Mental Health Week

So Buzzfeed is absolutely killing Mental Health Week. I am beyond grateful to all the people choosing to talk about their mental illness, and am beyond happy about the way mental illness is becoming less and less stigmatized.

After years of being physically sick, and after being diagnosed with adult ADHD just about a year ago, I thought the struggles with my overall personal health were finally over. But I suppose that life rarely works out the way you expect it to. Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have a strong support system, with friends and family who can see past the "happy face" that I wear all too often. 

Today, after feeling especially inspired by this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eV1o86_DB8), I finally gathered up enough courage to start the antidepressants I was prescribed over two weeks ago.

Mental health is a tricky thing. Before all of this hit the fan, I had two preconceived notions that I needed to come to terms with before I could be able to get better. 

1. The first is the idea that I don't deserved to be depressed. What do I have to be sad about? I'm taken care of, I'm going to a good college, I have plenty of friends and family surrounding me, yet I'm still not happy. How ungrateful must I be? Another video that was released this week by a favorite comedian of mine articulated the feeling perfectly (https://youtu.be/f8BzpU7Xfok). Anna asks why we are made to feel ungrateful by being depressed, and follows it up by explaining that society suggests "external factors are the keys to happiness and you have those right now so be happy," which is such a dumb way think! Depression can often be attributed to a chemical imbalance in the brain. No amount of external happiness is going to change that, not in my case anyway. No one deserves or doesn't deserve to be depressed, and we sure as hell shouldn't be made to feel ashamed about it.
2. The second notion I needed to get over was that mental illness only happens to "weak people." I had close friends and family that have dealt with mental health issues, and I ended up developing this weird impression that such things only happen to other people. I was merely an observer, that somehow my mind was impervious to such struggles. I thought I was too strong for anything like that to happen to me, but it doesn't matter how objectively strong or weak you are. As much as I believe in mind over matter, I think there is an extent to how much it works.

I'm sorry for writing this book, but thank you for reading. If you are struggling, please, please, please don't ignore those feelings! Don't bury them like I did! It will only make your future recovery that much harder. Get therapy, start medication. Like Buzzfeed's video said, "When you're not feeling physically well you go to a doctor, so if your brain isn't feeling well you go to a doctor, right? Wrong. Only one-third of people with a mental illness seek any form of treatment."

Hold on to those you love, don't hide from them. You'd be surprised how much they notice, how much they already know. I mean, to hell with it, you can even post about it on the internet if you want. Just do something, anything that will get started with this uphill battle.

And to those who are healthy, please don't dismiss mental illness as just "asking for attention" or something reserved for weak people. I was you once, I know how it looks from the outside. But also keep in mind that whatever happens, it's not your fault. Mental illness is personal and it's probably not something you can fix. You can support and be there for your loved ones, but ultimately it is the individual's choice to make a change, to become better.

Happy Mental Health Week, you guys. Thanks for taking a peak. 

Where you are, that is home.

After returning home, and retiring this blog, I realized that I have new reason to keep writing: all of the friends I made and the people I met during my time in Japan. Honestly, I really love doing this anyway. Everything I do now seems so normal to me, so I'm still not quite sure what I want to write about, but I'm sure I'll find something. 

I just thought that I would keep you guys updated on what I'm doing. 

To my friends Japan: I miss you all dearly and hope you are doing well.

Hello Bullet Train

Unfortunately, I took no picture that pertain to this portion of the story.
As the title of this post suggests, my time in Tokyo had come to a close, and it was time for my to take the Bullet Train to Shizuoka. I had gone to the train station a day before to get a ticket. This step was unnecessary, but since I had never been on this kind of train before, it put me at ease.
I arrived at the station the day after, lugging my monster of a suitcase along. This train line's name is Shinkansen, and is known for holding the world record of "fastest rail vehicle." I'm guessing most of you have hear of it. It looks a little like this:

By little, I mean this is the actual train. I did not, however, take this photo. Yes, it was taken from Google Images. 

My cousin drove with my to the station to see me off and make sure I didn't head in the wrong direction. I soon left the comfort of his presence and began to wonder towards the correct platform. After accidentally entering the handicapped waiting room, I found the correct path to the platform and train. My train soon arrived, but I noticed that no one was entering. Not wanting to get into any sort of "situation," I decided to sit and watch what others did (which I have learned, when traveling, saves loads of embarrassment). Instead of immediately entering the open doors, people were lining up in front of them. I followed suit and stood in front of the empty train. A short while later, a large crew of ladies in pink uniforms entered the train and began cleaning, and flipping the directions of the seats. I realized that this was the end of line, and were "resetting" the train for the next go. Now I just had to wait until they were done.

