Sunday 30 May 2010

Depression

I sometimes listen to music I listened to when I was little. Here's what I've been listening to lately. I think it was published in 1999 or something like that. It's the soundtrack of a children's English TV program. I looked at Wikipedia (Yes, I always refer to wiki! It's the fastest way to get info.) and found out that both the lady and the old guy are dead. The woman died of lung cancer (aged 30) and the guy of pneumonia (aged 79). I was sad to learn this.

Most of the songs on the CD are kids songs like Humpty Dumpty and BINGO. They are all happy songs. We are all special. You've got a friend.
I was an optimistic kid. I didn't believe the songs.



I remember starting to cry at the dinner table one day when I was 7 years old. My mum who was eating dinner with me asked why I was upset but I didn't tell her why. I guess I said I was just sad.
I knew exactly why. The thought of living and all the trouble I will go though in the future was making me feel depressed. I was thinking of killing my parents everyday. Why did they have me? Why should I go on any more? I was planning to kill them when they were sleeping with the knife in the kitchen and then I would be arrested and put into prison and be executed. That was what I was thinking everyday when I was 7.
Obviously, I didn't do it since both my parents are alive. I think the occasional depression I go through started when I was really young.

The most life threatening depression I had so far was when I was 15. It was when we were preparing for entering high school and I think the fact that where I was applying for wasn't decided made me feel unstable and got depressed.
I had a perfect plan to kill myself. I planned to go to the supermarket and get dry ice in a bag and cover it over my head.
I was going to a cram school at that time which the teacher taught the student 1 to 1. The teacher was a university student and sensed something was wrong with me. If she hadn't kept me after class that day, I would have killed myself within a week.

The long depression I had in high school was from 2008 June. I'm fine now but I got so fucked up when my girlfriend dumped me. I couldn't stop cutting my upper arm for 5 months. The scars remain.

I need to find a way to cope with depression. Nothing is making me depressed now, thank goodness. I just make fun of the English teacher. I'm surrounded with everything I love.

English Books



As I was tidying up my room, I found 3 of the English text books I used when I first started learning English. My dad got them from somewhere and I remember doing it everyday. I hated it. I came home from elementary school and had to do 1 page a day before going out to play football. Can you see that the top of the page is ripped a little? I was very short tempered then.
Now that I see what it's like to study English at a Japanese school, I'm REALLY relieved that I had these books. I'm grateful to my parents for making me do the studying when I was little.

Friday 28 May 2010

Definitions

I'll explain what LGBT is. You can easily make it more complicating by saying LGBTTTIQQA which is, according to Wikipedia, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, and Asexual. I will attempt to describe them but will have some inaccuracies as sexuality and gender is "fluid." I think everyone has their own sexualities and gender identities.

There's not much to say about lesbian and gay. People who are attracted to the same sex. Not straight.

Bisexual means they can be attracted to both sexes. I guess I identify myself as bi because I don't want to limit my choices (and sometimes see boys who I think are hot). I think it depends on the person if, when they are going out with a person of the same sex, they identify as gay and vice versa. Maybe it's just a gray zone.

Transgender is a word with a vast meaning. I like to say tranny because it sounds like a friendly word but I read that it has a negative sound. I'll use tranny anyway. According to my understanding, the following are what is classified as tranny: transsexual, transgender, transvestite. Well, there are other terms like gender-bender, gender queer etc but the simplest way to put it are those 3 terms.
A transsexual person is someone who feels their physical sex doesn't match how they feel and desperately wants the surgery to make it right. A transgender person can do without the surgery but wants to, and does live according to their "mental" sex. Transsexuals who want to have the surgery first needs to start hormone treatment.
A transvestite person is a person who cross-dresses. I can't say much about them because I haven't read books about them.

I identify myself as a transgender now but I have a vivid memory of saying "I'm definitely doing to have a sex change operation when I grow up!" when I was in kindergarten. I feel more comfortable now because I'm going to school as a male student. However, I may go as far as hormone treatment and chest surgery because I'm very conscious about my high voice and I don't want to have to buy 10000 yen (about $110) shirts in order to make my chest flat. The problem about hormones is that there are so many scary side effects and that I will have to take the shot or pill for the rest of my life.

