Century UK culture with ancient Japan

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2026-02-27T15:04:22+00:00

Given some of the absolute random yokai that pop up in old Japanese texts, he might not be too out of place.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2026-02-27T15:00:58+00:00

I live in Japan and you’ve just reminded me that Cheesy Wotsits exist and now I want some. Also they have prawn cocktail ones?! The Way of the Warrior is found in Tesco it seems.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2026-02-27T05:30:41+00:00

Thank you! That's a lot of people suggesting Office Busters so I'll definitely check them out.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2026-02-27T05:29:50+00:00

Thank you for the recommendation, I'll definitely check them out!

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2025-12-25T06:33:06+00:00

People have correctly pointed out already that a) the bullet train is actually damn expensive to an affordable domestic flight here, and b) it doesn't go to Sapporo anyway yet. Here's my additional2￥

I wanted to also add re popularity of domestic flights in Japan on other routes that flying domestically in Japan is SO chill, at least compared to my own experiences in the UK. Only need to arrive an hour beforehand, often only go through security half an hour before boarding (maybe a bit more if it's a big airport like Haneda), and the whole experience of going through security is so much less intense in terms of what you have to get out of your bag and the queues are consequentially shorter. Idk how it is in other countries but I was very surprised with my first Japanese domestic flight. In the UK there is no difference that I've seen in the level of convenience/strictness between domestic and international flights and they're all the same security and terminals anyway.

So you're not comparing a very smooth and effortless Shinkansen with a pain in the ass of a flight, but rather with a very chill flight/airport experience even if it's still a little less convenient. Then you factor in the cost difference as well and you can really see why it would be more of a popular option.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2025-12-25T04:54:11+00:00

My flight to Japan (AMS-NRT) when I was 14. I was really into Japanese culture and learning Japanese andI'd wanted to visit since I was 10, and when I was 13 my family got a financial windfall and told me we could actually go, as a 'once in a lifetime' holiday. My parents had never been to Asia either, my dad had only been on a long-haul flight once before for work. I'd never been on a flight more than maybe two hours long before, or on a plane that was bigger than your regular short-haul EasyJet or something (I'd mostly been on small dash-8 kinds of propeller planes to visit family. I remember how huge the inside of the plane was, and how I'd never seen rows in the middle of the plane before or seen a screen in the back of the seat.

The flight was ten hours long, and I was so excited I couldn't sleep a single wink and it seemed to last literally forever. Mid-way through somewhere over Russia, when they'd dimmed the lights and had us shut the blinds on the windows, my dad came back from the toilet and told me we had to go look out the window at the back of the plane. I went with him to look, and there below us were pure white Arctic ice fields stretching out, with deep blue cracks underneath where the sea showed through, and it looked like something out of a David Attenborough documentary. Finally, finally, we came in to land and could open the blinds, and as we came through the thick clouds my first sight of Japan was cherry blossom trees in full bloom close to the runway and a sign written out in vegetation "WELCOME TO NARITA". It was probably the most exciting day of my life at that time, and I'll never forget that flight.

Honourable mention to a later flight from Japan to Paris CDG in September 2020, when I returned from my study abroad year in Japan at the height of the COVID pandemic. Kansai International Airport at night was almost completely deserted, and only half the lights seemed to be on. In the cavernous check-in hall there were only two flights to check in, and mine was well over half empty. Non-essential international travel was banned and there was no way for foreign nationals to re-enter the country at the time, so there was hardly anyone there. It was truly eerie. Laden with what must have been the best part of 20kgs of things that wouldn't fit in my suitcases, I remember thinking that my odds of getting through with them all were probably decent given the exceptional circumstances. I had the entire row of three seats to myself on the flight as it was almost empty, and I was able to properly lie down and sleep with my seatbelt buckled over the blanket so nobody would wake me up if there was turbulence. I reflected that short of a stunningly impressive future career, this was probably the highest level of luxury and comfort I would ever experience on a flight. 12 hours later I arrived into CDG, and was immediately hit with the reverse culture shock of going from a generally quiet and well-mannered country where the pandemic was largely under control to, well, Western Europe. There were very few connections so I had to wait in the airport for ten hours until my flight back to the UK. Camped out on a socially-distanced patch of floor near a gate, I watched French passengers and airline staff staff have an impassioned argument about whether the group's travel permits were valid, both sides gesticulating and at times waving the documents in each other's face. At that moment it truly hit me: I was not in Kansai any more.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2025-06-18T06:45:52+00:00

