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I'm giving up on a day-by-day blow, since it's now been over two weeks and that's the point where it gets ridiculous trying to catch up/remember everything. Instead you get dot points, I dunno.

(Also, I started this at like 2 am Tuesday night when I couldn't sleep and it's now Wednesday, hence the shift from referring to tomorrow to today.)

* I was beginning to wonder if Fridays just freaking have it IN for me on the 16th of May. I was seriously grumpy and in a bad mood. Basically, my blood sugar levels were shot (um, this is an ongoing issue), I was sleep deprived and sick of homework, and in the middle of the night I'd knocked my only full-sized glass to the floor and it shattered, and, since I don't have a dustpan, I had to clean it up with my bare hands. Which was time consuming, as well as painful, and added to the sleep dep. Then I had to go grocery shopping, starting near Tama Station, then moving to Musashi Sakai, and then lugging my ridiculously heavy bag to Kichijouji. Why Kichijouji? I had decided I needed retail therapy for my utterly foul day, and went to Book Off to buy FFXII International for 2450 yen. Which made me feel slightly better. There were also delcious baked goods from the bakery at the station. So I was still bitter and grumpy, especially about how much money I'd spent (mostly on groceries and my recharging my train pass) but there was something of a silver lining.

... Although I was kind of grumpy again by the time I had to carry my stupid groceries back home and kill my shoulders in the process, but whatever.

*I played a lot of Mario Kart around this time. I tend to do this when I'm grumpy or depressed. Not Mario Kart specifically, but I get fixated on something to an insane degree and don't do anything else unless I absolutely have no choice. Often this something is a video game, and mum will be like, "uh, you have a law exam in less than a week, WHY ARE YOU SPENDING 18 HOURS A DAY ON THE PLAYSTATION?" Which is not to say I don't obsess over things when I'm in a perfectly good mood! Okay, whatever, I'm just an obsessive person, shut up. The point of this is I beat all the tournaments and missions in less than a week around this time. <<;

* The following Tuesday I finally went to Aikidou club. It was exhausting, to say the least. Half an hour of very taxing stretches, followed by over an hour of breaking holds, then cleaning up. On top of the fact that I haven't used those muscles since I stopped dance (when I got diagnosed with diabetes, i.e. like THREE YEARS AGO) I didn't have appropriate clothes and got friction burn on my knees. My wrists swelled up heaps too from all the hold-breaking. The sempai were all really nice, though, and patiently kept showing me things even though I found it really hard to grasp. I found Tae Kwon Do easy, so I don't know why Aikidou is so hard for me; maybe because Tae Kwon Do was focused on kata and offensive moves and Aikidou was defensive. Maybe I'm just a naturally offensive person. (Well SOMEONE was going to make that joke, I may as well make it for myself.) Sadly I haven't been back since, though, because that Thursday my body hurt so much I could barely move-- and I pretty much didn't, I don't have classes on Thursdays-- I have work on Saturdays, and then the next week I was so tired I was on the verge of collapse. Today... I don't really have an excuse, I'm just lazy and tired and grumpy. <<;

* Since my body had recovered a little by Friday, Dawn and I went to Musashi Sakai together to go shopping. I needed new jeans, and also, trackpants. The reason I need new jeans is that the jeans that fit me properly have formed a hole in the inner thigh which is just going to keep getting bigger. Unfortunately, this expedition was a total wash, which I sort of expected but. Apparently Japanese girls don't have hips, I don't know. Uniqlo is a western brand and that shop TENDS to be okay-ish, but the jeans were a complete waste of time. As for the boy jeans, the material was too rough and they didn't sit quite right, so my jeans saga is continuing. Mum is considering buying me another pair from Target, but it'd be really expensive with the postage so she wants me to try some of the department stores in Shinjuku first when I have the energy to go out that far. I've already given up on GAP (I went there once when I was looking for coats, they're American sizes but they only stock like, S, XS); Zara is a maybe; Isetan supposedly has a "big sizes" store. I still don't like my chances that much, but we shall see.

I achieved light weight pyjamas and 3/4 length track pants without issue, however. Go figure. As far as I can tell Japanese clothes just plain lie on the label-- they're smaller than they claim for most clothes, and bigger for trackpants. Which is impressive given they give actually bust/waist/hip measurements, unlike Australian sizing. What the hell, Japan.

