The Kimochi Warui Diary
This book is as raw as it is funny. There are moments of levity, discomfort, cringeyness, and deep insight. I found myself laughing throughout, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right emotion for what was being described.
Amazon Customer
A coming-of-age story for the “self-aware weeb”
Book Trailer
Watashi loves Japan. He studies Japanese, stays up all night reading manga and Japanese novels, marathons dozens of episodes of anime in one sitting, and even has a Japanese friend online.
But if you asked Watashi, he would tell you he’s not your average otaku. He would tell you that, unlike OTHER fans of anime and manga, his emotional connection to Japan is *special.*
To prove it, Watashi is going on a 2-week trip to Japan with his older brother. What his brother doesn’t know, however, is that Watashi hasn’t planned out a single bit of the trip. He’s convinced that his “shounen spirit” will bail them out of any trouble they may face.
Along the way, Watashi will have to use his knowledge of anime, manga, and limited Japanese to guide them.
But will all of that be enough for Watashi to find what he’s looking for in Japan?
Testimonials
Interview With the Author (cringe warning)
Free Sample
11:00 a.m.
“The last thing you want to do in Japan,” the Professor said. “Is to appear like some idiot foreigner.”
The classroom erupted in laughter.
“Anyone here taking Japanese?” he asked. “Come on, raise your hands.”
Before anyone could, he was already speaking again.
“They probably teach you to use watashi to refer to yourself. And that’s not wrong. At the same time, it’s not right, either.”
My professor was a 40 year-old white guy with shoulder-length, curly brown hair. He paced back and forth across the front of the room as he centered in on his main point:
“Watakushi, wagahai, ore, uchi, jibun… These are all Japanese pronouns, but you’ll sound weird if you use any of them.”
I rarely took notes in “Japanese Culture Through Films,” but this time was different. I had my Pilot fountain pen at the ready for the professor’s next words.
“Let me explain,” he said. “Some years ago, I was in Japan for a conference. While waiting for a train, I saw an older Japanese woman struggling to carry her luggage. I ran up to help her, and when I did, I used my best Japanese to greet her…”
The professor slowed down his frantic pace, ran his fingers through his hair, and took a breath.
“…and I used ‘boku’to refer to myself. And when she heard that, she stopped. She looked me straight in the eyes, and she said to me in fluent English: ‘Don’t use boku. It sounds like you have an Oedipus complex.’”
The classroom was silent. A couple students chuckled nervously.
“Okay, okay, weird example,” the professor said. Then he revved himself back up to his normal pace.
“I just thought of a much better example. It was during grad school, in Japan. A colleague of mine said he was having a hard time fitting in.”
My pen was uncapped, ready to write down what came next.
“He said no one wanted to hang out with him. He was envious of our colleagues who had found girlfriends. In the classroom, everyone appeared to be friendly with him, but outside of that, they had no interest in him. To him, it was a complete mystery. But if you saw how he walked… How he carried himself… How do you explain it?”
The professor held up his hands as if he was grasping the words as they appeared in front of him.
“He was the kind of guy who spoke louder than everyone else in the room. He had no sense of personal space. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t keep to himself—he had to touch everything as he walked by it. I wanted to say to him, ‘Look around, do you see anyone here acting the way you do?’ But no one in that society would ever tell him that directly.”
The professor stood there in silence for a few seconds.
“Anyways, sorry for the tangent. I promise it’s relevant to the film we’re about to watch.”
I was capturing the last of his words in my notebook. Before he could leave the topic behind forever, my hand shot up.
“About the pronouns,” I said. “You never said which one was best to use.”
He laughed softly and wagged a finger.
“None of them, actually. A fluent speaker will use the context of the conversation to make it clear when they’re referring to themselves.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“Okay, I see you’re confused,” he said. “I’ll make it easy: You’re best off using ‘watashi’ in almost every case—just don’t blame me if someone says you’re being too polite.”