From what I have written, you can tell there's a difference between LGB and T. The former is about sexual orientation and the latter is about gender identity. Tranny people can be gay, straight or bi.

Intersex is a condition that a person born with the physical characteristics of both sexes. They usually have an operation when they are very young. I read that the doctors decide which sex the infant should be by taking DNA samples. There are some cases that develop gender identity disorder.

An Asexual person is someone who is not into sex and have better things to do!

That is all I can explain about LGBTTTIQQA. I didn't explain all of them simply because I DON'T KNOW. Just check wiki and other sources.

Here's an interesting tranny talk.
There were 3 trannies (including me) when I was in junior high school. One was a year younger than me and the other was two years younger. AND they both happened to be FTMs (female to male)!
The first time time I saw the one year younger tranny, I totally couldn't tell. He was wearing 100% boy's uniform and a friend of mine said "Look, that's a girl! Can you believe it!?" I was like, "Who? I don't know which one you're talking about." The friend was pointing at a group of girls and a boy chatting with them. "That one! That's a girl!" I said "Yea I can see girls. What are you talking about?" I didn't get it until she said "The one in the boy's uniform is a girl."
I was amazed. I hadn't seen someone like me in real life until then. He was more "manly" than me. He was in the kendo club and my friend was also in the club. That's why she knew. I would never have guessed if she hadn't told me. I don't know where he is now. I regret never making friends with him. ...Would have been interesting.
The other tranny just so happened to be my manga drawing best friend(she's gay)'s sister. He refused to wear the girls' uniform when entering junior high. Now he is in high school wearing girls' uniform. I guess the whole process of going to a psychiatrist to get a medical certificate in order to go to school as male was too much.
Anyway, those 2 trannies and my best friend is all the "out" LGBT people I personally know. There's one guy whose class is above mine that I think is gay but I shouldn't make assumptions.

I hate it when the class teacher talks about other teachers who aren't married and make jokes about them. Respect their values, man. They don't have time to socialize, anyway. That is another topic so I won't go any further...

Thursday 27 May 2010

Test Over Tomorrow...

...NOT!!! My class (yes, ONLY my class!) has to take a mock test the next day the mid-term test ends which is tomorrow.

On the 2nd day of the test, we had the Japanese test. We were told that we will have to write a 400 word essay about rationalism. The teacher explained to us what rationalism was and I did understand what he was saying. However, the actual test was difficult like fuck. We wad to read a passage about rationalism written by some famous German philosopher which I couldn't understand a bit, and we had to write about rationalism and how to OVERCOME IT. What is there to over come? I didn't even know it was something you overcome. So, I didn't have a clue what to write but managed to write like 2 lines out of 20. Apparently, most of the other boys couldn't write anything and all the other awesome people did write the whole essay.
After the other tests were over, the class teacher said "The boys will stay. Mr H (the Japanese teacher) has somethings to say to you."
We had to sit there for 2 whole hours and listen to Mr H and the class teacher and another teacher. They said that we will never get into the universities we want to go to and that we weren't working hard enough and other quite harsh things. The boy who is aiming for Tokyo Univ started to cry. I felt sorry for him because I think he's very clever. I was thinking "yeah whatever." because it's nothing to do with me for I will get the hell out of this crazy country as soon as I graduate but I think, for the others, it was quite tough. I thought it would be better if they let us go and let us study. After the 2 hour talk, we were made to write about how we'll work harder from now on. Geez.

Many of the things they said, I couldn't agree. The class teacher said that the last teacher who went home the day before was the physics teacher who left at 4:30am. He said we should have the guts to do the same thing. I thought, " WHAT!? Weren't you the one who made the English test about teenagers needing more sleep??" And if a teacher does have to work until 4:30am, that's a problem. If there's that much work to do, that's a problem and if the teacher is slow to do it, then he has a problem.
Something needs to be figured out in this school.

