The Workaholic Hostess goes back to LA

bank

2008-07-19T08:41:29Z

When I was at the bank today with my dad, a sleazy, greasy, disgusting guy went up to the teller next to us and started speaking really inappropriately to the teller (who was a young girl). He was using a sleazy, super friendly pedophile voice and getting so close to the glass his lips were almost touching it when he spoke.

I've noticed that glass walls do something to perverts. My twin sister was stuck in a phone booth in Ikebukuro once while a man masturbated and ejaculated on the glass. The same thing happened to another friend who was using a pay phone in Amsterdam.

I couldn'st stand this guy, and I said really loudly "this guy is disgusting." I said it so he could hear me. I said it so he would know that he wasn't fooling anybody. He either ignored me or didn't hear me.

When we got out of the bank, my dad turned around and was really angry at me. He said that in Los Angeles, you can't insult people like that unless you want to get your ass kicked or have a gun pulled on you.

Whatever. People wanna talk about women overreacting or being too sensitive. That's bullshit and my dad just doesn't understand. The disgust and anger I feel towards these sleazy men is REAL, it's from somewhere deep inside me, and it's not superficial or fake. It comes from a lifetime of being objectified and talked down to.

Don't ask me why I decided to work as a hostess.
*****
My mother has been in LA for two days. She's been staying at my twin sister's apartment, but she' leaving tomorrow morning because she misses her cats. I'm gonna miss her. She's so positive and kind. She's like a buddha (as one of my friends once said).

She does freak out sometimes though. When she's driving, I have to stop myself from shouting at her when she drives too slow or gets nervous changing lanes on the freeway. Shouting will just make her panic more and it'll get worse.

When I'm with my twin sister, I have to stop myself from telling her to calm down, to slow down, and to not be so aggressive. Saying anything to her will just make her drive even more angrily and dangerously.

But somebody needs to tell her, and I'm her twin sister so I should. All her friends are too scared to say anything. She's a midget, but she's scary.

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i'm really back

2008-07-15T23:12:34Z

Have a California driver's license!

Have an American bank account!

Have filed my taxes (well technically I haven't sent the forms off, but I will soon)!

I feel like a citizen of the USA again : )

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dmv

2008-07-15T07:06:14Z

Everything was going well at the DMV. Honestly, I would have been pretty pissed off but not surprised if they told me that I had to take the driver's test over again. I mean I haven't lived in this country for seven years and my license has been expired for about four years (I think.)

But all I had to do was pay 30 bucks and fill out a form, and I was getting my long-expired California driver's license back.

Then the lady sent me over to get my new photo taken, then she handed me a paper and told me to fill it out. I look at it and it's a paper test. wtf. She could have TOLD me it was a paper test, she could have TOLD me that I could glance through the study book first. Anyways, I failed it by one point. So I took the handbook home and now I'm reading through it. I'm not leaving that DMV tomorrow until I get a driver's license.

Here's the first page of the handbook. The Governator is giving a personal message.

Governator

*****

My mother and I went to the store to get my little sister something (my mother wants to send her something in Cambodia). She decided on some weird "organic" blush set. She just walked into my room and complained that someone took something out of the blush set box. "The box says there should be a brush, but there isn't one in here, see?" I looked, and she was pointing at the word "blush." She's still mixing up her ls and rs. "How many years have you been in America, Mommy?" I asked.

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gambling in cambodia

2008-07-14T02:49:05Z

My baby sister has just had a funny adventure in Cambodia. Well it's funny now because nothing really happened to her.

Until two weeks ago, she'd never been in a casino in her whole life. She does love beer though, and she's no idiot. So after winning money and getting free beer at the black jack table, she was hooked. She won money every night, and she went to the casino EVERY NIGHT!

She had fun, she got free beer, she met some fun kids/fellow gamblers. She even met a nice older Korean guy, a generous high roller. He invited my baby sister and her friend (an American guy) out to an expensive dinner. They accepted, "yay, expensive dinner, awesome!"

