the insatiable beast

give an insatiable beast an endless pond of experiences, and she will never stop drinking. as the beast is a beast after all, hunger is in her nature. and in this pond, she is happy.

job search

One of my friends told me that he forgot to pay rent one month. He sent a picture to his mom asking for the 40.000 yen (around 215 EUR) and the next day his account was frozen. Apparently his manager called him because his mum mistook yen for dollars and made a transfer of that amount to his account. So, do you think this money came through in the end? I am afraid the word “manager” might have given you a hint.

This little boy, who loves to vape, talk with cute girls and probably finds 6-7 jokes funny, has a trust fund. A fund that comes with a manager who handles all his finances and the possibility to get 40.000 dollars when he needs.

Then, I decided to open my long-neglected savings bank account app. I, unfortunately, don’t have a manager to handle my “fund”. And even more unfortunately, my fund does not have the ability to multiply or even of withdrawing those amounts. Funnily enough, this boy also has a part-time job washing dishes in a restaurant. So, I have to lock in.

Faced with the reality of not being a nepo baby (tragic I know), I decided to start to look for a part-time job. Between the weak yen and that salaries are low, if we are being honest, a job for a couple days a week is not going to lessen my financial toll. However, with the use of ground-breaking girl math, I am making money just by the fact that I am busy. At the end of the day, it is not that my savings are not enough or that the country is too expensive. There is a money-sucking leech in my bank account. This leech is uncontrollable, its eyes glitter when they see something new to buy, something new to try. Some days, it’s sunny outside. Others, it feels so nice to walk in a new neighbourhood. This leech walks with its wallet in their hand, and even if it doesn’t want to spend anything, it can’t resist. Like a child faced with a big, bright lollipop, they must have it. Of course, I am talking about me. I am a walking-bomb to my bank account, an insatiable parasite. There is not much one can do to tame this beast, but the beast can’t spend while she is at work. So, with that logic, a low salary job still can make me a lot of money.

In a more realistic note and not to alarm people, I am completely within the budget I gave myself and I simply want to be responsible with my money, as I know of the many, many, many plans, travels, restaurants, purchases and experiences I want to have. Having a job won’t make me do more or less of these things, but it might make me feel a bit better about it.

That said, from my friends’ experiences and my own observations, the Japanese work structure is very outdated. Young people will only do simple tasks, no rewards, no handling of bigger responsibilities. Anyone satisfies a entry-level job. They will teach you and grow within the company. People, specially in these lower positions, feel like they are just human-machines made to perform few simple tasks. They shouldn’t do more, they are not allowed to, they should stay in line, time will lead to possible promotions.

They don’t expect you to ever change companies either. Once you go in, you will work there for life. The experience you get from one company won’t be useful in another. When you start in a new place, you will be forced to start from scratch: base salary, base tasks, regardless of your previous position. Another factor that contributes to this system is that you get more vacation days with seniority within a company. In your first years, you only get 10 days. As you keep being employed there, you can get up to 25. If you decide to leave the company, the next one will offer you only 10.

I don’t ever expect to work full-time in a Japanese-style company. I’d have an aneurysm, or more possible, ending up the black sheep after not being able to put up with some bullshit. However, for my part-time job purposes, this concept benefits me. My lack of experience in certain jobs does not mean anything. My lack of Japanese proficiency does limit me a lot, since here you must be conversational in most jobs. But with the growth of tourism, I am striving to get a job in need of someone who can speak English. Or, of course, the greatest language in the world: Catalan.

side quests

So, let’s get into what has this leech been doing this past week. The previous week I had gone snowboarding, so I mainly took it easy for the remainder of the week.

Sike. My energy reserves are endless and with every new experience, they multiply.

I did catch up with a lot of errands and studying, because yes, this beast is also insatiable in the pursuit of knowledge. I have been reading a lot of Japanese magazines to learn more vocabulary and it has been great. And yeees, they were cooking magazines… I got great inspiration, but I haven’t been able to take it to reality because I still had my meal prep from my previous week. (I prepped and froze 12 meals, with different recipes so I wouldn’t be bored and to eat diverse).

My first real side-quest of the week was going to a coffee festival in Ginza. I have been getting more and more into the Tokyo coffee scene so when I saw the ad, it only felt fitting that I attend. I was going to go one morning before class on my own, but for unforeseen circumstances, I ended up going with the ex of one of my friends. The previous weekend, you bathe naked with one girl, the next you end up going to a festival with her ex. The turntables. I wasn’t trying to stir the pot, so I invited another one of my friends to set clearly the goal of the outing: caffeine overdose.

