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December fucked me up. In a good way, but god damn. I had like a single week home and not a single weekend free due to work travel and holiday chaos.
I had my last business trip of the year and it was a doozy. First was Hong Kong, which I was visiting for the very first time, and then I took a quick trip to Japan to do some work, but only for like 3 days.
It's been a long time since I've been somewhere completely new to me. Hong Kong gave me an opportunity to engage with a place with fresh eyes again, which is something I haven't really gotten to do in over a decade, as my work takes me to the same places over and over again, typically. A few quick observations:
It's a little awkward defaulting to English in a place where everyone is Asian. My first instinct is to speak Japanese, which obviously is not the play. Then I want to struggle along in Mandarin, but I only know a few basic words and certainly can't carry a conversation. Plus I don't know a word of Cantonese which would be the primary language. It felt kind of rude just immediately speaking English, but that was what I had to do every time.
People defaulted to English with me about 20% of the time. Most of the time they went right to Cantonese, and then when I gave them my "oh god no please" look went to Mandarin, and THEN to English. Obviously for my white colleagues this did not happen, even though a lot of the white people who live in Hong Kong have mastered Chinese. And there are people who have been there for decades who still don't know any, which is crazy to me, but you really can go around without it.
The pedestrian situation on Hong Kong island, where I had to spend almost all of my time, is simultaneously very convenient and infuriatingly difficult. The walking paths are plentiful but not aligned with the roads. You get around mostly via a series of overpasses and skyways through buildings. This means that trying to wing it will result in getting lost in the guts of buildings where there are few indicators of directions, or getting spit out at an intersection and realizing that you need to backtrack significantly to find the actual crossing, because there is no street crossing. I had to add something like 5 minutes for each intersection on all of my trips because I would get so lost. And at one point I spent almost an hour ending up in the same building over and over again. The transit however is extremely convenient. The routes are plentiful and the busses and trolleys come often. So I'd spend 45 plus minutes trying to get somewhere, then on the way back say fuck it and jump a bus and have no problem getting directly to a place in less than 10 minutes. And this is not just because buses are faster than walking.
I was working in Central, which is kind of the high end, "Gucci in the mall" area of Hong Kong, and I was there on a Sunday, which means I got to see first hand a cultural phenomenon where the domestic servants of the city all pack up and spend the day on the streets in makeshift cardboard rooms or tents, partying, singing, and just chillaxing. The reasons this happens are not so great, involving poor protections for immigrant labor, lack of space which means many of these workers literally don't have a room of their own in their employer's house. Even though this entire district, for miles, becomes in one sense a massive homeless encampment for Filipino workers, when you going through the streets the entire thing has an air of a party. People have their own Karaoke machines and are singing in the street, everyone is playing cards, laughter is ringing out everywhere. Obviously it would be better of all these women had places to stay, but it was neat to see the strong sense of community that gathering like this obviously generated. It also put into strong perspective my own situation. I may live with housemates, but I have a room of my own and make decent money, and can take vacations and travel cool places for my job. As stressful as my life can be I'm very lucky and thankful for everything I have.
Japan was a super short trip. I tried to get a day in Osaka to see a friend, but fucked up the schedule and had only less than 24 hours. I did get to see my friend but had to jump on the Shinkansen immediately after and get to work, which was exhausting after having just flown in from Hong Kong and spent half a week working. When these trips happen I lose not just a week+ of my time, but I also usually get no weekend. Sometimes I'm out two weekends. This trip I didn't really have a free day outside of work until right before Christmas, at which point I was with family, so actually last weekend was the first time since November that I wasn't traveling or working or both.
Despite the narrow timeline I did manage to do some nerdy shopping still. I picked up a couple more books in Japan but stopped myself from picking up many more. I was able to be better in Hong Kong because even though there were some tempting looking books, the fact that I couldn't read them at all kept me from being stupid. And, I had very limited luggage space. I don't even have a roller carry-on, so anything I buy I need to be able to carry around.
The first book is on the history of an important publisher of Ukiyoe. When I first started buying books in Japan I thought it was novel to find books on book history around, but it turns out this must be a popular subject, because there are a ton! The other one is (I think) a collection of short love stories. I think they're probably going to be a little humorous. I got this as a possible text for my Japanese reading club. We're always on the lookout for collections shorter texts that won't take us a year to get through.
One of my big goals was to make my way to the Crazy Raccoon shop in Shibuya and get some Overwatch merch. The CR merch that's listed online tends to sell out almost immediately. When the Overwatch keychains came out they were sold out by the time I woke up. So I thought there was a chance I would be completely out of luck trying to buy in person, even though I was told they tend to have stock. Lucky me, they did have a bunch of merch available! I had already busted my budget on other things so I couldn't go wild. I only bought a single Shu keychain, but I'm so happy I got it. It represents about 5 years of intense fandom for me. 
I officially think Ikebukuro is nicer than Akihabara at this point. The bookoff in Akiba was hard for me to find anything I really wanted. And I am not an electronic type fan, plus Ikebukuro caters more towards to fujo crowd. I stopped by thinking I would get some doujinshi at Mandrake but ended up in the bookoff instead and found a section of drama CDs. There was nothing there I recognized so I just picked one at random I thought might be fun, but when I got home I realized the drama part was only the last 3 tracks!
And of course I picked up a few other stationary things for funsies, but then I accidentally gave it away to my roommate for Christmas because I wasn't paying attention to the stationary that /was/ for him lol. Whoops. Well I hope he enjoys it.
When I stay in Japan I stay at a hostel. The same hostel every time. I like it a ton because it's very small. Just two mixed dorms and in a very small traditional house. It's got the outer hallway with the shoji screens and everything, and a little internal garden. The whole thing is closed off by the surrounding buildings and a little cafe run by the hostel in the front. It's a beautiful place to stay, and also very cheap, but because it is actually a traditional old house, it is COLD AS BALLS in the winter because there is nothing but a single glass pane and a sheet of paper between you and the outdoors. I knew this was going to be the case, and the beds have very heavy and cozy blankets, but oh my god it's a good reminder that as much as I like traditional Japanese houses the modern ones are what I'd want to live in. 
Other stuff has been going on. For example Jayvik has grabbed me by the neck and is choking me out atm, but this post is long enough so I'll post a more fannish update later.
Meanwhile, the Snowflake Challenge is starting up again. I am very much not ready. Time needs to slow the fuck down. But Challenge 2 is an old one about my fan origin story, which never really changes, so I'll just link the post I made last year about that.
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I have to say I always get jealous when I'm in an area where multilingualism is so common. I'm like, if I had lived there I'd have learned ALLLL the languages. Free immersion!
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If I ever get to travel in Japan, I fear for my wallet and credit card 😂 I can already see myself going on a merch shopping spree.
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Looking forward to what you thought of the short stories, sounds fun!
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