![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tammaiyaI keep thinking I should update and then being far too lazy to do it. Of course, now I'm bored of all my usual distractions and am procrastinating from studying for my kanji final tomorrow, and that always motivates one. It's been a good three weeks since my last update so we're back to sporadic whatever I remember things.
* Saw the Hanadan movie the weekend it came out. IT WAS EPIC, YOU GUYS, SO EPIC. There were bits that didn't make much sense, but whatever, I love it anyway. Enough to go see it a second time. Akane and I were going to go see it this Wednesday but she wasn't feeling well, so we're going next Wednesday instead.
* Speaking of, that's the second time I've been to the movies since arrival in Japan, and it was a week after the first time. I went with my friends to see Indiana Jones 4-- the weekend it opened here, which was only 3 weeks ago, shut up. << It was really fun. I've discovered (much to the dismay of my physical health) that cinema food here is ACTUALLY REASONABLY PRICED and that they ACTUALLY SELL COKE ZERO and both times I went I was unable to resist the caramel popcorn/coke zero set for 650 yen. Considering they're both medium and "medium" is itself a fairly impressive size, it's a good deal. Plus, as an exchange student, I can get my movie tickets for 1000 yen whenever I go to a Toho cinema. Wednesday is Ladies' Day so girls can always get tickets for 1000 yen that day, but so long as I have my alien rego card and my school ID I'm not restricted. >D
Conclusion: thumbs up! Plus there is a Baskins & Robbin in the shopping centre at Fuchuu downstairs from the cinema with REAL ICECREAM. Aaaaah.
* Since then, my weekends have gotten fairly busy. In addition to my three students at Lingua House on Saturday mornings, I've started going out to Ikebukuro in the afternoons to tutor![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ontogenesis in Japanese-- which is good, because it lets me see people more often than I would otherwise and gives me a reason to go out to Ikebukuro-- and on Sundays, I've just started an English tutoring job for a family that was living in Canberra two years attached to the Japanese Embassy. The girls are primary school age and speak fluent English, so it's kind of like tutoring English as a first language rather than a second. Anyway, for that one I'm going to go out to their house in Shimokitazawa, teach for an hour and a half, play games with them for half an hour, and then their mother will teach me to cook traditional Japanese style and I'll stay for dinner. We worked the details out last weekend, so today is the first time for a proper lesson. I'll have to leave in about an hour to catch trains getting there for the right time-- most of my commutes are about 45 minutes, since I'm fairly far out-- but most of the trip will be on the Keio Inokashira line which is nice and quiet so I can take a seat and play DS. I'm quite looking forward to it, although at the moment the only text we've got is the level 2 TOEIC book and I'm not sure what the best way to test them will be. I think they'll be better off with actual primary school English texts like you'd get in an Australian primary, but I need to find them first.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is I'm making about 16,000 yen per week (approx AU$160) which is about enough to keep my self-sustained even without my parents paying my grocery bills, even if Lingua House only gives me monthly paychecks.
* On the note of my parents not paying my groceries, what actually happened there is that my credit card is demagnetized or scratched or something, but whatever the reason, it won't work. My parents have ordered a new card, but it hasn't arrived yet-- and when it does, they'll still have to send it to me, which takes about a week. So for now, aside from my phone bills (which are billed automatically to my credit account), I'm paying for everything myself. It's no big drama, especially not now I'm working more; on a daily basis it's only my weekly grocery trip I'd put on the card, which was quite expensive for a while but is now down to about 3000~4000 yen a week. I've still got a fair amount in my bank account saved up before I came here, and in the unlikely event of a complete cash crisis, my parents could always transfer money directly to my bank account.
Japanese or Australian, for that matter. I have a Japanese bank account now-- I assume I mentioned that, because I've had it for a month or so now-- but I'm still not actually USING it, since both my parents and my brother have transferred their own money into it in preparation for their respective trips just in case the dollar drops against the yen before they come and it's too confusing for me to start using it on a daily basis too. Besides, as it currently stands, I'm not having to withdraw money from the bank, and on the very minute chance that I won't need all my savings, it'd be a waste of money to change it all to yen and then back to dollars.
