give or take a day look

we go down to Chicago next Sunday it's close enough

one week

ONE WEEK LAUREN

s o o n

I'm doing that thing where I'm whiplashing between OMG SO YAY and OMG I'M GOING TO FAIL

plane panic, hotel panic, language panic, you know

you'll be fiiiine

language is easy, nobody will expect you to know japanese and everyone has translators on their phones

lmao yeah I know. and we both speak more than the average gaijin

for sure

I just feel like I'm going to suddenly start speaking Spanish even though I haven't actively done so in 20 years

as happens when you know more than 3 languages I guess

lmfao no I know that feeling, that was me nearly every day in korea, but in my defense I do use spanish regularly

Japanish

but yeah when your brain panics and is like ahhhh foreign language!! and picks the wrong one

Rose has it worse, her third is French

Nihonhonhon

since she looked at me, cocked her head to the side and said I'm sorry

goddammi

anyway I was chatting with my mom earlier (they got 14 inches of snow where she is oops) and realized I've never taken a "real" vacation

since I was a kid, that is

I go to conventions and camping

the only foreign country I've been to is Canada

it is definitely time

getting out of the us is such a relief, I always sort of dread coming back now

so there's a little bit of this, am I allowed to vanish off the face of the earth for 3 weeks?

it's nice to just have that complete mental separation from us everything

oh god I bet

some idiot on the Japan travel subreddit was like man in March it'll still be chilly, so I checked. 60 degrees is not chilly, sir.

not when I currently have to ask myself "is it too cold to salt the front steps?"

60 sounds positively tropical right now

for real!

[waves sadly as you zoom past]

soon

soon

ahaha oh man we will, won't we? so close

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

just

literally one week from this moment I'll be on a plane somewhere

internal screaming

got my hair cut today and my usual nerdy girl was working so we spent the whole time gushing about Japan and movies we've seen

apparently we both hated the recent Thor movie. she gets me.

I can sense your AAAAAAAAAnticiaption

damn right

like, so much is anxiety-inducing but then I talk to people like my hair girl or the folks at Joann's I used to work with and all they know is "omg so exciting!" so the hype levels go back up

roller coaster for the next week

speaking of which, last call for "bring me something" specifics. Otherwise, when we return with a grab bag of gacha prizes and weird shit from Donki, we'll hand them out like Halloween up in here

Rose is threatening to bring me back hentai 8|

you doing any shrine visits?

lmfao is she??

YES actually

For certain we're going to Itsukushima, a few temples in Kyoto dedicated to Oda and Toyotomi, and the shrines to the Date in Sendai

probably Meiji-Jingu just because it's literally ten minutes' walk from our hotel

everything else is going to be, if we walk past a shrine I want to look in

oh and Yasaka in Kyoto, it's just a couple blocks from our hotel and we have to walk past it to get anywhere anyway

IF.... you happen past any Inari shrines... I would love a good luck charm of some flavor

can do! of course you want an Inari visit

I'll drop a 5Y coin for you and see what I can pick up

of course

eee thank you

and if our "weird gachapon" rolls turn up any cute foxies it's yours

eeee you're sweet

I mean, Rose is prepared to get souvenirs for relatives she doesn' t even like, I can look out for my plurkfriends!

I know a lot of us share fandom but there are always other things

<3

I. honestly don't begin to know what souvenirs in honor of Susano'o might look like. but if something representative of stormy uncle happens across your periphery...

tha

gah

that is a tough one. but given my love of Warriors Orochi his name (among others) will be one of those "catch my eye" sort of things

this is probably obvious enough but for me "always other things" involves any cute/pretty bird things at all

like as much as I enjoy OP, birds are my forever and most enduring love and a cute bird teacup or whatever would be very treasured for all time

omg yes

at the very least I've already promised to snap pics of birds I don't recognize

yes and I'm super excited to help with that and bird vicariously through you haha

I'm just surprised at how many birds we do share. like, seeing great blue herons wading in the shrine moats in Kyoto

I'm like, I know that bird!

those are Grey Herons! But very closely related

here, we have someone at /r/whatsthisbird who has been putting together some excellent bird posts like this

omg I had no idea

damn, they are SUPER similar though, bless this person

yeah! there's lots of birds like these where they evolved somewhere, spread somewhere else, have been separated for a long time now but still look really similar

location of the wing spots and the amount of black around the eye, that's super hard to spot quickly

and it's hard sometimes to know what's individual variation vs what makes it a separate species

gosh. birds.

like that black spot on the wrist of the wing really can be seen on all three, the coloration around the eye can vary based on age and if it's breeding, etc

this is why on reddit we require a location as a rule for posting if someone's asking for an ID because yeah lmao sometimes that's the only way to be sure of what you're looking at

and then if you have a rare vagrant, like if a Great Blue Heron did wander to Japan, would anyone notice? I mean yes probably if an experienced birder sees it because we do know what's reliable and what isn't (neck color, thigh color), but

otherwise most people will just assume it's a Grey, and rightly so

I mean, yeah. fair

scuse me I'm just going to bathe in this nature talk

Lauren bringin the goods

I exist for this purpose primarily