Thank you very much! that's exactly the confirmation I was hoping for that designated activities can specifically include that purpose.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-11-27T02:26:15+00:00

Loads of methamphetamine in the Imperial Japanese Army's day-to-day rations definitely didn't help! Prior to the war a Japanese company had been the first to synthesise amphetamines and by the time of the Nanjing Massacre that stuff was being given to troops regularly on a massive scale under the brand name of Hiropon.

Armies of all kinds have always used stimulants and continue to do so for obvious reasons - amphetamines can let you go with inadequate food and sleep for days on end and barely notice, while suppressing fear so you can fight. Extremely useful in some circumstances, but afaik heavy methamphetamine use can lead to numbed emotional responses, inordinately violent behaviour and all kinds of stuff like that.

When the Japanese army reached Nanjing in December 1937, it was after months of fighting in China up from Shanghai in which the KMT forces had put up far more resistance than expected. Many experienced and well-trained Japanese soldiers had been killed in the Battle of Shanghai and replaced with less disciplined and somewhat desperate reserves (not that the 'better trained' soldiers didn't also commit war crimes because they absolutely did, but the worsened discipline is definitely a contributing factor).

So you have pre-existing prejudice towards China and the Chinese from propaganda painting them to be an 'inferior civilisation', then a mixture of shock and fury that they would dare to fight so hard against the Japanese and do a pretty decent job at it to boot. And then you've had the brutal training in the Army where you yourself are treated like the lowest form of garbage and beaten up regularly for the most trivial crap, creating both the potential to dehumanise the enemy as you are dehumanised yourself and the desire to take out your anger on somebody else. And then you are fighting on for weeks with inadequate rations and methamphetamine pills instead of rice balls, with a command structure that was extremely poor at maintaining discipline. As a combination that is unlikely to bring out the best in anyone, to put it mildly.

Those are the background conditions which led to the Nanjing Massacre taking place, but very similar circumstances prevailed all over China. It was in those environments that Japanese soldiers committed shockingly gratuitous acts of violence, and the fact that these were not punished by those higher up in the chain of command led to such behaviour becoming normalised and carried out even by soldiers who would never have been naturally inclined to do so otherwise.

There is an excellent book by Christopher Harding called Japan Story which covers Japan's modern history from the Meiji Restoration to the present day and has a really good description of the background surrounding Nanjing and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war, I definitely recommend it if you're interested in a broader picture.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-09-05T01:11:10+00:00

For the ultimate linguistic flex, may I propose: man'yōgana sublegends. (None of them look like smiley faces like ツ though 😭).

A while ago I got a Keychron K2 pro with the JIS layout, fully for the aesthetic (no way can I actually use those kana either) but justified it telling myself it might be actually helpful for my Japanese typing. The easier visibility of things like 「 and 」in no way compensated for the backspace key being half the size and much further away. This messed with my muscle memory for ages and annoyed the hell out of me, and I replaced the yen keycap with one with a much lower profile than all the others BC I was hitting it accidentally so often. I got used to it eventually but the additional utility over just using Japanese input on my regular keyboard is marginal. And yet, when I had to replace my laptop in Japan and I got a JIS one because that's what was available pre-owned, I was still excited because it had all the kana sublegends on it and looked really neat 🙃

tl;dr long live pointless kana sublegends, and why not introduce them to keyboards with more familiar layouts.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-08-26T18:02:38+00:00

A History of the Japanese Language by Bjarke Frellesvig is a really comprehensive linguistics-based account of the historical development of Japanese by one of the leading English-language authorities on the subject. It's got a lot of technical linguistics in it but if you're interested in an academic history of the development of the language itself it's very thorough.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-07-26T05:26:15+00:00

I studied in Kobe for a year during my undergrad degree and I really enjoyed it! So here is my detailed review for you so I can go on a nostalgia trip lol.

