2025年6月23日(月)
 professor drew a sprout on the board & to make the two leaves she drew them like someone would draw an infinity symbol and then added a line under the middle. really stuck out to me. really loud crows we could hear through the closed windows in the classroom; for a little bit there was 大雨 & we could hear thunder & I saw the sky light up. at the end of class, professor played a video about a ライオンのメス and オリックスの子供 and asked us to imagine their emotions & I couldn't stop wondering why the lion took care of the オリックス & at our human presumptions. when I got back to the building, floormate K invited me to sit down on the bottom floor with her & her friend to study. I went down but I played Final Fantasy most of the time. while I was sitting there, 2 of them & twice someone that was nearby who decided to jump in on their conversation debated Christian theology and philosophy and metaphysics. completely uninterested but a little wondering at it. I'm sure I'm culturally Christian in some ways, having been born and raised in the U.S., but given that I've read maybe a few words total of a random Bible we had in our house & never even stepped foot into a church in the U.S. (saw two as a tourist in Germany), none of it meant anything to me and I have not even a little desire to make it mean something. it was like looking into a different world. it meant so much to them. they talked a lot about 'free will' and how god theoretically chose to make everything how it is & he isn't necessarily good, and things like that. thinking about it now, I think about how I think about fate. but I don't want to believe that it's some god deciding the path of my and everyone else's lives. after I left, went to the conbini and outside there was a very strong smell of cigarettes; turned out to be two people outside smoking. the smell was entirely gone when I stepped back out. MALICE MIZER mysteriously playing in my head all day.

2025年6月21日(土)
 made french toast that was just OK. a bunch of kids roaming nearby this sports? place on the way to the drug store. knocked over omikuji I put on my lamp, and when I tried to fix it knocked a bunch of other things over. walked to the conbini at midnight & the temperature was moderately cool and there was the slightest drizzle, just a few raindrops in a few seconds. when I walked back out, saw a classmate walking to the conbini and we waved at each other. couldn't help but smile.

2025年6月20日(金)
 mysterious bug on classmate's desk that we watched walk around until the professor walked over and took it outside. walking down a different path than usual to return to my building, looked to the right and saw two pigeons standing right next to my head. received letter from penpal K.

2025年6月19日(木)
 black butterfly with white dots on the way to campus; interesting bird calls heard in the plaza; a glimpse of the evening sun seen through a small gap in the blinds.

2025年6月18日(水)
 on the train, a primary school kid walked up to another kid sitting down and they awkwardly waved at each other & then the first kid leaned down to poorly whisper something in the other kid's ear. walking back from the station, pretty sure I saw what Animal Crossing calls a tiger butterfly (apparently an "eastern tiger swallowtail") fly across the road. went into the kitchen at eleven and floormate ynちゃん leaned back in her chair & held up her arms to hug me.

2025年6月17日(火)
 set my alarm earlier than usual having made the decision to start eating breakfast, woke up to it & summarily turned it off and fell back asleep for another hour and ended up waking up about 10 minutes before I had to leave. wishing I had worn shorts when I walked outside because my pants felt too warm; later feeling like I was finally getting used to the weather and it wasn't actually that bad. watching a streamer I used to watch a lot who has recently begun streaming again, him saying "Who is he!" and fully realizing how often I say that now because of him.

2025年6月16日(月)
 writing this the day after, so remaining impressions: at the student health center, the nurse fumbling with the plastic bag, unable to pull the opening apart and laughing. deciding to be thankful for the humidity because to me it means we're close to the ocean… it's right there! (and I still haven't seen it….) walking to the supermarket, small black butterfly with white-tipped wings & a parent and their child biking down the road on an extremely creaky bicycle. walking outside of the supermarket & getting blasted with humidity. sticky skin.

2025年6月15日(日)
 went to Tokyo today. impressions: in the morning, I got to the station probably sometime around 6:25am, and the train was very empty. everyone around me looked like they were dozing, and when I closed my eyes I felt like I heard the sound of the train on the tracks more clearly than I ever have before. on the shinkansen, I meant to continue reading the collection of Andrey Platonov stories I'm reading, but instead I stared outside the window and took some pictures with my digital camera, texted my father, and closed my eyes and leaned my head against the seat. I didn't bring my headphones. the ride was about an hour and a half, but it really felt like fifteen. I think I could sit on a train for a whole day and enjoy it. my favorite parts of going out, without a doubt, are the train. there's a bus stop right outside my building, but I never go to it because I love the train and prefer to ride it any time, even though it's an eleven minute walk away versus about one minute. told my friend I was with that if all we did was ride the train for 6 hours I would have enjoyed it. the train system in Tokyo had different noises and voices, and seemed to be largely above-ground rather than under. I like the trains in Nagoya better. the rest of my impressions have largely faded. at the imperial palace garden, I got bit by an unknown bug that first made my finger itch and then swell, but within a few hours it went away. rain pattering on the leaves of the trees around us. on the pathway to the Meiji Jingu shrine, there was a very large number of crows. it felt sort of like an omen, but the day went fine: maybe it's just a sign of the times. after all, we are in Mappō. at the shrine itself, got an omamori bell for「やすらぎ」and attached it to my keychain, and thus the sound of gentle ringing began to follow us everywhere. too afraid to pray and stand out among the crowd, so I just eyed the Japanese people praying. in Inokashira, there was a person next to the lake with a guitar, sitting on a bench facing the water and singing. invisible raindrops on top of the water that I kept eyeing, and finally realized were left by pond skaters. huge horde of pillbug-like bugs in front of one of the lakeside benches. on the shinkansen back, I had to stand for the first thirty minutes because there were no seats open in the 自由席 section, and my feet ached horribly in the ill-fitting shoes I wore. on the 東山線 back from 名古屋駅, in the seat next to me a man sat in another man's lap. walking back to my dorm building, started singing エーゲ海に捧ぐ under my breath on the uphill, then looked up and saw someone walking in my direction on the other side of the road and switched briefly to humming. an impression from the entirety of the day: humidity enough to make everything sticky, but not quite oppressive. relief every time I stepped inside a building and it was air conditioned.

