Not sure if it is useful information but I had a friend apartment-hunting in Tokyo, and for dogs:
âsmall dogsâ = <10kg were allowed in ~10% of apartments, and larger ones in ~3%.
I guess if the dog is noisy, it could be a problem.
House cats are usually quiet but I think they are treated similarly to the small dog category.
And above was just for Tokyo.
5 Likes
Yeah I noticed similar results as well. Available apartments went down by 90% when I searched for ăăăçžè« and of course many of those also refused me on the grounds of being a foreigner. Iâm hoping to get 1-2 cats and one of the apartments is even listed as ć€ăç« which means I could go full crazy cat lady if I want to XD. The cat I initially had my eye on got adopted already, which is both happy and sad for me, but there will always be more cats who need a loving home. There are two more I have my eye on so I can go visit them and see if I am chosen by either. Plus, of couse, the cat colony cats if they decide they want to be inside cats.
6 Likes
February 16th
200 reviews
reached my 300 day streak
Okay so BIG development in the apartment situation. Yesterday the school sent out an email telling students to register for the university run housing portal so I decided to give it a look to see what I will be missing, since no rejections and furnished sounds pretty good right about now. So, I log on and put in the same parameters I put in on all the housing sites (minus pets) and it came up with zero. Okay so maybe the website is broken or they havenât listed all the rooms yet. So, I try again with no parameters except location and six apartments show up. SIX. Then it hit me: the medical school, where my lab is, is NOT the main campus. The main campus is 10km away. Like I knew about the other campus, Iâve taken the JLPT there before and saw it on maps, but it didnât fully occur to me THAT is where all the student action would be. The only student I know is also in the medical school, so my image of the school is the medical school campus. The vast majority of the available apartments are nearly an HOUR away by public transit 
. 30min walk is definitely better.
It is entirely possible I will need to go to that other campus at times, but lab is every day so it makes more sense to be close to that. Of the six apartments the university offers near the lab only two are below what todayâs apartments cost and neither of those two have available rooms. The available apartments would be closer but would also eat up 80% of my scholarship, so it looks like searching for my own apartment really worked out for me. However I still canât figure out if the area is safe or notâŠ? Like I walked it at night and felt fine but the path takes me on the edge of a place with some Yakuza activity and thereâs a love hotel close to the apartments. No hate on love hotels or ladies of the night, I am 100% fine with those, I just wonder if that means other characters are about. But again, I walked back at night and didnât see anything odd. Does crime take Sundays off? idk.
Realistically the biggest crime I will face is stalking, which can happen literally anywhere. In fact, it is actually quite a problem at my current house hahaha. For example one lady tried to go into my house while Mr. Engineer alone there, thatâs happened to me multiple times, Iâve had a lady show up at my work several times, I stick out like a sore thumb so I cannot just move to solve it, creepy guy at English club knows what my car looks like, creepy guy invites me to his house repetitively, etc. However I will say being stalked by people in their 80s is one of the less threatening forms of stalking. That said, it is the reason I donât go outside much anymore where I live.
Anyway, I will é ćŒ”ă at my apartment viewings. Hopefully it goes well!
14 Likes
February 17th
7 lessons and 260 reviews
appeased the owl
so much paperwork
probably 3 hours of talking about said paperwork
I did most of my reviews in the 40min waiting to leave work after my one class of the day. Can you tell I was nervous about todayâs appointments lol.
LONG RAMBLY POST INCOMING
Sometimes I wonder why I study Japanese.
