Sarah Hozumi

It’s a difficult topic to write about, especially when you’re a writer like me who doesn’t have the cushion of resounding success to surround myself with when writing about such a sensitive topic, but I’ve been meaning to mention it for a while.

I said on my Facebook page a long time ago that I’d list every single rejection I got so people who saw my successes could know nothing is just being handed to me.

However, I decided not to do that mostly because I worried potential agents or publishers might see that page and the list of rejections and decide I’m not the writer for them. It’s a pretty cowardly way out of a goal I had made, and so I’ve been toying around with the idea of trying to at least explain my headspace for rejections.

I think what’s galvanized me to write now, finally, about this was a friend saying that he doesn’t have the courage to submit out of a fear of rejection.

Rejections hurt. You pour your soul into a piece of writing, you wait sometimes half a year for any answer, and you get form responses: “Thank you for submitting this piece to us. While we enjoyed it very much, unfortunately, we can’t find a place for it at this time. Please note this business is highly subjective, and this in no way reflects on the quality of your writing.” That’s the usual response.

I’ve had worse responses, however, ranging from just a “Pass” as the entire email to the suggestion I read the works they’ve published already so I could “get a sense of what good writing is.” It’s been a lot of being kicked when I’m already down – I go weeks without any response from any magazine, then suddenly three rejections show up in a row in my inbox.

You start to feel like the entire world has read your works, and they’re just not interested.

Several things are helping me to just keep going anyway.

I can’t stop

First, I have this innate drive to be a writer. Since I was six, that’s been my life’s dream – professional author. I don’t even know how to quit, as I think I’ve said before; I have to write.

Sometimes I get worn out from writing and will take a break for a bit, but there’s always this part of me that thinks something is profoundly missing in my otherwise content life. And as soon as I start writing, I feel whole again. Life comes together for me when I’m writing.

Therefore, even if I want to quit, I can’t.

I suppose I could be a writer who hides my works away on the computer, never to see the light of day, but more than anything else, I’m looking to talk to anyone who reads my stuff and is as excited about it as I am. I want to geek out on this stuff with someone else, and I can’t do that if it’s on my desktop.

I’m not alone

Second, it’s important to know that most people who want to be an author will get rejections. Lots of them. Considering the sheer number of people who want to be authors, that’s just what’s going to happen.

A site called The Grinder is acting like a double-edge sword in driving home this point for me. On the one hand, users can log every rejection they get, and there’s an updated list on the main page of every rejection logged for the most recent couple of days.

On the other hand, it also lists all the acceptances.

Nothing is more heartwarming than seeing a long list of people logging their rejections and realizing you’re not at all alone, and nothing is more heartbreaking than seeing people get into magazines or publications you’ve been trying to get into for years.

There are also online writer communities that I’ve had mixed results with joining, but it can feel nice to commiserate with fellow writers about rejections.

Just submit anyway

I make it a point to make the vast majority of my submissions only to places where submitting is free. I understand a lot of magazines need money to keep running, and they get that from submitters, but I just hate the idea of paying someone to reject my stuff. I don’t want to pay someone to publish my stuff either, though, which is why free submissions are so great.

Since I make it a point of doing free submissions (about 99.99% of the time), I figure there’s no real harm in submitting to a place if I think I have a story that might work for them. Of course, I scope out the site first and see if what I’m writing would fit with them, but I can be wrong a lot, too, and I don’t have time to read every single piece listed to see if I sound just like everyone else they publish (I’m not trying to anyway).

Therefore, the only thing I’m wasting is my time every now and then submitting to a place that ultimately doesn’t work out.

But this site I personally like called Chillsubs pointed out a while back that even if a place rejects you, don’t give up if you have other stuff you think would work for them. They said sometimes there’s an editor among the others who really loved your stuff and fought for you, and they’ll want to see your stuff appear again to fight for you again until you get in.

Or maybe at one point the story you submitted didn’t work, but another time another story did for the same publication. That can happen. A lot of the time, I think, literary magazines are just looking for cohesion in what they’re going to publish at any given time, and so sometimes what you write just isn’t fitting with what they’re going for at that time. That’s ok – it’s not a poor reflection on you and your writing, I think.

Unless someone specifically says my writing is a joke (and that one recommending I read their published works to get a sense of what good writing is has come the closest to this), I’m going to just assume someone rejected my writing because it didn’t work for them just then. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for everyone.

So submit.

Because the only guaranteed rejection is never submitting in the first place.

Since hearing rumors about the possiblity of Fantasy Springs, I’ve wanted to go see it.

