IT’S HERE, IT’S HERE, IT’S FINALLY HERE! I’VE BEEN WAITING ALL YEAR! :D

So I’ve been kind of quiet on the Hikago front because I’ve been busy and Hikago fandom and I needed a mutual break from each other, by order of many months–but Hikaru no Go is still the ruler of my heart forever, and today is MAY FIFTH!!!!

Which means ONLY ONE THING: IT’S FINALLY HIKAGO DAY!!!!!!!

Hikago is my true joy, I cannot stress that enough, it is the love of my life, and every year for the last 3 years, I’ve done the greatest meme in the entire world to celebrate May 5th, aka Hikago Day. <333333

Previous Incarnations: here (2007), here (2008), and here (2009).

5 things to do if you don’t know what Hikaru no Go is:
1. Read my Pimp Post!
2. Buy the SUBLIME Manga from VIZ.
3. Watch the equally sublime anime after which you should read the manga bc there is an even more sublime WHOLE EXTRA ARC that the anime sadly does not cover
4. stare at the amazing art by Takeshi Obata until you feel the love.
5. Ask me how Hikaru no Go will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

How to play:
1. Comment to this post!
2. I and/or other people will ask you for one of your top-5 Hikago related things! Like, it could be ‘top 5 favorite fics,’ top 5 favorite characters, top 5 favorite sexually-suggestive go positions, AND SO FORTH. anything/everything you guys can think of!
3. YOU ANSWER, WE SQUEE A LOT, REPEAT STEPS 1-3

some days i just need to spend some time with them.

“Hey, Touya,” Hikaru says one day. He’s sitting by the window in early winter, looking outside. It’s cool, but not cold; the air is grey but not dark enough to be depressing. There’s a strange sort of freedom, he thinks, that lingers in the air on days like these, days when Akira wraps his scarf around his neck, but hesitates and stuffs his gloves back in his pocket, settling for the warmth of Hikaru’s hand in his instead.

Akira has been steaming hot tea for them both. He brings two cups over, hands one to Hikaru, and sits gracefully down across from him over the goban, perfectly balanced and never spilling so much as a drop from the other one. Hikaru has his legs bent underneath him to one side, half-turned to face the street outside Akira’s apartment. He supposes it shouldn’t feel so much like Akira’s apartment anymore, since Hikaru’s basically been living there for five, maybe six months; but he still gives his old place as his address because he and Akira haven’t exactly talked about this. There’s a lot of things they haven’t exactly talked about. He wonders if any of it bothers Akira. Actually, he sometimes wonders if anything bothers Akira that doesn’t have to do with Go.

Akira is giving him a curious look, one hand holding his mug, one hand tracing a nonsense pattern on the goban. He’s been cutting his hair shorter in the back lately, and slowly letting his pageboy fringe grow longer and shift away from the front. He looks like a pixie. But it’s gorgeous on him. Hikaru likes looking at him just long enough sometimes for Akira to know exactly what he’s thinking about. Usually Akira will blush and turn pink at the edges, but sometimes he’ll just narrow his eyes and look right back.

Now he’s just watching Hikaru patiently. They haven’t lit the lamps in the living room; the light around them is starting to turn dingy with the faintly stale quality of all light in winter. Hikaru realizes suddenly that he doesn’t know if Akira prefers the lights lowered or bright. It seems a strange thing not to know about Akira, considering all the things he does know.

“What is it?” Akira says. He sips his tea as though it’s not sending steam floating up over his cheeks. Hikaru’s never figured out how he does that, how he can drink tea as though it’s perfectly fine and not scalding hot. Maybe he’s permanently scorched his tongue or something. “You’ve been quiet all afternoon.”

Hikaru isn’t sure what he wants to say. He tugs the throw that Akira’s mother knitted for him last Christmas around his knees and tries not to shiver. “Do you ever think about what we’ll be in a thousand years?” he says.

“What?” says Akira. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” says Hikaru. “Will we still be here, d’you think? Or will we be…somewhere else? Will we even exist at all?”

Akira gives him a long, searching look. “Is this about Sai?” he doesn’t say. It would be a stupid question anyway, since they both know all of Hikaru’s weird moods are about Sai, like the one note on a violin that just keeps going out of tune no matter how many times you replace the string.

Instead Akira just takes a long sip of his tea, and looks at Hikaru as though he wants to be the resin and the bow and the violinist, too. Hikaru thinks that actually he probably is all those things, and almost laughs.

“I think that no matter where we are,” Akira says at last, “in a thousand years, or two thousand years, or even ten or twenty years, Hikaru–” he uses Hikaru’s first name, that’s what he does when he wants something to mean more to Hikaru than ever, because he has yet to figure out, or Hikaru has yet to show him, that everything means more to Hikaru when it comes from him–”if we live every day with our whole hearts, here and now, we’ll continue to exist.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Hikaru says sourly.