And that we did, the place was not that big. I don’t think there were more than 15 coffee stalls to try. Still, it was nice to see and read of all the different beans, varieties, origins, etc. You could smell a lot of them, read their informations, etc. Trying to figure it out all the different fruits and components of the coffee was fun. The festival was mainly Japanese so it was a bit disappointing that I couldn’t interact with the baristas properly. They were there to geek out about how they roast their coffees so I would have loved to engage in that. Thankfully, one of my friends was Japanese so at least we got some insights.

At some point, a very nice foreigner guy explained the work they do to promote coffee places to support local businesses in Tokyo to fight against big corporations making cheap coffee by exploitation. Everyone from that store/cafe was wearing the bandana they were selling in different ways and they all looked so cool. So, of course, I am now the owner of one of these bandanas. It is only my duty as a resident to support local businesses by going to nice coffee places and buying cool and cute items.

For a quite small festival, it ended up being very interesting and fun. We all went the morning before class, but afterwards, I went again to buy a dripper I had already took a look at before and some coffee beans with watermelon and kiwi scents. It was Friday after all.

I waited on buying because I wanted to be sure it was an actual good purchase, and not just a pretty prop that makes bad-okay coffee. I bought a ceramic origami dripper, which should offer similar quality of a v60 and you can use Kalita wave paper with it. I am still experimenting with it, but for now, it has been a fun and happy purchase. It was quite affordable as well, and most importantly, very cute.

The next day, I wanted to see a Hina dolls festival. Hina dolls are a very important item of Japanese culture and they are put in preparation for Girls’ day. The dolls represent royalty with the emperor and empress on the top. These dolls are made with a lot of care and there is a bunch of families and towns dedicated to their craft.

On my mega list of activities in Japan, there were a couple of places with nice Hina festivals. There was one that was quite far away and very very special, but because I wanted to chill a bit more, I went to a place closer. Looking back, I am not that sure it would have mattered as much in terms of time. However, what I did was definitely less touristy, as I didn’t see a single foreigner for the whole day. Nothing was in English nor anyone know how to speak it. What was more shocking was that there was barely no information online either. There were papers and flyers there, but nothing on the web. Right away, I could tell this was a very regional festivity.

I went to another province of Kanto (Kanto is the prefecture where Tokyo is) to a small and rural town in Saitama. It was called Konosu. In a shopping mall, there was the tallest Hina doll tower in Japan. The shopping mall is attached to the train station, so I arrived, I saw the tower and then, I was a bit like “what do I do now?”

In some random website, I did see there was a free shuttle bus to take you into different parts of the festival. What were those parts was unknown to me, but it couldn’t hurt to try. I walked around and I managed to find the bus. Apparently I was one minute late so they had to stop it for me. Oopsie. In that bus, there were only women. Grandmas, moms and daughters. So nice. The one driving was a man but I let it slide.

I thought that bus was going to a park in the city but we were going further and further outside the city. I was vibing. I felt very safe in my only-women bus. We ended up in the middle of nowhere. My fellow queens went down the bus so I followed. They went to a flower shop and then I realised this was the second festival location. A different and smaller Hina doll tower was there. All the store was decorated with the dolls. It was cute and a vibe. However, what was actually the greatest was the store itself. It was some sort of local wholesaler. The smell was divine. While walking through all the corridors, I could smell different flowers. It was like swimming in a fragrance pool.

I wanted to buy some flowers, after some debating I ended up picking two up. On my way to the cashier, I saw the pots because of course I need the pots. While looking at the pots, I realised I needed the plate you put below the pot. At that moment, I looked at my flowers and realised if they go home with me, their fate is to suffer and die. I decided to save their beautiful life and leave them in the store.

Next to the shop, there was a soba restaurant and a bakery. I could tell I was no longer in the Tokyo area because the prices were way lower. As the only foreigner, I was a bit intimidated with the restaurant as I had to order in person and the menu and organisation were unfamiliar to me. I managed to order something and pay without causing much trouble. I actually ordered a soba with a local veggies soup so it was a nice (accidental) choice. Afterwards, I went to the bakery because it reminded me of one of these japan bakeries I saw in youtube channels with my mom in the mornings. It was almost empty when I got there. Everyone had bought most of the items. I did still get two little things (that I have no idea what they were). I went to catch the bus, but unfortunately for me, it had left 5 minutes ago. Also very unfortunately for me, there was a random break in the schedule and there was no bus until 1 hour. I checked that it was “30 minutes” walking so I just decided to walk. I was walking a street called the flower path. I could tell by the fields this place is full of flowers. It reminded me of the tulip fields in the Netherlands (they also have tulip fields in this town). Here it is called the flower oasis. Sounds beautiful. Sad that there was not a single flower planted at this point of the year, so I was just walking a straight line seeing nothing more than lifeless soil.

