Yoyoyo whats poppin Its ya boi るーくぅううううう
Hows it going guys, I know I haven’t posted anything in a while but I have been working on the site here and there and I am STILL working on my massive “I’m in the UK” post which I literally started the day day after arriving in the UK (the 23rd of April). Idk, it’s just such a big post I get overwhelmed at times and it’s hard to stay motivated while writing, but I do know that once it’s done it will be a really swag post and if someone out there decides to read it all from top to bottom they definitely won’t regret it…*wink wink* ;).
Anyway, I figure instead of just leaving you guys hanging, (if there’s anyone reading these anyway lol), I’d make a post talking about very recent things going on in my life. So yeah, lets just get right into it :3
7/7 俺の誕生日だぜ
Yup, the time has finally come. Well, actually as of the time writing this post It’s technically tomorrow, my birthday. My birthday, if any of u are curious (send jp books if ur swag, lol jk), is July 7th. 7/7. Hella swag ultra lucky numbers 😉 because I’m cool, yes. It’s actually a holiday in Japan called 七夕[tanabata] (Jpnz wikipedia if ur interested)
七夕【tanabata】 Star Festival
Basically: (copied from English wikipedia cuz I’m lazy)
Tanabata (Japanese: たなばた or 七夕, meaning “Evening of the seventh”), also known as the Star Festival (星祭り, Hoshi matsuri), is a Japanese festival originating from the Chinese Qixi Festival.[1][a][b] It celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively). According to legend, the Milky Way separates these lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the lunisolar calendar. The date of Tanabata varies by region of the country, but the first festivities begin on 7 July of the Gregorian calendar. The celebration is held at various days between July and August.
source
The description of the festival reminds me of me and my girlfriend, two lovers separated that meet once a year (at least for now). Kind of romantic when I think about it.. Anyway, swag lore and seems like a pretty cool holiday. Looking forward to going to one of these festivals when I finally get to Japan.
My Secret
I’m going to get a little personal here and admit something I don’t really tell anyone. To be honest, for the longest time perhaps since I was maybe 11-12 y/o, I’ve always gotten pretty sad on my birthdays. I don’t really want to get too deep into why but I will shed some light on how I normally feel on my birthdays, especially the past 4 or 5.
What I don’t like about my birthdays
This is really embarrassing/hard to say, but If I’m being honest I don’t really like my birthdays, I normally get kind of well, depressed.. idk, It’s hard to explain, but I think it has to do with my family or lack there of. Sometimes I look at other peoples families and feel sorta jealous. I mean, when someone if their family has a birthday it’s like everyone there to cheer them up and just Idk, a proper “family” if that makes sense. Sometimes I start feeling nostalgic, and start missing certain people and I just feel “alone“.
I also don’t like the concept of having like a special “day” where all of a sudden things are just somehow “different” and people are supposed to treat you different. I remember living with my dad and his girlfriend and I always felt “weird” or like kinda upset when either my dads girlfriend or one of her friends would almost blatantly “act different”, if that makes sense. Like people who maybe wouldn’t normally treat me a certain way just almost completely change their entire demeanor when speaking to me (But only on that day). idk, weird.
Also, I always feel REALLY bad if someone gets me things or like actually genuinely tries to make me feel better and idk be “happy”. It’s weird, most people probably don’t feel like this. I might be broken lol, like a bug in a videogame, except no ones patching my retarded ass lmao. Nah, Idk, but I’d rather people not get me anything like Idk I just feel really bad like they didn’t have to do anything so when/if they do it feels like like, well idk, like I don’t “deserve” it. Not to say I’m not happy or appreciative, it’s the exact opposite I am I just don’t really feel like I deserve it so I just feel “guilty” if someone gets me stuff.
I miss u so much ゆず 🥺❤
Finally, and I guess probably the most painful of them all is the fact I won’t be able to spend my 18th birthday with my girlfriend (yuzu). I know I haven’t really introduced my girlfriend in any of my posts yet but that’s because I plan to make a whole post talking about her and well, us, as she really is the love of my life. Obviously we still talk everyday and and I’m sure we’ll video call and text loads tomorrow and she did send me a birthday present that I haven’t opened yet (but super excited to open tomorrow), but I still can’t deny the fact that I really wish I could be with her right now and of course on my birthday. 😞
That being said, It’s not all bad I mean like I said I still have loads to look forward to tomorrow. Talking to yuzu and reading the letter she sent me, (she said there was two in my present 😳) and she sprayed her 香水 (perfume) on it, the one she used last time I saw her, (probably the best scent I’ve ever smelled EVER) on the letter so I can’t wait 🥰🥰🥰not to mention My best mate Max and I are going to London the day after my birthday (although not only for my birthday), but I’ll get to all of that later in this post.
