Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see

16th October // Added some blue through the underneath of my hair to liven it up a little

17th October // I spent today in my favourite place, Whitby! Also found some real jet on the beach (this wasn't it, it turned out to be just some black rocks)

18th October // I got a new teapot to match my Moomin mug! I hadn't initially intended to get a matching set, but it was the only teapot I could find that I actually liked, and I like the laziness of not having to move away from my desk to refill my cup. I bought this leather raccoon binder in Itoya in Ginza, it's the most expensive stationary item I've ever owned and I regret absolutely nothing, it makes me so happy when I look at it. It feels so very me.

19th October // Harold and Maude has always been a film I've enjoyed very much, but I watched it recently and it just hit me in such a profound way. I really wanted the soundtrack, especially as it's Cat Stevens and there are two songs exclusive to this album that aren't on any others. Can I just rant for a minute about cardboard CD sleeves though? As I hate them, and I hate that they're being pushed as the 'eco friendly' version. It's not eco friendly when the CD is more likely to get scratched by swiping it in and out of the sleeve, which doesn't happen in a jewel case where it's actually protected. It's such a bugbear of mine! Companies selling things as 'greener' when it's actually just to cheap out so they can make more profit. Nothing is made with longevity anymore, and you're stuck buying it anyway as there's no other option. You can't even recycle cardboard CD sleeves as they're laminated, so there's literally no reason not to use a jewel case.

20th October // We had some pretty major flooding, I went out for a walk in it and killed my iPod 😭 It was in the pocket of my waterproof coat, but somehow it still got wet? It fried the logic board though. I've fixed it before and I shall fix it again! My iPod will never truly die, just get more and more Franensteined like all good obsolete electronics do.

21st October // Halloween nails! Although the more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of 1930s ceramics instead of Halloween ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

22nd October // This is a field, not a lake. I had to walk around it and the shallow areas were knee deep.

You might wake up and notice you're someone you're not

I know it's a little bit random in the middle of the month, but I've decided to do a photo a day challenge just for the next few weeks. Autumn is my favourite time of year and I really want to savour these little moments. Also I feel lately like my blog has become this slightly weird space where I only record the big moments, like it's some special highlights reel, and I don't like that, it never used to be like that, and I don't know what happened, but I feel like I don't know what to write or how to open up anymore and I've become so, so guarded. So I'm hoping this will help me to break out of that too. Because really everything is worth blogging about, I believe that with my whole heart, and I need to start putting it back into practice again. I'm always complaining about how the internet is too polished and inauthentic now and I'm part of the problem if I'm not being my authentic self on my own blog.

9th October // I finally finished my travel journal about my Tokyo trip. I love to create these books about my trips, and stick in all the ephemera I collect while I'm there. It gives those little treasures an organized home and gives me a blast of memories every time I flick through it. I got this Tokyo notebook from Traveler's Factory while I was over there

10th October // I love the light in my room when the evenings start drawing in and everything looks warm and golden.

11th October // We've been having some absolute beasts of spiders lately, and conkers do genuinely work so I went out and collected a bunch to place around the house.

12th October // Traveled to one of my favourite places, the antiques centre. If you've been reading my blog for a long time you might remember when I dressed exclusively in vintage clothing. I burnt out and got tired of it being my whole personality, but I guess it's been enough time that I'm starting to feel naturally drawn to that stuff again. I've always loved looking at antiques, but it is a lot more fun when you have more of a purpose. I just bought velvet and haberdasheries, I have no idea what I'll do with either but I like to have a small stash so that when the right project comes along I'm ready.

13th October // There's mushrooms popping up everywhere and it brings me so much joy!

14th October // My order arrived from Japan, including this bag from Tokyo Disney. There was a 40th Anniversary tote I saw people using while I was there but they were sold out at the time, so I snagged one from a Japanese auction site and threw this into my order while I was at it. I figured it's a bit of fun for Halloween.

15th October // Made a little autumnal scene with my left over conkers.