Today, while I was filling out paperwork to apply to an apartment I thought, âthis, this is why I study Japanese.â Like it has taken a mildly ridiculous amount of years and hours of study, but I did some serious adult stuff solo today. Originally I hoped to do this with Mr. Engineer in tow but scheduling didnât work out. In some ways this is kind of better though? Back when I was in elementary school we had a rule of you could only climb a tree if you could get to the lowest branch yourself, which basically means unless you can do something completely independently you just shouldnât be doing it (the reason I remember this is because I was a very small child but an excellent tree climber, so my best friend would give me a boost when the teachers werenât looking, but I digress). To some extent I try to live my life in Japan like that, if I canât do something myself I simply shouldnât be doing it. Like sure Mr. Engineer is helpful, but he also has a job so he isnât always available to help me. And obviously people are going to do their best to compensate for my lack of knowledge and vocabulary. Plus of course Iâm not doing everything on hard mode, I definitely had my phone out to look up words. Thatâs equity vs equality right? Instead of giving everyone the same tools, you give people the tools they need to be at the same level, and in my case that is a dictionary. Like I need extra help compared to a Japanese person, but nobody has to do it for me. Thatâs where I want to be.
I took a half day at work and drove to the city to both pick up visa paperwork from the school and look at apartments. Despite previously visiting the international student office and speaking in mostly English, I picked up all my papers and listened to the explanation entirely in Japanese today. Didnât understand 100% but it looks like Iâm good to go for changing my residence card. Just need to get a new picture. Such a shame, the picture on my current residence card is nice. The guy also asked what I was doing about housing and was both happy and surprised to hear I was going to look at apartments after picking up the documents. Iâm a non-traditional student in all definitions of the term (second ever North American student, returning to school after working, already living in the prefecture for several years), so things are a little different with me I guess.
As for the apartments, I was pretty nervous going into the office but the real estate agent was really kind and helpful. Everything was done in Japanese, he didnât appear to know any English, but he seems to have a bit of a soft spot for helping foreigners find housing and is a cat lover! He showed me pictures of his cats XD. He pointed out good cat points in the apartments too. Both apartments have been renovated, one of which is currently under renovations, so the rough exteriors do not match the insides at all. Pleasant surprise, I was worried hahaha.
While the landlords did say they would rent to a foreigner, it still isnât guaranteed they will rent to me so I actually ended up picking an apartment and applying to it today in case I do get rejected I will have time to apply to the other one. Should know by the end of the week if I am approved or not. Several pages of paperwork were required, including writing down Mr. Engineerâs address and having a mini existential crisis of âDO I know where he lives?!?â Like I know how to get to his apartment, but the actual address isnât exactly key to that lol. Lots of kanji. Praise my community college professor for instilling the importance of kanji and teaching proper stroke order. My Japanese classes in 4 year college didnât require kanji and pretty much none of the people I know here in Japan study handwriting of kanji. Unfortunately I cannot write most kanji from memory and need a dictionary, but my address is something I took the time to completely memorize. You have to write your address so much in adult life and having to get out your phone to look it up constantly is both embarassing* and time consuming.
What I really appreciated about the agent is he treated me like a normal person, but was also realistic. Like he didnât hesitate with anything or ask âcan you write kanji?â or other questions like that, he just handed me a pen and paperwork. However, he also informed me that many landlords reject foreigners and explained some housing related words I didnât know. This is exactly what I want, normal but realistic. I donât want to be treated like a guest or with not always honest ploliteness, and I also cannot be treated just like a Japanese person because Iâm not. The agent struck a really good balance.
Long story short, it went really well I think. The other thing about improving your language abilities is you usually donât notice it. Itâs very hard to see oneâs own progress. But, if I think about it, I didnât have any significant struggles with the paperwork yesterday. Or communication issues. Maybe he was just compensating? Hard to say. The key point is, it went pretty smoothly and I donât think that would have been possible two or three years ago. Three years ago I was still struggling with doctorâs office paperwork, and yesterday I read the âpersonal information use policyâ of a real estate office with relative ease (definitely N2 reading section level though, and that was the less detailed version lol).
