10/06/1989
Saturday, June 10th
Dear diary, JAPAN IS INSANE!, well, I definitely had to put that in caps.
Muggle culture is super weird, there are electronic gadgets for everything! and the toilets! I can't believe someone spent so much time creating such complicated toilets!, some even have music!
The other weird thing is the amount of people sleeping on the streets, not because they don't have a home, but simply because they got sleepy... and the other people treat it like it's the most normal thing in the world... super weird.
Draco fell in love with the arcades and video games (he bought a lot of the latest ones and even enough machines to set up his own arcade in his mansion). According to him, he needed them all and forced us to promise him that we would play with him as soon as we got home as a belated birthday gift.
Julius subscribed to a magazine where he can read about the release dates of his comics (I know they're called mangas, but I decided to keep annoying him anyway). He bought a mountain of action figures and merchandise from his favorite comics and wouldn't stop begging dad to buy him a really big TV to watch animes (the animated version of his comics). After a spectacular tantrum, dad bought a TV for my little brother, but he banned him from buying more merchandise for the rest of the trip for misbehaving.
The redheads had fun buying Doraemon stuff and Luna got lost looking for Bloommikis, small pink creatures that blend in with the cherry blossom tree petals. According to her, we had arrived too late to see the great Bloommiki migration and now we couldn't drink their honey that gives the gift of seeing the future for 48 hours.
And that's a whole other story, Japanese magical culture is the most incredible we've seen so far, at least in my opinion.
First of all, the secrecy statute is not so strict here and it's common to see magical things in the muggle world, but the best thing is that the Japanese magical world adopts all the changes and advances of the muggles and improves them, but without completely abandoning the traditional appearance of their Edo period.
It's a mix that I really thought was impossible until I saw it with my own eyes, nature and science coexist in complete harmony and you can see magical creatures running and walking through all the streets and trees that seem to grow from the middle of the houses.
Even springs, streams, and small waterfalls run through the streets constantly. But at the same time, there are electrical appliances, televisions in all the shops and houses, computers are used, and there are neon signs in the streets, not to mention the traffic lights and cars that work with magic…
A complete madness…
We were able to buy a lot of plants and potion ingredients for dad and he met a colleague of his who had been second in some of the contests in the great potionist competition where dad won the vial of elixir of life.
That man was only a few years older than my dad and, according to Sev, he had been the youngest potionist in the world before dad appeared. I really thought he would be a jealous and resentful person, but he was quite the opposite. He was extremely kind and invited us to meet his family who lived in a magical village in Hokkaido.
Mr. Nakamura or Yuki, as he said we should call him, had a wife who was incredibly beautiful, according to Draco she could compete with a Veela without any problems. But all the Veelas are blond and she had completely black hair.
We didn't see her much, she only came out to greet us at the beginning and say goodbye at the end. According to Yuki, she was a quarter Yuki-Onna, something incredibly rare, but not impossible in Hokkaido. Julius found it funny that they both were named Yuki.
They had twin daughters of 12 and a son of 9, we were able to meet him when he returned home in a huge Paiño, a kind of enormous bird that takes children between the ages of 7 and 11 back and forth between their homes and Mahoutokoro school. I liked Ren, he's a fairly quiet boy, but when our parents started talking about potions and the redheads joined the conversation, he stopped being quiet, started talking a mile a minute in rapid Japanese, and when he realized it, he repeated everything in English.
We told him it was okay to speak in whatever language he wanted, thanks to dad's translation spell, and that increased his excitement and he kept bombarding Sev with a number of questions about his inventions.
I don't know why, but the redheads seemed annoyed with poor Ren, they stopped trying to speak and went to a corner to talk to each other, although when I approached they were just staring at the corner of the room without saying a word.
Julius said they were surely communicating mentally and to leave them alone, but it seemed super weird to me, I had never seen them get upset!
The trip got weird after that, as the twins didn't make their usual jokes and were very quiet. Luna said they had a lot of nargles surrounding their heads…
We also visited Mahoutokoro and the headmistress herself guided us through her school, but even she could tell that something was wrong. At one point, She left us in a model class and dad went with her for a while.
When they came back, dad had two perfect spheres that seemed to change color between red and blue and the headmistress carried a small basket. The basket had tiny little jars filled with a pinkish, semi-transparent liquid, which turned out to be bloommiki honey, and Dad gave a sphere to each twin.
As soon as they touched the spheres, a blinding white light appeared and it sounded like branches crackling in a fire. When I could see again, Forge and Gred each had a tiny fox in their arms, so white that it looked like freshly fallen snow and the tips of their tails were red. When I could see their eyes, both little foxes had the same blue eyes as the twins.
The kitsune, because holy Merlin! They were real kitsunes! yawned in an extremely adorable way and a small flame of blue fire emerged from their tiny mouths. The redheads were dumbfounded and dad, in a somewhat clumsy way, told them that it was a gift for them to return to being themselves, mischievous like the kitsunes. Well, he said it in a more elaborate and "eloquent" way, but I understood that he cared about them.
It was a very nice gesture and the sparkle in my favorite twins' eyes returned, their cheeks were completely flushed, most likely from the heat of the flames of their new familiars, so they left them in Luna's and Julius' arms and at the same time ran over and hugged Sev.
Ah! and Celty got jealous when I called them adorable, so I told her that she was extremely adorable when she got jealous and I swear, diary, if snakes could blush, she would be as red as a cherry! Draco asked me if he was adorable too and of course I told him he was as adorable as a mooncalf dancing under the moonlight, but I just managed to confuse him... It seems like My Dragon needs to study a bit more about magical creatures…
The redheads did the familiar ritual with Kasai and Kaji, the kitsunes, a few days later and they haven't left their sides at all, it's very cute. What wasn't cute at all was finding out that the names they chose mean fire but with a meaning destined for disaster... I'll never understand them, but at least they're lovable…
Anyway, the trip to Japan was spectacular, but extremely tiring and an emotional rollercoaster... At least I got a new Pen Pal in Ren…
See you later!
Bye!