I nodded my head and scribbled a nearly illegible note:
“I don’t have to call myself anything, but if I do, I can be Watashi.”
3:30 p.m.
In the back-left corner of the room—in the seat next to the window—I reviewed my script one more time.
I’m going to nail this.
Meanwhile, in the front of the class, a student began his own presentation.
“Hajimemashite. Watashi wa Harold-san desu. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”
Before he could continue, Naoko Sensei interrupted him:
「ハロルドさん、もう一度言ってください。『Yoroshiku』。」
Sensei had a problem with the way he was pronouncing “yoroshiku.” He wasn’t able to roll his ‘R’ properly.
“Yo row shiku,” Harold said.
Sensei sent it back at him with a stern emphasis on the syllable: “Ｙｏろｓｈｉｋｕ!”
“Yo ROW shiku,” Harold said, louder this time.
Sensei’s face was blank.
“Okay,” she said. “Keep going.”
Harold took a deep breath and continued:
“Watashi wa anime to manga ga suki desu. Full Metal Alchemist ga ichiban suki desu. Video geemu mo suki desu. Supotsu ga kirai desu.”
Harold bowed deeply to the classroom, hinging at the waist a full 90 degrees. The students applauded him and he returned to his seat.
In Harold’s presentation, he said he liked anime and manga, but that was no secret to anyone. Two lectures ago, he was watching anime on his laptop—in the middle of class. Without any headphones.
Honestly, I felt terrible for sensei.
She came to this country to teach Japanese, but did she ever expect her students would be so embarrassingly otaku?
But that wasn’t fair of me to say. Even the actual otaku in Japan were much better than the wannabes in this room!
The people here? They were “weaboos.” Weaboos are entirely separate from otaku. An otaku is just a fanatic, but a weaboo is someone who literally wishes they could have been born Japanese.
I can forgive someone for loving Japan. I have no problem with that. The irritating part is that you can already tell half of them think this class is going to be a breeze.
Why? Just because they’ve watched Naruto with subtitles?
But don’t get me wrong.
I love Japanese cartoons as much as any weaboo. The difference between me and them is that there’s no way I’d let it show so tastelessly.
And unlike them, I’m way ahead of the curve. I’ve already taught myself how to write hiragana and katakana, and I’ve even begun studying kanji.
Honestly, I’m only taking this class to get speaking and listening practice. If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t actually—
“Psst! Hey!” My desk neighbor tapped me on the shoulder. “She’s talkin’ to you, [Watashi]!”
I looked up to see sensei staring right at me.
“[Watashi]-san, please present!”
Finally. It’s time to show everyone my power level!
I got up and moved to the front of the class. I took a deep breath and repeated my lines, just as I’d rehearsed them:
「はじめまして。『わたし』です。日本ぶんがくが好きですよ。日本語は難しいけど、とても楽しいです。よろしくお願いします。」
I gave a curt bow to show I was finished.
Sensei applauded. Her mouth was agape in astonishment.
“[Watashi]-san, you have very natural pronunciation. It almost sound like native Japanese speaker.”
Then, she asked something I hadn’t expected at all:
「どのくらい日本語を勉強していますか? 」
I’d barely caught even one word of what she said. Truthfully, I hadn’t expected sensei to ask anything at all after reading what I had written in my script.
“S-sorry…” I said. “I mean, ごめんなさい、もういちどいって。。。kudasai?”
Sensei repeated the question again for me.
“Dono kurai…” she said, slowly. “How long…”
My mind was blank.
“How long have you been studying Japanese for?” she finally asked in plain English.
“Oh. Um… One year?” Actually, it was longer.
“一年間ですか？”
“Hai, ichi nen kan.”
Sensei wasn’t satisfied with my answer. Her open palm was saying I had left something out.
“Ichi nen kan… desu?”
“です！That’s right. Don’t forget verb!”