This was also a case of, as the saying goes, âitâs not what you have itâs how you use it.â The vast majority of the speaking I did was at most N4 level grammar and words, nothing crazy. You can get around quite well at that level, which is why many people living in Japan never really push beyond that. As for memorizing my own address, thatâs something I did within one month of moving here. The address is a little difficult but I can remmeber how to write five difficult kanji if I practice enough. You donât need to be able to write all the kanji, just the ones you need. So, if anyone else is hoping to find an apartment in Japan, you definitely donât need N2 level Japanese just be solid on the basics and a ăăă°ă attitude.
Thereâs still a long way to go, but I was able to use the tool of Japanese language to achieve what I want, applying to a pet-friendly apartment. Thatâs probably a better win than passing any test.
*In my opinion it is embarassing, but as it turns out I am the second ALT in the 30 years of my school to be able to write their address in kanji. So, being able to write your own address in kanji is actually an exception.
17 Likes
awesome, congrats. I love what you wrote about self sufficiency and your ăăă°ă attitude, this is so inspiring. And it must have been so satisfying to experience leveling up like this
how fortunate 
I hope your application is successful!!!
fascinating tidbit, it helps to explain how firmly a lot of Japanese seem to believe that their language is unlearnable
6 Likes
February 18th
6 lessons and 225 reviews
appeased the owl with kanji
The Black Prism
These words are definitely getting into âwhat the heck is that?â territory. Like obviously I know the words in English because I have adult level English but these are not frequent usage words. However, I did have to sign a ççŽ as part of the âmagical æç¶ăâ so perhaps these are useful words if I just didnât know I needed them.
I had a bit of an âoh shitâ moment because it occurred to me that the classes for my masters might actually be on the main campus, not the medical school campus. Cue frantic searching until 2am to try to solve this myself. First of all was trying to google the classes, then the class schedule. While I did find class schedules, I will be the maiden voyage class of my degree so there is no previous class schedule to look at. But, there were schedules for other degrees in the same department.
These class schedules are distinctly different from my US university class schedules. First of all, it is listed by class period like a high school except the last class periods run until 9:15PM. More than 12 hours of possible class periods, and in that first year there are classes every single day of the week.
I did see a building name listed on the schedule so I looked it up. To my horror, a building in the main campus showed up. Cue the frantic searching for how long my commute would be, which would be over an hour with a bus and train. Not ideal. I have yet to be accepted to an apartment so I looked at some other apartments located between the campuses and find one that is almost exactly 30min from either campus by train and walking. This seems more ideal, but there is still the issue of if they accept foreigners or not. Anyhow, in this late night search I decide to search for the building listed in the class schedule again and notice something: there are two buildings with that name, one on each campus. Well fuck me sideways there are TWO buildings at the same university with the SAME NAME?!? This seems promising because so far everything I have done has been on the medical school campus, so it would track that the classes would be there too. So I look up a map of the campus and search for that building name, and it doesnât exist on the medical school map, but does exist on Google maps. What the heck is happening here?!?
In the end I just had to go to sleep and asked my medical school (PhD) student friend if she happens to know the answer to this, because I feel like this is a rather stupid question to be asking my professor. If the answer is yes the classes are on the medical school campus, it does seem kinda stupid that I thought the classes could be on another campus. But if the answer is no, then I will be seen as careless for not realizing that earlier. Hopefully my friend has some masters student friends and knows the answer to this, because I would feel awfully dumb asking this question to my professor or one of the administrators.
Just when I thought things were starting to get together lol.
Another fail is apparently all these years I thought I was on NHI (national health insurance), I was in fact not 
. The gov guy asked me what I wanted to do about my insurance and he asked if I want to enroll in NHI after I leave my job. Record scratch moment. I realized maybe I had never looked at my insurance card carefully. Pulled it out and Iâll be damned, it definitely doesnât say ćœæ°ć„ćș·äżéș lol. Anyhow, thatâs an easy enough fix. Just one more stop at the city hall and I can also negotiate for lower payments while Iâm a student. In my defense, I couldnât read all those kanji when I got the card 4 years ago, but that also doesnât excuse me never actually taking a look at the thing. Considering I had to go to city hall for my health insurance payment records for visa renewal, that even further confirmed in my mind I was on NHI. However, I do also work for the government, so that also tracks as for why I needed to go there hahahahahaha.
