tammaiya | (no subject)

This is one of those times where I think, oh man, I really need to stop being a lazy bum and update my LJ.

Also, I've decided, because I get sidetracked easily and this gets long and confusing otherwise, to split this post into two, one on my geeky pursuits. I figure spam in the form of double posting is less obnoxious than spam in the form of UBER posting, particularly if it makes it easier to read.

* Thursday last week I went to Enoshima, which is where books 13-14 of Mirage of Blaze are set. It's an island in Sagami bay south of Tokyo, near Odawara; it was an excursion with the Fuchuu English Club that I signed up for about two months ago. 300 yen for everything, which given it took us a 2 or so hour bus ride there and back is cheap even before you take into account the really nice sashimi lunch. Half of the group were foreign, half Japanese, and we were partnered off-- my partner was a really lovely lady about my mother's age. She was really nice, and I really enjoyed talking to her on the bus and around Enoshima. She gave me Japanese lollies she brought with her and bought me fried corn on the cob, too! <3 It was super awesome. Enoshima was really interesting, too. As my sister said, unlike Gothic cathedrals (which despite being her honours thesis topic she got sick of seeing during her 2 month circuit of Europe this year), Japanese temples and shrines are all so unique-- the Benzaiten... shrine? I'm not sure what to call it in English, because usually shrines are Shinto and temples are Buddhist, and Benzaiten is Buddhist, but it wasn't a temple. It was more a grotto than anything-- stone statues of Buddhist monks Kuukai and Shichiren (curiously incongruous, considering they founded different schools of Buddhism) and Buddhist gods including the goddess Benzaiten in a really dark, low-ceilinged cave almost right down at sea level. There was a still pool of water in the grotto which was pretty in its tranquility, and it was so dark that to see the main passage they gave you candles. Going back up the stairs almost killed me, but it was totally worth it. The view from the observatory tower (from which it's possible to look out over the pacific ocean to see both Tokyo in one direction and Odawara in the other, plus the very faint and foggy outline of Mt Fuji) and all the black kites (birds, not toys) wheeling all over the place were great too. Definitely worth the period of class I missed. Photos! Check the awesomely cliche ninja top I bought on Sunshine Road in Ikebukuro.

* When I stop to think about it, it's quite an odd feeling for me to have such a full schedule. Working to support yourself while studying full time will do that, I guess? I mean, I have 13.5 hours of classes and somewhere between 7 and 8.5 hours of work weekly, plus about 5 hours of commuting for work over the course of said week. I have something on every day of the week; the most open day I have is Fridays, where all I have is first period class. I actually quite enjoy it-- it was the dead of the summer holidays where I wasn't doing much where I got homesick, and I mostly like my classes and I love all my teaching jobs. It's just different, is all, and sometimes it would be nice to slow down and just veg. Of course I know even if I did have free time I wouldn't do anything productive with it. XD

* On the topic of free time, I have a week off from next Wednesday! Off classes, anyway. In practice I think I'm going to end up with plans every day except the Monday. But whatever, the purpose of the week off is our university's cultural festival (Gaigosai - mashing the short name of my uni, Gaigo-Dai, with -sai for festival). Kind of like a school fete, but obviously a lot more spectacular. School festivals are a BIG THING over here, as anyone who has read manga/watched anime/drama set in a high school or university is probably aware. I'm looking forward to it, it should be fun. I've got work as usual on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; Thursday I would usually have work, but that has to be relocated to the weekend because Mayuka and Saki have a school concert. During the day I'm planning to meet up with two of my students from the Lingua House who go to the Police Academy next to my uni at the gaigosai. Friday there is apparently a meeting of the Fuchuu English Club in Shiraitodai in the afternoon, which I'm sure would be fun to go to. (They're the people I went to Enoshima with, see above.) Tuesday I'm going to Hakone with Kaori and some of her friends.

Even on my week off I'm super busy! So much to do. There's only a month at this point until I go home for Christmas, and I'm beginning to wish I weren't, because it's only another two months after that until I go back for good and I kind of really don't want to. It's not that I don't miss people and things and places (and my dog, and not living in a shoebox) back in Australia, but I'm really going to miss Japan. The people, the places, the lifestyle, the language, the food... Even when I was really homesick in August all I wanted was to go home for a visit, rather than not wanting to be in Japan. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself; after this year, there'll never be one place that I can conclusively call "home" because part of me will always belong somewhere else no matter where I am, and that's weird to think about. Oh well.

