HOLY CRAP.
Two whole posts in a single week!
LOOK AT THAT.

How many people want to bet that this never happens again?


Anyway.

Let's talk about Hiroshima.
As I mentioned months ago, I accepted a position at a junior/senior high school on the west side of Hiroshima City. It's a really nice school, though the current class of 8th graders makes me want to rub my face against a cheese grater on a regular basis. My supervisor seems to feel the same way. The new 7th grade class is full of awesome kids, and I've heard great things about the other four grades, though I do not teach them. I am having a blast.


Since getting here, my husband and I have made an effort to get more acquainted with Hiroshima City in general. Gifu was not nearly as big of a city, and it cost nearly twice as much to get down to Nagoya City so we never really explored as much as we probably should have.

We've been here for almost sixth months. In the past six months we've explored our little neighborhood, and have explored a small chunk of downtown. We've also been to Miyajima twice, but we still have a lot more to go. I have an unprecedented three two-day weekends this month.

Three.

I am estatic.
We're going to try to rent a car next weekend (the 16th and 17th) and drive out to Okayama to visit the Bizen Osafune Sword Museum and Token Village.
Because they have a scale model of the Lance of Longinus from Neo Genesis Evangelion.
Monday the 17th (a national holiday) is the last day, so we have to go.
I have friends who will stop talking to me if we don't go.

Ahem.
BACK ON TOPIC WE GO.

In May, Japan had it's great Golden Week, which is three days in a row of national holidays at beginning of May, plus a national holiday on April 29th. Many companies and schools give the entire period from the 29th to May 5th off, making it one of the busiest times of the year to travel.

But that's not the point.

The point is, YAY NO WORK.

The first day, we hung out at the Flower Festival down at the Peace Park. Wasn't sure what to expect, but it wasn't too bad. Ran into my school's baton club after they finished marching in the parade and had a lot of giggles from the girls about my being married. Didn't stay too long, but have plans to go again next year.

The second day, we headed over to Hiroshima Castle for the first time.
Now, I love castles.
I mean, love castles.
I've been to: Matsumoto, Ueda ruins, Yatsushiro Ruins, Kumamoto, Shimabara, Hirado, Gifu, Kano ruins, Gujo Hachiman, Ogaki, Ogura ruins, Nagoya, Osaka, Nijo, and Inuyama. I guess you can even include the Imperial Palace in Kyoto.
We have plans to get to Himeji (even if it will still be under restoration) while we are living in Hiroshima. And any other castle or castle ruins I can find in the neighboring prefectures.

Even if it is a rebuilt replica, if it's a castle, I want to go.
I just love walking around the grounds. I love the gardening, and I love the architecture.
The grounds around Hiroshima Castle and the moat are just lovely for a picnic, or for a quiet day in the shade with a good book. There's even a jogging course around the moat and through the adjoining park.

For only being there a few hours, I took a metric ton of photos.
I nearly maxed out my 4GB SD card. With only JPEGs. Go me.

Here are some of the best, including two I messed around with in HDR software:






















Now, as this is a full two-day weekend, I will hopefully have time to go through my photos from the last day of Golden Week and have a post of that up sometime Saturday or Sunday. When I'm not so tipsy. Have I mentioned that I've had two Suntory Strong Zero grape chu-hi? Yeah. I'm a bit tipsy.

Hi again. Been awhile hasn't it?
It always ends up like this. Oops. Maybe I should start writing blogs during my lunches at school?

I have tons of photos I'm slowly sifting through and messing around with in Lightroom, Photomatix and Photoshop. One day I'll get around to posting them. I have some I want to write posts about anyway.

However, I am not writing this to write about Japan. Hell, I don't know if anyone even reads this anymore, but what I need to say needs to be said.


This past weekend was PAX Prime in Seattle. I have never gone to PAX, though I have friends who have. My cousin Ky over at ExplodedSoda has gone to both PAX East and PAX Prime. Every time she has gone to PAX or any other convention (She's been to a few ComicCons, and has gone to other cons as well I do believe), she always raves about how awesome it was and how awesome the people she met there were. Hearing stories from both her and my other friends has always made me want to join in the festivities if I get the chance. I'm not even that big of a gamer compared to them (though I will admit that 80% of my month-long summer vacation was spent playing Age of Empires III, Ticket to Ride, and Heroes of Might and Magic V), but it just sounds a like blast.