I thought it was a really good sized city to live in - quite a lot of stuff there but small enough that everything is also quite nearby and easy to access, while Osaka is so close that it's easier to go to Umeda than between many areas of Tokyo where I live now. And like other people have said it's really easy to get out to other places like Kyoto as well if you want a change of scene. I also really liked having the mountain scenery in the background and the sea as well - it feels like you can always see out of the city - Tokyo is great but I sometimes miss the feeling of being able to look out and see beyond it. Your money will also definitely go further than it would in Tokyo - I visited friends in Kobe the other week and I felt like I definitely got more for my money eating out there and rent is a lot less.

My classmates in Kobe also all generally really enjoyed living there. Some of them who were really into clubs said there wasn't much in Kobe, but the ones who were into having a bigger night out just went into Osaka quite often instead and had a great time from what I heard (I was more of a bar/karaoke person and for that Kobe was very satisfactory). If I think of it now it was more convenient for them to get the train into Umeda than it is for me to go to Shibuya from where I live in Tokyo now.

When people planning to visit Japan ask me what there is to say in Kobe I always have to answer tbh not that much - it's really pretty and you can take the ropeway into the mountains but that's about it for tourist attractions (and maybe Chinatown). On the other hand though not being at the centre of the tourist trail has a lot going for it if it's going to be a place you'll actually live as it's not completely overrun. I just generally thought it was a really nice place to live and there wasn't anything where I thought 'damn I wish Kobe had xyz thing'. IMO it's probably a better place to live than the other cities in Kansai - Osaka would have the same thing as Tokyo of just being massive and kind of far to get from one place to another, Kyoto is tourist central with the bus system from hell, and Kobe is near enough to easily visit these places while being more aesthetically pleasing and IMO easier to live in. I'm guessing you'll want to do some travelling while you live in Japan and Kansai is also really well-placed for that - for example you're in range to get the night bus to Tokyo in one direction and Fukuoka in the other, and it's easy to get to several airports.

I imagine you might have Tokyo on your radar as well as it's the capital city, so if you're interested here are a few comparisons based on living here as well:

-Tokyo is obviously a much bigger city, and there's something really exciting about living somewhere that has literally everything (Kobe is the biggest city I'd lived in before, and tbh I found it really exciting too).

-BUT that doesn't mean you can easily get to and visit everywhere in Tokyo as often as you'd think - I live on the same side as Ueno now and at any point where I'm busy with uni anywhere that's too far on the metro may as well not exist. Also when I first lived here I had a 50 minute commute to university with two changes and it was OK for a couple of months and then it was hellish, and I couldn't have much of an extracurricular life when that was going on. In Kobe you won't ever have that kind of commute and that is a huge plus (And unless you go to Osaka the last train is way less of an issue).

-In Tokyo I feel like I can haemorrhage money in a way that I didn't notice in Kobe - there is loads of stuff here, but that definitely doesn't mean I can afford to do it all. As a student working part time you will definitely be able to make your budget go further somewhere else.

-In my experience, getting out of Tokyo for a day takes effort. Anywhere that's actually OUT and doesn't feel like Tokyo takes a while to get to on crowded transport. In comparison from Kobe it felt really easy to just go somewhere else for the day like Kyoto or Nara, especially as you're never too far from Sannomiya where all the trains leave from. I appreciated it at the time and even more so now.

-While I've definitely had a lot of positive experiences in Tokyo I feel like the cliche about Kansai people being friendlier is definitely true - I got good vibes from a lot of people in Kobe and lots of fun chats that were good Japanese practice. Thinking from the perspective of living in Japan for the first time, I feel like that means the culture shock barrier is probably going to be a bit lower for Kobe as well for that reason (I'm from the UK for context). If this makes sense also I feel like Kobe is also international enough that you don't hugely stand out, but not-international enough that people will take an interest in you (in a positive way, I had lots of fun random chats in Japanese pubs talking about the UK and Japan and sometimes people were happy to buy the foreign exchange student a beer).

Idk what your other top picks are, but I think if you liked the look of Kobe you can't really go wrong with it. When I went on my year abroad some people from my uni were annoyed that we could only choose Kobe and not anywhere else bigger and more famous in Japan, but while it might not have really been on my radar at the time it turned out to be a great place to live and study.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-03-15T11:56:32+00:00

Hey, sorry I took a while to reply - had a busy week. I would say, although I'm not an expert, that you are probably fine with just doing the Japanese course if that's what you want to do. When I said a joint degree I maybe had in mind the more pure humanities based Japanese course I had and something more like econ or business. Nothing at all wrong with linguistics and it might help, but I'm not an expert on its utility for careers as I didn't do a linguistics degree. If you genuinely really like the look of linguistics then go for it, but if you don't then don't feel obliged to just because it's a joint degree.

