Three Days in Seoul

In Tokyo my visa status is limited to an entertainer. This visa, the “Entertainment Visa,” commonly referred too amongst expats as the “Stripper Visa” is three months long, with a possible extension of three extra months, which if you include the month you spend waiting for an extension, is about seven months possible of living/working time in Japan. No matter how many times you come to Japan under this visa there is no moving beyond that amount of time, unless you appear on TV Drama or become a celebrity “Talent” of some kind. So I’m stuck with that visa unless I get married or sprout a career that evolves beyond the blogger/model equation. So! My visa expired, and now I’m in Seoul. I have to stay here until I am granted another stripper visa, and the lovely people at Japan’s immigration have decided to make it extra difficult for me this time, requesting papers from the IRS that will take upwards of a month to attain. Thank you Japan.

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Sister Sister

I think my last trip to Seoul destroyed any brain cells left that were capable of creative writing, which leaves me with two options: One– lament the fact that I can’t write anything that I deem good enough for public viewing while waiting for a day of profound inspiration that might never come, simultaneously not updating my blog while the guilt of not updating my blog becomes even more consuming until my eventual suicide or, Two– write some mediocre kind of stuff with every day words about every day life in hopes that things will get better, words will turn to paragraphs, and content will just magically appear if I try hard enough. Seeing as I’m not quite ready to die I’ll try the latter. In the meantime, I do apologize, I’m afraid drinking the nail polish remover that is soju has ruined me. I’ll write about my sister visiting me in Tokyo now.

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Last Month in Magazines

As anyone who follows my Instagram knows, it’s been an interesting year of work for me so far. I’d love to sit here and write out how amazing my life is and take pictures of my different choices of lip liner for each day of the week, but that’s just never going to be what this blog is about. Tokyo fashion week was, although colorful in photos, pretty boring in actuality. After living through so many New York fashion weeks, which are for the most part a drunken debacle of alcohol and “You can’t sit with us” faces, everything here seems relatively tame. I can’t say I miss it though, any of it, I’d rather be sitting in my neighborhood bar with my notebook pretending to write something profound about my menial existence.

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Tokyo Fashion Week Kick Off Party

It’s pretty windy out, I have to hold my oversized Game of Thrones winter coat closed with one hand and my bike handlebar with the other. My tiger print vintage duster is wrapped up in a knot so it doesn’t get caught in the wheels as I ride. I’m going to Roppongi, hell in a hand basket, scum of Japan. On the sidewalk there are so many foreigners I feel like I’m in Times Square, but I’m on my bike so at least they don’t mistake me for one of them. Tokyo, resident, well…for six months visas at a time. After briefly getting lost and riding an escalator up and then right back down again, I manage to find the entrance to the Maybelline event, which obviously enough is marked with a giant illuminated Mercedes Benz right outside a store front plastered with giant lips. My hair is freshly bleached and toned from five hours of sitting in a chair at Toni & Guy, my Mcqueen sweater is drapey enough that no one knows that I sat in my room binge eating for six weeks while I was waiting impatiently for my visa extension.

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