30 minutes my ass, I was exhausted and the walk didn’t seem to end. Finally, I made it to the shrine I decided to check by a quick google search on what to do in this town. This shrine is a pregnancy shrine. Eeeeeeeh, I felt cursed. Of course, I am allergic to men so not a real problem. Apparently, this is the only shrine in Japan that has storks as guardians. I forgot my sacred sign book but I managed to get a nice paper out of it. Since I had nothing to do, I also got a luck blessing. At this point, I have so many blessings to last me a lifetime. This blessing told me I am pretty, so my feet no longer hurt after that. (It also told me I am fertile, but I will be ignoring that)

I returned to my lovely shopping mall after walking an empty town for an hour. I read (or google read me) that there was a taiko performance. I couldn’t figure it out where it was, so I asked one of the organisers. In Japanese. He answered in Japanese. I couldn’t understand a thing. The guy was very nice and went out of the way to show me a bigger paper with more information and then I understood. There was no taiko that day. I wandered a bit around the shopping mall, and then decided to take the train back so i would have more time to take a bath back in my share house (i am a bath addict now). I completely fell asleep at one point of my train journey, and because I had bags of purchases it was a bit weird. I was not the only one completely out of the realm called Earth. People here don’t speak on trains but they do sure sleep soundly anywhere.

Because this girl gets no breaks, the next day I woke up early to go with my friend to the Tokyo flea market. It was a very sunny day so it felt nice.

The flea market was huge, it reminded me to the one in NDSM in Amsterdam. It was still probably twice the size, maybe even thrice. There were also a lot of souvenirs stalls where you could buy dolls, antiquities and what I found very cool, you could buy old match boxes. They all had different designs from old coffees stores, restaurants, companies, etc. Definitely a great souvenir to give to friends and family. Very cheap as well.

The clothes were very varied. I would still say mostly everything was in the cheapest side. As in anywhere in Tokyo, you could find designer vintage, which is expensive, but there were still a lot of normal prices. A huge amount of people just sold their closets. Some came with a couple suitcases and laid their clothes on the floor. Other just dumped their clothes like cloth mountains. These mountains were extremely cheap (200 yen, less than 1 EURO) and its quality was great, the clothes didn’t look or feel worn out. A few had some small stains but mostly all were in perfect condition.

In the market, there were some nice food stands. I ate some wagyu tendon beef rice bowl and it was tasty and not expensive. It was quite hot and sunny and we saw a lot of people with their matcha’s so we were tempted to try. There was quite a queue but it went quite fast besides when the girl before us started ordering. First of all, she skipped the queue very blatantly. She was fully aware of it too, since they made us do two queues and then she just put herself in first position shamelessly. Very sadly, I realised this girl was Catalan. A disgrace to the motherland. She also had a bit of an attitude with the matcha man, which like chill your horses. The matcha spot was very popular so they did run out of some things but what else are you expecting. It was already quite late in the day. She actually didn’t like what she got so I’m happy about her misfortune.

I did get my matcha and it was absolutely phenomenal, I even wanted to buy the matcha powder but I don’t have my tools in Tokyo and I just bought a new coffee dripper so I didn’t want to buy more beverage things this week.

It was almost closing time and I hadn’t bought anything, so tragic. But don’t worry, the shopping gods came last minute and I found something. I was in the search for a normal blue shirt to combine my outfits (and to work with my recent coffee supporter bandana), and I found a place selling Burberry shirts for less than 5 euros. The tag may seem real but I am doubting that this is actually a designer shirt. However, the touch of the shirt was very, very good. So even if it may secretly be a copy, it is a goddamn good one.

The market closes at 14.30 so we still had a bit of a day ahead of us. Because it was so sunny, we thought about going to a park and trying to see some early blossoms. We ended up going to the park near the Tokyo tower. I hadn’t yet been to that area so it was nice.

