April 4th and 5th
1 review
appeased the owl
So uh, not a productive weekend study wise lol. However, I did get my laundry room and kitchen organized so thatās a good step. The main room thoughā¦
When I was leaving the lab last week, one of the other students asked me why I quit my job instead of continuing to teach while getting a masters. There are the simple reasons of Iām in my 5th year so Iām getting kicked out anyway, plus my former workplace is two hours away, but I think one of the bigger reasons is I was just tired of the disrespect. Like despite describing myself to others as an āEnglish teacher,ā I very rarely did any teaching or even preparing a game really. Most of the time I was just a human tape recorder that said words on command or a puppet to be used, not to mention getting banned from speaking Japanese or the activities where the main point was āwow foreigners are SO STUPID letās teach them stuff!ā And yes there are good activities where the students do actually teach me interesting stuff (like students presenting various vacation destinations or local spots), but thereās other activities like the guessing number of kanji strokes or guessing what foods I canāt eat because Iām foreign (āoh, but foreigners canāt eat octopus! Youāre too foreign!ā āYes, I can eat octopus, even raw.ā āeeeeehhhhh?!? But youāre foreign!ā). Thatās just in the classroom, not to mention all my name tags and belongings being labeled with āALTā when everyone else got a name and not appearing on the work schedule until I specifically asked four years in because they kept double booking me. Never occurred to anyone to put me on the schedule, despite the fact that I worked there multiple days a week. If the schedule changed last minute nobody would inform me in any way, so sometimes I would be late to a class I didnāt know I had or show up to class to find no students there. Or the stupid questions like āI thought you studied anime in college!ā Like wow itās almost like Iām a regular person that lived a regular person life before this and actually took college seriously. People treat you like you are stupid, and yes itās true that I donāt know Japanese or Japanās work culture as well as a Japanese person, but that doesnāt mean I canāt or donāt want to try. To paraphrase Kip from The Black Prism, āIām ignorant, not stupid. Thereās a difference.ā
So far, being in the lab seems to have somewhat alleviated being constantly treated like a moron, but I did hear some rather unfortunate conversation from the staff last week. They were saying things like āthey donāt know the Japanese way, how can we explain it to them?ā and āthey are so unJapaneseā and while these can seem harmless, the tone showed that sort of Japanese superiority complex perpetuated on TV(iykyk). The other reason I knew it was bad was later when I asked the man who said that a question in Japanese, he had a somewhat embarrassed/shocked expression and said āoh yeah, queenofthegods can speak Japaneseā¦ā Yes, I heard everything you said, asshole. Statements like āthey are so unJapaneseā are stupid because yes, obviously, we are foreigners. And maybe instead of complaining about how stupid we must be, teach us! The other three are medical students from Asia, definitely highly qualified and smart. Stop talking like we are some untrainable morons that canāt do anything right and never will simply because we werenāt born on this island. However, outside of that guy, all the other staff seem really nice. This is a near 100% reversal of my old job, where near everyone thought I was an unteachable moron except for like two people (eventually people took me more seriously, but that took several years and it was still less than half).
Obaachan is doing okay, but she does meow at me in the night and I donāt know what she wants. In my experience she either meows out of hunger or because she feels sick, but I canāt quite pin down what exactly she wants especially those 3am meows. Like when she wants her chuuru, she goes and sits by where I keep them. I have food out nearly constantly, so she shouldnāt be hungry. She doesnāt want attention either, sheās not a huge fan of cuddling. Like I hope itās not pain and sheās just begging for fresh food because the current food is stale, but itās hard to say. This is also a problem because I was hoping to go to Nagano for a couple days during Golden Week, but if I canāt figure out all her needs by then I canāt properly explain them to anyone to watch her. She canāt talk so itās much harder to figure out what she wants, but she is smart and has her ways of communicating, which is why I find the meowing so strange. Like normally she meows silently due to being deaf and all, but she has learned how to make noise since living with me, which indicates she is doing it to get my attention. When she wants food itās usually her meowing then leading me to her food or sitting by where I keep the food and meowing. Hopefully itās something stupid like she wants me to clean her litter box lol.
My silly and ongoing struggle these days is when I wear makeup, my eyes get really irritated. I canāt quite figure out what is going on. I replaced my eyeliner and mascara then swatch tested every product and makeup remover I own on my arm. Interestingly, the setting spray got an almost immediate reaction, so I tossed that as well. Iāve established that the new mascara isnāt the problem, I was getting suspicious of the eyeliner, so did some testing yesterday and oh boy are my eyes mad. Slightly blurry vision, skin around eyes hurts, bloodshot, eyelashes sticking together, what the heck?!? I have some suspicions of the make up remover I used because it always gets way worse after I take off the makeup but swatch test revealed no allergies, so something else may be going on. Desperately hoping itās not that Iām allergic to the new eye shadow pallet I picked up in the US, but that is one of the consistencies across my eye reactions. Truly tragic. My last ditch effort will be to disinfect the whole tray then put the eye shadows on one at a time to see if itās just a specific shade I have a problem with. This morning I had to ride my bike to the earliest opening drugstore and try to find something to at least clear the redness in my eyes, as I look ridiculous. Happy to report that the eye drops work very well and very quickly.
Anyhow, itās been a weekend of a lot of thinking. Hopefully I can get some more done with my hands and body in the coming week.
xdddd
orientation lecture
. Basically all the classes for my masters will be between now and the end of the first term, every day 8:30am to 10am. Itās like being back in elementary school again (the only time period in which I attended a regular school with regular school hours). I think Iām most looking forward to the āentering global researchā class section which is about using English in research. Iām going to knock that one out of the park lol.
)
Keep killing it!! Haha