She addressed the entire class now:
“I will be listening for verb during final speaking exam, ne? Make sure to study and practice!”
6:00 p.m.
I was laying on the couch in the living room, scrolling through tweets on my phone.
“Did you even listen to what I said?”
That was the voice of this girl who, for the sake of protecting her identity, I’ll call Hitagi.
We started out as nothing more than classmates—we just happened to share a couple English classes together. But then one day, out of nowhere, she started making fun of how I dressed! The next day, it was how I talked. Nothing was off limits. All the while, I just kept deflecting her comments and allowed her to follow me. Somehow that turned us into friends, and we became inseparable for a time.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you!” Hitagi said. She yanked the phone right out of my hand.
“What the fuck, give it back!” I said.
Truth is, I was right in the middle of a conversation with a girl. Hitagi was scrolling up and down through the chain of tweets.
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “What the hell is this?”
Fortunately, the entire conversation was in Japanese.
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” She threw the phone back to me. “After all, you have an Asian fetish.”
This again?
“I don’t have a fetish,” I said. “And besides, that’s not even what it’s called.”
Otaku, Japanophile, wapanese, weaboo… Any of those terms were more applicable for what she was trying to say. I don’t like all of Asia, just Japan. No use trying to explain that, though.
“Whatever,” she said. “What do you even talk about with these Asian people, anyways?”
Despite the way she phrased things, I could tell she was genuinely interested. I’d come to understand that her intentions were always sincere, regardless of how she came off. The fact I understood this was probably why we could be friends.
“Honestly, nothing interesting,” I said. “I know less Japanese than an elementary schooler.”
My online friend’s name was Yuno, and we mostly only ever talked about her cat. Sometimes we shared music with each other, but that’s about it. She’d been something like my “online language pen pal” for a couple of months now.
“And speaking of the so-called Asian fetish,” I said. “I’m still thinking about teaching English in Japan. In fact, I’m going to visit sometime after graduation.”
Hitagi had walked into the kitchen and was pouring herself a glass of cheap wine.
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
“I’ve got about $3k left in student loan money,” I said.
“Seriously…?” Hitagi looked up at me with just her eyes.
“Yeah. Why not?”
She took a refined sip of her wine, smacked her lips to taste.
“What if someone tries to kidnap you and put you in one of those tentacle porns?” she said, followed by gulping a mouthful of the wine.
Yeah, this was entirely my fault. Hitagi had heard the term “tentacle rape” from somewhere on the internet. Frankly, she was appalled.
But “tentacle rape” is barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to weird Japanese porn, ya know? I wanted to show her just how crazy it got. Thanks to some recommendations from internet friends, I was able to show her worse stuff than she could possibly imagine.
Ever since then, we could hardly have any serious conversation about Japan before she derailed it with “tentacle porns.”
“Listen,” I said. “Japan is one of the safest countries in the world. Plus, my older brother’s coming with me. Can you imagine someone trying to insert tentacles in me while he’s around?”
I pulled up a photo of him from his girlfriend’s Instagram account. He was the broad-shouldered, monolithic figure towering next to her. The bill of his hat casted a shadow over his face—the expression beneath that shadow was impossible to read.
“Wow, that’s your brother?” Hitagi said. “He looks just like you!”
Yeah, I’ve heard that a million times.
“Except, it’s like he got the better genetics. Taller… More muscular… Less pale… Wow, are those tattoos?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that a million times.”
Hitagi threw my legs off the end of the couch and sat down. She twirled her wine glass.
“But seriously,” she said. “You should focus on graduating.”
“All the bad grades I had are going to be fixed. I already talked to the teacher’s assistant.”
“Maybe if you had just done the work instead of reading your Asian books until morning…”
She had me there.
Whenever I had to choose between anime and manga or doing homework… The choice wasn’t always obvious.