The park was cool, the tower was very cute, the amount of people was quite low and I loved this area. Minato is the rich millionaire fund baby area and of course, I like it. Very close to the Tokyo tower, there was an area called Azabudai, next to Roppongi. The houses, architecture, the tall tall buildings, all so cool and modern. Though I agreed with my friend when she said this doesn’t really feel like Tokyo. It has no soul. It is just very modern buildings in a clean and organised way that you could find in many modern neighbourhoods in any big city in the world. There were no stores in the streets or anything, which is quite boring. The reason for that is because all the stores are in Azabudai hills. It has 3-4 shopping malls in the same area. There is a park in the middle with 5 entrances that lead to the different areas of these malls. There were at least two big museums inside, supermarkets, restaurants, cafes…. We tried to find one by the name, and even with a paper map and google we were confused. Different floors, malls, annexes…

As a mall, it was quite comfortable. It was spacious, it had inner gardens to relax, and just anything you may need for a nice outing. They had the Azabudai market which is like a fresh food place. I bought a bento there and it is one of the best I have ever had. It was made of quality ingredients and cooked very well.

So, I was finally home to rest. Sike, again. At 9 pm, I recorded a new episode of the STIT podcast. Because I had done so many things in the day, instead of tired, the excitement gave me more energy so I was very clearheaded. Though when I did finish and wanted to see a show, I completely passed out. Play hard, rest hard.

the weekend isn’t over

It was a long weekend on Tokyo since on Monday, Japan celebrated the empress birthday. So I could sleep in (I always sleep in because I have afternoon classes but this felt even better). I had an appointment at 14 in Omotesando so I took the morning with tranquility.

The Omotesando and Aoyama area was a very cool walk. It’s where all the fancy designer shops are. These stores had some interesting architectures so it was entertaining. Again, I love fancy rich places. I want to be a nepo baby so bad…

Finally, I made it to cat street, a very very famous street in Harajuku. My hairdresser was there. The street was mega hot, it truly felt like I was in summer. I was a bit early for my appointment, so I decided to try the famous Iyoshi cola. I must admit, even though it is a tourist trap, it slapped. I need to know how they make this and always have this in my fridge in summer.

My hairdresser was in the 4th floor so I had views of people walking the street. Harajuku is a very fashion place, so looking at people’s outfits was a vibe.

They cut your hair when it’s dry which felt off but they always do it like this in Japan. My hairdresser used Pinterest to decide and talk with me about the cut which didn’t give me nice vibes but she did a nice job. I don’t think she did anything too fancy but to be fair I also didn’t ask for it. Since this was a “good” and expensive place, I did hope we would have a bit more of a back and forth when it comes to styles and I did say I was open to suggestions but she didn’t really try to risk it. Nevertheless, I was pleased with the cut results.

Then, the hair dye journey started. I was in the hairdresser almost 5 hours. We decided to bleach my hair, which I was aware meant one more kidney to surrender. They went heavy with the bleach which I didn’t expect. My dark brown colour was fading away very rapidly and I went to almost white. I asked around later and in Japan, they have a loose hand with bleach. Foreign hair is different after all. However, I chose a salon that specialised in foreign hair so I was a bit disappointed about it. After they applied the dye for the first time, they saw that the difference between my recent bleached hair and my old-bleached hair was bad. One of the assistants who was checking my hair asked the main hairdresser for help with alarmed eyes. I just sat there while they were discussing options amongst themselves. Some more dyes, and 2 showers laters, they finished.

It surprised me about the salon is that the main hairdresser that does the cuts doesn’t treat your hair all the time. She supervises the younger girls who are not allowed to cut. They are only like extra help when you need to apply dye, shower heads, give the last shoulder messages, etc. I am sure more than 8 of these girls went through my hair at some point.

For the amount of kidneys the salon cost me, I was quite disappointed with the care they had of my hair. It didn’t feel premium at all. Still, of course, I look fire.

my rest also consumes me

The new k-dramas this season are banging, but because they air in Korea around almost 10 pm and only afterwards, they are available to stream. It’s destroying my sleep schedule. If I watch it at 00.00, I will end up going to sleep a bit before 2 am. If I wake up early to watch them, I am not motivated to do anything in the morning. One needs to digest the episode, you know.

Watching back the episode on TikTok and seeing the comments is one of the best things about weekly dramas, so it is also annoying if I wait to see the episode until the next day, because at that point, I would have ended up seeing all the spoilers on my phone.

So, if someone wants baby government propaganda, do watch “our universe”. A banger. There was a show that ends this week so it should have alleviated it a bit, but another one just started and it already has me on a chokehold only with 2 episodes, so it’s gonna be bad.