2024-10-09

I visited family in China for the first time in about 15 years. I don’t recall the last visit too clearly, but this is what stood out:

• Lots of modernization: Xuzhou got a whole new subway system with multiple lines in the past 15 years. Compare any American city; maybe the whole of North America built 6 lines in that time?
• Xuzhou also seems to have become a local tourist destination, with its museums and shaokao (烧烤) barbeque skewers.
• The family farm seems to have changed from apples to pears and corn.
• Things are ridiculously cheap.
• Lots of Japanese chains: FamilyMart, Lawson, and 7-11 all have Shanghai branches, though apparently they mostly only exist in the major cities.
• There are snack shops which are basically modernized dagashiya.
• Absolutely everything was via smartphone; AliPay did everything from the subway to restaurants to groceries.
• I didn’t expect people to randomly walk around in cosplay and hanfu (汉服); I spotted a Cinamoroll Hatsune Miku and a Kagamine Rin, as well as several people in hanfu. I do see some people in kimono in Japan, but that’s mostly older people; it was mostly young people wearing hanfu that I saw in China.

2024-10-14

Another little difference: vision tests don’t use the chart of letters, but instead a chart of rings with a little chunk cut out. You tell them which way the ring is facing instead of what letter it is.

2024-10-20

I attended atarayo’s live in Nagoya! Standing room only in these venues always felt a bit weird to me; is it really up to fire code? Also, nobody wears earplugs…

2024-10-26

I attended Hanatan’s live in Yokohama too! This ticket also came with a “mixer” (kouryuukai) afterwards.

• Ended with Romeo and Cinderella!!
• She asked who was from overseas; there were people from Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore.
• The “mixer” ended up being 6 medleys of 5 songs (total 30), picked by the super special ticket holders (alas, I was not one of them), with about 1-2 minutes per song. Precure, n-buna, yorushika (“Haru Dorobou”), Yuuhizaka, Dear, unravel, Double Lariat, etc. were all covered. She chatted with the audience in between songs, and gave away two handmade nuigurumi via janken contest (if I heard right she did it at a like build-a-bear style thing in China?)

• At the end she personally handed each attendee a CD with 5 tracks + a 2 track demo:

  1. FORTUNE KILLER
  2. 魂のルフラン (cover 高橋洋子)
  3. ‘Cause
  4. Glow (acoustic version)
  5. ベテルギウス (cover 優里)

  Demo was 私は最強 (cover Ado) immediately going into ラズベリー＊モンスター.