Another foreigner soon walked up, looking very confused. He kept looking around, and I'm guessing he was wondering why no one getting on, too. Instead of waiting it out, he chose to try and enter. Those station conductors are quite vigilant, and as this man tried to enter, he was whistled and yelled at. Blushing very hard, and still looking very confused, he stepped back. I accidentally let out a little snort and chuckle, making the kid blush even harder. Poor guy...

One thing that I have learned about travel is that you must be willing to embarrass yourself. If your not, you will most likely have a miserable time. With the language barrier, differences in customs, and generally unknown territory, there is no way to be fully prepared. The best thing to do is suck it up and push forward. I have never been one to shy away from embarrassing herself, but even so, I need to keep in mind that this is just a slice of the cake. 

After the train was reset and cleaned, people began to board and I wondered to my seat. I had to travel to the back of my car to stick my suitcase behind the last row, as it was too large to fit in the overhead rack. It always feels uncomfortable leaving things unattended, but this is the way things are done here. People will just leave their purses and backpacks on a bench while they are grabbing a drink from the vending machine at the train station. It is weird being in such a trusting place, and it is probably pretty sad that I feel that way.  

As I headed back up the aisle, two nice Australian fellows stopped me to ask if I needed help putting my bag away. Looking back now, it was a rather odd question, seeing that I no longer had a suitcase with me. I gave a raised eyebrow and politely rejected. I settled into my seat and the train soon began to move. 

I stuck my earbuds in and turned on some Frank Sinatra, Somewhere Beyond the Sea to be exact, which I felt was very fitting. I watched the scenery speed past me. The high-rises soon turned into small houses which turned into farmland and mountains. Everything is so green in this country. I appreciate that there is always something strikingly beautiful, wherever you are in Japan, at least in my experience and mind. 

With an entrance into a tunnel and, subsequently, my view being blocked, I pulled my computer out to write a post in this very blog.  

About an hour later, I arrived in the town of Shizuoka. This is were I met the family that I will be staying with for the next two months. Angela, the matron of the family, found and led me to the car. I was rather excited about this, as the parking garage was an Automated Car Parking System. This means that a mechanical, multi-story system was used to transport cars to and from parking spaces to eliminate wasted space. I had never seen one of these before. It was pretty cool.

After a while of driving, we arrived in a little town part of the Shizuoka area called Shimada. This was my new home for the next couple of months, and I couldn't be happier. 

Making fun of trees is a knock on wood.

So this post is going to be very short, but I want to share one of my favorite places in Tokyo. 

It's pretty small. I found it during one of the first few days I arrived. While trying to find my way back to the apartment, I stumbled upon a bunch of sports fields. I sat and watched all the teams play a variety of sports. I can't quite put it into words, but many of the sports played here have very subtle difference than the ones back home, I noticed this especially with baseball. 

After sitting for a while, I chose to press on and try to figure out where I was. I soon arrived at this vaguely open gate leading to some sort of park thing. Looking back now, I'm fairly sure it was a service entrance, but I still went in. On my way on this tiny little driveway, I found this. 

What? Stuff on fire? I like this place better already (I'm still not quite sure why this was happening).

Anyway, I pressed on and entered on a nice little stone path. It led to a wooded area. The trees twisted overhead and weaved some sort of canopy above me.

Butterflies where flapping about, with the songs of both birds and cicadas (don't even get me started on those guys) following me wherever I walked. I soon ran into a small river with a path parrelling it. A little ways down this trail, there was a cute little stone bridge. It was all very romantic. I sat on the edge and looked down on the koi gliding through the murky water. 
This was the view from my seat: 

The bridge was quite steep, and couples would run up to the top and let gravity push them a little further on the way down. They would hold hands and giggle too hard. It's funny how media has portrayed these kinds of bridges as romantic, and that a good part of the population believes so also. Not that it is a bad thing, but I've always wondered why we think of certain things in the way we do.

After sticking in my earbuds and listening to something sentimental, I hopped off the bridge's railing and ventured further into the park. I soon came across a long boardwalk extending into a large pond that said river connected to. I strolled around the pond, watching the various kinds of ducks swim around and the schoolkids running off together. After following the path as far as I could, I came to actual entrance of the park and found a plaque (partially in English) explaining where and what this park was all about. It is a place called Arisugawanomiya Memorial Park. It was beautiful. I felt as if I had stepped off of the street and into someplace magical.