Sunday 23 May 2010

Family Photo

Dad wanted to take a official family photo because of the big event, silver wedding. It must have been a huge accomplishment to feel that way!The whole photo shoot session felt really silly because we (well, except me. I wear my uniform everyday) never dress up like this.

WoW by Chris Crocker

Maybe best known for his vid on YouTube "Leave Britney Alone," Chris Crocker is one of the people I look up to. He is not afraid to say what he wants to say and he says it no matter what. His Twitter and YouTube is full of words of wisdom. AND he has a point. I really like that.

ChrisCrocker
I do not enjoy hurting anyones feelings. What I enjoy is getting people to a place where they are used to the truth so they can embrace it. via web
ChrisCrocker
No one likes hearing the truth FROM ME. Because the truth, FROM ME, doesn't come sunny side up or scrambled. It's served raw & straight up. via web

Passion

I recently came to realize that if something is spoken by a person who is passionate about the topic, it's very interesting.
I listened to a podcast about opera by one of the people in Joy 94.9. To me, opera was something my grandad used to listen to before he went to sleep on the radio. But on this podcast, the guy talks about it with so much enthusiasm that it really made me want to go to Australia and go to the opera house.
Also the history class and maths class are (I think)taught with passion and makes me interested. I think the teachers who have passion to whatever they are teaching are great. :-)

Saturday 22 May 2010

Speech Contest Script

Just a draft... I've just typed it out and not read it out loud yet so I don't know how long it will be. White I was writing this, I thought "fuck it. I don't care if I get a prise or not as long as everyone actually listens to what I'm saying."

So... Here it goes. Please leave a comment if you have any opinions.



LGBTI. Perhaps many of you here know what it stands for. It is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex. Before I start my speech, I would like to make it clear that sexuality and gender cannot always fall into a simple categorization but I will use the term LGBTI to avoid confusion.

Being a transgender and a bisexual myself, what I think about most is LGBTI issues. Among many topics that come into mind, I would like to take this time to talk about the importance of conversation about sexual and gender minorities be more open. I personally feel that such conversation is a taboo around me and this is causing a negative impact to the attitude against sexual and gender minorities.
You can easily find examples of the negative attitude.
I will give some examples from my own experience.
When I was in elementary school, I liked a girl so I told her. This was when I was living as a female which made me a lesbian. All her friends who found out that I liked the girl said I was gross and a freak.
You may think this happened because they were children. Here’s a data from a survey done is 2008 in Japan. More than 50% of the gay men who answered the survey said that they were called names when they were in school.
So, it is clear that there is a negative attitude towards sexual and gender minorities. As I said in the beginning, I think the way to change it is to talk about it openly. This is because I believe conversation about such topics will cause people to think about it more seriously. But how and where should it start? I say schools. I know for a fact that there are clubs and meetings for LGBT people at universities but not many non-LGBT people are involved in those groups and it is not an effective way to educate people about LGBT issues. I think it should be talked about from elementary schools onwards because the only way to stop bias is to grow up in a bias free environment.
Next I will talk about how it should be talked about in the early stage of school.
I have never heard about LGBT people being mentioned during sex education. It should at least be said that they exist to let children know there are a diverse values ad it’s perfectly normal and healthy and fine to be that way. Sex education normally starts at the age of about 7 with the introduction of human birth, and if my proposition should be realized, the view against LGBT for them will .be open minded. As an extent, the number of bullying against LGBT youth will hopefully decline.
I don't have the power to realize my plan but I hope my message got thorough to you. Thank you for listening.

Thursday 20 May 2010

Silver Wedding

We celebrated the silver wedding anniversary at a sushi restaurant and later went to a cake shop and bought 4 cakes. I usually get really excited when we go out to eat but today, I have a runny nose so didn't enjoy much. When I catch a cold, my nose starts to run first and the cough and fever comes next. I will take a medicine and go to bed early. I need to study for the test so I have to get rid of this cold ASAP.