In conclusion, I probably look super rich because I have almost the equivalent of $8,500 in my account, but in actuality the grand total of 1000 yen of that ($10) is mine, as it was the amount needed to open the account. XD
* There are some things I'm holding off on buying until I've got a new credit card, specifically a camera and any substantial clothes shopping. I did buy a t-shirt in Ikebukuro yesterday whenontogenesis and I went shopping together after dinner, but I've been thinking of looking into getting some summer dresses or something now I've discovered where NEXT is and my mum has given me her blessing for using the card for stuff like that. If, you know, I actually have it to use.
* Also on the topic of blatant consumerism, to catch the Keio Inokashira line to get to Shimokitazawa, I first have to catch the Seibu Tamagawa line to Musashi Sakai and then the JR Chuuou line to Kichijouji. The same in reverse on the way home. The point of all that is that they're three different train line companies, so I have to go out the ticket gates at both Musashi Sakai and Kichijouji. This is in some ways actually quite convenient; it makes my train fares considerably more expensive, but I do my grocery shopping in Musashi Sakai and Kichijouji has a Book Off, so it gives me incentive to do my groceries after work in a timely fashion (actually, I usually do it on Saturday night, since I go via Musashi Sakai then too) and an excuse to check out the games in Book Off. I may have bought second hand copies of Popolocrois: Hajimari no Bouken and Tales of Rebirth (which I've played but didn't own) for 950 yen last Sunday, but I'll never tell. *shifty*
... Completely randomly, I have discovered there is real icecream in the food court where I do my groceries, too! Mmm, almond caramel vanilla icecream. It's my reward to myself for being a (somewhat) responsible adult who works and does grocery shopping.
* Other stuff, let's see... ah, on the gaming front. I finished ToA. It was very good, but at the same time mean game is MEAN. I've always spent some ridiculous number of hours on Tales of Fandom 2, which has side stories for Tales of Phantasia, Symphonia and Abyss plus minigames and stuff. I'd forgotten how completely heterosexual Symphonia isn't. XD;
I procured a bunch of stuff for my DS, too, most notably Lego Indiana Jones which is HIDEOUSLY ADDICTIVE (something to do on trains?) and Dragon Quest IV which I've decided to give a proper try. I never got into DQ aside from the DQ Monster games, but I've always intended to sooner or later.
I got "Nihongo Kentei" which I was looking forward to trying because I have kanji testing games but it could be good to have a game that'd also test my grammar. For some reason, though, it won't work! I'm baffled. I have never encountered that with my M3 DS real before. But whatever, I'm intrigued enough that I might check to see if they have it second hand in Book Off after work today.
Meanwhile Squeenix has announced a bunch of new stuff, including a DS version of Chocobo Dungeon: Forgotten Labyrinthe (Wii game I was vaguely interested in), a sequel to Chocobo Fables (which I adored) and most !!!!!!!!!!!! inducing, a DS remake of CHRONO TRIGGER, one of my all time favourite games. Everyone who cares has probably already heard about this, but it bears repeating. They've also come up with a game on the IPOD, of all things, where soldiers are created by choosing a song. Odd, but intriguing. Brendan bought it, and he tells me that the Okami soundtrack makes for strong fighters. XD
* Oh, speaking of Japanese dramas again, I watched the first episode of MAOU-- thriller about a sociopath lawyer orchestrating the murders of everyone involved in the death of his younger brother years ago, said lawyer played by Ohno from Arashi-- and it was really good. Unfortunately I missed episode two because I forgot there's anything I watch on Friday nights. ><;; It hasn't been uploaded to Veoh tv yet, which I discovered after wading with a fair amount of irritation through all the tons of Kyou Kara Maou downloads. ~___~
* It occurred to me that last time I posted was right before I had a bunch of stuff due, particularly the abstract for the ANU, and I was whining about it a lot. Well, on the bright side I got it all done and I don't have anything else for the ANU until the end of September. On the not so bright side, my finals are next week, with one on the Tuesday the week after and two final reports spread here and there. There's also a presentation on the Murray-Darling Basin drying up, because integrated Japanese is exciting like that. But on the super bright silver lining side, that means I will very shortly be on holidays. HOORAY!
* Totally random: I was near the admin building on an excursion to pay my rent when two girls asked me if I had time. I said I was kind of busy right now, but what did they want? They asked if I'd be friends with them. Um, okay? I said, and swapped phone numbers/emails with them via infrared transfer. While doing so, I asked if they were English majors. Oh no, they said, we're not students at this university.
... huh?