Special 18th
What makes this birthday “special”
Well, turning 18 actually means, at least in the west, that I am now an “Adult”. Which if you read my post about living alone, you’ll know I think this is kind of bull shit…lol, well, I mean at least in my eyes being an “adult” has more to do with your life experience and how mature you are than your age. Age is completely arbitrary in my opinion, I mean, there are plenty of people I’ve seen that are in there 20’s hell, even 30s that act like children, and on the opposite spectrum there are people in their early teens who are more mature than me lol.
Nonetheless, being 18/ (being considered an Adult), does, open a lot of doors in life. The biggest and most important “doors” it opens for me in particular is *drum role please*…
I can finally get married in Japan!!!! YES BIAATTCH
*insert Jessie from breaking bad pic*
You heard that right, I can finally get married in the J-Land. I’ll get to why this is so exciting for me in a sec but first let me explain a bit. So obviously I’m American and in America land I’m pretty sure in most states you can actually get married as early as 16 (with parents consent) and then when you’re 18 you can get married without anyone consent. However, the land of the rising sun as some wack ass rules for the age you have to be for getting married. Get a load of this:
Article 731 to 737 of the Japanese Civil Code stipulates the following requirements:
The male partner must be 18 years of age or older and the female partner must be 16 years of age or older.
A person who is under 20 years of age cannot get married in Japan without a parent’s approval.
Most people related by blood, by adoption or through other marriages cannot get married in Japan.
source
Obviously the parts about not being able to marry your sister n’ shit make sense to me. But what I think most people including my self will think is “weird”, is the fact that the girl can get married at 16, but the guy has to be 18. like は？
I’m sure they have their typical “Japanese Logic” for this too but as you can probably tell, this is what I’m talking about when I say “Finally” when talking about being able to get married in Japan.
Ur boi’s gettin married 結婚しますっ！！！
I realize that this is probably a shock to anyone who just came to the site/doesn’t know me too well, but I I think I’m going to save the “why” for another post. Perhaps the post where I talk about yuzu (my gf) and our relationship. Regardless, I will say, yuzu and I have been wanting to get married since I was 16. We started dating in 2018 So roughly a year after dating, and meeting for the first time we started talking about it and It’s been something we’ve wanted to do for over 2 years now. Not just getting married of course, we want to create a family together. But like I said, that’s for another post. What I’m trying to get at is well, this birthday is quite important because it means yuzu and I can finally get married and as a bonus (a really swag bonus) getting to Japan, (and maybe even fairly soon) is now a feasible plan.
Finally going to Japan?!
Here’s where things start getting really exciting. So unless you’re living under some rock, you probably know that Japan has its borders closed to well, basically, anyone right now. Unless, you have some “special circumstances” (and even then you have to apply for a visa before going to Japan). So basically up until pretty recently yuzu and I were both pretty down. I mean, the borders have been closed now for over a year and a half and things just seem to be getting worse and worse with the pigs ruling the world making stuff worse every day. Nonetheless, one of these “special circumstances” that I was referring to just a second ago is basically if you have a Japanese spouse/kid, or Japanese family living in Japan, you fall under these “special” circumstances. Which honestly I’m surprised they even let you get away with being with your family anymore.
Anyway, I’ve known this since pretty much the time they first shut the borders and so the plan was always to get in the country under these “circumstances”, obviously originally the plan was to get into japan with the 短期間 (short-term) visa , and then get married in Japan and then switching to the spouse visa to start working and what not. But, obviously that’s not going to happen anytime soon, and isn’t a feasible plan anymore. So now we are rolling with plan B, as mentioned before. The problem with plan B is well, we didn’t think it would be possible to get married or if it were we thought she would have to come to America for us to get married and then we would go back to Japan together. But this is when we found out
You can get married in Japan without actually being in Japan
Yes, It’s true. In-fact part of the entire visa (its called 配偶者ビザ) ‘s meaning is that in the case you DO get married while your spouse is outside of Japan (from the perspective of the Japanese person), you can use said visa to actually almost “call” your spouse to Japan. I’ll leave some links at the end of the post to that goes more into detail about it all but yeah. This is great news for us, I mean if all it is paperwork (albeit loads of paperwork cuz its Japan), at least its POSSIBLE. That’s the important thing.
So basically if we get married (which we’ve wanted to do anyway), we can apply for a specific visa called the haiguusha visa (配偶者) /Spousal visa which, by the way, is the best visa you can have. It basically puts you on the same playing field as a Japanese person in that you can work at any job, go to school etc. Also once you renew it the second time you can apply for 永住権 which is basically permanent residency. All sounds really good, and it probably is, or can be. But, first step first, we need to get married.