Reading is important yâall lol.
Because my Nightwatch audiobook still has a 4 week wait, Iâve been listening to a book my sister recommended. It is quite violent, and due to that I am still not sure if I will finish it. However what keeps me going is the grotesque violence is mixed in with a fascinating magic system and HILARIOUS commentary. The other thing that keeps me going is I still donât know who the bad guy is. Like at the moment there seems a pretty obvious evil king and vigilante justice super powerful good guy, but given how this world works I am not confident the apparent good guy is actually the good guy. The audiobook is 21 hours long and Iâm only about 5 hours in, so still lots to go. So many people have died though. Like dang when will we hit plot armor?!?
12 Likes
Thank you! Leveling up is kind of a blink and you miss it kind of thing, or so gradual you donât notice. Like the main feeling was âthis doesnât feel impossibleâ which is very different than âwow Iâm so good at this!â 
To be honest Iâm not exactly sure what is going on there, especially among ALTs. Like almost all ALTs study Japanese in at least some capacity but because the mail system does allow for romanji on packages that somewhat disincentivizes the learning of kanji addresses. The other issue is addresses tend to have more complicated kanji, with my prefectureâs æ°æœ kanji being on the more difficult side. While I did have some kanji experience when I came here, it was still in the range of 100-200 kanji. However, one of the first things I set myself to was memorizing how to write my own address. The first couple days here was a whirlwind of registration and I had to write my address every single time, so it became clear very quickly I would need to use it a lot. It does contain some complicated kanji, but with enough practice I could remember the 5ish more difficult kanji. It could be an effect of missing the forest for the trees, people see the complicated kanji and think âI donât know complicated kanjiâ failing to realize you literally just need to learn 2-5 difficult kanji for your address. Anyone can do a difficult thing 2-5 times. Another phenomenon Iâve seen is people completely avoiding handwriting of Japanese, opting to only type their Japanese. It is true that most things are available online these days and you can print out thank you notes if needed, but if someone hands you a document at city hall you canât type that. One solution is to ask the Japanese person who handed you the document to write it for you, and while that is reasonable strategy, they wonât always have the time to do that for you. Plus, itâs just a basic adult level admin task. Just because you can technically avoid it doesnât mean you should.
The other thing I wonder about is if this is a Japanese language issue or just a generational thing. For example, how many phone numbers do you remember? I remember a handful, but since the age of 15 I have only memorized one phone number: my own Japanese phone number. The rest are what I memorized in childhood in the early 2000âs. With the advent of phones and computers and autofill, are people even remembering their addresses at all these days? Itâs not really something you know about a person unless you really spend time with them in a situation they might need those in. One time a friend in high school gave me his phone number (previously we communicated over Messenger) and he had the realization that he didnât even know his OWN phone number and needed to look it up. Itâs a sort of invisible loss of knowledge.
11 Likes
My 2-cents worth: itâs pretty important information where you will go most days so I think it is a reasonable question. Hopefully your Phd friend knows or can find out easily for you.
7 Likes
With Japanese I will totally take ânot impossibleâ as a win as well
woah, never thought of that, but I bet youâre right. To be fair, my in-laws only live 2 streets away and Iâm not 100% sure of their address, I just never use the number so I donât know it!
invisible loss of knowledge, yikes
Iâm also on team âno dumb questionsâ
Ask them all! Make it clear you tried and they will also be able to explain some of those mysteries you encountered along the way. This is what administrators are for imo. Also, if it makes you feel better, day one of my PhD - I showed up at the backdoor and waved to everyone drinking tea to get inside 
it is still a total mystery to me how I missed the FRONT DOOR! There wasnât even a path to the backdoor, honestly
11 Likes
February 19th
8 lessons and 225 reviews
appeased the owl
Like why exactly do I need to know this XD. I know Americans are banned from investing in the Japanese stock market but idk about bonds. At least I know what a bond is, thanks to my finances obsessed friend. Otherwise I would be real confused right about now. Actually these days when my coworkers see the words on my screen they are like âeh? Thatâs a weird word.â Not sure if that means they are actually weird words that nobody uses or just Iâve run out of ânormalâ words they expect foreigners to know.