It was really strange. But they seemed nice enough, so when one of them mailed me that evening to ask if there was anywhere in Tokyo I wanted to see, they'd guide me, I kind of shrugged and went "why not" and told them I hadn't seen Harajuku or Odaiba yet. We haven't managed yet to organise a mutually convenient time to go yet, but. Anyway. I would probably be more cautious about people I'd met in such odd circumstances if this were anywhere else, but Japan tends to be fairly safe and I assume they probably just want to meet people from Western countries.
* It has been brought to my attention that my Japanese voice is really quite different to my English speaking voice. Not that I was aware of this in some vague nebulous sense, and I think Mari and I may actually have had this conversation one time back when we were still in high school, but I haven't thought about it for a while. Kaori and I have been speaking almost solely in Japanese for probably about 2 and a half months now, but she asked me to read out a dialogue in English so she could hear how it sounded, and she was like, waaaa, your English voice is so DIFFERENT! and I was like, yeah, I guess it's a lot lower, when I think about it... It's interesting. I'm not sure if it's because Japanese is just a higher pitched language than English when you speak it without an accent, or if I'm modelling my pronunciation on someone else, but if I try to speak at the same register I do in English it feels unnatural like I'm taking on a different character role. I can do it, it just doesn't feel like my voice. Akane says that a lot of the exchange students have the same thing though, so maybe it really is the former. Hm.
Okay, I've got to go catch the train or I'll be late for work. Later~
* Saw the Hanadan movie the weekend it came out. IT WAS EPIC, YOU GUYS, SO EPIC. There were bits that didn't make much sense, but whatever, I love it anyway. Enough to go see it a second time. Akane and I were going to go see it this Wednesday but she wasn't feeling well, so we're going next Wednesday instead.
* Speaking of, that's the second time I've been to the movies since arrival in Japan, and it was a week after the first time. I went with my friends to see Indiana Jones 4-- the weekend it opened here, which was only 3 weeks ago, shut up. << It was really fun. I've discovered (much to the dismay of my physical health) that cinema food here is ACTUALLY REASONABLY PRICED and that they ACTUALLY SELL COKE ZERO and both times I went I was unable to resist the caramel popcorn/coke zero set for 650 yen. Considering they're both medium and "medium" is itself a fairly impressive size, it's a good deal. Plus, as an exchange student, I can get my movie tickets for 1000 yen whenever I go to a Toho cinema. Wednesday is Ladies' Day so girls can always get tickets for 1000 yen that day, but so long as I have my alien rego card and my school ID I'm not restricted. >D
Conclusion: thumbs up! Plus there is a Baskins & Robbin in the shopping centre at Fuchuu downstairs from the cinema with REAL ICECREAM. Aaaaah.
* Since then, my weekends have gotten fairly busy. In addition to my three students at Lingua House on Saturday mornings, I've started going out to Ikebukuro in the afternoons to tutor
ontogenesis in Japanese-- which is good, because it lets me see people more often than I would otherwise and gives me a reason to go out to Ikebukuro-- and on Sundays, I've just started an English tutoring job for a family that was living in Canberra two years attached to the Japanese Embassy. The girls are primary school age and speak fluent English, so it's kind of like tutoring English as a first language rather than a second. Anyway, for that one I'm going to go out to their house in Shimokitazawa, teach for an hour and a half, play games with them for half an hour, and then their mother will teach me to cook traditional Japanese style and I'll stay for dinner. We worked the details out last weekend, so today is the first time for a proper lesson. I'll have to leave in about an hour to catch trains getting there for the right time-- most of my commutes are about 45 minutes, since I'm fairly far out-- but most of the trip will be on the Keio Inokashira line which is nice and quiet so I can take a seat and play DS. I'm quite looking forward to it, although at the moment the only text we've got is the level 2 TOEIC book and I'm not sure what the best way to test them will be. I think they'll be better off with actual primary school English texts like you'd get in an Australian primary, but I need to find them first. Anyway, the upshot of all this is I'm making about 16,000 yen per week (approx AU$160) which is about enough to keep my self-sustained even without my parents paying my grocery bills, even if Lingua House only gives me monthly paychecks.