I'm Just Saiyan

The next day I thought I would indulge my more disconcerting side and decided to visit a part of Tokyo called Akihabara. To give some sort of reference on what this place it like, every time I have heard an American explain it, the descriptions goes along the lines of 'nerd town.'
Anyway, being a small fan of animation, I thought it would be fun to look around. Unfortunately, at this point of my trip, I was neither bold enough nor confident enough in my communication to actually buy anything, so I just stuck to mostly window shopping. However, here in Japan, vending machines are widely popular, which I cant complain about. There was one particular shop that I wanted to find. It was entirely composed of vending machines for various figurines and merchandise of anime and other cutesy products. I bought a few things there and went to search around. The main street is full of high-rises, comprised mostly of duty-free shops and huge arcades of sorts. These duty-free shops are everywhere, and they can have up to eight floors each. You couldn't walk two blocks without seeing one. I decided to visit a few of the manga shops, which ended up having five to nine floors. Let me tell you, there is so much freaking manga. I went about browsing there, trying to find all the ones I had hear of.
I soon left and found myself in one of the duty-free shops. They mostly have electronic related products, but they also have many, many figurines. I am both impressed and disgusted by the figurine maker's attention to detail (that can be taken many different ways). Needless to say, I wore this face for a large part of the day (especially when I accidentally entered the adult manga section):

See! look at that attention to detail!
I spent most of the day walking around looking at nerdy stuff and other pop culture items, so I was a happy girl. That night, I went out with James and Masami for dinner. It was a vegan-y place and I enjoyed one of the best desserts I have ever had the pleasure to eat. Plus it was adorable.

Beyond my little cake thing, I also had this stellar drink. It is basically steamed soymilk with ginger and cinnamon, and it was a little slice of heaven.

I guess this is as good of a time as any to introduce these two to you readers. Look at how cute they are:

Just to clear up any confusion with who these people are, James is my cousin, or to be more precise, my mothers cousin. Masami is his wife, shes a pretty awesome lady. I've been staying with them for my time in Tokyo. They are two pretty cool cats and I am my words can't describe how grateful I am that I have had the chance to get to know them. 

And thus concludes this day in Tokyo. I know I have so much writing to catch up on, and I am kicking myself for not getting on it sooner. However, these posts are coming along slowly, but surely. 

I bid you all a farewell. 

A+ anime puns in the title right???

That Brown Lemur That Had a Crush on Me.

So looking back a week ago, I realize that I can't remember what day or how succession the following events proceeded. I do however, remember the events well, and that is all that really counts, right?
Anyway, after learning how to navigate and take the metro (by both having it explained to me, trial, and error) I was finally able to explore further than my feet could take me.
I decided to go to a part of Tokyo called Ueno as there were many things I wanted to see in that part of town. However, that "not having a GPS" really got me again. I guess I went the wrong way when exiting the train station and I ended up at a very large wall expanding who-knows-how-long in two directions. Thankfully, you can load a map on the iPhone and it will usually work without service or WiFi. Also, another fun little trick I learned was, even without cellular data, the GPS on my phone will show a rough current location. You, my friend, are welcome for that little piece of information.
Still, even with this knowledge, I still got lost... This is, however, besides the point. With all the intuition I could muster, I chose to walk left. I soon realized that this was a mistake, but it was a little late at this point to turn back. So I just kept walking, with a large cement wall to my left and a residential area to my right. I assumed my destination, the Ueno zoo, was behind this large mass of rock, but I still needed to find an actual entrance. After a while, the sidewalk I was on began to drift away from the wall, and soon disappeared altogether. I still kept walking, just on the road, not that anyone in Tokyo strolls on the "sidewalks," anyway. I soon stumbled upon a beautiful little temple and shrine, devoted to health, beauty, and happiness. And, hey! I actually took pictures. The photos do not, in any way, capture the feeling or grandeur of the real thing, but they give a little glimpse.



