Weeb Movie Night with Friends

Inspired by: On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning

I suppose it's once again time to use my oft-repeated line that it's been a while since I last blogged (even private ones). I wanted to blog at least one a month, but here I am, three months later sitting in my apartment at 3am. There's been a lot going on in life, especially with figuring out my path for the new year. A is most likely leaving at work and, it feels pretty sad to see him go after working together for 8 years. I'm trying to explore some new things as well but only time will tell how they turn out.

But the point of this post was just to record a memory with J, A and K who have become some of my closest friends here. We had what we called a 'weeb' movie night - watching 5cm per second  which is kind of an artistic (film festival vibes) anime film about  guy who's unable to move on from his first love. To be on theme, J brought over a bottle of Attack on Titan sake (Mikasa!) which we managed to polish off eventually.

The film itself was above average - it had great visuals but had a lot of anime-tropes (such as the girl whos obsessed with a guy who doesn't notice her). I really did like the first part though, that I thought captured pretty accurate what it was like to be in "love" for the first time and how intense moments can shape our lives going forward. It's also a cautionary tale though - about how we need to let go of the past in order to move on sometimes. Funnily enough, J, A and K wanted me to watch it to give me some perspective about my situation with S - I guess insinuating that I shouldn't "fumble" things with her and just tell her how I really feel.

I told them though I don't think S was that important - the time apart from her has given me some perspective. Can you really be that into sometime if you essentially forget about them after not talking for a few months? I guess my view is that we'll never feel as strongly about anyone as we did when we were younger - say, 18 or 19. There's just a period in your life when you have really strong and formative interactions and, once that time has passed, you can't get it back. I guess that's also the point of the film and the corresponding short story by Murakami.

I wanted to record this moment with my friends though, because it really was a nice hangout - and representative of our friendship. We got pretty drunk and talked about some deep topics like how our current relationships were probably like 70% - 80% of the most "in love" we'd ever felt. We also just talked in general about if we wanted to have kids and existential fear of what might be facing the world in the future (climate change etc). I also decided to wait outside for an Uber at 3am in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood and felt like I nearly avoided getting mugged...so yeah, there's that. 

Not sure what else is there is to say. I appreciate their friendship, though it's a sappy thing to say so I don't think we'd ever admit it to each other aloud. There's a kind of honesty between us - that we can all readily admit our imperfections and be there to laugh about it with each other without deeply judging. It reminds me of high school friends, but just a tier lower in how close I feel.

Anyway, it's a nice memory and eventually if I move away in the near future, I'm happy to have experienced it.