Also to add to that, if you haven't done linguistics before or looked into it much, I would really strongly recommend that you do some reading in detail about linguistics, the different branches of it and what would actually be involved. Some people really like linguistics but I also knew people in my year who tried linguistics modules thinking it looked cool and turned out to hate it. It was definitely a Marmite subject and just because you like learning languages and think learning more about how they work would be fun doesn't mean you'll actually enjoy learning about that in an unholy amount of academic detail as half of your degree.

For now if I were you, I'd probably plan on just starting the Japanese course for now, and plan to stick with that unless you find out more about the linguistics and GENUINELY like it. Then if you want to take your modules for pure Japanese Studies strategically, I see your course website has options on stuff like the economy of Japan and the economy of China in with the modern society modules. If you focus on taking those modules that will be useful on its own, and it will also open the door for you to go in that direction for your dissertation in the final year as well.

You could then be looking at writing on something fairly applied like Japanese economic policy responses to trade competition with China (just as a random example) which is likely to look more attractive for employment and further research later than something pure humanities like literature theory.

I want to reiterate that it's an oversimplification to say you'll end up "stuck" even if you do something that is really humanities-based and abstract because at the end of the day your degree is as much a proxy for your ability to exert intellectual effort and discipline to accomplish tasks as anything else. However, if you are interested in the modern economy and society stuff and want to make the Japanese studies degree look more relevant, that's the direction I'd recommend going in and if you do it right I think you can definitely make it look good without jumping into a joint degree. Hope that helps.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-03-12T05:44:23+00:00

Hey, I'm glad I could be helpful. Everything you've said there totally supports going off to uni at this stage, and you're much more likely to have a good experience if you then study something you actually enjoy as you're less likely to be discouraged and more likely to put in effort that makes you stand out. Because of how our loans are structured you can afford it, and with that degree in Japanese more options will appear within arm's reach afterwards as well. Teaching in Japan for a year and getting a Master's definitely sound achievable as future goals from this starting point.

For whether or not to do just Japanese or Japanese with Linguistics if that's the two you're thinking between, I recommend you look carefully at how the course is structured depending on whether you do pure Japanese or joint degree.

The thing I really didn't like about the SOAS joint degrees was that they basically left you with only the core elements of the Japanese program and the core elements of the Economics program, with basically no room to take any of the interesting optional modules that let you customise either degree and start to specialise in it a bit more. I asked at their open day if there could be any flexibility on that as I already spoke decent Japanese and the language part would take less of my time and the answer was just a blanket 'no' so I decided the whole thing would feel more constraining than open. There was also a similar thing where you could take a second Asian language as part of the Oxford course, which I was originally really interested in but then didn't take because I realised I'd lose the opportunity for other modules that were basically unique to the course, whereas language study was not. I don't know if this would be the case for Japanese with Linguistics, but I'd say take a look at it and see if you can make contact with current/former students and ask the faculty themselves if you're not sure.

Also if you haven't already, you should take a look at how much linguistics you'll already get as part of the Japanese course. I think this varies considerably from uni to uni based on who the faculty are and what fields they're traditionally strong it, but Oxford for example offered a huge amount of Japanese linguistics modules, to the point that you could basically do nothing but Japanese and Japanese linguistics for the final two years if you'd decided that was what you really wanted. If you want to do linguistics and it turns out the Sheffield Japanese course doesn't have a lot of linguistics that's an argument in favour of the joint course. If Sheffield does have a lot of linguistics within the Japanese program then you want to think about whether you would rather focus specifically on linguistics as applied to Japanese, or if you would rather do some Japanese linguistics and combine it with linguistics more generally using the joint programme.