It all depended on which felt more important to my life at that moment. Sometimes, a more artistic anime or manga would hit me so deep that I just had to understand how the author was going to solve the character’s problems. It was the exact same as the author saying to me, “Hey, I’ve experienced what you’ve been through. Here’s how I got through it. Here’s how you can, too!”
And yeah, I’ll admit, not all the anime and manga I watched were “artistic.” Sometimes I just felt inspired and bad ass from watching something cool.
On the other hand, what was I going to learn from writing some essay that my professor was going to have his assistant read?
And by the way, it wasn’t not only anime or manga. It just so happened that what I felt was most similar to what the Japanese authors expressed.
After beginning my Japanese literature class, I began to see how the characters and tropes in these old stories were connected to the modern stories told through anime and manga. By tracing the threads of influence through all Japanese mediums, I was beginning to form a clearer picture not just about Japan, but about myself. If pursuing this latent truth had the power to uncover something about myself, then it would be way more important than some school assignment.
I’d tried to explain all of this to Hitagi in the past. When I started up again, she knew exactly where I was heading and cut me off.
“I know, I know! You don’t have to go on about your Asian fetish again.”
11:45 p.m.
I told my online friend, Torako, about my conversation with Hitagi.
I’ve known Torako for a few years both online and offline, but lately, we’ve been using LINE—a messaging service that’s extremely popular in Japan. Best of all, you can send images called “stickers.” They serve the same purpose as emoji, but they don’t look like smiley faces. Instead, they’re actual depictions of characters, both well-known and original creations by independent artists.
I gave Torako my rant about Hitagi and her resistance to Japanese things. In response, he sent me a sticker of an anime girl shrugging and expelling a sigh.
“What do you expect from normies? Of course she wouldn’t understand!”
“True,” I said. “I feel like she just hates anime, which is fine, I understand why some people don’t like it—but it’s like she’s pinning all of her hatred for anime onto Japan!”
“That’s to be expected of pig disgusting 3D women. They instinctively know that 2D girls will make them obsolete one day, so they try to make you feel bad for liking anything that has to do with it.”
Torako sent a sticker of an anime girl shrugging.
“But don’t worry,” he continued. “Soon you’ll be travelling through glorious Nippon. You’re really going to like it.”
“I have a good feeling about it too,” I said. “I mean, I’m not going to lie, I’m not really into traditional Japanese stuff like tea ceremonies and samurai and all that junk… It’s just something about the atmosphere of Japan that resonates with me. Like, the idea of walking through the rain in the Japanese suburbs gives me some big feels. You know?”
I punctuated my long-winded message with a sticker of an anime girl using an umbrella under a raincloud.
“I understand completely,” Torako said. “By the way, you should check out a net café while you’re there. I stayed in one for almost three days straight just levelling up my character in Eden of Eternia 2.”
“You stayed in a net café? But wasn’t Noah letting you live in his apartment?”
“Yes, but… Experiencing a net café in glorious Nippon? That’s something you can’t do anywhere else.”
Torako sent a sticker of a burly anime man, staring off into the distance as a solitary tear rolled down his chiseled face.
“That’s true,” I said. “But I don’t really play those kinds of games anymore.”
“You can always catch up on anime,” Torako said. “Actually, that reminds me… I saw all the tweets you’ve been liking. You sure do have a thing for those Japanese school uniforms. I might know a few anime that would be perfect for your tastes.” He sent a sticker of an anime girl with a psychotic grin.
“Hold on,” I said. “You can see the tweets I’ve given a ‘like’? Those things are public!?”
He teased me for a few more minutes until the topic of the trip came back up.
“By the way,” he said. “About Noah. You should message him before you go. He can probably show you around Tokyo.”
“Noah’s still there, huh? It’s been a year already…”
“Yep. He’s still finishing his degree.”
I sent a random sticker of an anime girl standing on her head. Truthfully, I didn’t know Noah very well and didn’t know what else to say.