It was much to my dismay when on Sunday evening that I found my cousin freaking out on Twitter about something that had happened at an after party away from where PAX was officially being held. Several minutes of frantic text messaging back and forth about what happened ensued.

I love my cousin. She is a very strong woman and I am proud of her for who she is and what she is doing with her life. However, I am also EXTREMELY defensive of my cousins. Maybe it's because Ky and I are the only cousins who are only children; our other 9 cousins all are in families with two or three kids. Maybe it's because I'm the oldest of the 11 of us and spent most of my life from 5th grade through graduating college baby-sitting and being the caretaker of my cousins at family gatherings.

Ky is like a sister to me, and has been since I first got back from my exchange to Japan in high school. At that point, I could count how many times I had met her face-to-face on one hand; her family was the only one of my mother's siblings not to live in the tri-state area. Once I was back in the US, we were talking CONSTANTLY on AIM. Now here was a girl who I had barely known growing up, but we were quickly turning into more sisters than cousins. I still think we were supposed to be twins but a deity somewhere screwed up and we ended up being born 4 years apart to different mothers. At least they got the family right?

Anyway. Tangent.

I am extremely proud that she had the courage to write about her experience. Not many women do. Her blog post has spread to Kotaku, reddit, 4chan, and elsewhere on the net. The creator of Minecraft (who had hosted the party where this sexual assault happened) has even publicly announced that he is upset at what happened and will look into the incident. Many of the comments on her blog and on other blogs that have given her support. As Raf's comment on her blog, states "He whipped it out. He grabbed her and made her touch it. HE DID IT." in response to Ky stating that she was plagued by guilty thoughts after the fact.

Regardless, there are many who have stated all over her blog and in comments elsewhere that she was pathetic for "trying not to cry because she saw a penis in [sic] a party", making herself a martyr, and telling her, although sometimes not outright, that it was her fault.


Seriously, people? We're still blaming the victim?

It doesn't matter if she should have kicked him in the nuts or gone to find security more quickly.
It doesn't matter if you think she shouldn't have been drinking.
It doesn't matter if you think she should have told him outright that she wanted to be alone.

What matters is it is never appropriate to whip your dick out and force some girl you do or do not know to touch it. Ever.

Doesn't matter if it was at a gaming-related after party or the Democratic National Convention. Keep your dicks in your pants. If a girl specifically asks to see it and you're okay with that, go ahead. Show it to her. If a girl asks to see it and you do not feel comfortable with a random chick asking to see your wand, don't show it to her and walk away.


There are also a lot of comments everywhere about how Ky should have screamed or yelled; should have made a big enough scene to get the guy noticed.

People, she just had been violated. Even if it hadn't completely sunk in yet, any type of violation leaves one feeling dirty and in a fight-or-flight mode. Ky obviously took the flight option, and I don't blame her.

Unless you were in the same situation you cannot know for sure how you would have reacted.

Everyone reacts differently to situations. Had this been somewhere where she had not been drinking, maybe she would have been able to scream or smack him. Maybe not. That's not the point. The point is, her emotions, her feelings of guilt and disgust, are all things that only she will ever be able to know at their core and no one has a right to tell her how she should have reacted.

The point is, the guy never should have forced her to feel his dick in the first place.

Stop saying she was at fault, or that she should have done this and that, or that she's just trying to get attention. When men and women say these things about women who have been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped, it creates a culture where victims feel they cannot raise their voices about what happened. It creates a culture where women blame themselves for actions forced onto them by others. It creates a culture where women feel that even if they are harassed/assaulted/rape, no one will ever believe them so why bother telling anyone it happened? It's sickening.

Same for men. There are many men out there who have undoubtedly been placed in a sexual situation where they were not comfortable. Be it being hit on/touched inappropriately by a female co-worker or boss, or random women coming up to them at the beach and rubbing their chests or buttocks. Men who are subjected to this may be fewer in number, but they are just as cautious about telling anyone that it happened because they feel they will get laughed at by a society which promotes men feeling empowered by being a sexual object to women.

Let's stop blaming the victim for their reactions.
Let's stop blaming the victims for their clothing.
Let's stop blaming the victims for "putting themselves in that situation".
Let's stop blaming the victims period.

And let's start addressing the main issue here:
We as a society needs to teach our children that whipping your dick out and forcing a girl you've never met before to touch it is not okay.