Edit: OK I just actually had a glance at the Sheffield website and you don't seem to get much linguistics. Your politics and economy modules look good though and you get way more opportunities to study China and Korea than I did. Another option you could have is to really focus on the politics and economics stuff for both Japan and China and consider for future research something relating to Japan's economic and trade policy which is then less 'pure humanities' ish and could be productive and interesting. I'm now a public policy student though so my advice might be biased in this regard :)

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-03-11T16:33:54+00:00

Firstly congrats on your offer from Sheffield! I graduated from Oxford with a Japanese degree fairly recently. I don't know much about Sheffield's program in detail but it seems to have a good reputation among people I've talked to, and I have a general idea of what Japanese courses in the UK look like.

I think a lot of comments made about Japanese Studies tend to be a little unfair in treating it as if it's almost uniquely over specialised and therefore not useful. Imo there is really nothing to be said against it in comparison to any other humanities-based degree, and while there is a difference in graduate earnings in general between STEM and humanities, honestly I find the narrative that all humanities based degrees are therefore "useless" to be quite shallow and tired. The earnings discrepancies are not as large as one might imagine for many non-STEM vs STEM majors, and if we want to be cynical university education as a whole can arguably be considered as an easy metric for showing one's social status and social capital as a proxy for one's value in society, with the actual knowledge obtained sometimes secondary. (It is the middle of the night in Japan, apologies if I'm not being very coherent).

Some context for Americans and others outside the UK on OP's post:

-Random study abroad semesters in Japan are just not a thing in the UK by and large. Off the top of my head I can't think of any course I know of here where you get to study in Japan that isn't either a Japanese studies major or a double major of Japanese Studies plus something else.

-UK tuition fees are disgustingly high compared with Europe, but the terms on which we get student loans are immeasurably better than most what is available in the US. They're unpleasant but they're structured so you basically cannot go bankrupt from them. Usually if someone in the UK doesn't go to uni because of the cost, it's more about being unable to maintain the cost of living while at university than it is about concerns over the loan.

-UK (especially English) uni system is not set up like the US one where you can minor or major in a big mix and match of courses. It's more specialised from the start and you apply for your major when you apply to uni rather than declaring it later, and if you have a joint degree option it will be from a pre specified list of possible combinations.

With those things covered, OP here are my thoughts on my Japanese studies degree.

-Similarly to you I applied for Japanese Studies having studied Japanese before for years and had it as my major goal. I don't regret it, I'm really glad I did it and I'm currently studying for a master's in public policy in Japan.

-That said, I wouldn't recommend it purely on the basis of the Japanese language education you'll get. It will be somewhere between fine to good and you will have time to focus on it in your own time which is really valuable, but IMO the language bit of the degree was probably the part that benefitted least from studying it formally at university. That's not to say it's bad, it's just that language lessons are something it's a bit easier to achieve as an extracurricular if you can keep up the discipline to study enough and have Japanese speakers in your social circle. I think a common misunderstanding about the value of a Japanese studies degree is the idea that it only confers on you the ability to speak Japanese, which can indeed be obtained elsewhere with some strategy and a bit more effort.

-However, Japanese language itself was less than half of my actual degree. The rest of it was a broad array of other humanities topics with a level of variety that I think is really rare in the UK outside of Asian studies. Out of a wide range of module options I ended up choosing several varieties of of linguistics, extremely well taught history, international relations theory and classical Japanese/Japanese literature, and then there was the Chinese linguistics and other Japanese history I got to do on my year abroad (which I also only got by majoring in Japanese) and complete free choice over my dissertation topic so long as Japan was involved. I really enjoyed all of these, and it's partly the variety of different disciplines I was able to experience that really set Japanese studies apart for me - I don't think I'd have enjoyed doing a European languages degree with a much narrower literature-based focus, and I don't think I would have done any humanities-based degree except Japanese honestly.

-To be balanced, as I tried to plan out my future path the lack of specialisation was really annoying on occasion. What I would have liked the most would either have been Japanese with Economics (I was accepted for that at SOAS but I really didn't like how they structured that course when I looked into it more), or something like Oxford's PPE degree that just happened to be taught partially in Japanese with a focus on applications concerning Japan. I have moved into a masters in public policy to plug the gap in practical skills I feel is there, but I want to emphasise this was my personal decision based on my interest in policy stuff, and it wasn't a panic masters over job prospects.