“And what about Yuno?” Torako asked. To this, he sent a sticker of a mischievous anime girl—she was looking down at the viewer with a smug expression. “You’re gonna meet her too, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, and sent a sticker of an anime girl with her thumb and finger under her chin. A yellow spark of light glimmered from her giant grin. “I think I’m gonna have to.”
Tokyo
Chapter 1
Several months later, my brother and I were landing in Tokyo’s Haneda airport. From my seat at the window, all I could see was the airport. I was eager to bust out of this glass and concrete airport and into the mystical land of Japan.
“Get me the hell out of this plane,” my brother said.
He’s 6’3” and wasn’t doing well in coach seating for the last 11 hours. Not only is he tall, but he’s got a blunt, “no bullshit” kind of demeanor. Back home, he’s an LA City firefighter.
In life, he chose the jock route; I chose the academic route. When we actually work together, we form a nice team:
He’s the big strong guy who breaks through solid walls, and I’m the one thinking of how the broken pieces of wall will affect whatever’s on the other side.
Since I don’t want all this getting back to him, let’s go ahead and call my brother “Jotaro” from now on.
After getting off the plane, we were heading toward our first trial:
The line through customs.
A quick flash of our passports should be enough to get us through the gates!
A few minutes later, we were already at the front of the line. A round-faced Japanese woman in uniform pulled out a pink card, a pen, and got ready to dictate.
“How long you staying?”
“Until the 28th,” I replied.
“And the address where you staying?”
Nonsense! For this trip, we were doing things on the fly. After all, Jotaro had been on multiple camping trips in the mountains with only the bare minimum of supplies. That’s why he agreed when I said we should keep things simple:
We only carry what will fit in our backpacks!
The only exception of course, were our sleeping bags, which were strapped on top—just in case circumstances forced us to camp out somewhere less-than-conventional.
“I don’t have an address for that!” I said proudly.
But after I said it, I felt a chill. A cold and oppressive aura gathered behind the back of my head. It was the same feeling you’d get if a large, carnivorous animal just stood up on its hind legs behind you in a dark forest.
I turned around slowly to see Jotaro glaring down at me. The bill of his “fire station” baseball cap created a dark shadow over his eyes—the only light shining from that darkness came purely from his intense glare.
“What do you mean there’s no address?”
Behind me: death.
In front: a genuinely concerned customs officer.
“How about I write down that address?” I said, taking the card and pen from her.
I wrote out Noah’s full name.
I wrote “Tokyo” as his home address.
I didn’t know anything else.
I handed the slip back to the customs officer. She looked down at the slip, then up at me and Jotaro, and then at our passports.
Were we about to get sent back home?
Just some months ago, a famous K-pop group was denied entrance into the United States. They had to take their plane all the way back to Korea, just hours after they’d arrived.
The customs officer looked up at us one more time.
“Ok, go ahead.”
I held my breath as we walked out of customs. Then, when we were outside the gate and far away from customs, I spun around to face Jotaro.
“See?” I said. I emulated the sparkling grin I’d seen used by smug anime characters. “Everything works out perfectly fine when it comes to us. That’s just the kind of luck we have!”
Jotaro’s facial expression was unchanged, but now, a deathly purple aura emanated from behind his body.
“You need to find us a hotel.”
It was already getting dark outside. Indeed, finding a hotel was top priority.
I looked around the airport and, across the lobby, saw several maps and brochures on the wall. I grabbed a handful and began poring over them.
I soon realized that all the hotels in these brochures were way out of our league. After all, these were promotional materials, not actual guidebooks. Our situation was becoming bleak.
Think, think!
I got it! If I was ever going to have any chance of finding a hotel in a pinch, there’d be no place better than the internet.
I whipped out my phone and connected to the first unlocked WiFi channel. It then forced me onto a browser—a normal formality for free WiFi zones. Except, this WiFi zone’s registration page had a big banner on it:
￥１０００
…This isn’t free!!!
