Gamer Girls

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgJirsIfPNE

It’s the chubby blonde woman from Metal Jesus Rocks.  But she appears to have lost a fair amount of weight.  Good for her.

0:00 – She moved to Japan with her husband and her cat.  I’m surprised that the cat is allowed in.  Maybe that’s a stupid thing to say.  It just seems like a giant hassle to move a pet internationally.  Do they have to be quarantined for a while afterwards?  

Speaking of which, Kinsey had this job offer in Japan before covid.  But then covid happened and she couldn’t move.  So it’s been like three years.  That’s unfortunate timing for a “global pandemic.”  

Is the visa even good any more?  Visas are usually for like two or three years, aren’t they?  Did she have to renew, which might be really expensive, or did they give her a free extension or what?

0:30 – She says that border has only been closed for a year and a half.  Is that right?  Maybe it is.

1:00 – She starts talking about what a hassle it was to bring her cat over.  So I was right.

2:00 – Shout out to Chubby Labs, her new, weird employer.  The company is owned by a British guy and nobody there speaks Japanese.

Then she shows a picture of her co-workers: a bunch of white guys.  This is what you want when you move to another country.  Just work with a bunch of people from your home country.

I suppose that this is a common immigrant experience.  I worked in a place that was almost entirely people from Pakistan.  They all spoke Pakistani all day.  What a joy it was listening to that..  And I worked in a place with a lot of Polish people.  So shit like this.  These were all really rock-bottom jobs but they tended to attract immigrants from their home countries.  These immigrants don’t have the language skills to get a more mainstream job.

And also neighbourhoods often have large concentrations of people from the same country.  I lived in a place that was mostly people from Sri Lanka, another place had a lot of Jews, another place had a lot of Muslims, another place had a lot of African/Caribbean people.  These places were all dumps of the highest magnitude but again, immigrants tend to move to places where people from their home country reside.

I never liked this, though.  I did not move to England so that I can live with a bunch of people from Sri Lanka.  It’s ridiculous.  But this is what London is.  You walk along the street and you’ll hear every language on earth except English.  It was three years before I saw an English person.  It was at work, when I was finally able to get a halfway decent job.  I don’t know where these English people were living but it was nowhere near anywhere where I lived.

I think that there’s also, allegedly, a small enclave of Americans somewhere in London.  But I didn’t move to London to live in fucking America Town.  If I wanted to live with Americans, I would have stayed in America.

What is Chubby Labs anyway?  I looked this up years ago and couldn’t figure it out.

Oh.  It’s a game publisher.  Why is this guy doing it from Japan?  Couldn’t he do this from the UK?  All of his employees speak English anyway.  And the games seem to be marketed to a Western audience.  So what’s the advantage of doing this in Japan?  

2:45 – She says that she’s looking for an apartment but it’s difficult because she doesn’t speak Japanese.  Yeah.  I guess that it would be.  

3:45 – She sold her and her husband’s game collection.  They couldn’t bring it with them.  Yeah.  That’s the problem.

5:30 – She starts talking about her love for alcohol.  What the fuck.  Go talk to somebody about this.  See a doctor.  Is there a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous in Kyoto?  Hopefully, they speak English or else you’re fucked.

6:15 – “When I found out that I was moving here, I thought, ‘Oh, I should find some cool craft beer places that I should go to'”.

She doesn’t even have a place to live.  She’s staying in hotels.  And the first fucking thing she does is find the nearest place to get drunk.  What is wrong with her?  How is she able to function?  

“I’ve been there quite a few times now.”

At the time of this video, which is from six weeks ago, she’s been in Japan for a month.  She’s been to this “craft beer” place “a few times” already.  

Maybe get your shit together.  Maybe concentrate on finding an apartment.  Maybe learn the language.  Maybe enjoy the sights of Kyoto.

No.  I’ll just get drunk.

And the whole idea of people enjoying the various tastes of beers is preposterous.  It all tastes the same.  Like shit.  No beer tastes any better or worse than any other beer.

7:30 – She’s still talking about beer.  It’s been two minutes now.  

8:00 – She’s finally changed the subject.  Now it’s Mexican food.  She’s going to talk about the difficulties of finding Mexican food in Japan.  What the fuck.  What does she expect?  

I enjoyed the occasional taco when I lived in the US.  However, you will not find anything even approaching authentic Mexican food anywhere in the UK.  No Mexicans living here.  

Who gives a shit?  I enjoy the local cuisine.  There are different types of immigrants here who open restaurants.  Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Middle Easterners.  So these are the restaurants.  There are also some surviving restaurants owned by British people.  “Fish and chip” shops.  I’m not too into that, I don’t eat fish, but they have other stuff.  Nothing particularly good, though.

Anyway, I don’t go looking for Mexican restaurants.  Because the ones that exist are owned by British people or non-Mexican immigrants who don’t know what they’re doing.  They’re serving wraps with a bunch of stuff in it.  They’re usually fine.  I like wraps with a bunch of stuff in it.  But it’s not Mexican food.  And I don’t give a shit.

There’s also a Taco Bell that I go to sometimes.  I can’t compare it to the ones in the US because I never went to one in the US.  But I’m sure that compromises have been in bringing the menu over to the UK.  And that’s fine.  If I wanted the authentic American Taco Bell experience, I’d go to the US.  When you move to another country, you need to accept and enjoy the shit that’s on offer.

8:15 – She says that she’s been to a lot of Mexican restaurants in Kyoto and they’re all good.  She’s been there a month.  Why is she eating so much Mexican food?  

What the fuck is she doing?  If you like Seattle so much with their craft beers and Mexican food, why didn’t you stay the fuck in Seattle?  

8:30 – Now there’s a picture of her with a “jumbo margarita”.  Go get fucking help.

“And back to craft beer…”

Oh fuck.  

9:15 – “Another thing that we’ve been doing, in our short time here so far, is sightseeing.”

Where do you have the time for this?  She’s working.  Full-time, I assume.  And every free second of her day seems to be spent in Mexican restaurants and craft beer breweries.  

She’s talking about the cherry blossoms.  I wonder if they can be fermented.  Maybe she can try it out.  Save some money.  Ferment your own stuff in the bathtub.  But first you need to find your own place.  And I wonder if bathtubs are common in Japan or if there are just shower rooms or wet rooms.  

10:45 – Now she’s talking about how she misses Renaissance faires.  Who the fuck…who even goes to these things?  I’ve seen the commercials.  They’re for children.  

And they don’t really exist outside of the US.  Not in any appreciable numbers, anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Renaissance_and_Medieval_fairs

This is not authentic British entertainment.  That’s what it’s supposed to be replicating, right?  British feudal stuff with knights and whatnot?  Yeah.  It seems to be.  Well, they don’t do that shit here.  At least not since feudal times.  You’re at least 350 years too late to see that bullshit anywhere in the UK.

Unbelievable.  Who goes to Japan and complains that they can’t go to a live theatre/restaurant experience where they loosely recreate a medieval British jousting tournament?  

Do they serve ale at these things?  That’s probably what she’s missing most.  The authentic medieval ale.

So that’s the video.  It doesn’t seem like she’s really embracing the culture.  Not even the alcohol culture.  Is beer popular in Japan?  She didn’t mention sake once.  

Maybe it just takes time.  But at the moment, she’s an embarrassment to the country.