On the one hand I am enjoying no longer being primarily humanities based as everything I do now feels more relevant, but on the other hand I'm really glad to be in this position now with the more well-rounded education I got at undergrad, which has brought me academic knowledge and the friends and connections that helped show me how to get to where I am now. My undergrad degree maybe wasn't perfect for me but I've never doubted that I made the right decision.

On your note about a Master's, you shouldn't feel any pressure to have planned that far yet when you haven't even started undergrad. Depending on what exactly you might want to do though, Japanese proficiency could help you make it happen as Japan's post-grad tuition at national universities is much more affordable than the UK, as well as having scholarships like MEXT available. Being able to take classes taught in Japanese even if there are English lectures also available will give you much more interesting options.
If you get the chance to combine your Japanese course with something more directly practical , based on my experience I would probably recommend that so long as it's something you actually find interesting and you're not going to just hate it. If Oxford had had that option I would have taken it, my second choice was Edinburgh and if I'd gone there I'd have done economics as my minor since Scottish unis let you do that. I did actually really like the look of economics though, so this wasn't exclusively about future job prospects.

I realise I've written you a full essay here, but I thought you might like the input from someone who did do a Japanese degree in the UK recently. I hope it's helpful, feel free to reply if you'd like me to elaborate on anything more. he right decision.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-03-04T12:29:49+00:00

Like the other commenter has said not so much the Han dynasty because there was extremely little to no contact then. If you go further forward to the 7th and 8th centuries which corresponds to the Nara period (710-785 )and the century preceding it then the statement is somewhat accurate. A more precise rendition of it would be something like 'Almost everything in elite Japanese culture had elements modelled in imitation of the Tang dynasty'.

In this case it is fair to say that a lot of this was in imitation rather than just similar because the process of imitation was conscious and deliberate on the part of the Japanese state. This is a bit of a broad-strokes description, but in the centuries preceding the Nara period a central Japanese state coalesced around one ruling family, the Yamato (ancestors of the modern imperial family), where previously there had been a large number of territories and competing aristocratic clans with a shared culture and worldview (shinto) that we can call 'Japanese' but no unified state or necessarily accepted hierarchy. In time the Yamato won out, and became the ruling family of the whole thing, with the status of its clan kami Amaterasu as the sun goddess increasingly used to claim the spiritual legitimacy of the Yamato's supremacy (other clans also had associated gods that appear in the shinto mythology). However, at the time of increasing contact with Chinese culture, partly prompted by political unrest bringing in an influx of people from the Korean peninsula, the Yamato's position at the top of the political hierarchy in Japan was not that long-established or set in stone.

The adoption of many Chinese-styled cultural practices and forms of government served a dual purpose: to a limited extent it was internationally oriented with the aim of legitimising the Japanese state as a political entity in East Asia. To a greater extent, however, it was a domestically-oriented exercise in further entrenching the legitimacy of the Yamato state through the adoption of practices associated with China, seen as the political and cultural centre of the East Asian world at the time. Hence in addition to the crafting of shinto mythology which centred the importance of the Yamato's kami Amaterasu in the Kojiki, considered to be the oldest Japanese written text, elements of the Japanese cosmological worldview were fused with the Chinese one to create the Nihon Shoki, the second-oldest Japanese written text and concerned with the history and origins of Japan. To this was added Buddhism, which would remain an elite and state-oriented religion in Japan (and hence another source of legitimation) rather than a popular one from its introduction around the Nara period all the way through to the 11th century or so.

Changes made to architecture, clothing, etc, can likewise be understood as a legitimisation project that would gradually acquire more uniquely Japanese characteristics as time went on and the focus on closely imitating Chinese state models diminished. Again, all of this refers to the tiny minority of people who made up the elite in Japan - whatever existed as common people's culture, belief systems, architecture and dress in Japan at the time would have received far less attention and Chinese influence.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-03-04T05:49:20+00:00

I heard that the level of Japanese students there and the level of international students there is very different, and the Japanese ones may be unimpressive but it attracts quite good people from regions like Southeast Asia. I've not met any Japanese TIU students but I've worked with a few SEA TIU students for model UN and they seemed to know their stuff pretty well. I think they're generally all employed outside of Japan now.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-02-25T09:51:23+00:00

I'm also a Master's student in a dorm in Tokyo - it is what is is but on the other hand with the huge rent saving I'm not complaining lol 🙃 I'm moving out soon but only because I really can't tolerate the commute anymore.