* On the note of my parents not paying my groceries, what actually happened there is that my credit card is demagnetized or scratched or something, but whatever the reason, it won't work. My parents have ordered a new card, but it hasn't arrived yet-- and when it does, they'll still have to send it to me, which takes about a week. So for now, aside from my phone bills (which are billed automatically to my credit account), I'm paying for everything myself. It's no big drama, especially not now I'm working more; on a daily basis it's only my weekly grocery trip I'd put on the card, which was quite expensive for a while but is now down to about 3000~4000 yen a week. I've still got a fair amount in my bank account saved up before I came here, and in the unlikely event of a complete cash crisis, my parents could always transfer money directly to my bank account.
Japanese or Australian, for that matter. I have a Japanese bank account now-- I assume I mentioned that, because I've had it for a month or so now-- but I'm still not actually USING it, since both my parents and my brother have transferred their own money into it in preparation for their respective trips just in case the dollar drops against the yen before they come and it's too confusing for me to start using it on a daily basis too. Besides, as it currently stands, I'm not having to withdraw money from the bank, and on the very minute chance that I won't need all my savings, it'd be a waste of money to change it all to yen and then back to dollars.
In conclusion, I probably look super rich because I have almost the equivalent of $8,500 in my account, but in actuality the grand total of 1000 yen of that ($10) is mine, as it was the amount needed to open the account. XD
* There are some things I'm holding off on buying until I've got a new credit card, specifically a camera and any substantial clothes shopping. I did buy a t-shirt in Ikebukuro yesterday when
ontogenesis and I went shopping together after dinner, but I've been thinking of looking into getting some summer dresses or something now I've discovered where NEXT is and my mum has given me her blessing for using the card for stuff like that. If, you know, I actually have it to use.* Also on the topic of blatant consumerism, to catch the Keio Inokashira line to get to Shimokitazawa, I first have to catch the Seibu Tamagawa line to Musashi Sakai and then the JR Chuuou line to Kichijouji. The same in reverse on the way home. The point of all that is that they're three different train line companies, so I have to go out the ticket gates at both Musashi Sakai and Kichijouji. This is in some ways actually quite convenient; it makes my train fares considerably more expensive, but I do my grocery shopping in Musashi Sakai and Kichijouji has a Book Off, so it gives me incentive to do my groceries after work in a timely fashion (actually, I usually do it on Saturday night, since I go via Musashi Sakai then too) and an excuse to check out the games in Book Off. I may have bought second hand copies of Popolocrois: Hajimari no Bouken and Tales of Rebirth (which I've played but didn't own) for 950 yen last Sunday, but I'll never tell. *shifty*
... Completely randomly, I have discovered there is real icecream in the food court where I do my groceries, too! Mmm, almond caramel vanilla icecream. It's my reward to myself for being a (somewhat) responsible adult who works and does grocery shopping.
* Other stuff, let's see... ah, on the gaming front. I finished ToA. It was very good, but at the same time mean game is MEAN. I've always spent some ridiculous number of hours on Tales of Fandom 2, which has side stories for Tales of Phantasia, Symphonia and Abyss plus minigames and stuff. I'd forgotten how completely heterosexual Symphonia isn't. XD;
I procured a bunch of stuff for my DS, too, most notably Lego Indiana Jones which is HIDEOUSLY ADDICTIVE (something to do on trains?) and Dragon Quest IV which I've decided to give a proper try. I never got into DQ aside from the DQ Monster games, but I've always intended to sooner or later.
I got "Nihongo Kentei" which I was looking forward to trying because I have kanji testing games but it could be good to have a game that'd also test my grammar. For some reason, though, it won't work! I'm baffled. I have never encountered that with my M3 DS real before. But whatever, I'm intrigued enough that I might check to see if they have it second hand in Book Off after work today.
Meanwhile Squeenix has announced a bunch of new stuff, including a DS version of Chocobo Dungeon: Forgotten Labyrinthe (Wii game I was vaguely interested in), a sequel to Chocobo Fables (which I adored) and most !!!!!!!!!!!! inducing, a DS remake of CHRONO TRIGGER, one of my all time favourite games. Everyone who cares has probably already heard about this, but it bears repeating. They've also come up with a game on the IPOD, of all things, where soldiers are created by choosing a song. Odd, but intriguing. Brendan bought it, and he tells me that the Okami soundtrack makes for strong fighters. XD
* Oh, speaking of Japanese dramas again, I watched the first episode of MAOU-- thriller about a sociopath lawyer orchestrating the murders of everyone involved in the death of his younger brother years ago, said lawyer played by Ohno from Arashi-- and it was really good. Unfortunately I missed episode two because I forgot there's anything I watch on Friday nights. ><;; It hasn't been uploaded to Veoh tv yet, which I discovered after wading with a fair amount of irritation through all the tons of Kyou Kara Maou downloads. ~___~
* It occurred to me that last time I posted was right before I had a bunch of stuff due, particularly the abstract for the ANU, and I was whining about it a lot. Well, on the bright side I got it all done and I don't have anything else for the ANU until the end of September. On the not so bright side, my finals are next week, with one on the Tuesday the week after and two final reports spread here and there. There's also a presentation on the Murray-Darling Basin drying up, because integrated Japanese is exciting like that. But on the super bright silver lining side, that means I will very shortly be on holidays. HOORAY!
