Hikikoyoubi

This was the most viewed photo on my flickr account yesterday, as well as one of my most viewed flickr photos. I titled it "hikikomori" so it comes up on Google searches for that word all the time.

Do you know about hikikomori? They're the infamous Japanese shut-ins, people who don't leave their homes for years and years. Sometimes decades. It's a serious problem in Japan, I think. But it can also be a joking matter. I was talking one day to an assistant manager at The Kaisha, asking her what she did on her day off and she joked that she had a hikikomori day. "Hikiko-youbi?" I asked, putting the word hikikomori (shut-in) together with youbi (the word for day, perhaps as in yester-day or to-day). She laughed.

So that photo was of my apartment at the beginning of Golden Week, which, if memory serves, is in May. I should have cleaned, but instead I hopped the Shinkansen to Kyoto. I mean, c'mon. Cleaning versus traveling to a new city?

But today? Today was hikikoyoubi.

I've been sick, so my sleep schedule has gotten all out of whack again. I'm staying up all night and sleeping away the early part of the day. Today my great accomplishments were showering, making quinoa, watching an episode of MST3K, and writing out a couple of alphabets using traditional tattoo lettering. Then Dave came home and we went grocery shopping. So I did make it out of the house at least.