“You find something yet?” Jotaro asked.
I couldn’t bear to meet his gaze.
But just then, two middle-aged, slender Japanese men approached us. Had they come to save me from the wrath of Jotaro?
They were wearing plaid, short sleeves shirts. One red, one blue.
“Excuse us…” Blue Shirt said. “We see you are lost?”
This must be it! The friendly Japanese citizen that is infamous throughout the rest of the world! The kind that will chase you down to return your wallet! The kind that will find you a hotel at the very last minute!
Looks like we’ve been saved after all. Tsk, tsk. Our luck just doesn’t run out, eh?
Red Shirt then said, “We are… How you say in English…”
And Blue Shirt finished his sentence: “Plain clothes police officers.”
Chapter 2
The two police officers looked at each other with genuine bewilderment, as if they had never encountered this situation before.
“You are telling us… You didn’t book hotel?”
They started speaking in Japanese to each other, working out a solution to the conundrum I had created. Here’s what they finally told us:
Over in a certain region of Otsuka, just a few blocks down from the train station, there’s a district with plenty of hotels. If we take the train there right now, we should have a shot at finding something for the night—but there’s no guarantee.
They pointed us to the train station and sent us on our way.
It was dark outside the train window. The lights from inside the train created a glare, giving us only our own reflections to look at. Streetlights and neon signs occasionally whizzed by.
“Tell me,” Jotaro said. “Is there any part of this trip that you do have planned out?” He was staring into me, ready to parse the lies out of every next word.
I turned to the window and tried looking past my reflection, trying to catch any glimpse of Japanese scenery.
“I know which cities I want to go to, yeah.”
We left the train station at Otsuka and made our way toward the area marked on our map. Sure enough, several hotels began materializing in the distance.
The first few hotels brought us no luck:
「いっぱい」, they told us.
In other words, “full.”
We eventually found one hotel that didn’t reject us outright.
Jotaro took a seat in the lobby and crossed his arms, waiting for me to get the room. I could feel his oppressive aura lingering like a thick fog around me.
The girl behind the front desk looked up at me. I immediately started begging:
“Please, we need a room. Everything else is full. We just got in to Japan and have nowhere to stay!”
I tried sounding extra pathetic and helpless, but the look on her face said she didn’t understand my English anyways. She left through a door in the back and disappeared.
A few seconds later, an older man with unkempt, graying hair came out in her place. He seemed even less sympathetic.
“Please, we need a room for one night,” I said.
The man looked at Jotaro. Then he looked at me. And then he held up two fingers:
“You get two room.”
“Oh, it’s alright,” I said. “We only need one!”
He looked taken aback at this, almost offended.
“Two men, one room… very bad. You get two room.”
Wait a minute… “Whoa, no, that’s not it. He’s my brother. 私の兄ですよ。”
He wasn’t having it. It was two rooms or nothing, and we were in no place to complain. Which level of Japanese classes teach you how to have this conversation…?
I paid the man and took the keycards for our room. The total cost was about $200. I couldn’t help thinking that, if my Japanese skills were better, I could have talked us into something better.
We were exhausted, so Jotaro and I went straight to our rooms to sleep. While taking a shower, I recounted the day’s failures. We’d managed to slip by them without much issue, but what about the rest of the trip? Will my lack of Japanese skills continue to hold us back?
After the shower, I went to brush my teeth, and something strange happened.
I noticed that the hotel had supplied a plastic-wrapped toothbrush on my sink counter. Printed on the plastic wrap, itself, was a sentence of English words in cursive lettering:
“Life is full of trials and tribulations. A man of strong will delights in adversity.”
Huh? What was this power flowing through me?
Who the hell was I kidding!? Non-fluent people visit Japan all the time and have a blast!
A sudden burst of energy shot through me, and with it arose an incredible idea. As soon as I finished brushing my teeth, I pulled out my phone, ready to fix this whole mess I had created.