I'm in a position to say the camera does not lie

Before I went to Japan I bought a Kodak Ektar H35 camera, which is a fun little film camera that takes half frame photos. I love using film cameras and the excitement of not really knowing how the photos are going to turn out, but I end up not knowing what to do with the actual photographs. So I like the idea of half frame because it makes the prints a more managable size and I can then cut them in half and stick them in my journal. It also makes a roll of film last twice as long - I got 84 shots out of this one reel, which is both a blessing and a curse. It's nice not feeling limited, but it's a pain when you want your vacation photos already! I've seen a lot of people with this camera be really precise with their photos and try and get them matching on each side of the print, but I like the randomness. I assure you any that do match were purely by accident and dumb luck.

Trieste

I went to Trieste last week, a place I’d never actually heard of until Phantom of the Opera announced a production was opening there and I was intrigued. It had a strangely stacked cast for such a random location (Ramin Karimloo! Bradley Jaden! Earl Carpenter!) and when I found out that Ramin Karimloo was going to be reprising his role as the Phantom, I knew I had to go! He was my first ever Phantom when I first saw the show in 2008, and I also saw him in Love Never Dies (but the less said about that the better). I was even more intrigued when I discovered that it was going to a be non-replica production and apparently the Phantom would be riding the chandelier as it dropped at the end of Act 1. I'd honestly never even heard of Trieste before, but I really regret not going to see it in Oslo as that production still looks incredible to me so I figured I'd book it and see what happened. After all, that's what I did for New York and that worked out!

I was in Trieste for 3 days, and it was OK. There wasn’t really a whole lot to do in the city that didn’t require an entry fee (even the beach! Even the bathroom!!) and I was determined not to spend a lot, so I didn’t really end up doing much and felt like I was just waiting to go to the theatre and then waiting to go home. My trip also coincided with the current heatwave that’s happening in central Europe (some temperatures in Italy are reaching 49°C/120°F) so that made me pretty miserable too - I’m a cold weather autumnal girlie. I also just found myself feeling very anxious and depressed on this trip for no real reason which wasn't fun, but I struggled last time I went to Italy too in 2018 and it ended up being a turning point for me and I went on to have the best year of my life afterwards, so maybe having a mental breakdown in Italy is just something I need to do now and then for my health.

The show though!! It was incredible! I’m so glad I went! I'd read comments of it "looking cheap" so I didn't have very high hopes, but I found that to be completely untrue. I loved the set, it was a rotating stage and the main set was a stage/mini theatre (you can see what I mean here) and it rotated depending on whether the scene was taking place on stage or backstage which gave it a really great sense of it taking place within a theatre. During the Overture as the chandelier rose the stage kept rotating and kind of "wound the clock back" and showed key scenes from the musical in reverse until it got to Hannibal which looked incredible. I really loved the costumes too - especially the Phantom's, controversial opinion but I actually don't like his original costume at all and think it's aged horribly. In this it felt more historically accurate, but with some added gothic drama by lining his cloak with red. All of the costumes felt really historically accurate, including Masquerade which I didn't like at first as it felt kind of plain as they were just all wearing cloaks, but then I realized it was a traditional Venetian Masquerade rather than the usual fancy dress party and I liked that so much, especially as it was in Italy.

I liked the choices they'd made with some of the characterizations too - Christine is rapturous when the Phantom first appears in the mirror, but when she realizes he's just a man living in a basement she's visibly afraid and looking for a way to escape and the Phantom literally drugs her during Music of the Night to make her euphoric again so she'll let him touch her. Why Have You Brought Me Here/All I Ask Of You was Christine feeling so desperate she's about to throw herself off of the roof of the Opera Populaire and Raoul has to talk her down from it, and I loved that so much. Not only does it give their relationship some much needed depth, Christine contemplating suicide is in the original novel and it perfectly illustrated how traumatized she was by the whole experience. Overall the mood felt a lot more like the book than the high romance of the musical, and I really loved that! During the Final Lair scene Raoul comes on stage dripping wet because he's just swum through the lake and I'm obsessed with that level of detail. I don't know how they did it either as Raoul was shirtless and not wearing a harness, but the Phantom actually hanged him, Raoul was in midair from his neck for most of the scene. And at the very end just before the mob arrives they had Madame Giry find the Phantom just before he disappears, and that was just such a perfect full circle moment for the plot - she saw how far he'd fallen and how desperate he was, and made one last ditch attempt to help him by misdirecting the police at the last minute (it makes so much more sense than Meg finding him!). The managers also burned the theatre down after Don Juan (not literally, obviously), and it just felt like every character had an ending, whereas in the original they just disappear when they’re not relevant anymore.

