about me
I'm a thirtysomething still trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life. Honestly, I cannot come up with a very coherent description of myself so I'll just list some things that seem relevant to mention:
- I like anime and manga. Here's my anilist
- I like travel, public transit, and walking. Every weekend for about 5 months in 2023 I would spend a day going on a stair hike in San Francisco, and it was probably the only thing I looked forward to doing in that period of time
- I'm currently (admittedly, half-heartedly) learning how to code and (less half-heartedly but admittedly not very competently) learning Japanese
- I vacillate between trying to resist internet brainrot and fully leaning into it, so if I consistently work on this site I expect it to be completely all over the place tonally
about la manon
La Manon is a cafe in Tatebayashi, a city in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. I took a daytrip to Tatebayashi when I was in Japan in early 2025, and had some pretty good keema curry at La Manon.
Of course, that's not the reason why I went to Tatebayashi, or La Manon. Tatebayashi is one of the main settings of the anime A Place Further than the Universe, which is not only one of my favorite anime, but is, to borrow an expression from a friend, part of my personal canon. La Manon in particular appears in a few scenes throughout the show, being a hangout spot for the character Megu. (one of my regrets is somehow missing the Megu shrine at La Manon despite, from my understanding, sitting basically right next to it - I think I was just too hungry at that point to notice)
So why La Manon? If you know anything about the show, you'll know it's about a group of girls who go to Antarctica, so I'm definitely not picking the most exotic or memorable location in the show. Honestly, in the moment, I didn't pick this name very deliberately, and it just came to mind, but in hindsight, it makes perfect sense. Megu's character arc is fundamentally about confronting her shortcomings and overcoming her own complacency. At this moment in my life, which depending on how charitable I'm being with myself I'll call anything from "a hard reset" to "my life is basically halfway over and I still cannot in good conscience call myself an adult", this story resonates with me quite a bit, so the name stuck.