However, considering half the planet of Disney fans want to go, too, I decided I’d wait for maybe a few years before trying to get into the area, leaving me to salivate in front of my TV as news reporters here in Japan introduced all the wonders of Fantasy Springs in various segments when it opened in June.

This past Saturday, however, I decided I was going to just go for it and bought a ticket to DisneySea.

While summer has dragged its heels across our sanity for the past few months, temperatures are finally going down, making theme parks much more bearable.

It was time.

The newest area

For those of you who don’t know: Fantasy Springs is an expansion of Tokyo DisneySea (the only DisneySea on Earth), that has four new rides and I think three places to eat, plus a gift shop.

I think one of the main features of this area is the Fantasy Springs Hotel, which is right up against Fantasy Springs and offers views (for an outrageous fee) into the area from your room. This hotel is booked solid, and when reservations do open up, they’re gone within seconds.

The big draw of this area, for me at least, is that this area has a Tangled ride. Nowhere else does.

One of the great complaints I hear from Disney World fans is “Tokyo Disney got a ride for Rapunzel; we got a bathroom.”

Getting in

The tricky part of Fantasy Springs is that it’s completley closed off from the rest of DisneySea via a tunnel, with three main ways of getting into it:

1. Have a room booked at the Fantasy Springs Hotel
2. Use the Tokyo Disney Resort app once you’re in DisneySea to select one of two fastpass options for any ride in Fantasy Springs. The first fastpass option costs money while the second is free.
3. Once inside DisneySea, do a “Disney mobile order” where you order food from the online menu of one of the restaurants at Fantasy Springs and pay with a credit card (you need a credit card linked to your Disney Resort app for this, of course), then pick a time you want to go pick up the food.

(Please note: The GPS for the Disney Resort app is absolutely insane in its precision. It does not count you as being “inside the park” until you have had your park ticket scanned and you are standing near the great globe in the fountain in front of DisneySea. For Disneyland, you’re not “in the park” until your ticket is scanned and you’re looking at the little bed of flowers out front)

If you can score any one of these ways of getting in, you’re allowed to go into Fantasy Springs at the time they give you to pick up the food or ride your ride (you can come and go as you please to the area if you’re a Fantasy Springs Hotel guest) and wander around inside the area for as long as you want.

(Please be warned: Once you leave Fantasy Springs, you can’t go back in unless you have another fastpass/food reseravation or are blessed with a room at the hotel.)

The plan

The great challenge of going to Disney when the weather is more forgiveable is that everyone else flocks to the parks, too. And during Halloween, dressing up in Disney character costumes (something that’s normally a no-go at the parks unless you’re a little kid) is highly encouraged, drawing in even more crowds. I personally loved seeing how jaw-droppingly amazing a lot of the costumes were, though, so I wish Disney would make this a more permanent feature.

For the past month, I’d been checking my Disney Resort app — which outside the park will still offer wait times and tell you where fastpasses are available — to see how quicky fastpasses for Fantasy Springs disappeared, and even on weekdays, they were snapped up within an hour of the park opening.

Thus, I devised a plan for trying to score a free fastpass.

The park opens at 9 a.m. and stays open util 9 p.m.

Super diehard Disney fans seem to enjoy arriving two or more hours before this opening time and just camping out in front of the security checkpoints you go through before scanning your park ticket.

Not being a morning person, I decided my only hope was to arrive an hour before the park was scheduled to open. I prayed the crowds would still be relatively small so early in the morning.

It was a madhouse.

The line to get into the park was about twenty people deep and extended about a mile out from the security checkpoint. It was like we were waiting for a meet-and-greet with Taylor Swift.

Like USJ, Disney will open the parks early if they notice the crowds are getting unbelievably bad.

They only seem to announce an earlier opening in Japanese, though, so just keep in mind that if you see a sea of people waiting to get in, the gates will probably open early.

The gates did, indeed, open at 8:30 a.m., and the line I was in slowly inched its way toward the security checkpoint.

DisneySea, anyway, has a checkpoint now reminiscent of an airport security checkpoint now. You wait for a machine to scan you, and if there are no problems, you go on through. If there is something detected, however, you get put into another line, where they physically go through your bags.

I think considering they were handsearching every single bag the last time I went to DisneySea, this is a huge improvement, and the whole process took a lot less time.

The miracle

As soon as I made it through security and scanned my ticket, I immediately dashed off to one side of the entrance and fumbled through the app to the Tangled ride on the map the app has.

I had no hope. The park had been open for a good 45 minutes at that point, and I was sure that everyone who’d entered the park before me had grabbed everything.

I tapped on the ride, which said that fastpasses were still unbelievably available, and though I thought it just meant the app hadn’t updated properly yet, I still tapped through all the stages needed to reserve a fastpass.