There were some questionable moments (I didn't like the chandelier falling! The Phantom does "ride" it, but it's over the stage not the audience and it's very anti-climatic as it just swings a bit while the set around it moves to signify it falling) but overall I wouldn't be mad if this one replaced the original entirely quite honestly. Although I love Phantom of the Opera, I’m not a purest either and I’m happy to see it get updated as time goes on. I ended up seeing it twice as I got a last minute ticket for the day I arrived in Trieste, and I'm really glad I did that. It meant I was really far away the first night, but there were some things I couldn't see as well closer up so it gave me a better perspective of the whole thing.

We'll be living in color

My ultimate comfort place is always a Disney park, and I booked to go on three seperate days which felt just right: two days in DisneySea, and one day at Disneyland. Disneyland is actually my favorite and the bigger park, but there's only one DisneySea in the whole world so I felt like that was the one I should make the most of. And as it ended up raining the entire first day I was at DisneySea I was even more glad I'd planned that! I did enjoy DisneySea in the rain though, it makes the outside areas of the park really quiet and I enjoy just sitting down and taking in the atmosphere.

I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind, Alone in Tokyo

I've gone back and forth over whether I wanted to share about my trip to Japan. I had an incredibly weird time, and in some ways although it's silly I've felt ashamed for not doing things that I feel like other people probably think I *should* have done - like their opinion matters, I know. To be honest there were things I had planned, in some cases tickets booked and paid for, but I just didn't get round to it. Even while I was there I was beating myself up; I had planned this trip as a vacation, I had each and every day itinerized, but when it came to it the effort just felt insurmountable. And it's only now, with some distance, that I've been able to reflect back on it and see the situation for what it was: not only had I recently had Covid and was left battling the worst fatigue of my entire life (it was my first time, and my only symptoms were every single inch of my body hurting, and being so tired that if I stood still for a few moments I could actually fall asleep standing up and did so!), but I was also mentally recovering from South Korea, a situation that had been so stressful and traumatic that I had to run away in the night. So on reflection it's really not surprising that I just wanted to find comfort in areas of Tokyo that I already knew and enjoyed from having lived there before. I did what I was capable of under the circumstances, and I'm so thankful to Japan for being so kind to me and that I got to have the opportunity to heal there.

I'm so happy that I got to go to the Pokemon Cafe, which I loved and recommend with my whole heart! I'm not actually a huge Pokemon fan, I've played a couple of the games on DS and remember seeing bits of the anime on Saturday morning cartoons, but that's the extent of it. Oshawott is my favorite as Pokemon Black was the first game I played, and I collect things of him as it's kind of hard to find. I stopped by the adjoining Pokemon Center and was thrilled to see more Oshawott than usual as he's been brought back for Legends: Arceus which was exciting! 

You have to pre-book to go to the Pokemon Cafe, and it can be quite difficult as slots go so fast, so I was really excited to get in. Looking at the menu beforehand I wasn't actually sure what I wanted to eat, but I ended up going for the Pikachu plate with a ramune soda float and it was delicious. Pikachu himself came out and did a little dance, and the whole thing was just adorable and so fun!