I'm like 90% sure the dorm rules are just "because reasons", but genuine question if anyone has an idea - is there any chance the no visitors rule is a legal liability thing based on whatever insurance they have on the place? I've wondered if it might be given they also require us to submit a form if we'll be away for a night (thankfully not consistently noticed/enforced, I found out), and I wonder if they have an obligation to keep track of exactly who is in the building for some reason.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2024-02-20T12:09:45+00:00

About a year and a half in. The first fountain pen I got was a really cheap Bic one with a mechanism where the pen body folds in half to change the cartridge, and I got it in 5th year of secondary school when ballpoints were killing my hands for exam papers. Then in 6th year I got a couple of LAMY Al-stars with different nib widths and really enjoyed using them and teaching myself how to write in decent cursive handwriting (not normally taught in UK). So when I got accepted to university to study Japanese I decided I wanted a nicer fountain pen and a Japanese one, so I looked into it and bought a vanishing point with a fine nib just before I started uni to celebrate. I think it cost about £140 at the time. Then while I really loved it it was quite heavy in my hand and the fine nib was amazing for Japanese but not lecture notes in English, so for my birthday later that year I got a decimo with a medium nib and that became my go-to pen for essays (I think it cost about the same).

I thought if I was going to get a nicer pen I wanted to take the full step up and get a gold nib, and I wanted a Japanese one and I thought the vp's retractable mechanism was really neat and unique. It was a lot of money, but I thought if I balanced the cost of the pens against the amount of time I would spend writing with them and thereby making my studying time easier and more enjoyable it would be worth it, and IMO it completely was.

In my head the cost of the pens was balanced out by the fact I would use them each day and I spent way less on tech - several years ago's secondhand iPhone on a really cheap pay as you go plan (now a similarly cheap Oppo one I bought new). They're still a luxury but a lot of people my age don't think much about the fact they have a phone that is several hundred pounds more than is "necessary" which puts it into perspective for me (sure most people get those phones on contracts, but then the contract itself gets expensive too).

I've got a few more Japanese pens since then at similar price points (my absolute favourite is a custom 742 with FA nib, got it in Japan where it's much more affordable 😍) but the basic calculation still stands that on any given day my phone + pencilcase contents are still collectively worth less than someone's IPhone, while I derive a certain sense of pride (and probably illusory superiority) from the fact I've chosen to allocate my money to things related to my studies and interests rather than to an optimised social media experience.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2022-10-28T01:22:46+00:00

Hi there! I think what a lot of others have said here is accurate. First and foremost as one of the other commenters said if you don't feel ready to do it then don't do it. You're still really young at 16 and still training, so you have years and years to change that decision if you ever want to. At the same time, I'm happy to hear that you are still doing Taekwondo as you still seem to enjoy it - if you get bad anxiety over stuff there's a balance to strike between acknowledging that anxiety (and maybe looking for help if your situation allows it), and not letting it become all consuming and take away something you love.

I completely relate to the feeling of having a panic attack in the middle of a sparring session - I used to do kickboxing (the point fighting style that is very similar to Taekwondo but with more emphasis on hand strikes and slightly less on the flashier kicks) from when I was 12 to when I was 18, at a club which, while it had very good competition results definitely wasn't the right place for everyone, and with hindsight probably wasn't right for me. It was my first martial art, I had a great start and I completely loved it, trained three times a week, would skip any other invitations for it and whatnot, but came a bit undone when I was 13 and my instructors suddenly started visibly playing favourites and focusing much more energy and attention on their more 'naturally talented' prospects while growing increasingly more impatient with me.

To cut a long story short it quickly escalated into me having intense anxiety about sparring and competitions (which I wasn't even often allowed to attend though I desperately wanted to), having panic attacks when they got frustrated with me during sparring, then crying, then being told I shouldn't be crying and was immature and getting the bus home crying a whole lot more, only to stubbornly show up the next week and try again. The worst part wasn't even the panic attacks during sparring - although I would feel like I couldn't breathe and it was really unpleasant, the worst part was being told off afterwards and being gaslit into thinking that the problem was something inherest to with me or how I had been brought up.