-- oh, and I also bought all three FFXII ultimanias because I have no willpower. My life, so hard. .____.

* Back on the topic of work, the number of students I'm teaching has been rapidly fluctuating. There was a four year old boy in the same lesson as Yui that Saturday there for a trial-- his mother decided not to continue, which in some ways is a relief because teaching two four year olds is a lot harder than teaching one four year old. Harder to find things that can be done with two, especially when they're at the age when they don't necessarily share well, harder to keep their attention, etc. So that was a wash. But the Saturday just passed I had another trial, this time with a middle-aged lady who has basic English skills and wants to travel. It was more taxing than my usual lessons because I had to translate the conversations in the text and pretty much conduct the whole lesson in Japanese, but it was quite satisfying and she apparently liked my lesson and has decided to continue on, so I'm satisfied with that. (That lesson is after Tamaki's, 11.20-11.50.) I got a call that evening from sensei to ask if I'd be free on Thursday night... so now I'm lined up for two students, first one at 7pm, with a trial this week. I'm getting kind of busy, but it's work I enjoy and I could use the money.

*Going back to last week, though; I refer to it as the period of being SO TIRED I COULD DIE, which is how I'm going to feel tomorrow, too, because diet coke fucking hates me. Anyway. Basically, it was hot, it was sticky, I couldn't sleep. Lots of me being tired and grumpy. I wasn't kidding about being near collapse, I barely had the energy to move. It sucked a whole lot. Last Tuesday I was 20 minutes to class because I just couldn't get out of bed, and I accidentally turned my alarm off instead of hitting snooze and didn't wake up until the class was already starting. Thankfully I didn't miss anything (just going through homework) and the teacher was forgiving, especially when I explained I was suffering sleep dep from the heat. .___. (I was also 10 minutes late on the Monday for the same reason.) But then there was no class on Wednesday because apparently our university is involved in some boating competition, whatever, I don't know, I just know that I didn't have to go to class at first period and that the weather had cooled down and I got 10 hours sleep and it was GLORIOUS. And again on Thursday. I LOVE YOU, SLEEP, NEVER LEAVE ME. (except hah, look where that's gotten me.)

* Last Wednesday, after I got Actual Sleep, Kaori and I went to Musashi Sakai to get me a bank account. Basically there was a lot of tedious paperwork. Amusingly it's free for a credit/debit card and over 2000 yen for a plain debit card. Guess which one I went with? Also they gave me the (free) option of having either an ordinary card or one with Disney characters. Again, no prizes for guessing which one I chose. XD My temporary card arrived today. I love it. It has Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore on it. I ONLY WISH MY NAB CARD WAS THAT AWESOME. Less awesomely I got a phone call from the bank on the weekend-- which terrified me, because I'm afraid whenever I get an official phonecall that my Japanese will desert me like rats from a sinking ship-- to say that they were wrong about me being able to withdraw/deposit money with my signature, I have to go back in and stamp that form with my name seal. Which is annoying, but not the end of the world; Kaori and I are going to do that tomorrow. (And on the bright side, I had no problem with my comprehension.)

* Speaking of Kaori, she's so ridiculously nice to me. At the moment we're studying on Tuesdays and studying/running around dealing with stuff on Wednesdays. I texted her last Tuesday to say I wasn't feeling up to studying, and she rang me up to check if I was okay, and said if I was well enough she could drop by the dorm on her way to class, because she'd been intending to bring Hana Yori Dango to school that day to lend to me. I'd been talking about it several weeks earlier and she'd said she'd lend it to me, but we hadn't mentioned it since and I was taken by surprise. I'd actually read the scans over the preceding weekend (all 36 volumes in TWO DAYS, beat that), but some of the translations were bad quality, I kind of wanted to read it raw anyway, and it's always better having a physical volume. She said to take as long as I wanted and return them gradually. Seriously, I am so lucky to have Kaori as my tutor. ♥

* Okay, IT IS NOW WEDNESDAY. Bank thing is dealt with. My permanent key card will have vein verification built-in. I am a little terrified, but okay!