Also, happy to report the classroom crisis is averted. PhD friend told me the students in the med school take their classes on the med school campus. Thank goodness, I was losing my shit there for about 12 hours lol. While panic researching I also sent my findings to Mr. Engineer for his (hopefully more accurate) interpretation and when he got up this morning his comment was ăăăăăèȘżăčăŸăăçŹçŹă. Mr. Engineer also pointed out that my professor probably doesnât even think of the other campus, hence never bringing it up.
As I was outside waving goodbye to the elementary kids, my students started looking at the staff entrance and saying âwhoâs that?â Look around the corner and low and behold itâs some of my former students who graduated junior high three years ago. I waved at them, after a second they recognized me, then they asked ăèŠăăŸăăïŒïŒïŒă. One of them has a brother in junior high now so I saw him recently and remembered his name easily, and after a second of name fumbling in my head I was able to correctly say the name of the other one. Both of them were quite shocked and very excited. Turns out they already graduated high school and are making the rounds trying to visit old teachers. Pretty sure I was teacher one of five that is still in this district. Itâs always a treat to run into old students, since after graduation most just disappear. High school is a time when kids really become themselves so itâs fun to see where they end up going.
Also the reason I can remember their names even years later is neither of their faces changed very much and in my hours of boredom I made it my goal to very thoroughly memorize the names of all 70 students at my school(at the time, itâs even less now). Itâs still a lot of names obviously, but considering most schools are double or triple that size itâs a much more manageable task. Back in the day it was much harder for me to memorize Japanese names and therefore I worked much harder at it, but that also means they are very stuck in my head.
I like to write the dates I open perishable things on them (äžäșșæźăăă) and apparently I CAN write æ from memory. One of those first year kanji I learned and it stuck.
12 Likes
Back in the US, you could at least deduce someoneâs address because all you need to do is look at the street name and find the numbers posted on the building, because all buildings need to have their address number on them. In Japan, on the other hand, is organized by blocks and numbering that nobody truly understands and is not posted anywhere. It is on a map somewhere, but I do not own said map lol.
Hilarious XD. I actually did a full 360 of the administration building trying to find the door this week as well. Also found myself walking on a dirt path toward the door that turns out doesnât even have a handle on the outside, just gotta keep walking until I find a door. Building didnât have a label on the outside or a floor guide on the inside, just had to go based on the map and instructions from my email lol.
13 Likes
same here, girl.