And I got one.

For 6:20 p.m.

Fantasy Springs

Because my fastpass was for the evening, I only have seen Fantasy Springs at night, but the way everything is so nicely lit up made it worth it to me.

The area, itself, is a lot smaller than they make it out to be on TV. I thought it’d take a good half hour just to walk around the entire area, but at a quick pace, you can easily do it in about 10 minutes.

I gawked and marveled at everything before realizing the line for the Tangled ride was snaking along the walkway almost near the entrance to the area.

It turned out, despite having a “fastpass,” the wait was 65 minutes.

I’m not sure if this is because hotel guests are clogging up the line, too, (those lucky people) or because they’re trying to get more people into the area so there are fewer disappointed fans, but I was just shocked to be suddenly standing there, wondering if I was going to make the mobile order time I had scheduled for Rapunzel’s The Snugly Duckling restaurant next door to the ride.

Rapunzel’s Lantern Festival

I have a couple of complaints about this ride.

1. The waiting area is almost entirely outdoors. Considering how brutally hot the summers are here now and how bitingly cold the wind off Tokyo Bay (which DisneySea sits right along) is in the winter, I thought the operators of Tokyo Disney Resort would do us poor visitors a favor and making lines for new rides more indoors than outdoors. To me, it just seems like a good idea. I’m not sure what they were thinking with this.
2. The ride, itself, is unbelievably short.

These two complaints aside, I loved this ride.

There is something breathtaking and magical about being able to see the lanterns floating above you while you watch Eugene and Rapunzel singing to each other on their little boat that just tugs at your heartstrings.

I also personally liked that the villain (Mother Gothel, your horrible person) was completely cut from this ride. It’s just a happy, relaxing ride.

I think if the crowds for this ever do die down to like 15 minutes (will this ever happen?), it’s a nice ride to end your day on.

The Snugly Duckling

Curious if I could tempt fate twice, after scoring the fastpass for the Rapunzel ride, I did a morbile order for the Snugly Duckling quick-service restaurant (quick-service just means you order, find a table, then go get your food from a pickup window when it’s ready).

I managed to order a caramel muffin and the strawberry and lemon dessert in a pretend, plastic frying pan. It came with a souvenir, tiny, plate with the Rapunzel ride on it, a design which I love.

While the caramel muffin (let’s face it – this is a cupcake) was fabulous in that it wasn’t as rich as I had dreaded it would be, the strawberry and lemon dessert was rather bland. I mixed the lemon mousse (I’m assuming it was a mousse) with the strawberry puree as much as I could before eating the pastry on which they both sat, but the dull taste of the pastry simply overpowered everything.

If I can ever go again, I’ll only get the caramel cupcake from here.

The gift shop

Considering Disney, I thought there would be a gift shop at every single ride for this area. I had just assumed, stepping off the Rapunzel ride, I’d be shepherded right into a gift shop with Rapunzel everything under the sun.

Not the case.

Fantasy Springs (for now anyway) has only one gift shop: on the first floor of the hotel, facing into the park.

It’s not a vast shop, but if you want to say you bought a Fantasy Springs souvenir inside the actual Fantasy Springs, then this is the shop for you.

Just keep in mind that most shops throughout DisneySea offered Fantasy Springs stuff, and I thought the shop was kind of lacking in what I was looking for (just some pencils would have been nice, more necklaces, keychains, shirts that aren’t just t-shirts), but I know Fantasy Springs only just opened so I’m sure the greater Disney powers that be will fine-tune this later.

Overall

Though it’s a tiny area with impressive wait times, I have fallen madly in love with it. I loved all the carvings of Disney characters around the water features, I loved seeing Captain Hook’s ship docked in a little lake, I loved finally feeling like I was part of that great Rapunzel scene from the movie.

I think this area will be nothing short of magical when the crowds finally do die down enough that access will no longer be restricted and wait times still won’t be an issue. I don’t know how many years that will take (10 or more?), but I’m in it for the long haul, so I can wait.

Considering Disneyland is redoing Space Mountain right now, I’m thinking maybe when that’s newly opened, maybe interest in Fantasy Springs will wane a tiny bit, and that’s when I’ll pounce and try to go back again.

I’m really happy to share I had a short story published in the Sci-Phi Journal. You can read the story here, if you’d like.

I saw on the Sci-Phi Journal website that they were interested in “fictional non-fiction,” which are stories that read like non-fiction.

Ever since reading Dracula in high school, I’ve been intrigued by fictional non-fiction, and so I thought I’d try my hand at writing a news article about a subject that is very obviously fictional.

