I'm in Tokyo and there's a lot of meetup activity here, too. Lately I've been thinking about joining some groups, but it seems to be mainly an English language site, and I guess I'm kind of worried about getting too stuck in the "expat bubble."

Gah, yes. This.

Oh my god, *everybody* in my elementary/lower school did cotillion (yes, in the South) — it was pretty ridiculous. Near as I could tell, it was lots of wearing white gloves, and learning which fork to eat with, and being forced to dance while all participants are firmly in the "boys/girls EWWWW cooties!!!!1!" stage of…

It's true, I read this and was like— light bulb! THAT'S why real deodorant doesn't exist in Japan! Totally blew my mind.

It's true, Terminal is the last ep of the season/series — although oddly enough I don't see an air date for it anywhere. Basically, the show's not canceled in the sense that nothing is ever canceled with franchises like this — there's always the possibility it could come back in some form or another.

That was my guess too. I'm betting the assumption is that the target audience "knows" SATC through pop-culture osmosis or whatever, but has probably never actually watched the series. Or not watched it enough to pick up on any continuity issues.

and pockets! *happy dance*

Yeah, it's not really her "fault" — they made the choice to cast an alto in a soprano role. But I think the other songs may be easier for her, this one has some of the higher notes Cosette has to sing, if I recall.

I think I saw some Muslin Banana Certificates for sale on Etsy last week.

I agree that there are a lot of problems with gender issues and the way women are viewed in Japan. And rape is a problem in the sense that if a woman is raped, the idea of going to the police mostly doesn't even cross anyone's mind.

One of my favorite AP English assignments ever was a free-form essay where we were asked to write about "Hell."

Agreed! For me, I feel like it's OK to have multiple best friends, especially as they tend to sort of naturally get divided by life stages.

Completely. I actually have a couple of folks who I would consider my "best" friend, and I only one of them lives on the same continent as I do. I'm a truly terrible penpal (whether it's letters or email, makes no difference) so we don't communicate as much as I wish we did, but that doesn't change the way I feel…

Yeah, I had some friends at Columbia (mid aughts) and during that period the slogan was apparently "Barnard to bed, Columbia to wed." :-/

Especially appropriate, perhaps, for kissing while aboard a ship on turbulent seas?

My favorite is still that GoT as a romcom trailer parody that was on here a while back... So cute!

Well, technically semi-legally I suppose — you are essentially tricking the site into believing your IP address is in the UK or wherever.

OK, I've watched this like 3 times and still don't see the missing apostrophe... "But for us it's different" has it included, and that's correct. Am I completely missing something?

Gotta watch out for those vicous rapits...

I always wondered about the exercise before eating thing. I don't know about "training your body" and whatnot, but the body's metabolism is elevated for a period after exercising, right?