My comfort places in Tokyo are Shibuya and Shinjuku as I know them so well. I ended up spending a lot of time browsing various branches of Tower Records, it was a lot of fun as I've started collecting CDs now. I loved flicking through the Japanese variations, and the Ghibli soundtracks on vinyl. I ended up buying a Japanese cast recording of Wicked and an Elvis complilation.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released 3 weeks after I moved to Japan, which kind of makes it even more special to me now.

I always have to stop by dear Hachikō, you can read here for his full story. Although I wasn't in Japan for rainy season, there was a pretty major typhoon that hit.

Akihabara, which I had never been to before as it's actually pretty skeevy with most of it being a front for, ahem, 'adult' stores. There are a lot of arcades, I won an angry Moomin key chain in a claw machine and the worker kept stopping by to check my progress and move him to an easier spot! But I didn't stick around for long as there's arcades and gachapon in safer feeling places. This is the only place in Tokyo I've been to that feels like that.

I also went to Ginza which I'd never been to before either - it's kind of like Tokyo's Bond Street or Fifth Avenue where all the designer stores are located which just isn't my vibe, I'm more of a Shibuya 109 kind of girl. But I'd heard of Itoya, a huge stationary store that spans 8 floors, so I was curious. Really for my interests it didn't offer anything that I couldn't get at Loft or Tokyu Hands, but I did like that because each floor is dedicated to a different type of stationary it had me looking at stuff I might normally bypass in those other stores. Which is how I discovered ring planners, and now I'm obsessed with Plotter. Oh well. I also got a binder with a raccoon on the front that I love so much.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return

So, I live in Korea now. To be honest it's been a real experience and I'm not sure how much I'm ready to talk about it yet, but I traveled into Seoul to see Moulin Rouge yesterday and I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would! I was really hoping I'd get to see a musical while I'm here, partly as I just love musicals so much, but I was also kind of curious about how the experience would compare to the West End or Broadway. I knew there would obviously be a language barrier, so when I saw a poster advertising Moulin Rouge it felt perfect as I'd already seen it on Broadway so knew it well and had something to compare it to. And looking at it objectively without all of the emotions of seeing my favorite actor Aaron Tveit and it being the show that made me realize my dream of traveling to New York, I think I actually enjoyed it more in Korea? Although I admit I do think a big part of it was the language barrier as I couldn't tell the awful script so I could just project what they were saying and the tone didn't feel so inconsistent and it overall just felt less Glee like (Moulin Rouge is one of my all time favorite movies, and one of the worst written musicals I've ever seen. My feelings on it are COMPLICATED)

The staging was ever so slightly different for Korea, there was no 'can-can seating' for one, which is where the stage in the Al Hirschfeld literally wraps around the first few rows of the audience. I think the stage was just too high for that to be viable, and it didn't hurt the show at all - if anything I always felt that the people in the can-can seats probably missed out on a lot of the show. There also weren't any side stages, or dancers gyrating in cages before the show started, which I can't say took away from the experience.

Top two photos of the Korean production, while the bottom photo is of the Broadway production for comparison. You can also just see the people sitting in the middle of the stage in the bottom photo, which are the can-can seats.

I felt like the emphasis is more on the acting in Korea than it perhaps is on Broadway and the West End. Like with Aaron Tveit's performance as Christian specifically I feel like fans are more impressed by his singing ability and whether or not he 'opts up' during El Tango De Roxanne rather than how he's actually performing the character, and with all of the actors I saw in the New York show they just felt more concerned with a voice performance and just projecting the acting as big as they could. And don't get me wrong I loved it and could tell how hard everyone was working on that stage, but the acting in the Korean production didn't feel as exaggerated or over the top and so just felt more believable as a result (and the theater in Korea was much bigger than the Al Hirschfeld too, before anyone tries to jump in with that). The Korean cast were still all incredible singers, but it didn't feel like the sole purpose of the performance, and if the singing had to be taken down a notch for an acting choice then so be it. I'm not saying either is better, it just felt like the priorities were different between the two productions and I liked it a lot more and I was able to get really lost in the show. I even shed a few tears when Satine died as the whole emotional turmoil of the characters leading up to that point just felt so much better executed than what I saw in New York which fell a bit flat.