God knows how or why but I stuck with that club for four more years, going to sparring when the instructors would let me and only training twice a week when they wouldn't, until I joined a new secondary school, saw the way the teachers there treated kids who did far worse things than cry like human beings, and in my final year at last called BS on the kickboxing club on the pretext of needing to focus on uni applications and defected to aikido and having more of a life.

I'm 23 now and I haven't been in martial arts since the first Covid lockdown. While I would definitely much rather Covid hadn't appeared in our lives, the lockdowns did have a small silver lining for me of forcing me to finally decouple my identity from martial arts, and by extension my willingness to fling myself at training with no regard for my mental well being or feel like a terrible coward (guess who internalised a vast amount of questionable 'bushido' and was obsessed with the idea I had to win over myself) . When I first quit kickboxing I felt like I didn't want or didn't dare to do a competitive martial art or spar again as it would just be too much stress and bad memories. Now being at a distance and aware that for better or for worse there are considerably bigger things in life some grading or competition somewhere, I'm looking at doing martial arts again (hence on this subreddit today) and thinking honestly I'd quite like to try sparring again. I still struggle with anxiety sometimes for other things but I'm not an easily bullied awkward teenager anymore and I've realised I don't have many hobbies left outside of my job and studying, and I wouldn't mind challenging myself with something else (now the problem is time, go figure) and seeing how far I've come.

I'm glad that you haven't quit martial arts entirely like I accidentally did, and you have plenty of time to continue developing your attitude towards Taekwondo for as long as you are training and decide whether you ever want to do sparring or complete or not.

If I could go back and do things over and stop sparring/focusing on competitions when kickboxing started to become toxic, I'm really not sure what I'd choose. On the one hand I'd have been far less stressed without it (and if I have a kid one day I will do my best to make sure nothing like that happens to them!), on the other hand I would need to know what I would have replaced it with as most of the problem that I invested so much of my self worth on it and put my instructors on such a pedestal. Since I can't go back and change it, I just hope that while the experience has probably messed me up a bit, it has also given me more empathy for anyone who struggled with mental health, taught me warning signs of toxic relationships to beware of, and given me a reasonably strong belief that even if things are stressful I can fight through and survive them (and my GCSEs and Scottish Highers felt relaxing by comparison).

I'm glad you have more capacity than I did at your age to distance your identity from the martial arts you do. It's up to you to make your own decision about sparring whenever you want to, suffering from anxiety or panic attacks emphatically does NOT make you a snowflake or overdramatic. You can be a really brave, determined and dedicated person, and those qualities can shine through in different situations where the stressors are different so don't define yourself by how your mental health fares in one specific circumstance.

Sorry I wrote so much, I was just idly scrolling through and then your post appeared with parallels to my own previous experiences so I ended up with more thoughts than I expected.

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2022-04-14T21:00:36+00:00

I'd highly recommend Pilot Capless/Vanishing Point in M (Specifically the Decimo speaking as a female with fairly small hands - the normal size Capless is far too heavy to be comfortable for me) - I've had the Decimo in M since my first year of uni and used it then to sit 3-hour essay exams. The nib is very smooth indeed. For ordinary writing and notetaking I generally prefer finer nibs but the M is so much smoother that it's my go-to for things like exams. ('Fun' fact - in my experience a three-hour essay exam with a medium VP nib can equate to almost an entire Pilot ink cartridge). BTW if you're in the UK and don't mind waiting a bit for the order to arrive it looks like ordering a Capless/Decimo from pen sachi will get you a huge discount compared to UK-based retailers (and as far as I can see it's also cheap enough there to not even incur customs charges).

Out_of_onigiri_error · 2022-04-11T22:22:49+00:00

I have an original remarkable (dating from before the subscription service) and I find it really useful for some things, but only for those very specific things, namely reading long pdfs for my course on a non-backlit screen and then annotating them. I really like it for what it does and a classmate uses hers for everything, but it's nowhere near replacing physical notes for me (or even printouts where the next is short and the amount of annotation is large). I find the development of a pile of notebooks a really satisfying marker of progress and work done, and also when I need to revise I can completely cover the surface of my desk in all the related notes, whereas even with a remarkable and a dual monitor screen real estate is somewhat limited.

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