Akira gives him a small, sad smile and reaches over to the window to turn on a lamp. Bright, Hikaru thinks. Akira likes it bright. And that does makes sense. He waits for Akira to bring up Go as a metaphor for life or something, because that would make sense, too. But Akira just returns to tracing the pattern on the board and sipping his tea.

“My grandmother died when I was young,” Akira says. “After the funeral, I asked my mother where my grandmother had gone, because I was too young then to understand.” Hikaru watches his fingers, slim and effortless in the way they move over the board, the way they curl around the mug. “My mother answered that she hadn’t gone anywhere. She told me I could find my grandmother every time I looked in the mirror, and every time I went to the park where we used to walk together.”

He takes another sip of tea, swallows without really parting his lips. Hikaru could watch Akira sit and do nothing for forever.

“I believe,” Akira says, “that our spirits linger in the traces of what we have loved.”

Hikaru nods.

“Sai’s spirit lingers in you, even after a thousand years,” Akira says calmly.

Hikaru looks up, feeling the twist of pain he can never ever seem to let go of, the icicle of it lodging deep in his chest.

Akira’s eyes are lowered. He takes another sip of tea. Then he says, “So in twenty minutes, or twenty years, or twenty thousand, I will linger inside of your spirit, and you will linger in mine.”

He looks up, his eyes suddenly brilliant and sharp in the white lamplight that floods over them. He holds his hand out to Hikaru over the goban.

Hikaru takes it, and their fingers tangle.

He looks at Akira, who doesn’t look away.

don’t kid yourself they belong to you – they’re the start of the coming race

now or someday?

Hello, Livejournal!

I am in D.C. with arboretum who is even lovelier in person, a feat which I did not think humanly possible, and who has put up with me getting us lost fifty times while fumbling our way around Washington and Virginia. We are going to see The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Milennium General Assembly tomorrow and I’m so ridiculously excited about this — geekily excited the way Val is excited about Achilles shouting “to your disadvantage!” at the end of every sentence. It’s kind of just all kinds of amazing.

We have had the most ridiculously chill weekend. Yesterday all I did was stare at Tarot cards. I’m trying to get to know the cards and the suites and their connections to each other and it’s actually really fun, and meaningful in ways I had not expected.

Also, I did Tarot readings for Touya and Hikaru, because, again, geek. Touya’s was amazing. Hikaru’s was awesome too but I didn’t keep a record of it. But Touya’s was the first one I did on my own and so it was, of course, slightly dearer.

Happy Hikago Day!!!!!

Hello, everyone!

I am making my first official crosspost from Dreamwidth to LJ to wish you all the happiest of May 5ths! It’s Cinco de Mayo, of course, but more importantly to me, it’s Boy’s Day in Japan, which means that it’s HIKAGO DAY! And Hikaru no Go is basically my favorite thing in the whole entire world.

5 Reasons we celebrate Hikago Day:

1. Because in Japan, “go” is the word for the number “5″, so 5/5 is GO, GO day!
2. Because our hero, Hikaru is a huge dork who paints “LET’S FIVE!” on his shirts, so today we can all go around and say “LET’S FIVE!” to each other and it will actually make sense. Shut up, it so makes sense.
3. Because even though it’s a very, very sad day in Hikaru no Go canon, it’s ultimately a very *happy* day, because Hikaru no Go is a story about 2 people (really, 3 people) having to travel very long and sometimes hard paths to find their destinies, and it’s a celebration of the fact that ultimately, they *find* those destinies and their souls are forever joined and connected because of that shared journey. And it’s only the most beautiful thing in the world, okay.
4. Because Hikago is all about cycles! Cycles of life and death and rebirth, Cycles of failure and success, cycles of mourning and celebration. So, for me, May 5th has become my personal holiday to celebrate all those things at once, and to look back and reflect on the cycles in my own life! (it’s spiritual, for me, this story. I love it. so. much.)
5. Because it gives us an excuse to talk about Hikaru no Go, which basically makes it the best day ever.

As you know if you’ve read my journal for a while, for the last 2 years, every spring I’ve done a Hikago Day Top 5 Meme. This year, by request, and because we’re also celebrating Dreamwidth, I’m doing it on the DW hikarunogo community here!

The previous incarnations of the meme are here (2007), here (2008), and (2009).

And just for fun, here are 5 pimp posts about Hikaru no Go: mine, eddy’s ♥, sorka’s, harukami’s, mtranc3′s, and matilda’s as a bonus. okay and one more picspam from me. 5, 7, whatever.

