Thursday, September 25, 2014

I got called RACIST by a lady on the bus!!

Hey guys! Sorry this is kind of a little rant about what just happened today and not really about travelling, but I thought I needed to let this out or I just feel more and more uncomfortable.

I went shopping with two of friends today and we had to bus from where we live to downtown, which took around 40 mins. On our way back, we were just having a normal conversation about life and when it was more of a private subject we spoke in Chinese, just so not EVERYBODY around us knows what's going on in our lives. We were telling jokes and laughing, minding our own business. Then, I felt someone staring at me and when I looked in that direction, an African-Canadian lady in her late 50s was giving me a hateful stare. I don't know what was wrong but she just stared at me and made me really uncomfortable. Since she didn't technically do anything, I chose to ignore her. After most of the people got off, one of my friends and I were just talking so I told her about the lady who's still staring at me. After discretely making sure, my friend confirmed that I wasn't paranoid. Right after that, the lady tapped on my shoulder. I thought she was going to tell us that we were too loud but instead heard things I never want to hear again.
To sum it up, she basically said "You're stupid, you're speaking in Chinese and therefore are making racist comments about me!" "YOU'RE RACIST". Those three words made me so shocked, I was on the verge of crying. Never in my life, have I even dreamt of being called such a thing. Those simple three words were MUCH more hurtful than most things I've heard in my short life experience. Ironically, one of the other painful things I've heard was "Asian", which was a racist comment made by someone else. To be completely honest, I wouldn't have noticed her if she wasn't staring at me in the first place, mention less judge her by her colour. Extremely offended, I tried to tell her we didn't say anything about her but she would just get ruder and ruder so I raised my voice and said "Why did you call me a racist?!", making the entire bus look towards us.
The driver stopped the bus and asked if she needed to call security and before I could say anything, the lady answered NO. She then stood up and walked over to the driver in front of the bus and started rambling about how "racist" we were while the driver told her to calm down since she made her uncomfortable too. When the bus arrived at her stop, she kept on talking about it to the driver and the latter finally snapped back saying she was delaying service time.

Having lived most of my life in Canada, where multicultural elements are not anything new, I never thought something like this would happen. People in the neighbourhood are generally very nice too. It's hard for me to understand why that lady would think in such a way, but it's not completely impossible to have similar feelings sometimes.
Anyway, this rant is just to let out my inner rage. I hope this never happens to any of you awesome people.

Minnie

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Summer in Japan: Super Hot Tokyo Disneyland

Hello~!!
This is a much belated post about my trip to Japan in the summer. It links up to the older posts before it so it really doesn’t matter except this is posted 2 months later… Sorry!!

Two days before I leave to come back to Canada, my friends and I decided to go to Tokyo Disneyland. Most people won’t understand this, but the way Japanese people view Disney is pretty different from the American point of view. In Japan, everybody loves Disney. When I say everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, from toddlers to people my age, to seniors. I have a feeling that Disney makes waaayy more money in Japan with DisneyStores all over the Tokyo and the huge amount of visitors everyday. Anyway, the theme park is the absolute favourite of my closest friends, naturally, we had to go there. 
I love the park myself so it was very enjoyable for me. Back when I was on exchange, I only had the opportunity to go during the winter but this time, it was in the beginning of August. Let me tell you right off the bat, the heat of summer in Japan doesn’t simply stop at “Today’s hot”, it will ring the local temperature alert for heat, Every Single Day. Minnie, being an inhabitant from the cold North felt overwhelmed, even after spending two weeks there. I never knew it would be tiring to be surrounded by a bunch of mouse ears. 

We went on a Sunday, which was the day where everybody went. By the time we started to line up for the line to go in, I was starting to sweat already… It was about 7am. When we finally started to line up for our first ride, one of my friends was already feeling lousy. Then I started to feel lousy. By noon, we were crashing dead in a restaurant with air conditioning blasting. After that, it was much better. 

Disneyland had a special corner for Summer, only in Japan, where they call it “Natsumatsuri” which translates to “Summer Festival”. They had Mickey, Minnie and all the other characters dressed in traditional Japanese clothing, and stands selling Japanese inspired food. It was awesome!! They had Okonomiyaki inspired crepes and apple ice-cream. If you wonder what kind of clothing they were wearing, check out my last post by clicking —> Here

The Sleepover triplets... We had to leave my friend's house at around 5am!! It was crazy >_<

The fourth person joined us halfway at a train station. 


Sena and I were wearing Twin outfits that day.










It was needless to say a wonderful and magical experience. I love my friends and having to leave them at the end of the day was painful!

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