* Totally random: I was near the admin building on an excursion to pay my rent when two girls asked me if I had time. I said I was kind of busy right now, but what did they want? They asked if I'd be friends with them. Um, okay? I said, and swapped phone numbers/emails with them via infrared transfer. While doing so, I asked if they were English majors. Oh no, they said, we're not students at this university.
... huh?
It was really strange. But they seemed nice enough, so when one of them mailed me that evening to ask if there was anywhere in Tokyo I wanted to see, they'd guide me, I kind of shrugged and went "why not" and told them I hadn't seen Harajuku or Odaiba yet. We haven't managed yet to organise a mutually convenient time to go yet, but. Anyway. I would probably be more cautious about people I'd met in such odd circumstances if this were anywhere else, but Japan tends to be fairly safe and I assume they probably just want to meet people from Western countries.
* It has been brought to my attention that my Japanese voice is really quite different to my English speaking voice. Not that I was aware of this in some vague nebulous sense, and I think Mari and I may actually have had this conversation one time back when we were still in high school, but I haven't thought about it for a while. Kaori and I have been speaking almost solely in Japanese for probably about 2 and a half months now, but she asked me to read out a dialogue in English so she could hear how it sounded, and she was like, waaaa, your English voice is so DIFFERENT! and I was like, yeah, I guess it's a lot lower, when I think about it... It's interesting. I'm not sure if it's because Japanese is just a higher pitched language than English when you speak it without an accent, or if I'm modelling my pronunciation on someone else, but if I try to speak at the same register I do in English it feels unnatural like I'm taking on a different character role. I can do it, it just doesn't feel like my voice. Akane says that a lot of the exchange students have the same thing though, so maybe it really is the former. Hm.
Okay, I've got to go catch the train or I'll be late for work. Later~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-16 12:50 am (UTC)Wondering about the Baskin Robbins thing, do they not have real ice cream in Japan? XD
And aoidjfadf if I was in Japan, the thing that would get to me the most would be that ability to watch dramas on TELEVISION. XD (Although I do agree, having to follow timed schedules, etc would be most inconvenient.) And seeing movies when they come out in theatres!
I also find that when I (attempt) to speak Korean, voice goes higher pitched than in English. XD; Am guessing it's an Asian thing?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 07:15 am (UTC)not a blogposter type, just thought i'd say hi ... think the last time i spoke to you was a few months ago, i was still in spain and you'd just arrived and had discovered bakery heaven at a nearby mall??
oh and re: the voice change, i think that's a universal language thing, maybe more with asian languages, haven't analysed myself yet, but definitely with spanish too (the anglican minister i knew was like a whoa dude totally different person when i heard him speaking in spanish). i have a feeling it tends to happen if you're fluent in both - so yay for you :D
you're a much more regular updater than i ever was, tempted to read more of your doctor who commentary but. will. resist.
in summary, hi, how are you, hope you're well, canberra's cold, ichigo!!, take care!!
xoOO [hsu]annnnnnnn
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 07:57 am (UTC)not a blogposter type, just thought i'd say hi ... think the last time i spoke to you was a few months ago, i was still in spain and you'd just arrived and had discovered bakery heaven at a nearby mall??
oh and re: the voice change, i think that's a universal language thing, maybe more with asian languages, haven't analysed myself yet, but definitely with spanish too (the anglican minister i knew was like a whoa dude totally different person when i heard him speaking in spanish). i have a feeling it tends to happen if you're fluent in both - so yay for you :D
you're a much more regular updater than i ever was, tempted to read more of your doctor who commentary but. will. resist.
in summary, hi, how are you, hope you're well, canberra's cold, ichigo!!, take care!!
xoOO [hsu]annnnnnnn