I'm judging you.

Okay, I mentioned this in an addition to the TxN FAQ post on the comm, and in chat with a couple of people, but I wanted to go ahead and make a proper post about it here, because I just find the absolute "not normal at all"-ness of Tuti's life fascinating given Japan's need for everything to fit in proper holes, so...

It is known that Tuti's family currently consists of his mother, Yumiko, and little sister, Mizuho (or Mizuha, hard to tell). It is also known that his father died when he was young, and he goes to visit his grave during Obon.

On at least two separate occasions that I can recall, Tuti has mentioned that his mother has an 愛人 (aijin, "lover"). For a long time, I've wondered wtf this word really means, but...have been a little hesitant to ask the Japanese people around me, dunno why :P Japanese has two words for boy-/girlfriend or lover: 愛人, or more commonly 恋人 (koibito). If you've been in an anime or Japan-based fandom, no doubt you've heard "koibito" before. It's the word young couples toss around or you find in song lyrics, and really generally translates to boy-/girlfriend.

So what, then, is the difference between 愛人 and 恋人, and what does it mean that Tuti refers to the person his mother is with as the former? A quick google search reveals that this is a common question among Japanese people themselves, so I don't feel so bad XD

Apparently, while the term koibito carries with it the connotation of an open, public relationship much like the one most people are in when they are dating or call themselves boyfriend and girlfriend, the term aijin carries with it the connotation of exactly the opposite: a relationship founded on the same love and passion, but not open or public, hidden, for any reason be it moral, ethical, whatever.

Two students dating, open about it with their peers, may be called koibito. But a salaryman who purchases time at a love hotel on the weekends away from his wife to have an affair is with his aijin. Do I think Tuti's mom is part of an affair with a married man or something? Nah. But in a country where, at least among her generation, men and women don't just "live together" (at least not for a long time, and definitely not in a romantic relationship) without getting married, I can't imagine she would be spoken of very kindly in a small town if she was shacking up with a random dude, even if it was for a long time (the way Tuti speaks so easily of his mother's aijin, it feels like he must be a father-figure [or maybe his mom's a HOMO like her son :D]). She likely has reasons for not wanting to get married again--maybe she feels like it would be against the wedding vows she made with Tuti's father (are Japanese wedding vows even LIKE that? And dude, even in Western weddings, death's one of the tickets out~), maybe they just don't find it necessary, maybe they want to buck a trend, who knows!

Whatever the reason, I think...for Tuti to have grown up in that kind of environment, likely so different from that of his friends, it must have had an impact on how he views the meaning of a relationship with someone important, even if subliminal. Seeing that his mother was happy with someone despite what society told her she should be doing, living her life and loving who she loved regardless of what was "proper," it could only have been a positive influence on him if he found that his own feelings drifted towards the less-than-socially-acceptable. And despite the, "G-GAY?! WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT?! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO RESPOND TO THAT?!" attitude he has now, it....really makes me happy knowing that he at least grew up in an environment where his mom was a trend-bucking BAMF and likely instilled that in her children, too :D

or who knows, maybe she IS married to the new guy and he just feels weird calling him his 'step-dad' or 'my mom's husband' so he just sticks with a term that means lover :P

Huh.

So Tuti's still the one mixing all of *pnish*'s songs?

Today I was told not to come to rehearsals, to just make the soundtrack, so here I am at home packing everything in. Everyone else has been working on the dances at rehearsals.
If I don't bring this tomorrow they're gonna get mad at me.
Hope I finish...

...As posted at THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING. GEEZ.

And THAT SCREEN is Tuti's computer?! Holy crap *_____*

In other news--so apparently Nagayan is doing a collab with Naoya? I can't really tell...that actually looks like the Kime collab shirt to me. Guess we'll see?

I've actually been thinking about the collabs he does with his friends, and...no matter how you cut it, Tuti's is special. Like, REALLY special.

1) No one else has gotten more than two collaborations (with an implication that there may indeed be more coming). Kime got two--that's the most. And that was only AFTER Tuti already had two under his belt, with three now. Nagayan just doesn't collaborate with people more than once--and I dare say his second one with Kime could have just been an attempt to dispel suspicions about why Tuti was the only one he'd ever collaborated more than once with.

2) No one else has gotten their own brand name. Nagayan gave Tuti not only his own brand name (or hell, maybe Tuti thought it up himself?), but a name quite intimately linked with HIS brand name. Seriously, "decossam" doesn't even make SENSE. And yet it DOES make sense.

and (probably the most important) 3) No collaboration Nagayan has done with anyone else has been such a true collaboration, showing obvious elements of the two who put work into it such that it doesn't even look like Blossam anymore so much as a melding of two styles, like a collaboration should be. The wine label shirt with its 1978-1979, the two bags with their obvious floral patterns to represent Tuti (stated outright that they represent Tuti) and the plaid to represent Nagayan, the YELLOW decossam tag.

Every other collab he's done with people before has always been something that, if he hadn't said it was a collab, I'd have thought it was just another normal piece of Blossam merchandise. But you cannot argue that the collabs with Tuti aren't as much HIM as they are Nagayan, at all.