* Thanks to the period of dying and apathy, my living space degenerated into what can only be called complete squalor. And not just in terms of crap lying all over the place or dirty dishes, etc-- I practically RAN OUT OF FOOD. And money, because nothing in my local area takes credit card and there are no international ATMs in my area. At one point I was down to about 1000 yen with almost no food (appropriately it was while I was reading Hanadan; I was really FEELING the "omg poverty vibe" >>;), and then I had to force myself to leave the dorm and catch two trains to Kichijouji to find a bank. It was probably good for me. Although I subsequently discovered there's an ATM I could have used in Musashi Sakai, which is only ONE train. *facepalm* This would have saved me a lot of trouble over the past two months. Anyway, I am slowly recovering from my hideously degenerate state; I have real food, I finally cleaned the dishes (though not, um, before my cutting knife started to rust), the floor is... well okay, it was at one point clean, and now is only sort of messy, and most importantly, yesterday I CLEANED MY BATHROOM. It was getting truly gross. .___. Now I just have to clean my desk, do my washing and vacuum, sigh.

* I'm really not kidding about the apathy and poverty-stricken state of foodlessness, guys, at one point I was eating chocolate for dinner because I couldn't be bothered/couldn't afford/didn't have the ingredients for making/buying real food. (I only wish I were exaggerating.)

* Speaking of, I have discovered chocopies. If I don't want to put on twice my weight and/or go into an actual diabetic coma, I suspect I ought to promptly undiscover chocopies. (So delicious, though! ;___;) But given the size of the meals here and how much chocolate and ice cream I ate during the phase of degeneration, I think I need to lay off and eat healthily for a while, even if I don't think I've really put on any weight yet. For nutrition's sake, as much as anything.

* All this talk about food. Food is going to be what I really, really miss when I go back to Australia. Just making a list off the top of my head-- gyoza, chicken katsudon, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, oyakodon, udon, modanyaki... *__* Even things like crockets and my maple bran biscuit cereal, which aren't particularly Japanese but I won't be able to get in Canberra. (Honourable mentions: nikuman, dango, parfaits...)

* I'm over my bread craving. Japan has delicious muffins, this is sufficient. (Mmm, muffins.) Instead, the thing I miss most right at this moment is-- completely bizarrely-- decaffeinated diet coke. I am dying of exhaustion right now because the caffeine build-up is making it really hard for me to sleep even when I'm tired. But if I don't want to drink water, there's nothing else without sugar in it. T_____T (Also, random side-note, Japan doesn't have tubs of ice-cream so far as I can tell. Everything is individual serves. This is probably a good thing in the grand scheme of things but I am still a little miffed.)

* There's a guy in the same integrated Japanese class as me who is in the top level kanji class, which teaches the 1-kyuu JLPT kanji. He's done Japanese for like, 2 years. Everyone keeps being like "wow that's amazing!" when I say I've studied Japanese for 8 years, but it really doesn't feel all that amazing when I'm still only at the same level or lower than people who've studied for a quarter the time. I guess my reading comprehension tends to be higher-- even when I can't use grammar forms properly or don't know the reading of a kanji compound, I can usually understand the meaning-- and I have less of a foreign accent, but still. *sigh*

* Again during the week of sloth, I watched Kamen Rider Kabuto. It has pretty much consumed my brain space. I feel quite shamed by this, because it's a TOKUSATSU SERIES. FOR CHILDREN. Although actually I'm not so convinced about that last bit. It is way, way fucked up and kind of brutal for something aimed at children. Also, incredibly, incredibly gay, so gay that it's almost hard to believe that it's not completely intended that way, considering none of the heterosexual relationships that occur involve either the main characters (or the background really gay morally ambiguous pair). And I mean. We are talking really, really gay, right there. .___. Yaguruma and Kageyama tend to make for better screenshots (see current icon) but pretty much the point of the story of Kabuto comes down to the sparkly eternal love of Tendou and Kagami and could be transported into the setting of a shoujo manga without actually changing much at all, so you know.