Of course, the night turned into a complete disaster. The Korean "businessman" was actually scary gangster who was also completely INSANE. He started speaking in scary drunk gangster Japanese and threatening to kill my little sister's male friend, who was scared, despite being ignorant of the fact that his life was being threatened! And this is just half the story (hostesses, and other things also made their appearance).

They ultimately made it home safely. I didn't find the story that amusing. I mean that gangster guy has obviously spent way too long in a consequence-free world.

My little sister's American male friend spent the next day emotionally and physically recovering (he also had a hangover). When my little sister told him what the gangster had been saying, I think he got even more exhausted. "Am I going to be beheaded now?" he asked. "Not if we stay away from the casino," said my little sister.

So that's the beginning and the end of her days as a gambler.

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conversations with my mother

2008-07-13T21:50:03Z

I've been hanging with my mom for the last two days. She moved to a totally boondocks town a few years ago after reading a big feature article in the LA Times about how this town will be the next resort town of California. She sold the house that she had only recently bought and moved with her two cats. Then she got really lonely because she lives hours and hours away from EVERYONE and there are no Japanese people. Now she said she's going to stay here because she "doesn't want to give up." She's no quitter!

*****

She has a few Japanese friends now. There are a handful of women who married American men. They came over the other day and we cooked a big meal. One of the ladies gave my mother a huge pile of Korean tv dramas. Five years after the Korean boom, my mother's finally fallen in love with Young-sama. "He's so handsome, I can't imagine anybody being as handsome as him!"

My favorite Korean movie star is Lee Byun-hung. He is so handsome! We've been watching My Beautiful Lady, where he plays a boxer. The storyline is just really ridiculous, but it's all just an excuse to watch Lee Byun-hung look incredibly hot.

*****

My mother said that when we were really young and living in a big apartment complex in the San Francisco bay area, me and my sisters got in a fight with the Korean girls who lived downstairs. My mother had to go downstairs and apologize to their mother, who was kind of a nervous, screechy type of lady if I remember correctly. In fact, the neighborhood flasher once broke into her apartment, and that made her even MORE screechy. I think everyone thought "great, could the neighborhood flasher have chosen ANYBODY's house but hers?"

The father didn't live with them, so we had never met him. My mother said that when she knocked on the door, she almost fell over when it opened. "You know who answered the door? A man like Lee Byun-hung!" The father was a tall dark and handsome man with a heart-stopping smile!

"How could that lady be married to HIM?" was what my mother said she thought.

Hahaha.

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simon and mariko

2008-07-11T18:48:19Z

My dad and Simon met traveling around the world. He worked his way through Afghanistan, which apparently was a nice, friendly touristy place back then, and was in fact a sort of cultural threshold for a lot of westerners. Exotic enough for adventure, but close and safe enough for people to feel comfortable.

He ended up in Japan eventually, and my parents (he met my mother at some point) made some really good friends during these years, and I grew up surrounded by these people. So I thought everyone knew Japanese and English, I thought everyone moved around all over the world, and I thought mixed race kids and interracial marriages were as normal as can be.

Simon and Mariko are kind of like my aunt and uncle, and sometimes I feel like they are substitute parents. If they were my real parents, I'd be a lot taller for one thing (both of them are very tall), and I'd speak Japanese with a Kansai accent (Mariko's from Nara).

Anyways, Mariko told me about how she ended up meeting Simon and escaping a regimented Japanese life. She said that back then, women didn't really have a whole lot of options. She could either become a secretary or a teacher. She chose teacher, and studied English. But then, she didn't get hired as a teacher. Her mother panicked and pressured her into getting married. She stalled and got a job at an English conversation school instead, doing secretarial stuff.

That's when she met Simon. The tall, skinny, glasses-wearing dork from Philidelphia with a penchant for relentless sarcasm. Not what you would call a knight in shining armor, but I guess they fell in love. They're both funny people, and I think they've never stopped laughing together since they met all those years ago.

Simon still says that choosing to move to Osaka instead of Tokyo all those years ago was the best decision he's ever made in his life. That's how he met Mariko.