* Classes are going well. I bitch about having integrated Japanese every day, but I'm enjoying it more than I did last semester. I did a 10 minute presentation (plus question time) yesterday on the reasons leading to and effect of Australian federation yesterday; it's times like that that I can really feel the improvement in my Japanese, because I can sit down and spew forth a speech like that onto paper, and Kaori did have to fix certain phrasing and occasional grammar here and there, but it's a way higher standard than anything I could have achieved before. Plus, I was suddenly reminded while I was giving the oral yesterday that back in high school I couldn't have just read smoothly off the script without weird breaks and stumbles in my sentences, and departing from my written speech while talking about a series of maps of colonial Australia (especially given the need to say the years in Japanese off the bat) would have given me a heart attack. But it didn't feel like a big deal, and that made me really happy to realise I've improved that much. My fluency in speaking has improved so much over this year; I still make grammatical mistakes, especially when I'm speaking at length and quite quickly, and I still have to scrabble for words sometimes, but it's natural for me in a way that it never was back home. I can carry on an involved conversation for two hours without a problem, I can explain about the stolen generation or the system of government in Australia (with slightly more problem, but I can still get my meaning across), I don't have to dumb down my ideas or expression to suit my language ability. It's not as effortless or articulate as my English, but I don't feel like my ability to understand or make myself understood is handicapped. (Except sometimes when making official phonecalls. For some reason that makes me really nervous.)

Going back to the presentation, though, I think it must have gone quite well, because when the time for questions was up the teacher said it was easy to understand, that I spoke in a nice loud voice (that is my number one big advantage with orals, voice projection), and that she wished she could hear more about it. She didn't say anything about any of the other orals so that was surprising and very heartening. :D

* The Lingua House Christmas party (there's actually two, one in the afternoon for kids and a dinner party at night for the adults. plus I have classes in the morning, so I'll be hanging out there all day) is a. the day before I fly home and b. on my birthday. Mochizuki-sensei referred to it as my birthday party, which makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

* Speaking of warm and fuzzy, I really love tutoring Mayuka and Saki. (Even if I wanted to throttle Saki last night when she was echoing EVERYTHING I SAID, which was even more annoying when I was speaking Japanese than when I was speaking English. and even if explaining puberty to Mayuka made me pity myself. *g*) They really are like little sisters; getting Mayuka to do her homework instead of my hair is sometimes like herding cats, but I love spending time with them and playing with them after dinner. Reiko-san is really nice and always cooks such lovely dinners; last week we had sukiyaki (with wagyuu beef, so delicious~), and last night we had nabe. It was Reiko's birthday-- birthdays aren't quite as big here in Japan as they are in Australia, but we had a banana chocolate sponge cake her friend gave her and sang happy birthday. I told her thank you for always looking out for me and being so nice, and she said it was nice having me around and that Saki and Mayuka always looked forward to me coming. (EVEN THOUGH I make them study!) <3

* Totally apropos of nothing, I am a complete klutz. Today while taking my plate back in the cafeteria, it slid off my tray and shattered while I was juggling my crap. Ironically this was about a minute after I wondered whether the plate was made of china or plastic. << It was kind of embarrassing and I also just felt bad about it. Two random guys came over and helped me clean up the china, and Kaori coincidentally saw me too and got a staff lady to deal with the mess and take the broken bits of the plate away. Man, I suck. I need to be less clumsy.

What really struck me was that both one of the guys and the staff lady asked if I'd been hurt at all, which made me blink in confusion for a moment because nobody has ever asked me that when I've broken dinnerware before. Actually, mostly they get annoyed with me for being a klutz, which I totally am. Really, now I think of all the times my plate has slid around on my tray, it had to happen sometime. I should be thankful it was on my way back and not before I'd eaten, it would have sucked to lose my lunch as well as making a much more spectacular mess.

-- lunch, by the way, was katsu curry rice. Curry rice is a BIG THING here in Japan, and I never eat it because I can't eat spicy food and I was wary, no matter how much I was assured Japanese curry is mild, because people always TELL me curries are mild and then they still always burn my mouth so it hurts to eat and I can't taste anything. But I decided to give it a shot today, and it was probably the least spiciest curry to ever be called a curry. Seriously, I don't think it was spicy at ALL. It was great! A++, would eat again. Deliciousness without pain~

ETA: Oh yeah, I went to the hospital on Monday for a checkup, clocking up one of the calculated absences on my very high tally for the semester (most of them when I'm back in Australia). Teachers were all forewarned though, so it wasn't a big deal. Had to get up earlier than I would have for class, which was rather disgruntling. Anyway, Kaori went with me, which was nice of her. Didn't have to wait THAT long to see doctor-- or, well, you know, as these things go; I think it was an hour and a half between the blood test and the doctor all told. The real wait was getting OUT of there, man. I think it was another half hour or so for the reception desk to give me the prescription and my bill. ~___~; After which I still had to go to the chemist to pick up insulin and ended up being over half an hour late to my third period kanji class, so all in all, a thrilling day.

But the upshot of it all is that I now have what should be a sufficient supply of insulin for the rest of my time here, there is nothing wrong with my organ functions, and my hba1c was 5.9 which is the lowest it's ever been, and I haven't been having more hypos than usual, so that means my control is better than ever. Whoo! \o/ I do have bruising on my arm, which is somewhat less cool, but my veins are hard to find. It's just one of those things in life you have to accept.