While writing it, I thought about a clip from The West Wing where the characters talk about most Americans (in the show anyway) being against a tax on the wealthy because they think it could be them someday.

“That’s the problem with the American dream – makes everyone concerned for the day they’re gonna be rich,” President Bartlet says.

This story takes a page from that idea: There is a bacteria that, if it infects you, can either enhance you in some way or kill you.

Despite evidence widely suggesting you’re probably going to die after being infected, most people are still voluntarily infecting themselves becuase they think they’re going to be one of the lucky ones.

For anyone interested, I listened to random songs by The Chainsmokers while writing this story.

I hope you enjoy the story!

The New York Times did a quick post of this on their Instagram feed, but The Black List, which used to only host screenplays that were being ignored, is now offering their services to us poor writers trying to get a book published.

While I don’t think I can afford the $30/month fee to have my manuscript “hosted” on the site, I at least put up the basic information about the book. Maybe someday, if I make enough money selling short stories that I could easily afford such a fee, I could give the hosting a try, but for now, I’m just going to see if absolutely anything comes of posting a little blip about my book on there.

If you’re at all curious, please check out the short listing here: https://blcklst.com/profile/schalaislost

Beginning on July 6 (though there was a special lottery ticket event for July3-5) and running unil September 23, an art museum in Tokyo is playing host to a special CLAMP exhibit.

CLAMP?

For those of you who don’t know, CLAMP is a four-member team that makes manga such as Magic Knight Rayearth and Card Captor Sakura. Their name is weird, but I think it’s a combination of the first letters of their names (last I checked that’s what was the explanation was anyway).

Their stories can go from super bloody and dark (RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon, X) to super cutesy (Card Captor Sakura), but all of their stories have the common theme (as far as I’ve seen) that nothing is what you think it is.

Magic Knight Rayearth, for example, starts out like a classic superhero story. Three high school girls are suddenly transported to another world as the “chosen ones” destined to banish an evil guy from a magical world. You spend most of the manga rooting for the three kids, of course, and delight in all of their triumphs.

But then comes the twist.

The Line

I think my mistake lay in the fact I wanted to go on the first day. Reading through the website’s information about the gift shop had scared me (“You only have 30 minutes,” “Pick out what you want to buy in advance,” “Print off the map of the gift shop ahead of time”), and I wanted to make sure I got all the stuff I wanted before it sold out.

The museum opened at 10 a.m., and I arrived at 9:30 a.m., thinking I was just being entirely too cautious and a bit overzealous.

I was wrong.

There was already a line snaking from the ticketing booth outside all the way inside of people who had probably been there since dawn.

The next hour and a half was a journey through the first floor of the museum, led only by the people in front of me as the line went through one of the museum’s cafes and through several switchbacks that made me think I was waiting for a ride at Disneyland.

It was a true indication that I was probably the only one taken aback by the crowds when I saw someone in front of me lounging on a portable, folding chair, a tablet in hand and earphones in place.

I learned things that day.

For anyone wanting to brave this line (and assuming it stays this bad for the entire exhibit’s run, which I pray is not the case):

Tips to brave the line

A few unfortunate souls had to wait outside in the insane heat. You may be one of them. And the first floor did not have the air conditioner on at full blast whatsoever, or maybe it was too vast of a place to properly cool, because it felt only marginally different stepping indoors.

As such, bring things to brave the heat. Japan sells -3 C wet cloths and sprays, ice cooler rings for your neck, portable fans, and sun umbrellas. I don’t care how dorky or dainty you think a sun umbrella looks, it makes a world of difference waiting outside baking on the concrete.

The wait when I left was 200 minutes, which is longer than I waited for the Beauty and the Beast ride at Disneyland. Thus, prepare for the worst when it comes to waiting. Bring a portable charger, your cell phone, a tablet, a good book, an entire CLAMP series. It doesn’t matter – just bring things that will entertain you for at least an hour.

Bring drinks. I can’t stresss this enough. The only place with vending machines was the nearby train station, but it’s a journey getting there since it’s underground, and most of the stuff you want is inside the station or on the other side, which you can’t get to since the museum blocked off several exits to funnel people into certain areas.

Bring snacks. No one yelled at me for munching away at a granola bar while in line. Obviously just make sure you finish before you get into the actual exhibit.

There didn’t seem to be a restriction on bags. I saw people lugging massive purses – I had a little backpack – and no one said “you need to stow that somewhere.” I don’t think the staff will appreciate you hauling luggage through the museum, but I think a backpack should be all right.

The Exhibit

Each room had a theme based on a word that starts with a letter of the weird name CLAMP.