PS We got the 4th cake for my mum because she's skinny as hell and we want to make her gain weight.

Dad and Books

My dad safely came home. If he had left a day later, he would had been stuck in the airport. I didn't expect any presents but he got something. I thought it was a dead bird at first because it looked like this.

I took it out of the bag and found out that is was a...

HEDGEHOG!!!!!!!!!!!!! And a cute one too! I LOVE FLUFFY STUFF!!!!!! It came with a green bag with lots of little elephants on it (see first pic). Thanks dad. xxxxx

I finished reading "Kiss Kiss" by Roald Dahl the other day and now reading "Boy." This one is not full of creepy stories, thank goodness. After I finish this, I will read the sequel, "Going Solo."


Tuesday 18 May 2010

Bits and pieces

Lots of things to write about...
Here's photos I took on the weekend at the park I always go to for exercise. It was so sunny and everything looks so beautiful in spring. The ducklings refused to come out of their mothers protection! I love anything that is fluffy including my dad who has just a bit of hair left on his hair! He's supposed to come back from Bangkok tomorrow because it's my parents silver wedding anniversary tomorrow. I'm worried if he can come home safely...

I sent an e-mail to Joy 94.9 Transmission Time the other day saying that I really love the show and they should post more podcasts. I got a reply from one of the DJs and she said they only post the ones that "last." Geez, there are loads of podcast episodes that are out of date out there! Or maybe is costs money to post a podcast... Also she told me that, as they are a community radio station, they have a 6 month rotation for the shows so Transmission Time is not on air all year. It's on air on Tuesdays from 20:00 in Melbourne and today, I thought I could listen to it as I was using the computer at 20:00 JAPAN TIME!!!!! I didn't know Japan is an hour behind Australia! I thought we were at the same time zone. I won't be able to listen to them because I'm at school all the time! Shiiiiit!

Thursday 13 May 2010

Facebook

I'm finding a bunch of people I knew back when I went to elementary school in Bath on Facebook right now. It's been 7 years. I can't believe how they have all changed. I wouldn't have found them if I hadn't had their names! I still think about that time sometimes...

Sunday 9 May 2010

Going Crazy (Again)

OK... Confidence Crisis. I should have studied properly last week but I didn't so I'm in this state again. The test is in 2 weeks and I have to figure out how to understand every thing by then.

Does every high school student stay at school to study till 8:30 or is it just us? The class after school (4:20~8:30) is so long and difficult (because it's for students who want to go to Tokyo Univ) and I don't have the time to do the general studying (like reviewing the days' classes). When I get home at 9pm, I have dinner and wind down and by the time I get round to studying, it's like 11:30. Well, I can get on with stuff between 9:00~11:30 but still. I will tell the teacher that I want to quit the "class after school" thing tomorrow.

Saturday 8 May 2010

Discovery of new Podcast

So I was looking for another podcast. I used to listen to Adam and Joe but got tired of it and what I am now regularly listening to "Big Gay News" and "The Planet: The Podcast For L Word Fans!" I thought I want something new and I found "Transmission Time" which is a radio program done by a LGBT radio station in Melbourne, Australia. The accent is Australian and sometimes I can't hear what they are saying and it's nothing like the American accent that I hear in the said two podcasts and is kind of refreshing. It's enjoyable so I think this will be my next new thing.

Bangkok

My dad is in Bangkok, Thailand. He just said on the phone that there was another bomb attack and 2 police officers were killed. I thought that thing was all over. I don't hear anything about it on the news here. Maybe it's because I don't watch the news or read the paper or getting any kind of info about what's happening in the world. I have to do something about it. I'm looking for a good news podcast.
Anyway, my dad told my something interesting the other day. The soldiers that are walking around Bangkok are "water melons." This is because they wear green military wear but they are really one of the red shirts. I just thought the expression is accurate.

