American Gaijin

  • Trump Won.

    Trump Won.

    This is, I think, going to be a somewhat long post. And it’s also going to be somewhat nuanced. Far more nuanced than most posts on this topic. If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few days, you’ll know that Donald Trump was elected president of the United States last night.…

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  • Why I Might Quit Studying Japanese

    I have had a love-hate relationship with Japanese, and Japan, ever since I started learning it. When I first started learning Japanese, it was because I saw the “Morning Musume” English lesson, where a bunch of cute idol girls were “studying” English (actually, they pretty much weren’t, though maybe one or two learned something). I…

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  • Cinderella Girls: Lessons in Gender Identity

    Cinderella Girls: Lessons in Gender Identity

    I’ve been watching a lot of anime lately. I mean, a lot. That is not to say that I’ve even made a dent in the available anime (I haven’t), and I don’t intend to either. But there’s been a lot that peaked my interest. Some are great, some are mid, some are awful. One of…

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  • (Not) Waiting for Godot – Why I do not contribute to Open Source

    Years ago, I used to be an open source developer. Yes, me. Mister Japanese-language-studying amateur-theologer blog-making writer composer, etc… used to be an open source developer. I haven’t done it for years. And the reason why is perfectly encapsulated in the hubbub right now around Godot. One of the “community managers” in the Godot product…

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  • Requiem for a Cat

    I had to put my cat down last week. She was fifteen years old. She was sick. I took her to the vet and they couldn’t find anything obvious wrong, but she wasn’t using her litter, and I knew that it would just get worse. After a couple of days, I took her back to…

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  • Relife: High Functioning NEET

    Over the past couple of days, I watched an anime that I almost regret watching. It was good. I mean, it was really good. And it asked a question, well, a lot of questions, that made me take a long look at my life, and realize, something’s very wrong. The plot of the story revolves…

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  • Sound! Euphonium S3E12 (spoilers)

    This is a post I made on MyAnimeList about Sound! Euphonium S3E12. As noted, there are major spoilers. This episode has been on my mind for days. One of the things I simply don’t understand, is how many people are calling this anime “trash” and “garbage” because they decided to deviate from the LN. I…

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  • My Father, the Abject Failure

    Let’s be blunt: My father is dead. I don’t really care to talk about him all that much. The world will be better off when he dies the second death of never having his name spoken again. Except right now, I kinda feel like I have to. I’ve recently been taking lessons at certain things…

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  • Temple Anime – Or Not

    So having had a couple of weeks of vacation that are now over, I decided to spend some of it looking for places in Temple to buy anime stuff. That, ummm… didn’t work. Temple is a town of maybe 90,000 people, and I’d guess about two actual Japanese people, give or take. And maybe twenty…

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  • Bell County Comic Con

    So… apparently Bell County has a comic con. Bell County is not a large county. I’m actually a little surprised by how active the “comic” community is here, even if it’s not nearly as active as it is in some of the bigger cities. I’m debating going. At the moment, I’m leaning towards “no”. I…

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