First Room – COLOR

The first room you go into has a ton of colored works, and this place has a “NO PHOTOGRAPHY OR VIDEO” rule. This is strictly enforced, too.

A guy behind me maybe accidentally snapped a photo, and there was the staff right there to tell him not only to stop taking photos, but to delete the photo. She stood right next to him and watched him delete it before she let him continue to enjoy the art.

Honestly, I don’t know why all the secrecy. It’s all artwork that’s been online for years, just the originals.

Apart from being blown away to see most were colored in using markers (Copic), none of it was stuff I’d never seen before. It was nice to see, but I really don’t understand why no one could take photos.

Second Room – LOVE

As soon as I entered this room, it was all manga panels, and photography was just fine.

People were respectful, which is nice, in that no one was pushing or shoving to get a better look at the art, and everyone was going crazy taking photos. I went crazy, too.

This was a room full of manga panels that discussed love. Any mention of “I love you” or “I miss you” or anything pertaining to love, and it was shoved into this room.

What impressed me the most witnessing all the framed manga panels was seeing the team’s liberal use of whiteout. There’s a scene where the entire arm of a character was “erased” using whiteout.

A closer inspection of the pivatol moment of Card Captor Sakura where Sakura becomes the official guardian of the Clow Cards reveals her left eye was entirely redone with the help of whiteout.

It’s just entirely refreshing to see that these megastars of the manga world, people who could make such incredible stories come to life with such amazing art, had no problem redoing things with whiteout and still sending that page to the publishers.

I love that.

Not only that, CLAMP continued cutting out dialogue and pasting it into the speech bubbles well after the advent of computers. They apprear to enjoy perpetuating old-school ideals.

Possibly the biggest mystery, for me anyway, were letters that look like stickers at first glance but were probably painstakingly cut out to make the lettering really stand out on the page.

I don’t know who spent what must’ve been hours cutting out every letter so it was just so, but my hat’s off to you.

Third room – Adventure

Probably to make you feel like you were about to embark on something amazing, the third room was marked off with a large archway leading to a vast room with giant stickers of characters overhead.

There was a section for RG Veda, X, Magic Knight Rayearth, Card Captor Sakura, Tsubasa, and xxxHolic here. It seemed like they had gathered up all the defining moments of each manga and put them on the walls, starting each section with the first pages of each manga series.

Again, more admiring of the whiteout use (they use it to fleck the white dots that I think is their signature move in most of their artwork) and reminiscing about the scenes I’d read years before.

It was like a trip down memory lane accompanied by a behind-the-scenes tour.

The only thing I wished they’d had throughout the exhibit were more explanations or comments, even about a select few of the pieces.

I would’ve loved to have heard the manga artists say something like “Oh man our hands bled making this scene come to life” or “We were under such a strict deadline that day that we just threw that page together last minute, but it worked somehow” or something like that.

That was all apparently in the audio guide, but that cost extra so I skipped out on it.

Oh well.

Fourth Room – Magic

This room was more like a breather than anything – a dark room with three floor-to-ceiling screens randomly showing scenes from the manga series in an endless loop while random music played.

I don’t understand why, but this room allowed for photography but not videos.

Still, it was a nice little break in the middle of viewing so many panels of manga. I would’ve loved to have seen some projection mapping and something even interactive.

Fifth Room – Phrase

There are about four boxes at the entrance to this room from which you’re told to withdraw one silver sticker.

There is one line from one character from one of the manga series on that sticker, and you have the choice to either place that sticker on the walls of this room or take the sticker home with you as a souvenir.

I liked the line on mine, so I took it home with me.

I like the idea of this room, but I think as the exhibit wears on, they’ll have to either start stripping off stickers or providing ladders so people can keep putting their stickers on the walls. Either that or some serious overlapping is going to happen.

Random Room

The last one had a visual timeline of CLAMP’s manga series, with the manga volumes all stacked up on shelves as versions in different languages were put in display cases below.

There was also an incredibly cool kimono featuring X symbols that I would’ve killed to have worn even once, and a wall of collaboration art, which you were not allowed to photograph.

In the middle was a table full of random quotes and lines that you weren’t allowed to touch, so I’m not sure what the point of it was.

The last room

Now this, I would have thought, would have been the one place where photography was prohibited, because in this last room lies a lone piece of artwork that the manga artist (the main artist of CLAMP is a woman who just goes by Mokona) drew just for this exhibit.

Of all the things you’d want to keep secret, I’d have thought it would’ve been this.

But oh well, we all lined up and took photos next to it while revering it.