Thankfully there was no one there, so I had free reign to explore as I like (nothing disrespectful or destructive, I promise). I just liked being able to look at things and walk around without feeling watched or judged. I walked along the outside of the temple, looking at the garden and streams.
I left and began walking the direction I was going before, and eventually ended up in a little town and park area. There was apparently a pretty big event going on, there were many speakers set up under some trees in the park and there was a little church service going on. There were about four people up-front singing worship songs. I stood pretty far back to watch and hum along, but there soon came a volunteer who handed me a piece of paper. I'm guessing it had song lyrics on it, but I guess I'll never know. The worship ended and some sort of minister came up to preach. From the volunteers shirts, which had a little blurb of English, I guessed it was a Christian ministry. There was an impressive mass of people who came to watch, many of which were sitting on the ground with old cardboard and newspaper. After a good while of sitting and watching the preacher, I mustered enough courage to hand the paper back to the volunteers and began to walk further in the park. It was quite beautiful. I soon stumbled onto some bathrooms (thank the Lord) which ended up having no toilet paper, but when you got to go, you got to go. Upon exiting the toilet, I scanned the park and spotted the entrance to the zoo! I went up the automatic kiosk for the tickets (because I am a whimp and don't want to deal with the language barrier) and entered. If I had just waited a few more minutes, the toilets at the zoo had toilet paper.
I realize now how sad it is to go to a zoo by yourself. It is much more fun with a companion. I did make friends with a lemur and some bats, so that was good.

Whether it be sad or lame, I spend an excessive amount of time with the lemur. It was in a rather secluded part of the zoo and it didn't look it got many visitors. The thing I though was the most interesting it that it would refuse to look me in the eye. It's gaze would follow me wherever I went in the room, yet when I got up close, it would keep glancing down to ground and then up to my face. It's actions were just vaguely human. It was probably just cause it was a caged, trapped, nervous animal, but I would like think that we had a connection, you know.
I love the differences between the sorts of animals in this zoo than the zoos back in America (and trust me, I've been to a lot of zoos). Its rare I get to see large animals I haven't heard of (cause I'm a major nerd) and I loved seeing the few there.
One example is this guy. Look at how cool he is:

Pretty chill, right?
I'll admit I have heard of the Japanese Salamander many times before, but I have never had the chance to see one in real life, so I enjoyed catching up with this guy (there is my umbrella for reference):

Not only was this zoo full of interesting and beautiful animals, but it also had impeccable landscaping. There was a boardwalk going over a giant pond full of foliage leading to more enclosures.

As you can see in the last picture, the day was rather gloomy (hence the umbrella). I arrived in the middle of rainy season and a typhoon. Reminds me of home (well, not the typhoon part).

After I made sure I saw every animal in that zoo, I estimated where the University of Tokyo was and started to walk that way (in other words, more intuition!). After not knowing where I was and walking the direction that I guessed was best, I arrived at, guess what!
Another wall! I assumed this nicer, brick wall was enclosing the university, so I walked alongside it for a while until I came to and entrance. It was guarded, which made me a little nervous (I know I have no reason to be, but I can't help but think I might do something wrong). I still walked in, with no hitches. I know what your thinking, "um, Valerie? You don't know Japanese, why do you want to go to university in Tokyo?"
I assure you, I have no plans to go to university in Japan and was not "touring" it in any way, I just have heard a lot about it and I was in the part of town, so why not? I sat down under this tree on campus. I wish I would have taken a picture. It was in the middle of courtyard, standing proud and tall. Its roots had broken through the ground, cracking the cement benches in two. I just think its rather poetic how a tree can brake free of the bounds put on it by humans. After getting up and walking around for a bit, plus listening to a group of Japanese guys make fun of Americans in English, I chose to try and find the train station. And yes, this would be yet another challenge of my internal compass. But I prevailed! After yet another situation of looking at vague street maps and hoping I was walking the right way, I ended up at the correct train station. I got home and "freshened up," meaning I applied a lot of deodorant and did my best to mask my stench, and went to meet James and Masami for dinner.

The First Day

Alright, lets do this.
My first morning in Tokyo, I sat down to my fruit and black coffee on the balcony of the apartment. The view was astonishing.
 

I was left alone to explore the city, so that is exactly what I did. At this point, I still hadn't used the metro system and I didn't feel like thoroughly embarrassing myself that day (I know realize that this is a part of traveling in a foreign country) so I decided to go by foot. At this point, I hadn't realized how freaking huge Tokyo was. I just got up and started walking with no direction or destination.
I walked for most of they day and soon realized that I needed to get back to meet my people, James and Masami, for dinner. The only problem with this is that I can't use my phone's GPS, so I just had to figure out what to do by "intuition" and various street signs. Thankfully, at most of the major intersections, there are maps showing a small area in both English and Japanese.
Mostly, I just chose a landmark and a direction and walked that way, hoping it would get me where I needed to go. Eventually, it did!
We had a wonderful dinner (without gluten) and upon arriving home, I fell asleep on the couch. My toes at this point had been taken by some fairly large blisters.
Though I have less to write about on this day, it was quite a bit more stimulating than the last. The city is beautiful and grand, and I can't get enough of it.