okay this is a very important detail xdddd
times are changing in japan, but iâve heard a similar testimonial time and time again from people, that the only way to feel like you belong is to acknowledge that nobody belongs here, not even the actual japanese people, and unless you make your own communities for yourself, you will always be a foreigner to everyone 
hope itâll be different in a while though
awww C: xdd
my university did until 8:30PM, and i did think for this to be really rough, but the KFC visits with friends afterwards at night to celebrate the end of a very long thursday, that was making all the difference xddd
damn, even that sounds pretty long for my imagination of niigata to me
i imagine that this is probably the reality of living a bit more suburban, but when i think âniigataâ, how far away can 30 minutes of walking + training be 
my current commute to the opposite part of the city, with 13m walking and one train switch, takes about this much
now im curious about your healthcare system horror stories, did anything interesting happen because of not having the correct insurance type? xddd
a bit, yeah, but for expats it does save a lot of brain capacity
dont know if queenofthegods had to experience that, but when i was moving countries a while back, in each new country id have a new phone number, and then the correct way to deal with them is not to remember each one, its to look at whatsapp phone number that you currently have xdd
i think the age of having just one phone number for your entire lifetime is a little hard to achieve for expats and people that travel, i got myself an esim card for both the US and the UK and i didnt even bother looking up what that esim phone numbers were
id probably say the latter, but itâs just like with technical knowledge from any domain, like i know what a âmonomerâ or âpolymerizationâ are, but if someone were studying a dictionary of english language to become better at the language and theyâd see the word âmonomerâ in it, then id be like âokay its probably time to go to sleep nowâ ^^
that being said, the kanji learnerâs course that im doing right now has a lot of really funky sentences for some reason, like âpositivist doctrineâ, âspirally fluted handlesâ, âextant manuscriptsâ, and im looking at them and going like⊠HUH xdddd
uu, does it also involve writing the kanji for their names? or is it just listening/speaking/reading
7 Likes
I think this is true. Like I do feel accepted in my community (work and village settlement) but I fit the niche of âwacky immigrant who speaks funny.â Iâm totally fine with this, I loved all the immigrants in my life who spoke a little funny sometimes, and now thatâs me. Actually I find Japanese people to be way more comfortable with foreigners now than they were 8 years ago when I studied abroad. Got stared at a lot more and people would get scare when I approached, now I am treated fairly normally. For example, I was getting gas today and a worker came up and gave me his little speech and handed me a flyer. I am VERY clearly foreign and even have on all clothes from the US today, but man was on a mission to hand out fliers and a little thing like a girl being very clearly from another country wasnât about to stop him.
My school did too, but those were usually just an option for lab sections vs required like these seem to be ;-;. However, this is one of the medical school schedules and med students of course are quite busy. Hopefully mine will be a bit less intense (technically I am also in the med school but not on a physician track).
I mean, to me Niigata city is pretty urban, but it isnât exactly the most walkable city. Like back in the early days I took the train there but trying to get anywhere was so annoying I started driving instead. Itâs about 30min by car between the campuses, but closer to 1 hour by public transit. The main campus is outside of the city itself vs my campus is in äžć€źćș so thatâs part of it, but I have also found walking around the city to be so annoying I drive between locations.
Iâve had no issues ever, hence assuming I had the most basic kind of insurance XD. Residence card renewal went off without a hitch, the fees get pulled out of my paycheck before I even get it, I just hand my insurance card over at the clinic, no issues whatsoever. I just always assumed that since I worked for the government and we werenât fancy we wouldnât have our own insurance.
I donât memorize my esim numbers either, but I still have my US phone number on a family plan back home and living in Japan I need to write my phone number a lot so it became faster to just memorize it. Hilariously enough though, I actually memorized my address long before I memorized my phone number. My address is like 4 lines long with a lot of kanji but remembering 8 numbers was too much for me hahaha.
The words I got "wtf"ed on recently were ć ±çŁć and ćČăă, but considering the political trucks and posters are everywhere the first one makes more sense to me to know lol.
The majority of my students have millennial parents and they tend to useâŠcreativeâŠkanji and readings of said kanji. Because of that, even the Japanese teachers canât necessarily guess the readings of names or remember the kanji. So, I can listen, say, and even read their names, but I donât even try to write their kanji names. However, I can write my coworkerâs names in kanji. Gen-Z Japanese people have pretty straightforward names, older can get more complicated though.
10 Likes
February 20th-23rd
86 reviews
appeased the owl except the day I passed out on the couch
Goshuincho workshop
The Black Prism
It has not been a good study weekend but I did go to a Japanese only workshop simply because I wanted to.
This workshop has to be peak goshuin-otaku: making your own goshuin-cho(goshuin book). You could bring your own fabric, which two people did, but me and the other guy used some of the very nice available fabric.