The Gift Shop

In a move I think they should’ve just done for the entire exhibit, a person standing at the exit to the exhibit (No reentry so be careful) handed me a receipt with a QR code on it and a number. A virtual queue for the gift shop.

Scanning the QR code told me when I was being called, though it didn’t provide any updates on what numbers had been called thus far. It was always just, “Your number has not been called yet.”

The only good news is there’s no window of entering like a fastpass at Disneyland has. As long as your number’s been called and the museum hasn’t closed yet (I think the gift shop said up to a half hour before closing), you’re good to join the line.

The website was not lying – You get a green piece of paper when you enter the exhibit, which you need for the gift shop, and just before you enter the shop, a staff member writes the exact time you started your shopping journey.

You have to present this ticket to another staff member before they let you join the line to buy things, meaning they are really serious about you having 30 minutes and that’s it.

It was a madhouse, but not as much pushing and shoving as I would’ve expected given the time crunch.

I managed to grab most of what I’d wanted, though one postcard thing I’d wanted was already sold out (I’m sure they’ll restock at some point) and there was a CLAMP exhibit book I’d wanted to buy that’s not even available yet for some reason. It will be at the gift shop starting on August 14, and it features what was said in the audio guide.

Considering this exhibit has a “Part One” and “Part Two,” where the artwork changes out, I might have to go back.

First, I need to recover from the line.

Nestled seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Fukushima Prefecture, Spa Resort Hawaiians is a massive indoor waterpark and onsen that inspired a movie in Japan a while back called Hula Girls.

The waterpark themed on Hawaii has the following pools for your enjoyment:

1. Kiddy pool with three slides
2. Baby pool that’s a very wide puddle basically
3. Two onsen pools you can go into while wearing a swimsuit
4. A lazy river (closes at 5 p.m.)
5. A grand pool where people were goofing around and throwing beachballs at one another
6. Something like five waterslides (these cost extra, though)
7. An extra kiddy pool for slightly older kids with a slide

It should be noted there is no place for professional swimmers or anyone hoping for some serious exercise to swim laps. I got a good workout, however, just walking around the lazy river about 50 times.

Time, I think, hasn’t been too kind to the waterpark, which has paint peeling in places and outdated decorations, but I think it makes up for the overall look by how the place is.

This is a place that seems to have dedicated more of its time to making life easier for visitors than making the place look good, and that makes me able to handle the cheesy decor.

For example, they have places where you can blow up inner tubes for free, a baby room for nursing mothers, lifeguards (of course) everywhere, a food court next to the pools, a baby pool right next to a little kid pool, and a massive ceiling stretched over all of it so you can visit year round.

There’s nothing like escaping the winter and its breathtaking cold to enjoy a nice pool while surrounded in humidity.

I also have noticed – and I have no idea how standard this is around the globe – that places in Japan with a pool have these machines in the locker rooms where you can stuff your dripping wet swimsuit into it, push and hold a button for five seconds, and your swimsuit will come back to you only mildly damp. Where have these machines been all my life?

I think the most genius design, however, is an onsen pool you can go into while wearing your bathing suit that is right next to the main kiddy pool. While I was there, I saw dozens of parents relaxing in the onsen while watching their kids splash around in the kiddy pool or go down one of three slides available to them.

As I only just visited the waterpark, I thought I’d share a few tips that will make your visit a lot easier, I hope:

1. It can be a challenge just getting to the resort if you don’t have a car, though I know there are busses that can take you. It’ll take a bit of research to figure this out, though, if you don’t have a car as an option.
2. Bring four 100-yen coins for the locker room. Only one 100-yen coin comes back to you, too, so be prepared to say a fond farewell to anything you leave in there until the very end of the day.
3. You can bring a plastic swim bag with you to the main pool areas. People stashed their bags on any available ledge. I put my cellphone into my bag, along with my glasses, and a small amount of cash for the food court.
4. A lot of the foodcourt closes at 5 p.m. This waterpark technically closes at 9:30 p.m., but they spend most of the day encouraging people to leave through maneuvers like this.
5. The foodcourt does take cashless payments, but it might be wise to have a tiny bit of cash on you in your swim bag.
6. Bring any inner tubes or beach balls from home or buy them somewhere else – prices for that kind of stuff at the waterpark are insanely high.
7. Unlike most of Japan’s indoor pools, this place doesn’t require that you wear a swimming cap.
8. No tattoos are allowed, but if you happen to have a small tattoo, cover it in a large waterproof bandage before arriving at the waterpark.
9. You can go straight to the onsen in your bathing suit (assuming you have clothing to change into), where you can find showers accompanied by shampoo, conditioner, and body soap. Be aware that this onsen closes right at 8 p.m., however.
10. Getting to the onsen is also a nightmare. They do not do a good job of providing signage for the onsen, which is basically buried deep within a maze, so please force someone who works there to walk you all the way to the entrance of the changing rooms for the onsen.
11. All pools at the waterpark close at 8 p.m. The actual building shuts down at 9:30 p.m., but they will kick you out of the pools at 8.
12. However, even on a Saturday, I found that the entire waterpark got considerably less crowded after around 5 p.m. That left me with a good few hours of having a waterpark almost entirely to myself, and it was awesome.

