Life

COFFEE THOUGHTS | So, Where Now?

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For those who still haven’t quite mentally prepared themselves for adulthood yet (read: me), this could be quite a jostling thought: where exactly is home now? Prior to coming to Cornell, I was so caught up in the frenzy of excitement and eagerness to explore the newfound limits of college and independence that I never stopped to consider the consequences of the transition: once I moved out, would my definition of “home” change? Sure, home is where my family is, but even my trips to California during breaks are merely “visits” now. Many times I’ve caught myself telling my friends “I’m going home now!” when I’m really about to trek back to North. Have I begun to think of my dingy little dorm, and even Cornell, as my home?

Culture

THE WORLD AROUND YU | America Under Trumpism

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I grew up in a minority-majority enclave in the Bay Area. My elementary school was made up of 800 students whose demographics were made up of roughly fifty-percent East Asian and fifty-percent South Asian. There, at school, you could probably count the number of white kids on one hand. Almost everyone had immigrant parents and spoke at least two languages. There, you would see not just Christians but Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Atheists, just to name a few, playing together during recess.

Bill Nye

MANGA MONDAYS | Anime and Rural Japan

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I recently watched Only Yesterday at the Cornell Cinema (highly recommend it!) and the show really got me thinking about the role of rural settings in Japanese popular culture. Note that I didn’t just say anime there! I’m broadening my horizons a bit this week. To which end, we’re going to start with some cultural background. Modern Japan has a bit of a problem: during the postwar period, the country urbanized at an unprecedented rate (if I recall correctly, it was the highest rate in history, though I don’t have a source for that).