Which is, you know, maybe why it sideswiped me hard enough that in the space of about 4 days I have finished one 4300 word fic, have 4000 and 1000 words on two respective others, snippets for a third, and several more fairly concrete ideas to follow. orz

* I don't remember if I mentioned this already, I don't think I did, but I started playing FFIV: The After on my mobile phone and I feel like a total sell-out. .___. The first half of the prologue is free (aside from download costs, but I have an unlimited DL package), but it's 500 yen for the continuation of the main story (Theodore side, which also concerns Cecil and Kain and presumably Rosa) and 300 yen for each of the side scenarios, at the moment consisting of Rydia, Palom, Yang and Edge (the next one will be Porom). I played to the end of the Theodore side, and got TO BE CONTINUED, god knows when. I'm wondering if the side scenarios are complete, or if they'll do the same thing, in which case a. there is no way this game will be finished by the time I go back to Australia, and b. IT WILL COST MORE THAN A PS2 GAME, WHAT THE HELL. Essentially Squeenix are a harsh, harsh taskmaster and the spawn of the devil for making me pay this much and WAIT this much for a game where Cecil and Rosa are married and he calls her "kimi" in a really condescending way. >< (I'm kind of drawn to the game other than that, which is the TRUE HELL OF IT. I just don't believe in Cecil's heterosexuality. For god's sake, his sword TINKLED AND SPARKLED when you hit things in the DS version.)

I'm sure there's other stuff but I can't think of it right now and I'm lazy. If anything occurs to me, I can always bring it up again later, I guess.

Date: 2008-06-04 09:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cienna.livejournal.com
I'm totally with you on the clothing issue. I usually just put off buying clothes until I go home for a visit. But if you're really desperate, Next in Sunshine city stocks regular sized clothes. It's a little pricey, though. It's on the same floor as Gap.

Date: 2008-06-04 12:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tammaiya.livejournal.com
Hmm, okay. *ponders this* I think an excursion out to Ikebukuro might be in order~

Date: 2008-06-04 12:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sakanagi.livejournal.com
I'm disappointed to hear that Cecil talks to Rosa in a condescending way. They seemed like a nice couple in the original game...Bah.

You are not a sell-out for playing FFIV: The After! If it was available over here...well, I wouldn't actually play it because of the health risks from using mobile phones, but I would want to play it. However much of a rip-off it was.

I am now tempted to watch Kamen Rider Kabuto. Just to see if it really is as gay as you claim.

My permanent key card will have vein verification built-in.

Ahhhh! So creepy. I hope that doesn't become the norm.

Date: 2008-06-04 12:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tammaiya.livejournal.com
It's... I mean, it's not super overt or anything, but he called her by her name in the original Japanese game and now calls her "kimi". Which can be a sign of affection, but it can also have a slightly condescending edge. And coupled with being all "you stay here and be protected while I save the castle like a big manly man!"... yeaaaaah. Anyway. I never shipped Cecil/Rosa-- I liked both of them as characters, I think they care about each other a lot and I like their friendship, but I never felt any passion from them. It always read more like mistaking something platonic for something more because of external pressure, to me. The atmosphere was far more charged when he was around Kain, really.

... Uh. Moving on. *cough*

Dude, I cannot possibly overstate the gay in Kamen Rider Kabuto. If anything, it is MORE gay than I claim. The only way it could be gayer is if there were actually kissing and hand-holding. I seriously mean that. *uses one of her ten billion new Kabuto icons*

I KNOW CREEPY. .___.

Date: 2008-06-04 12:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sakanagi.livejournal.com
I don't really ship anything in that game; I merely worship Rydia, Palom and Porom. ^^ Though since Cecil/Rosa is canon, I'd tend to go with that.

At least if Cecil and Kain were married, Cecil wouldn't be allowed to get away with a stay-at-home-while-I-save-the-castle thing...Actually, I'm surprised that Rosa would let him get away with that either! She wasn't what I'd call a bad fighter.

I've just taken a brief peek at Kamen Rider Kabuto. At first all I could see was people in rubber monster suits (no gayness in sight! Probably.), and so I looked at a different clip and hey that looked odd so now I think I understand. Wow.

Date: 2008-06-04 12:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tammaiya.livejournal.com
Yaguruma and Kageyama (dudes in current icon) have a lot of really, really warped scenes that I really cannot explain any other way and I'm surprised was allowed in kid's tv. So it was probably a clip of them you watched. Like, context of this icon: "COME TO HELL WITH ME. BE MY 'LITTLE BROTHER'."

Me: UUUH.

On the other hand, Kagami and Tendou just have sparkly eternal OTP shoujo romance. There are an amazing amount of parallels between their relationship and, say, hana yori dango. XD They are pretty much epic OTP, and you should watch for them! (The rest of the show really grows on you too because it's a surprisingly serious plot for a tokusatsu show, but it's the gay OTP that sucks you in in the first place.)

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