I found some old pictures of the young Simon and Mariko at their house the other day. Simon is laughing as usual, with his big goofy teeth showing and his eyes crinkling behind big glasses. Mariko is looking like a natural country girl with a fresh young face and long, tousled hair.

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domes

2008-07-11T00:57:05Z

Hiked up a bunch of domes. Yosemite is all about the domes, and they're cool.

Swam in the most awesome stream ever on the hottest day ever.

Survived without the internet for four days. People, this was very very hard. On the second day I started having really freaky dreams.

Saw a bear! It was running really fast.

For some reason, went to see the circus is Fresno. Mariko wanted to go. Surprisingly entertaining.

Had an eye full of lots and lots of wild west dessert space. There is so much space here. There's so much space in the world. The world is just so damn huge. There is just so much I can do.

And I just want to do it all!

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i'm hitting the north

2008-07-06T05:00:18Z

I'm off on the Amtrack tomorrow, going to visit the rich non-relatives. Should be a good time. I'm packing my bikini, my electro gadgets, some work, and some prezzies. I'm gonna swim in some lakes and hike up some mountains and I'm not even going to complain while I'm doing it!

I'm also gonna see my mother too, and perhaps my second oldest aunt in 'frisco.

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Fourth of July

2008-07-05T21:23:08Z

First we (my twin sister, Kosuke and me) went to HOLLYWOOD to watch WALL-E at the El Capitain, yeah baby! There were a bunch of impersonators out for the fourth of July crowd. Slash looked pretty hot in his big black hat and black clothes, but then Capt. Jack Sparrow really looked uncomfortable in his many layers. Then I saw Darth Vader and his big black shiny plastic helmet seriously looked torturous. Marilyn Monroe was definitely dressed more for the weather. She was eating a burrito taking a break when I saw her.

We ate some pizza. My slice of pizza was as big as an actual whole pizza in Japan. I don't think I need another pizza for awhile.

Hollywood-pizza

That evening we went all the way down to some place called San Clemente for fireworks. It was very crowded once we got near the beach -- like Japan crowded -- and there were big white people everywhere. There was even one guy driving around in his pickup truck singing "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American waaaaay!" through his megaphone type thing.

So here's my feet in the waves.

Feet

And here's my twin sister dressed super inappropriately for the beach!

Inappropriatesister

And Kosuke heading into the water to splash around a little. That's his flip flop on the bottom.

Flipflip

There were fireworks everywhere. We saw them on the beach, then we saw them all the way home all along the highway.

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dad dating, host clubs, vh1

2008-07-04T06:06:05Z

My dad just came back from another date again. This lady seemed nice. I think he met her through some jewish dating website, at least that's what my twin sister says. I think that's kind of sweet.

My dad can be really cute. I went into the kitchen yesterday and he had his laptop on the counter and he was watching a youtube clip of a lady making hummus. He then proceeded to make hummus, and it was actually really good.

*****

I didn't know that I couldn't use the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. In fact, one of the best things about America is the garbage disposal. Anyway I clogged up the drain. It wasn't really what my dad wanted to see when he came home from his date just now. He was kind of nice about it. "Somebody clogged up the drain," he said, when obviously that "somebody" could only be me. Then he started swearing and throwing paper towels, so I told him to do it in the morning when he wasn't tired (notice I didn't offer to do it myself...).

*****

Sayaka is my twin sister's roommate. She's a hostess here in LA. I just had my mind blown because my sister told me that Sayaka goes to some Host clubs around K-Town I think. Hosts are men who are paid to be with women, btw. She said the hosts are all Korean though, and a lot of the times can't really speak anything other than Korean. They must be pretty stupid if they can't even speak Japanese.

*****

I'm really fucking excited about the fact that I'm not blocked from vh1 anymore cuz I'm actually IN America. It was a dark day when they suddenly started blocking people outside of America. Trashy reality shows, here I come! How awesome does "I Love Money" sound? All the freakiest peeps from the past shows are all in one show. You can't go WRONG!

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