Getting the paperwork
We are both in the process of getting all the paperwork, I will say the Japanese person generally has to do way more work than the foreign spouse. That being said, there’s still quite a lot I have to do, the biggest of them all and really the most important is whats called:
Affidavit of Competency to Marry | 婚姻要件具備証明書
This is basically a piece of paper that says you can get married in your own country and there is no problems. Its an Affidavit so basically you write all your information and then you swear by it and say its all true and then have it notarized. In my case, it’s a little complicated because I’m American and normally you would do this type of thing well, IN America. But, since I’m in the UK right now my only option is to do it at the American Embassy in the UK which is London. London is really far from where I currently reside, I live in a really small city called Ripon in North Yorkshire, basically the northern part of the UK, London is probably a 5 hour car drive from where I’m at but you wouldn’t drive. Here’s a picture to describe how far it is.
as you can see, quite far. But, since it’s either travel a few hours and get there or literally go back to America (fuck that), I’d rather just go to London.
Going to London ロンドン行くぜ！！
Max and I actually were planning on going to London from even before I came to the UK. We always talked about how if I was going to the UK I’d have to go London at least once. It’s like one of those “once in a life time” experiences, and it would make no sense to come all the way to the UK and not go to London at least once. We were also planning on going in July anyway because the weather is nicer during summer.
It just works out because we already planned on going to London in July and now I have an actual “reason” to go other than just 遊び. So basically I had to talk to talk to this person from the American Embassy in London via email and I told him my situation and even though apparently they closed all routine notary appointments he’s making an exception for me so I can go there to get the affidavit.
The shitty thing is that even when I get the shit notarized at the embassy, because it has to be signed by a US consulate I will have to send it to a consulate in America probably in the state i was born in, have it signed, then have it sent back to me so I can then send it to Japan… yes, quite the trip this piece of paper is going on. Either way I’m still excited especially because my boy max and I will have a good time in London once we’re there.
6 Days ６日間
So we’ve decided to stay 5 nights and stay 6 days. We are going on the 8th of this month (july) so the day after tomorrow (as of the time writing this). So from the 8th to the 13th. 6 days. We chose this time because its the full time max has off thanks to his vacation days, and also it’s based around my notary appointment at the embassy on friday (the 9th)
The thing is with the notary appointment is that the only time they can see me is 11am in the morning, no later. And since obviously it would be impossible to take a bus and train to London from where I am so early so to arrive by 11am we are going to need to go the day before so we can get to the appointment early in the morning. So the first day is mainly just to get there, get settled into our hotel and what not. Then the next day is the American embassy shit (shouldn’t take too long). Then from that the rest is just exploring and sight seeing.
Small list of shit we made of things we want to do/places we want to see/go to in London
-Get Japanese books/Go to big Japanese book store/Weeeb store
So it turns out theres like no Japanese book stores or like stores that sell Japanese books even in London except one and its kind of hidden, Max and I had to do quite some digging just to find this place and apparently its like a scavenger hunt just to find it, but basically under this department store theres this massive Japanese book store called “JP books” and its notorious for being one of the biggest Japanese book stores in all of Europe. From what we know here’s the address/how to get there.
JP books below mitsukoshi department store on 14-20 Lower Regent St, London
-London tower
Take pictures, go to the top all that shit
-Order food in Japanese at a Japanese restaurant.
yeeeee. Im sure there will be some Japanese ppl in london and I really wanna try speaking in Japanese to someone other than my gf lol
-China town in London
street food, take loads of pictures. Eat 1 time at proper authentic Chinese restaurant.
-National history museum (and other free museums as well)
Take pictures, see cool shit
-Go to skyscraper or some shit and look down at all
the peasants of the world
where I’m from in Florida theres not many tall buildings and this is always something I’ve wanted to do
-Piccadilly Circus
Apparently it looks swag at night so yeee
-Hyde Park
Swag park
-London Eye
Massive Ferris wheel
-Hampstead Heath
another cool park ( I think )
In Conclusion
in conclusion, yes, I’m tired. It’s about 11:30 when I’m writing this and Max and I just spent loads of time looking for hotels and train tickets and I’m kind of sleepy not gonna lie, I’m sure there’s more things I could add to this post but I’m gonna cut it short here and publish it because I’d rather have something out so ye. this is basically what’s been on my mind recently and I hope you enjoyed reading and if you did maybe, just maybe? make an account and comment on the post letting me know what you thought of it.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being u :3
G’night now, おやすみ～