My Japanese level was mostly sufficient, but when I asked where to cut the corners she said ăăżă which I thought was ăăżăă, which I could only guess was âcut really closeâ but it was actually ïŒăăȘ, or 5mm . So, my corners are a bit wack but as long as I take care of the book it should be fine.
My hope was to make some goshuin friends at this event, but that did not end up happening. The guy sitting across from me was angry sighing a lot (like dude, why are you here lol), the couple talked about people who âcollect the wrong way,â and the teacher plus daughter were talking to them mostly. The event was at a shrine and one of the workers came in and said âwell some people collect goshuin the wrong way, but you guys are wonderful!â He said the first part while looking right at me. Like my dude I understand Japanese lol. The main complaint among the ânot the right wayâ people is treating it like a stamp rally. Well, the shrine is the one making new designs every month, not me, so why is it my fault if I want them all?
Most of my interactions with goshuin collectors are among foreigners who collect them and by the workers who make the goshuin. Foreigners donât complain about how I collect them and I think the workers are more forgiving because despite my not doing it âthe right way,â these locations need money to keep the lights on and as long as you are respectful, any sort of contribution and passion is welcome.
This doesnât bother me too much to be honest. For example, in the US and other western countries, churches are the main religious location. Technically churches are for worship and praying and such, but I feel like a universal American experience is doing something completely unrelated in a church basement like a holiday market, dance practice, support groups, etc. Or, when I went to Italy, you can just wander around inside the churches and look at them. They do kick you out during services, but generally the rule is if you act respectful, you are welcome, even if you arenât "doing it right.â
Up until now I have generally found people to be quite friendly to foreigners. However, up until now I have also always lived in inaka places. Despite what you would think, inaka folks are quite welcoming and curious about foreigners. They arenât afraid to ask questions and can see the effects of declining population first hand, so they are happy to see people coming to enjoy their culture and prop up the labor market. So, maybe this was my first true taste of city life. It is what it is, and the only way to fight it is to kill them with kindness right? Despite some of the less than ideal remarks, I would 100% attend the workshop again.
My area currently has a massive influenza outbreak so I spent the rest of the weekend at home making the opposite of progress on my social media addiction. The one positive thing I managed to get done this weekend was tell my work bestie that I am leaving. She got transferred to another school but is set to come back to my district in April, so she is quite dissaponted I am leaving. Thankfully she doesnât hate me, unlike some other people I told.
My proposed move in date is about 1 month away, with my last day of work being about a week after that. It is getting very real very fast. Unfortunately I still do not know if I was accepted into the apartment. The guarentor company accepted me, but apparently the landlord has yet to. Either the landlord is dragging their feet or is on vacation, hopefully the latter.
Because the wait time on the Terry Pratchett novel I didnât finish is still 4 weeks, Iâve been chugging along on The Black Prism during my drives. While I did predict one of the big plot twists, I still donât know where the plot is going or who is the bad guy! The gross violence continues but so does the witty humor. Kip is a hilarious main character, both fitting and not fitting the main character role.
Anyway, my residence change request is set for Friday, so I have to get all the documents together and NOT catch influenza. About half my school is out sick .
11 Likes
Boo! Also, if this is the wrong way, whatâs⊠the right way? Just not getting the new designs? But why are there new designs if they donât want people to get them? 
9 Likes
That looks so fun!
omg Iâm not the only one who misses these super simple words when spoken. I love how you are so good at Japanese that you could fill in a way more complex words
Um, I didnât know that wasnât the point 
Also wondering this 
8 Likes
February 24th
6 lessons and 230 reviews
appeased the owl
student letters
Happy durtle, but, oh boyâŠ
This is what happens when you basically donât study for four days.