This is my tale of woe.

Once upon a time, Kellogg’s imported Froot Loops to Japan. They called it Unicorn Froot Loops, but it was the same thing.

It was a magical time, with every grocery store’s otherwise incredibly dull cereal aisle (you have a choice between Frosted flakes, corn flakes, and granola) lit up by the Unicorn Froot Loops’ magical glow.

But then, one day, they vanished from the shelves.

Poof!

Gone, without a trace.

Unfortunately, this happens all the time in Japan.

This is a nation that seems to have a zeal for introducing a food product, leaving it in the market for a few months, then taking it away. I try not to get attached to anything, or to snap it up as much as I can while it’s there and horde it like I’m a dragon guarding treasure.

I should’ve learned this lesson of impermanence at least ten years ago when, for some reason, the grocery store Seiyu had Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups just there, on their shelves.

I still remember observing them on the shelves and thinking, “I can grab those anytime now.”

And then, they disappeared.

I should have learned from that mistake.

But I didn’t.

Time and time again I’ve been met with disappointment. Whether it’s Honey Nut Cheerios suddenly vanishing from Costco here or Annie’s macaroni and cheese being a product the store’s employees have suddenly “never heard of” weeks after promising me the food would always be there, I have been living a life of disappointment when it comes to imported food.

I know there are some naysayers out there who are probably shaking their heads at this post, thinking, “But you live in Japan! Eat what they do.”

To them, I say, “You must not know what it’s like to live abroad.”

There’s a reason there are places in America like “Little Italy” or “Chinatown.” That reason, I think, is people who live abroad feel the profound loss that comes from not being able to readily have the food they grew up eating. Food is a huge part of one’s culture, and suddenly being denied it can be tough. So, people band together and make places that offer that comfort food.

There are American restaurants here, which help, but when it comes to snacks and such, those can be really hard to find.

I like a lot of Japanese food, but I miss American food, even though I know it’s mostly snacks and junk food.

So if Kellogg’s is reading this, please bring back those Unicorn Froot Loops.

In deciding I don’t need to follow strict rules, such as defeating Breath of the Wild first, I decided to put aside Breath of the Wild for a bit and have fun in Tears of the Kingdom for just a little bit.

I thought I was going to play for a couple of days just to see what the differences were, then dutifully head back to Breath of the Wild to finish up the game (as in defeat Calamity Ganon).

That was weeks ago, and I’ve almost completely forgotten about Breath of the Wild because I’m having way too much fun in Tears of the Kingdom.

My God this game is fun. I love skydiving, I love the towers shooting you up into the sky, I love the side quests.

Though the Gloom Hands scare the living daylights out of me (I was actually way more comfortable with the guardians in Breath of the Wild), the rest of the game is just way too much fun to put down.

And it is a distracting game, not just from reality, but all the various things in the game distract you from just about anything you’d intended on doing.

For example, I started off playing last night with the goal of finishing up a few shrine quests I hadn’t completed, but then I saw some ruins falling from the sky, so I rewound time on them (it makes sense if you’ve played the game) and went up to the sky islands, where I found a treasure chest containing an old map. The old map marked in the Depths (creepy place below the surface) where I could find treasure. So off I went into the Depths, only to discover I didn’t have any Gloom-resistance food, so off I went to a stable to cook some food, but then I ran into the white bird journalist dude (it makes sense if you’ve played the game) who has a new side quest for me to do, so then I went off looking for a prophetic chicken.

And that seems to be about the typical gameplay I’ve read about from other gamers online. “Distraction” is the real name of this game.

That’s not a bad thing, either. I’m in no hurry to finish this game, so wandering around getting distracted is enjoyable for me.

Maybe at some point, whether it’s becuase I defeated the Demon King or because I got bored, I might go back to Breath of the Wild, but for now, I’m really having the time of my life with this game.

I’m extremely late playing this game, but after seeing how amazing its sequel, “Tears of the Kingdom” looks (and hearing all the good reviews for this game), I knew I had to give it a try first before going into the sequel.

