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other movies i watched this week as i tried to catch up to my “one new movie per day” goal (i’m still one behind)

List of movies watched from 29 August to 2 September:
Godzilla Minus One, The Quiet Earth, Strangers in a Train, Gerald’s Game, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Rurangi, It Was Just an Accident, Conclave, Nightcrawler

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this week, i got kinda annoyed with how deeply LA Nightcrawler was and went all-in on extremely Britishness. also i apparently felt like watching movies with really long titles #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

Screenshot from letterboxd:
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More
Nightcrawler

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honourable mention to last night’s gyoza, which was _extremely_ ginger-forward bc my mom has basically lost her ability to taste ginger. i spent my first two nights there wondering why every single tea tasted of ginger, turns out she didn’t rinse out the pot enough after the ginger tea

A plate of handmade, as yet uncooked gyoza.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 01/09/2026

gonna miss my mom’s food, but holy shit i am glad to be home

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“Do you want a set of keys to the car? They’re a bit tacky, but…”

A black key fob with a keychain. There is a big heart shaped ornament with pink, purple, and white rhinestones, with a purple leather tassel. It’s extremely tacky.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 31/08/2026

previously in "my mom forgets Japanese people speak Japanese". by now I am prepared for this happening

Twitter screenshot:
My mother, looking at a variety of (bento emoji) to take on our bus trip: These ones are expensive...
Shop lady: Hello, welcome!
My mother: ... they look good though.

My mother did that thing again where she forgets that people in Japan speak can understand Japanese

Twitter screenshot:
Waitress: Is everything okay?
My mother: Yes, we’ve ordered already
My mother (muttering in Japanese): I hope they got our order
Me: We’re in a Japanese restaurant.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 31/08/2026

problem solved, katsu sando for lunch

Chicken katsu and some cabbage in two slices of bread. Several bites have been taken out of it.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 30/08/2026

for the past few days we’ve suffered the terrible, tragic problem of having too much japanese fried chicken

Chicken karaage on a plate with potato salad and baked kumara.

chicken katsu on a plate with potato salad and baked carrot, with miso soup on the side.

Sana @bigshika.com · 30/08/2026

in case you were wondering, the thing that took over the entire homescreen with an ad for a “free AI assistant” was either of the two free flashlight apps she’d gotten from the Google Play Store

Photo of a mobile phone screen.
Full screen ad with the text:
Unlock free Al Assistant
Enable display over other apps once - then a draggable Al bubble is ready over other apps when you need it.
Required to continue using Al Assistant
Free Al chat from your launcher
Draggable bubble available over other apps
Runs on your device session - no ads paused
Enable display over other apps
Takes a few seconds in Settings - we'll return here automatically
& Your privacy is protected

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Sana @bigshika.com · 29/08/2026

the kōwhai tree outside my mom’s living room has been taken over by the fattest tūī i have ever seen

A tūī sitting in a kōwhai tree. It is extremely round.

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this week, a deep dive into the work of some legendary storytellers - Nicolas Cage, Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson, Tommy Wiseau, Yasujiro Ozu #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched #ItsFridayHereGoddammit

Pig (2021) starring Nicolas Cage
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024) dir Wes Anderson, based off short stories by Roald Dahl
The Disaster Artist (2017), a biopic on Tommy Wiseau and the making of The Room
The Munekata Sisters (1950) dir Yasujiro Ozu

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i had to talk my mom out of getting a donut (“hey look, donuts!” “no those ones look way too sweet and…”), but she went into the shop to pay for the petrol while I waited in the car and… came out with a donut

an ad for “passport to japan” special edition Krispy Kreme donuts at the petrol station pumps

screenshot of message chain to my gf:
i feel like she just took a detour on the way to the cash register. i'm sitting in the car rn so can't tell
she already got trumpets at the supermarket be they were on sale

screenshot of message chain to my gf:
yup there's a donut

it was a 2am adventure

wait actually you know what i don't think these bolts are supposed to be doing this
Oh no

also all these slats are bowing upwards for some reason. and there was a dead snail shell on the back. where the fuck did this come from
Uhhhhh

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Sana @bigshika.com · 26/08/2026

day 5 at sana’s mom’s place update: i did not sleep well

Messages screenshot:
okay good night! ❤️
update: the bed collapsed

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the local government for my mom’s place in japan has their entire site translated by some bespoke system and it’s quite possibly the worst quality machine translation i’ve seen in a long time

Screenshot of a website. there’s a hyperlink with the text “There is no bean jam from library (easy Japanese).” followed by “User Menu”

The Japanese version of the page before.
“図書館のあんない（やさしい日本語)”, Guide to the Library (easy Japanese). I think the mistake comes from it parsing “あんない” (annai=guide) as two separate words, “あん” (an=red bean paste) and “ない” (nai=none).

Sana @bigshika.com · 25/08/2026

update: we went to a place in Newtown called Sheh’s Coffee and Crumbs and got their biscoff cinnamon bun. mom, after we got back home: “wow, that was fun!” me: “we went to the hospital…” mom: “yes, but the cinnamon buns!”