(We interrupt this otherwise informative post to give you HOMG A PICTURE OF TOUYA’S BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL TOUYAFACE:

FLAIL. LOOKIT LOOK AT HIM OH AKIRA ♥_♥. There is only one person on the whole planet who can make him look like that and if you don’t know who it is, it’s because you’re not reading Hikaru no Go.

Aaaaaand if you *do* know who it is, then it’s a sign you want to

COME FIVE WITH US!

ILU FOREVER, HIKAGO. AND EVER. *slips away to flail quietly*

two overly long posts in a day, what? if you’d had the week I’ve had, you wouldn’t care either!

Livejournal, why did you not tell me that they’re re-issuing Hikaru no Go with new cover art!

OH AKIRA AKIRA AKIRA AKIRA I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER *____* look look look also you have to click on the teensy hikaru stone to see the new covers but ZOMG LOOK AT THEM. the first cover is so beautiful, so so so beautiful. (You can also see smaller thumbnails here.) But the wallscroll cover is the best. i cannot resist the urge, looking at that picture, to exclaim: “AT LAST, MY ARM IS COMPLETE AGAIN!” this concludes your bizarre fandom crossover references for today, as well as your gratuitous “Aja starts blithering about stephen sondheim or hikaru no go for no reason” moment. okay, really, the more i think about it, i’m surprised i haven’t made that connection sooner. sjfsdfjs;l but just. you guys. NEW HIKARU NO GO. I am just. this makes me so happy. so so so happy.

(i know, you are all going, but Aja, this isn’t really new, there’s just new art for old story, and in the meantime, over here is NEW PRINCE OF TENNIS about which you have said ZILCH NADA NOTHING, and Aja, where is your heart? and the answer, well, the answer is – I fell so far behind on still-running Prince of Tennis in 2007 that I never caught up – never finished the nationals or the OVAs! I DON’T EVEN TECHNICALLY QUITE KNOW HOW IT ENDS. my love for Tenipuri is at least partly the love for the moment of living that Prince of Tennis brought me. I still love the characters but I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to capture the moment in the same way. so it is still out there, this big giant unanswered blank ? for me, and so I prefer it to stay, for now.)
________

Continuing trying to note and review every book I’ve read this year:

Epic BG Fic Dump – Part 2!

(Explanation here.)

• Epic BG Fic #3: started for BG Round 5, May 2008.
  In my head this fic is called ‘Ashiwara and the Adult Lifestyle,’ and there’s this whole series of farcical interactions and also sex, and I really wanted to finish it for the smut round, but, lol, I don’t think I can tear myself away from Akira and Hikaru for that long.
• Read More
  Posted by bookshop on Sep 20, 2008 in fic, hikago, touya akira is my density | 0 comments

●○●○●

i think i’ve basically lost my ability to function in the world without having some sort of hikaru-no-go-associated love attack once a day or so.

i’ve also lost my ability to talk about it properly. by now like my world is so basically centered around what this series does to my heart that i’m pretty much at the point where, if you haven’t watched/read hikaru no go, or if you have, but have not basically found it the most uplifting thing in the world ever, i sort of generally am appalled and may well likely think less of you as a person. ahahaha. um. D:

like what else is there? there’s nothing, there is just nothing else as true on the planet as hikaru and sai and touya and their epic search for eternity and ultimate meaning and purpose, god, i’m not even joking, it’s like this series is scripture. this series is my holy writ, my ultimate life survival guide:

stuck in a rut? start playing now instead of someday.
thinking you can make it on your own? remember, go is a game for two players.
think you’re strong enough? being strong means holding on til the end.
how long should you wait for true love? two years four months, or a thousand years.
want to know the meaning of life? simple, it’s to bridge the far past with the far future, one human connection at a time.

is there life after death? yes. this isn’t the end – it never ends.

i just, god, oh my god, three years in and it never ends, what this story has done to my heart. it never ends.

i decided to watch this anime because people kept telling me about the subtext. the subtext still makes me so unbearably happy i can’t even express it. but everything about this series makes me happy. it uplifts me. it inspires me. it seriously, utterly, repeatedly, permanently, has broken my heart. it makes me cry basically on a daily basis. it has given me Touya Akira, who has basically become my favorite character ever, my favorite fictional person in all world history.

It has given me a part of myself that for most of my life, I sincerely believe that I lacked: the ability to mourn.

i cannot get over how transcendent this manga is, how much i just feel like if you don’t think this is the greatest thing you’ve ever read then you haven’t read it enough. how it’s like. like nobuta, like bump of chicken, like the soaring freedom of cheesy pop music, like rie fu, like finding out dumbledore is gay!!!, like every unbelievable, unexpected, inspirational, cheesy, moving thing we discover in the things we love, all rolled up into this giant package of true love and allegory disguised as a board game.

i always wish that i could give these things i love to everyone else around me but most of all, i wish i could give everyone this.