I’ve been playing Zelda games since they were out for the NES decades ago. That being said, I am horrible at them. I hate fighting the bosses, and I’m terrible at the puzzles.

For a long time, I didn’t really like the games, and I didn’t play them so much as watch my older brother play.

All of that changed when I started the Nintendo 64’s Ocarina of Time. I was still horrible at the game, but I loved the storyline and playing it. My brother was also there to help me beat the bosses I couldn’t or solve the insane puzzles I couldn’t.

Life with Zelda games got infinitely better for me when I bought a guidebook for Majora’s Mask. I lived and breathed that guidebook as I had it in front of me like a security blanket while I played.

I know there are people out there who enjoy the stress and frustration of solving Zelda’s puzzles on their own, but I am not one of them. I like the side-stories, the weapons upgrades, the random battles. I like wandering around and only progressing when I feel like it.

And Breath of the Wild delivers that for me. While it’s still a harrowing experiencing running into a massively strong enemy while exploring the wilds of Hyrule, for the most part I’ve been biding my time doing the side quests, defeating shrine quests whenever the mood strikes, and taking my time to rescue Zelda from her 100-year struggle containing Calamity Ganon.

Whenever I finally do get around to defeating that major evil boss I still think of as a pig, then I’m going to go out and get “Tears of the Kingdom” and start the whole meandering process all over again.

As an introvert, I’m not much of a concertgoer. The entire experience is quite frankly stressful, with the massive crowds complicating every task that’s normally fairly easy to complete (using the bathroom, getting food, riding a train).

I didn’t go to concerts when I was in high school and college thanks to being an introvert and not having a lot of money set aside for things like that.

I’m also a casual fan of Taylor Swift. I have been for well over a decade now. By casual, I mean I focus on her music rather than her, and I don’t particularly care about her beyond that. I’ve always liked her lyrics and songs, but I have to say her album Evermore really sold it for me that she is truly fantastic at writing songs.

I also have to admit I have a friend who is a casual fan like I am, and we went to Taylor Swift’s concert together about 8 years ago when she played at Tokyo Dome. I want to say it was her 1989 tour, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. It was a fun concert, and we both promised we’d go to a concert together again if we ever had time.

This same friend told me half a year ago that Taylor Swift was coming to Tokyo, and by then her Eras Tour had kicked off and was incredibly hard to get tickets for. Knowing this, we entered the ticket lottery system fully expecting we wouldn’t get anything. I also chose the cheapest tickets because I really didn’t see the point in spending what could have paid for a vacation somewhere on a single seat.

We got really lucky – we got tickets for her February 10th concert.

It was crowded at Tokyo Dome, of course, but my friend and I waited in line outside the dome to buy t-shirts since we’d gotten one at her last concert, too. Everything was selling out fast, but we managed to at least get shirts.

Seating proved to be a bit tricky. We were shoved to the right of the stage (stage left), but because signs everywhere said we were on the second floor, we thought we’d lucked out with our seats being pretty close to the stage. Confirming with security, however, sent us up to what is actually the fourth floor but what security was calling the second floor, and we soon understood we had indeed been banished to the “nosebleed” section.

Taylor Swift, when she appeared, was a spec of dust on the stage to us.

Still, being surrounded by diehard Taylor Swift fans actually helped make the concert more fun to watch. It felt like being at a highly controlled party, with teen fans a couple rows up from us waving their hands to the beat and acting like their minds might explode every time Taylor Swift announced the next song. We were all given wristbands that lit up in varying colors according to whatever the lighting programmer wanted at any given time, which I think helped the audience feel like we were all helping to make the concert amazing.

The best way I can summarize it was that it was fun.

My friend has been to other concerts, she said, where the performer was extremely late starting the show, but Taylor Swift was out and ready to go right at 6 p.m., and even though the entire world knew she had to fly back to America for the Super Bowl, she acted like we were all just hanging out at Tokyo Dome together with all the time in the world.

I know she’s a professional performer, but I still found it amusing that she kept asking the audience “Do you have time for one more song?” or “Do you have 10 minutes to spare?” Did anyone say no?

Going to that concert, I can understand why people shell out a ton of money to be crushed by other people and have their eardrums assaulted. It’s not just about that, it’s about finding other fans and singing and dancing along to the music together. The music was so loud, I could see the people around me singing because their mouths were moving, but all I could hear was Taylor Swift’s voice crashing against the ceiling.

I also quickly regretted we hadn’t spent even a little more on tickets so we could see better. It was nice the organizers put everything up on a massive screen, but I think it would’ve been amazing to have at least been able to see Taylor Swift’s face with my own eyes instead of on a screen.

Maybe next time.