Hi! It’s me! Lily!!!!
New Years was so much fun!!! Yuki and I went to the shrine for the midnight visit. It’s nice to see so many people all in one place, hoping for good luck, even though the Boss certainly had some opinions on it. It does have a kind of beauty though. There were vendors selling amazake, which is really warm when you’re out at midnight in the middle of winter. After that Yuki and I huddled under the kotatsu, ate mikan and other snacks, and just chatted until morning, then we went out to see the first sunrise.
That’s a surprisingly meaningful tradition, actually. People have so much hope for the new year. In Japan, it seems that sometimes there’s not a lot of hope, so people take it where they can get it.
Because of the time difference, it worked out that I was able to pop into Sabby’s new years party, and that was fun too. She made more goodies! That’s Sabby. Most of my friends were out doing other stuff, but they all sent me texts and videos and it was lots of fun.
Japan is a fun place, but it’s also… a difficult place to live, sometimes. They take things very seriously, sometimes in ways that aren’t very healthy. Even now I get tripped up on all the different forms of address, etc. They cut me lots of slack for that because I’m a gaijin and seem happy that I can speak Japanese as well as I can, but it’s still difficult. Even Yuki has trouble sometimes, and she was born here. She said she’s jealous of me because I have such a “free” mindset… but I’m just me. She tries to be like me sometimes, but I think she should just be herself. She’s a sensitive and sweet woman, there’s no need for her to try to be anything she’s not.
The idols are, well, idoling. They’re having lots of fun, and they’re learning lots of cool stuff too. Some of them actually had some latent talents they didn’t know about, like Miki. She actually turned out to be fairly musically talented. So she’s taking lessons to develop that. She might do a solo debut at some point soon. She has such a strong and clear voice, I think she’ll go pretty far. But Lily, you might say, she was an idol… didn’t that mean she was talented before? Hah. No. She was good at being cute. Even when an idol makes a mistake or tries her best and fails, it makes her relatable. But that means they don’t really try to be anything but cute. Miki (and Yuki) says that really hurts idols in the future, and about all they can do is get married and become a housewife, or turn to gravure modeling or whatever.
So I’m happy for them. Their producer seems well intentioned. But he’s part of the industry too, so it’s not always smooth sailing.
Yuki and Miki are actually talking about collaborating at some point. That might be amazing.
Crystal and her girlfriend broke up. Awww. Crystal seems pretty closed mouthed about it. Crystal says she really loves her ex, I mean really loves her, but she had to let her go. She wouldn’t say why, just that it wouldn’t have worked. There were a lot of tears, but I guess there were a lot of hugs too, and in the end, they’re still really close. Crystal just never seemed all that comfortable with the idea. Her ex moved on and Crystal’s supporting them – she even made friends with her ex’s new girlfriend, and they’re all pretty close.
The Boss was pretty cagey about it too. He just said “trauma is a very poor reason to be with someone” – and he’s right, as always.
There’s a guy she has her eye on – I hope he treats her well. We’re all keeping a very close eye on him. I may or may not have popped around a bit to spy on him. I won’t tell. But he seems okay. We’re all cautiously optimistic, and very protective. the Boss isn’t too keen on that. He knows it’s just out of love for my sister, but that maybe I should just ask him instead of poking around in others’ lives. Dang it, he’s always right.
I won’t say what he said, but I think Crystal’s in good hands, they just have a lot of dancing around to do.
She loves us for that, even though it seems to annoy the snot out of her.
Well, anyway, guess that’s enough for an update. Everything’s going fine. My grades are okay, everyone seems pretty happy, even though there’s a bit of sadness, and, well… life is good.