I really loved the chemistry between the two leads, I saw Lee Choong Joo as Christian and Kim Ji Woo as Satine (there are two main casts as they perform more than 8 shows per week so it gives the actors a break which I love). Christian was perfect, he was so fresh faced with wide-eyed wonder that it felt very believable that he'd get obsessed with Satine and this was his first experience with love, whereas Satine felt older and world-weary by comparison. At least until halfway through Elephant Love Medley, when she begins to fall for Christian and starts to light up around him, and she's devastated by the Duke later in the show. It felt like such a natural progression to their relationship, and I believed in it, unlike on Broadway where I always got the vibe that Karen Olivo and Aaron Tveit didn't like each other much in real life which spilled over into complete indifference on the stage so I never bought into their romance. And I feel bad saying that because I really love Aaron and I feel like I'm really dragging him in this post, but I truly feel that Christian is his weakest role he's ever done which is why it pains me so bad that he's so attached to it.

The whole entire Korean cast were amazing, with particular shout out to Zidler and Nini. I also really liked Lee Chang Yong as the Duke, a role that I found kind of ridiculous on Broadway, but he felt much less comical and more genuinely threatening in this production. Several times I felt like he had a kind of young De Niro energy, and he seemed like he was deriving actual pleasure from making these people as miserable as possible, which makes more sense for this iteration of the character honestly as he doesn’t really have any other motive unlike the movie.

I don't mean to do so many direct comparisons between Broadway and Seoul, but it's difficult not to when I have such an emotional attachment to this show. And I do feel like a lot of my preference for the Korean production comes down to the fact that I couldn't understand what they were saying, so I wasn't internally playing 'Name That Tune' every five minutes, and I couldn't pick up on the cheesy dialogue or inappropriate tone for the moment. I could just pretend to myself that they were saying the right thing for the given moment, and it's kind of a shame because it proves that this show could of worked if it was better written by people who actually cared about and understood the source material, which I felt the Korean production obviously does.

As for the actual theater experience in Korea: I was so anxious leading up to it, more so the idea of getting to my seat and having the box office staff (I had to collect my ticket, and OMG I'm so excited over a real, actual ticket and not a QR code!!! They even gave free photo cards of the leads 🥰 I hate this shift to digital only options so much, give me my memento!!!), the usher, potentially the audience members to get to my seat, and having them find out I couldn't speak Korean and omg why is she even here if she can't understand the show?? Of course none of that happened, and everything was fine. If anything I was surprised at how few people I had to interact with compared to the West End or Broadway: there were no security or bag checks, no one telling you where your seat is, staff in general felt kind of minimal. Other than the box office, the only person I interacted with was the usher checking my ticket as I went in and I could get away with a simple "감사합니다"

There's no food or drinks allowed in the actual theater which I liked a lot, as someone with auditory processing issues it really affects my ability to focus on and hear the show when someone is loudly chewing and rustling packets behind me, so I really appreciated that. For the actual BlueSquare Theatre specifically there isn't much of a rake to the seating, and the mezzanine/dress circle felt like it started about 5 miles back from the stage. I was 4th row from the front in the orchestra/stalls, which felt perfect for the height of the stage. Unlike London there's ample leg room and you don't have to fold yourself up like a pretzel to sit down. I also noticed a lot of people were there by themselves, which also made me really happy. I go to the theater by myself a lot, and the West End is intent on making this more and more difficult by even refusing to sell less than two tickets at a time in some instances which is gross. I like cultures that support independence!

I just find the differences really interesting, and I had so much fun, it's one of my favorite experiences I've had in Korea. It also felt kind of testament to just how much I love musical theater as I just switched off to the language barrier and got into that zone and thoroughly loved it. It’s just the medium, it means so much to me. I saw a poster on my way back to the train station for Sweeney Todd, so I guess now the question is do I go see that as well 😈