The reason it was four days not three is because I only had one class on Friday and there was a teacher whose cough got worse and worse over the following hour and I am not in the business of marinating in viruses unnecessarily so I requested to use my PTO and got out of there. When I got home I played an absolutely legendary game of REPO with my friends. Made it through three rounds, made an epic comeback where we had to kill monsters to make enough money, ended up with $69k, goofed off so hard in the lobby that we found three secret rooms, and finally blew each other up ending the run.
Last night Mr. Engineer helped me search the school website as I spiraled about where my classes are and despite finding the syllabi of various classes, none had classrooms listed so more spiraling. Just to be absolutely, POSITIVELY sure my classes are where I think they will be, I emailed the administrator. He said that all my classes* would be on the medical school campus and not to worry.
* This isnât entirely true because Japanese classes are on the main campus but thatâs not his wheelhouse so his answer is still correct and informed.
I have a yearly tradition of writing letters for all graduating students. The letters have all been essentially the same throughout the years, refined to my language ability. The first year I had so many students and low Japanese level so I wrote it once and photocopied the letter, but since then I have managed to write all the letters by hand, even if it takes multiple days. This year we have the smallest graduating class yet, so this was a breeze to do in one day. The backs are personalized with names and messages for each kid too. My handwriting is kinda terrible but readable hopefully? Somehow my Japanese handwriting settled at 5 year old level and never really got better lol.
Every year when I hand the letters out the students are like âyou know this much Japanese?!? All along?!?â Maybe this group wonât be so shocked, since Iâve been their teacher for 27% of their lives (damn that makes me emo lol). Every time I write a kanji on the board the teachers make the kids clap for me hahaha. This is a very rare occurrence, though.
Speaking of my students, more than half of them have influenza right now! Hopefully they all get better soon. They were all fine this time last week so this was a surprise. In all my time as a teacher and student, Iâve never seen this happen before. Stay safe out there everyone!
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Well, traditionally goshuin are collected as a way of gaining favor with the gods so you can have a good afterlife (or something?). You are also supposed to pray and give money to every shrine you visit. The issue they take with people like me is I am more interested in the goshuin than gaining favor with the gods and I do not always pray at shrines (need to get back into the habit of it). But again, Iâm not the one making all the designs, the workers are XD (admitted, shrines with younger leaders tend to do this). This shrine even made a workshop specific goshuin for us. Maybe I do it âthe wrong way,â but I think these things can and should coexist.
Shines are losing their centrality in communities and family run shrines shouldnât have to go out of business because their communities are shrinking or are less interested in shrine activities. The next generation of these families are finding ways to fit into a modern world. For example, an English speaking shop owner saw me outside a shrine one day and told me that when the current head priest took over he completely overhauled the shrine and turned it into a sort of Instagram picture spot. She wasnât sure what to think of it, but she said it brought so many people back to the shrine, which had been pretty empty for years. Another shrine in this area quite literally brings in a DJ so you can have a dance party at the shrine and hosts historical reenactments. Shrines are the home of kami-sama but kami-sama should have some fun too.
This happens so much you have no idea lol. Japanese has a lot of homophones and often I only know one, so a person will say something and Iâm like âWHAT?!â then they realize why I am confused and laugh. One example of this is a coworker pointed at the chair next to her and said ăăăŠă. I just stood there confused, because I thought she meant äŒăŁăŠăă and was trying to figure out who she was meeting. She meant ç©șăăŠăă and was inviting me to sit lol. After I figured it out we had a laugh drawing out the kanji of what we thought the other meant. People around here and by extension myself have slight Tohoku accents so we also blend the sounds a lot more as compared to a Kanto accent, so this doesnât help the case either lol.
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eek, flu season sounds terrible where you are, I hope you escape it
how embarrassing omg no wonder they think youâre illiterate if every kanji gets applauded
such interesting details and photos on the goshuin, thank you!!
that sounds impossible, go you
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Ohh, I see, itâs those young people and foreigners who are not properly respecting the gods 
Seems like a classic case of âback in my day people prayed properly at the shrines and now they only care about the goshuin!!â
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