2025年6月14日(土)
 rode the bus for the very first time since I came here. I liked it, but I think I prefer the train. decidedly different feelings between them. sound of rain pattering on my umbrella; watching the puddles of water beneath my feet as we walked down the sidewalk. one of the people I was with jumped into two puddles. wet pants sticking to my calves. on the mascot goods floor, they played Can't Take My Eyes Off You and I couldn't help but immediately start singing it under my breath (not along with it, just a random part I remembered). I took a picture of the glass of milk I ordered at the so-called Hawaiian restaurant and one of the people I was with said that I'm a "fun person". outside of the restaurant, dropped my brand new digital camera on the concrete, but nothing broke.

2025年6月13日(金)
 walking to class, outside of campus, heard a very loud crow and turned my head up to the side to see where it was. did not see it, but lost my balance, as I always do when I do such things, and stumbled into the middle of the sidewalk & had to move back to the left side. I have noticed that there are a lot of crows here. I always think back to the Japanese books I've read, for some reason my mind tells me Dazai but maybe not, in which crows are a bad omen. then, on 東山線 on the way to 名古屋駅, the crush of bodies: not quite as compact as sardines, but enough that I was constantly brushing up against someone or another. all crushed together, too, when we left the train and stood in orderly lines waiting to step onto the escalator. I'm not particularly a big fan of crowds, but I think I feel most alive in the crush of the subway. I hate the crowds at concerts, but in the train I feel like a person, a member of society, someone contributing to something, someone part of something large. I just like the train. on the 名城線 back, I got on the 大曽根行き train because it was the first one that came, and I liked watching it empty out until we arrived at 大曽根駅. then there was the last-stop jingle, and the last few of us disembarked. at my stop, the artificial birdsong that always plays throughout the station, the same call over and over and over. I was going back through my reading journal entries recently, and saw that I talked about how I should stop wearing my headphones all the time. well, I've stopped. since I came here, my music listening has drastically decreased. I don't listen to music at all outside of my dorm room. it's at least partially because my headphones are chunky and annoying to fit in my bag. but because I don't wear them, I notice so many more sounds than I did when I wore my noise-cancelling headphones everywhere. the train jingles, people talking, crows, wind blowing, the beeping that indicates we can cross the crosswalk. I never understood how people could just go places without headphones or earbuds, but now I do, because it's easy. I feel more patient, not having stimulation all the time.

2025年6月12日(木)
 on my way to class this morning, I saw a worm, half-crushed, writhing weakly in the middle of the sidewalk. I thought about how Chagataev from Soul might have picked up this worm and moved it to the dirt, without slowing down or pausing to do the same myself. later, walking in the same spot as yesterday, I saw two of the black moth again, except I realised that it wasn't a moth, it was actually a butterfly. also, they had small-medium orange spots lining the bottom of their wings. do moths pollinate flowers?

2025年6月11日(水)
 walking to the café, saw a kind of bird I had never seen before, mostly white with black lines across it that kind of remind me now of marble pound cake, land in the plaza and pick up a worm. on the way back, a big moth that was entirely black and pretty fuzzy flew in front of me. I had never seen a moth that big in person, or seen one fly. I thought the way it flew was weird compared to butterflies and birds. at the welcome party today, when talking to my floormate who is also a study abroad student, I thought about fate again and how everything I've ever done in my life has led me to meet this smattering of people from places like Mississippi that I would never have met otherwise.

2025年6月10日(火)
 on my way off campus, over the sound of rain beating down on my umbrella, someone cheerfully whistling a song I didn't recognise behind me; it stopped as I walked out of the gate. multiple streams of water running down the sidewalk. I really wanted to stomp in them, the same way I wished it was raining while I was walking back from the station last night so I could feel it falling upon me—I kicked my foot through one but there wasn't even a splash.

2025年6月9日(月)
 95% sure that rei harakami was playing in the special wooden part (I forgot what it was called) of Daiso