Tag: essay

Regionalisms and Jargon

The narration in this chapter states that the long jump is grouped with athletics rather than gymnastics. This phrasing is accurate, but there’s some interesting context that makes this more meaningful than it may seem and that I want to unpack a bit. In most parts of Europe, “athletics” (accounting for language variation) is the term for sports which involve running, walking, jumping, or throwing. The running long jump is clearly included.

But this isn’t the case everywhere. In the United States, including Pittsburgh, “athletics” is instead a catchall term. It groups together essentially everything which could be considered a physical sport or training for one. It is also used to allude to physical prowess in general; picking up something very heavy might be called an impressive display of strength, but it might also be called an impressive feat of athletics. That particular group of sports, meanwhile, is called track-and-field.…

Ukemi

When Kyoko talks about taking falls here, she’s referring to some specific skills. Learning to fall down or be thrown without being injured in the process is a major skill in a variety of martial arts; judo and aikido are the two where she learned it, in large part because I have the most experience with them. Though given that both are Japanese in origin, and she was studying in Tokyo at the direction of her rather traditionalist father, it also just makes sense. There are numerous differences between judo and aikido, but for the purpose of this note I’m going to be treating them as a unit, since falling is mostly the same set of skills in both; this skillset is referred to as ukemi. For terms I’m generally going to be using a mixture of English and romanized Japanese, mostly because it’s the format I learned in. If you want to follow along with the descriptions, there are numerous videos which showcase the falls in question.…

Immigration

Immigration is a theme in this story that shows up in a lot of places, and I want to comment a bit on how I depict it and why.

Start with the fact that the majority of characters in this story are immigrants. It’s not something Kyoko really emphasizes or sees as a significant part of her identity, especially after this long; she’s pretty well assimilated into American culture. But it’s something I do try to keep in mind. She was not raised there. Her early life was primarily spent in Tokyo and its immediate vicinity. When she was very young, she traveled more; she went on some business trips with her father, who was trying to groom her for the same kind of corporate salaryman position he held. She also spent time in Osaka with his family. When she got a bit older, in her teens, those things stopped and she was almost strictly based in Tokyo.…

Psychiatry and Mental Hospitals

So mental hospitals and psych wards have been mentioned a few times now. Psychiatry, and mental health in general, can be very delicate subjects for a lot of people, and this delicacy is something I do keep in mind while writing. All the same, though, I want to take a moment to comment more extensively on the prevalence of these topics, and on the tone with which they’re handled in the story. I will note, a priori, that I am an extremely biased source here. I have extensive experience of the mental health system, and my experience has not been good nor normal. I’ll comment on that further later, but I feel I should stress this up front, because it does heavily impact how I write about this topic. Additionally, all of my experience has been in the United States. This kind of information is very hard to really get from the outside of a culture, so I do not know nearly as much about how the system works in Japan. This caveat is significant and likely unavoidable in impact when I’m describing her experiences in Tokyo, particularly with how long ago those were. That said, and with the additional caveat that this note is on the long side, let’s dive in.…

Dice and Card Games

So characters play games in this story a lot. It’s a character trait that comes up a lot, particularly with Saori and Raincloud. What games they play, when, and how is something that I put a fair amount of thought into.

Dice games are the most commonly referenced. The reason for this is pretty simple, and it’s one that will show up in actual life a lot. Dice games are easy to play. You don’t need much for it. You can play a game of liar’s dice with nothing more than a flat surface, a bag of dice, and some cups or screens. It’s simple, easy, and portable. You can pack up quickly and with little fuss. You can play anywhere that there’s a reasonably flat surface. Dice are durable, and if you lose one, you can use any other die of the same type to replace it.…

Werewolves

Derek has some comments here about werewolves and the experience of being one. Some of this has been mentioned already, but other parts are new information, and it seems like a good time to talk more about it metatextually as well. A lot of information about them isn’t widely known, and some of those details may be revisited later, but for now I’m going to be focusing more on basic information that’s easily learned in-setting.…