Photo of a cinnamon bun. It is topped with a lot of icing and some biscoff crumbs on top. It was very tasty.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 25/08/2026

in the most highly esteemed way:

A mostly complete crossword. The clue is “Genre for Dolly Parton” and the letters already filled in are C_UNTRY

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ah it’s my old friend Covid Lockdown Ceiling Spider, or possibly Child of Covid Lockdown Ceiling Spider. thanks mom.

A spider in a web on the ceiling. Its body is about 1cm long and it’s quite fat. It’s eating what’s probably a housefly wrapped in spiderweb.

Tweets from March 25/26th 2020, when I was in lockdown at my mom’s place.
@bigshika: I was trying to encourage a rather large bookshelf spider to become a rather large ceiling spider instead but I lost it and welp I guess I'm going to stop cleaning for today
9:06 PM • Mar 25, 2020
@bigshika: Isolation Day 1: The bookshelf spider accepted a new spot on the ceiling above the bookshelf so l was able to keep cleaning out the room today. I'm now using number of insects as a unit of measurement for cleaning - the bookshelf was a 2 spiders, 2 dead moth clean
Mar 26, 2020

my mom started making her own cola because she’s boycotting coca-cola and pepsi due to their stance on palestine. honestly it’s pretty good 💖

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my mom is having surgery tomorrow so i’m staying with her for the rest of the week. anyway, her car thinks it’s in japan

Photo of a car navigation system. The UI is entirely in Japanese. It’s showing the user nowhere near a road in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 22/08/2026

our hotel in wellington a few weeks back was pretty nice, but for some inexplicable reason the interior decor theme was “axe murderer”

White curtains with a design along the bottom of dark red splashes, reminiscent of blood.

An orange wall art thing with splashes of dark red.

An orange headboard with an artistic smear of dark red.

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three movies in a row containing trafficking adjacent characters getting burnt to death by the protagonist #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched #Letterboxd

Screenshot from Letterboxd, showing recent activity: The Usual Suspects, Django Unchained, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, Prey (2022)

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Sana @bigshika.com · 15/08/2026

i should probably get around to watching The Godfather at some point

A screenshot from Letterboxd, saying "You've watched 3 films directed by Francis Ford Coppola". The films are Megalopolis, Jack, and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 14/08/2026

I SAW THE ODYSSEY TODAY IT WAS PRETTY FUN

Screenshot of environmental sound levels today from 2-3pm. Listed as Loud with an average exposure of 88 decibels.

Screenshot from Apple Health app showing environmental sound levels today from 3-4pm - listed as OK with an average noise exposure of 86 decibels

Screenshot from Apple Health app of graph of environmental sound levels today from 4-5pm. Listed as Loud with an average exposure of 90 decibels.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 12/08/2026

my mother baked a pear tart for dessert. but since we’d also brought a cake, we ended up having two cakes. im so full

A baked pear tart on the left. An Arobake lemon sour cake on the right. Both are full sized cakes.

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Sana @bigshika.com · 11/08/2026

beware HUGE FUCKING BIRD

yellow warning sign that says “slow for bittern” with a picture of a bird swooping into a car. the bird is bigger than the car

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Sana @bigshika.com · 10/08/2026

if you’re into Star Wars at all, i really enjoyed the Star Wars: From A Certain Point of View books. they’re short story collections by a variety of authors each written from the perspective of a minor character e.g the HR complaint from the guy getting force choked by Vader

screenshot of an excerpt from the short story An Incident Report by Daniel M. Lavery.
“spiritual traditions. I would welcome, under more appropriate circumstances, the opportunity to learn more about Lord Vader's understanding of the Force, and how it enriches his daily life.
I do not welcome Lord Vader quite literally attempting to shove his religious beliefs down my throat. This was a military meet-“

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Sana @bigshika.com · 08/08/2026

it’s saturday but hey #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched i think going into a movie with higher expectations means i end up giving it 3 stars. the Castle in the Sky rewatch was a palate cleanser after watching Léon, bc i could not deal with the sexualisation of Natalie Portman in that movie

Screenshot from Letterboxd. Arrival (3 stars), Reservoir Dogs (3 stars), Weapons (3 stars), Castle in the Sky (rewatch, 3 stars)

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Sana @bigshika.com · 07/08/2026

goddammit NOT AGAIN

screenshot from Letterboxd, showing a list named “Movies where cheese graters are used as a weapon” containing 3 films

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so i haven’t been photographing the additional foods bc i just assumed everyone would find them really boring. although the gacha chocolate here is a bit of a surprise

Some Japanese snacks. “Takenoko no sato” - chocolate covered biscuit shaped like bamboo shoots, delicious. Grape gummies. Ramune candy (mostly sugar in a tablet shape). Chocolate bars shaped like random characters from a comic (???), there are 8 possible options it could be.

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if you guessed noodles, you were correct! which… i mean, she warned me ahead of time and it still took me until i opened the recipe to figure it out

Cooking instructions for Japanese noodles. The pink noodles have a much longer cooking time for reasons I don’t understand

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i got a belated birthday gift from my mom! luckily she warned me ahead of time what she was sending, because whatever you’re guessing these are, you’re almost certainly wrong

Little bundles of individually packaged pink and white string-like objects.

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