Every Shirt Has A Story I

Dear Followers,


While my "Valentin" Spanish homework slowly decomposes in the messy confines of my "devil-may-care-Naveen" backpack, I have decided to do some posting. Every week I often have arbitrary bouts of laziness in which I cannot bring myself to do my homework. Some people deal with problems by eating chocolate, some people deal with problems by facing them, but for me, I deal with problems by being as unproductive as possible. Today was the epitome of unproductivity.


After playing shallow politician for 5 hours afterschool, I headed over to Taco Bell with Evan Chen, Oliver He (GOSU), and Luke Plutowski to collect my cheap Mexican food bounty. You would be amazed how quickly a 99 cent Beefy Five-Layer Burrito can suck your energy away. With my stomach full of Baja Blast, cinnamon twists, and refried beans, I planted myself in front of my computer and conducted a thorough study of "teddy bears" and "kawaii" on Wikipedia. Who would have thought evolution was behind the development of "kawaii?"

During my bout of unproductivity, I decided to come up with some fresh posts on my blog. Everybody on this planet has a story. Hell, I have been wanting to direct a Shojo following the lives of Cozy-Katz and Camy-Katz for years now. Today, when I was going to lunch with my freshly-printed March Madness bracket in hand, I suddenly just stopped and watched all of the people around me and concluded the following: Wayzata High School is filled with people I do not yet know, filled with people I will never know, and filled with people I will know forever. Maybe one day I'll expand on that.


Seeing everybody in the hallway, however, made me ponder about how unique and how synonymous we are. Many of you don't know much about me. I don't really blame you. I am not an open faucet. I am a no-good flip-flopping hypocrite. Hell, I don't even think my parents know who I really am. I am not even sure I do. Almost everybody in the school knows me in some shape or form, varying from the "smarty pants" to the "douche-bag" to the "weird kid." Today I decided to explain who I am in the best way I could think of: with shirts. I plan on covering a new side of the Naveen-die every week. Go ahead and take your pick.

CLOSET OTAKU


Who would have guessed that I would start off with something like this? Congratulations, if you are reading this you are one of the few people who know that I am a Japanophile. You probably never noticed. Ok, enough GOSU.


As many of you already do know, I love Japan. My love for Japan developed when I was a young child. My mom works for Medtronic. For her job, which I do not know the details of even today, she is constantly hopping from one place of the globe to another. From a young age I got used to being dependent with my mom out the house and my dad being, well, as needy as me. When I was younger, I would eagerly wait for my mom to come back home and show me something she had brought me from afar.

From Dutch clogs to Swiss chocolate, my mom always gave me the world. Today, I am far too conceited to acknowledge this fact. I wish I could show my mom how much I love her, even if I keep trying to convince myself I can do things on my own. I can't. Anyways, one day my mom brought me back a charm from Japan. Being the 6 year old I was, I could only identify my gift as an object from China until my mom enlightened me. She took me into her lap and explained a nation I knew nothing of, the nation which gave me Power Rangers and Pokemon. The rest is history.


This winter, I had the chance of going to Japan for the first time. In a coincidental mixture of events, my parents asked me if I wanted to go to China one evening and I jokingly explained to them how I wanted to go to Japan instead. The next day I had a ticket for Tokyo. As we boarded the plane for Tokyo from frosty Minnesota, I was bouncing up and down faster than the toddler to my right. After a surprisingly short plane ride (time flies when you are playing Fire Emblem), I was refreshed by the commonly foreign sound of Japanese ringing through the speakers of Narita International Airport. I had arrived in the holy city.

Maybe one day I will give my trip to Japan a proper post. For now, an explanation behind this shirt is in order. One day I convinced my parents to let my brother and I go to Akihabara by ourselves while they rested in a local cafe (next to a maid cafe which my mom mistook for a cleaning shop). I gave them a full explanation of how Akihabara was one of the foremost educational districts of Japan and my brother and I were off. In case you don't know, Akihabara is the otaku capital of the world. Jam-packed with building-sized anime characters and bright neon lights, I felt like Mrs. Cardona in a library.


My brother, taking my obsession in stride, was willing to follow me around as I popped into each store one by one to take in as much as I could, feigning interest and just allowing me to do as I please. When people can just accept you for who you are like my brother can, being yourself is easy. With my 50,000 yen in hand, I excitedly ran down Akihabara looking for anything to add to my collection. Surrounded by manga, figurines, anime DVDs, unreleased videogames, posters, original art, anime apparel, and Japanese citizens, I was lost in pleasure.

Finally, I found what I was looking for. In a store named Happy Jean (I kid you not), I found a myriad of anime shirts and I quickly scoured every aisle while my brother confusedly looked vacantly at the one way escalator trying to determine how he would go back to the first floor to use the bathroom. When I had found exactly what I was looking for, I turned over the price take and nearly fainted. Every shirt in this store was 60,000 yen and up. Heartbroken, I lethargically showed my brother the exit escalator and we descended to the first floor (in Japan, every store is built vertically versus horizontally).


On my way out, I passed by a clearance rack and the shirt above caught my eye. I couldn't believe my luck. For some reason, this energetic K-On! shirt was on clearance (I guess 40,000 yen is a clearance price in Japan). With my purchase in hand, I quickly headed back to where my parents were stationed and we headed back to our hotel for the last time on the Japanese subway. You wouldn't believe how much I wanted to break open that bag and sport my new K-On! shirt for every Japanese citizen to observe on the ride home.

LOLWUT?

I guess that will suffice as today's story. If I haven't completely freaked you out with my obsessive behavior concerning Japan, feel free to check back next week.


Ho-Kago Tea Time,
Noel