Thursday 6 May 2010

War Theory

This guy in my class has a ...uhh... unique theory about the military.
"If the food in the country tastes bad, then their military is strong."
He says that when the soldiers get back from war, the food served there will not be good. So, if they are used to eating disgusting food, they will not be unhappy about it and will be able to fight in the war better than the soldiers who eat delicious food all the time.
In my opinion, that theory is a pile of bullshit. The definition "delicious" is completely vague and he said "delicious for Japanese people." ...Japanese people aren't in the military of other countries' are they??
He likes to talk about war and foreign countries. Everyday at lunch time, he says "Let's talk about war." He really says that. I'm not kidding! I'm like (here we go again...). It's always the same topic. "What if a war starts between China and America?", "I think Bulgarian soldiers are strong," "Which country do you like?" etc.
When he asked the last question to me, I said, "I can't say which country I like because I don't know every single country in the world and even if I do know, I know just a part of the country. If I actually go there, I may get a completely different impression about the place. I can't decide whether I like the country based on just one aspect." That shut him up. I said," So, which country do you like?" and he said, "I can't decide because...." and he repeated what I said! :-p

Tuesday 4 May 2010

DVDs

Yesterday, we rented these DVDs from the rental shop.

My mum and I watched Sicko last night. I did know that not many people in the US had insurance but didn't know that things are this bad. I can't believe so many people get rejected by insurance companies and politicians getting money from them. Some even die because they don't have enough money to pay for operation and/or medication. I wonder if the system changed after this movie was out... I used to think Michael Moore was just a fat ass guy who makes vids about Bush. Now I know he's not. I don't know any Japanese filmmakers who make films that actually has a real message. I look up to people who take action in order to change something. I want to be like that. (Maybe the speech contest is the first step. Hint hint! (Only I haven't finished the script yet!!))

I watched Johnny English today. I thought it was funny like all the other movies with Rowan Atkinson but I wouldn't watch it again. It's the kind of movie that you know the ending. It was nice to have a good laugh, though!
I used to love Mr. Bean and watched every time I caught a cold and had to stay in bed. Rowan Atkinson's hilarious!He was funny in Love Actually even though he appeared just a few minutes!
You can watch all Mr. Bean shows here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrBean

Monday 3 May 2010

Books

I watched the movie "Creation" the other day. My mum got the DVD from Amazon because she got so excited when she watched it in the air plane to England and found a scene filmed at a place we know in Bradford-on-Avon. The movie is about Darwin when he wrote The Origin of Species. There was drama involved because (according to the movie) Darwin was suffering from hallucination of his dead first daughter. Also his wife (he married his COUSIN!!!???) was so religious that she was disapproving of his theory at the beginning. (she let him publish the book in the end obviously.) This movie made me want try reading the Origin of Species. The book is in my dad's room. Well, he's (kind of) a biologist so it's natural that the book is there.
There's also a famous book by Stephen Hawking. I want to try this book too. I have so many books I want to read and I don't have the time. I will try to read before I go to bed everyday but I get so tired.
I tried reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves which is about punctuation but the vocab was difficult and gave up.




So I started reading this Roald Dahl book yesterday. Filled with short creepy stories... I read a really nice little book by him when I was little. This one is quite different. The stories are really creepy, grotesque, and realistic. Not suitable for small children haha!

Saturday 1 May 2010

Emperors Report: Deocletian


Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus (244-311) was a Roman Emperor from 20th November 284 to 1st May 305. He was born to a Illryan family of low status (his father and himself are even said to have been a freedman!) but gradually became powerful.


He succeeded in organizing the tax system with a high tax rate, enlarging the army and establishing a well-organized bureaucratic government. However, some of his plans didn't work out well-- his attempt to take care of inflation by controlling prices was ignored and the tetrarchic system (four people governing) was successful only while Diocletianus ruled. He also tried to get rid of Christians which is said to have been bloody did not succeed in destroying the Christian community. (Christianity became the most popular religion from 324.)


He is significant for stabilizing the economy and the military of the huge Roman empire which made the empire to survive for another 100 years.


He decided to step aside from the imperial office because of illness. He was the first person to abdicate from his position voluntarily. It is said that his despair and illness made him commit suicide.