Goddam those half-Japanese girls...

I just had a pictorial and I thought I was ugly in all the pictures taken. What happened to me; is it age? I used to think I was pretty photogenic. Well, I don't even think I'm pretty anymore, actually. Or was I ever to begin with? Don't mind me, I'm everyday looking for new stuff to obsess over. But can I just say that I worry because I felt the exact same way (unphotogenic, fat and ugly) in the last pictorial?

The highlight of the day was putting on the kimono for the first time. I'm sure it's not a real kimono, a costume equivalent. But wow, it rocked. I think I'm so ready to be a geisha so much that when they were thinking of poses for us to do, every pose I hit was like "Yes, Joelle!" My only problem was the hooks in the back of my costume, in the neck, getting caught in my hair. Minor glitch though.

I love Japanese things. Especially recently. I'm walking around in my tights and my thong sandals and even if my tights are convertible (there's a hole at the soles of my feet so that they can be footless if I want them to be), I wear my tights footed so that I have that stockinged chinelas Japanese look.

Sometimes, I think Japanese things are only fun to the non-Japanese. Lotsa times, it doesn't seem like they enjoy anything. I heard they're really shy, that it's imbibed in their culture or something. Which explains that, and explains why the un-shy Japanese are usually the strange freaks like the Crazy 88s in Kill Bill. But what do I really know about how the Japanese think?

A couple weeks ago, I finished reading Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance. It's quirkily strange - I really didn't understand some of what happens; well, mostly why some of the stuff happens. It doesn't end quite the way normal books/TV shows/movies do - the weird stuff doesn't really get explained, nor do the things that don't make sense find their way to making sense in the end. Perhaps that was the point, but while I respect this turn of events I still kinda felt that turning the dark hotel floor incident into a dream was a cop-out. You kinda think, maybe the important thing was the main character finally did get to screw that pretty receptionist with the glasses.

Other than that, I like Haruki Murakami. My favorite parts are when his protagonist is hanging out with the kid, Yuki. I read their conversations and I'm awed at how they talk - do the Japanese really talk that way? I want to say I love his use of the language, but I wonder if that's him or the work of his translator. I wondered the same thing reading Banana Yoshimoto and Yukio Mishima. Almost makes me want to learn Japanese. Almost.

Of course, not everything is turning Japanese, at least I don't think so. It only seems like it because I'm more aware of anything Japanese, now that I'm getting into character. I'm quite worried about any faux Orientalism we don't even know we're guilty of (as was the case with my graduation recital), so I'm always looking at anything Japanese for clues. Hence this fixation. Well, I'm guessing. I only made that up just now. But since we're buying into that, I admit I have leftover issues about how I did my recital. I mean, the research I did was mostly going to the arcade and watching Japanese video games.

My graduation recital (which is the equivalent of a thesis in my college, except we dance majors were required to write a thesis and stage a recital to get our bachelor's degree) was a modern version of Cinderella, set in the Philippines. Cinderella's stepsisters are Japayuki and she wants to be one also, so her Fairy Godmother dresses her up and sends her to Japan. She becomes the girlfriend of Boss Charming, a Yakuza, who passes her off to the other blackies (picked that up from Murakami) and since she's thinking, hey I went here to sing, dance and find a boyfriend and not to whore myself, they kill her. Even if the panel gave me a 1.0, I feel like if I had more time and more freedom with it, I would have made it less problematic. At the time, I was just following the libretto given to me and I didn't put up much fight then because all I wanted to do was finish my recital on time. My choreography and staging was pretty good but now I wish I had seen Kill Bill or read Murakami before I did the recital, I would have made it more Japanese. Or more respectful of the Japanese, anyway.

I do accept that I'll never pass as a Japanese. Even in my kimono and my heavy, extended eyeliner, I look Filipino. Or maybe Thai. Or Vietnamese. In a kimono and heavy eyeliner and very unphotogenic.