Glad everything is going (sorta?) well 
Having some time off from time to time could also be helpful 
Is the test the shop owner did normal in Japan? 
and what would happen if you donāt prove yourself to be worthy? 
I like the knitting piece a lot and it shows that youāre a pro at knitting 
Congratulations on 9 years spent in Japan and hereās to many more if thatās the current wish
She would just speak English, but would know I canāt actually speak Japanese and she needs to use only English to interact with me. Itās actually similar to how the Japanese language portion of my JET interview went, basically a person just uses harder and harder Japanese until you either can no longer understand or they decide you speak an acceptable amount of Japanese. I think this is a common technique among people who have good English but donāt want to use it 100% of the time. Like the guy training me these days speaks English just fine, he lived in the states for several years, but he still lets me fumble around in Japanese before switching to English.
Just to clarify, I havenāt been IN Japan for nine years. It has just been 9 years since I came to Japan for the first time, that time as a study abroad student. I still went back to the US and got a degree (but not without studying abroad a second time 
). My tax paying presence in Japan Japanniversary is October 31st, and this year will be the 5th!
OMG
This is IT!!
Wow! Itās an anniversary to celebrate!! 
I think they mean yarn embroidery over the knittingā¦ So it can be č¶ ćććć!! Ah, I just read on that (of course!) you know about embroidery over knit
Itās not letting me quote right nowā¦ But
Interesting comments about āgreen waterā and about āWaldorf dollsā (never heard of this)ā¦ So itās interestingććććć that it does seen ācreepyäøę°å³ā to meā¦ Youāve pointed me to an unconscious bias that I harbor!
Hah, I guess I donāt consciously do this when I talk with non-native speakers of English (mostly because their average level of English is still above my level of Japanese) but it makes total sense as a way of dealing with me-shaped people if you interact with a lot of themā¦
When I was in Nara the other week and chatting briefly with the middle aged folks staffing the basement area of the Buddhist statue gallery, one guy threw out ę®ŗč«å¤, which I had just DAYS ago unlocked on WK and I thought to myself āwtffff thatās a wild coincidenceā and maybe it was and also maybe he was like āi wonder if this white guy knows the word ę®ŗč«å¤ā
This is quite interesting. It seems like a way to gauge your language skills and see how to handle the situation (and whether to overcome the laziness of speaking English 
). Itās an interesting insight and I can see myself already failing the test
Oh, I wasnāt aware of that Thank you for the clarification Anything but the taxes This is the most important thing
12 lessons
mostly appeased the owl
Equal Rites
Night Watch
student presentations
After a couple days of this, the cell culture mentor was complaining to my mentor that everyone is afraid of him lol (this is all in Japanese, btw). They asked if Iām afraid of him, yes I am, but I also told them that itās not his fault but itās my problem because I tend to be afraid of people. Next was why are you afraid, to which I replied ćę©ćå¦ć¹ć¾ćććwhich communicated in few words what I feel all the time, which is that I canāt learn fast enough for others and Iām not good enough (really need to work on my Japanese speaking because itās so bad compared to my listening). Other mentor was saying āwell yeah you see it once then figure it out from making mistakesā to which my mentor told him āabout thatā¦she canāt do thatā . Despite this being a bad quality of a researcher (but a common one), my mentor seems to accept it? Like interestingly he arranged for me to learn Western Blots twice, even if this meant a lot of āwe showed you twice, so you have to do this alone next time.ā Not the best feeling but the price to pay if it means I can learn twice. They also asked me which one of them is scarier and apparently ābothā is the wrong answer. Lots of laughing and āwhy??? We arenāt scary.ā Itās more like a fear of disappointing them because I know I donāt live up to their standards, but I donāt know how to say that in Japanese. Also I hope they understand that despite my cringing away from their questions like a kid, the fact that Iām willing to be that honest and vulnerable shows Iām not too scared and do trust them. Like the person I am the most afraid of is another mentor, and I definitely wouldnāt tell them that XD.
As mentioned in my last post, I have jobs of some sort now. One of these is doing chores around the lab. I got assigned trash and 200uL pipette tips. Not bad, you might say. Well, my lab is huge. We have to collect trash from three different floors and 200ul pipettes are the most commonly used. Due to a backlog of pipette tip boxes I have filled something like 35 boxes (of 96) in the past week. I find it kind of calming in a sense, just doing a repetitive task while listening to audio books, but the endlessness is a lot sometimes. Itās like the laundry in House of Many Ways, you leave it for one day and it multiplies. Like how in the world do I fill 20 boxes in two days then there are 6 more boxes the next day?!? As for the trash, it isnāt so bad but the trash cans in our office were NASTY. Like lord knows what in the gaps and the whole underside of the lid covered in mold. Technically speaking the task is only to take out the trash, but somehow of the multiple people in charge of taking out the trash and 10 people who use that room, nobody cleaned the trash cans. So far Iāve avoided the trash cans because they are nasty but now that I have to interact with the trash cans a lot, I cannot be working with these nasty trash cans. I spent 20min cleaning the trash cans as best I could. Maybe next week I can get the insides not just the lids.
Now, I have some theories about how the trash cans got so nasty. One is the obvious bystander effect, so the fact that so many of us use those trash cans we all assume someone else will clean them. Another theory I have is nobody in the lab has ever worked a job where they need to do tasks like this before. Think about it, the vast majority of students are from Asia where generally speaking students are encouraged to just study not work if they want to go far (which they clearly have). Then, once you get to the staff phase, you have āgraduatedā out of jobs that involve cleaning trash cans. Not to say people donāt do their lab chores, there is just a lack of doing it enough. Like we had 40 pipette boxes to fill, someone will fill 2 or 4. Trash gets taken out but the trash cans have an ecosystem going inside them. Like am I the crazy one here?
To me, cleaning out the trash cans seems obvious. They are dirty, I have 30 min while my gel sets, why not? This is also far from my first time dealing with trash for work. Iāve pulled plants on a wildlife preserve, changed out trash cans at a fast food restaurant, and participated in all cleaning days and beach cleans at my school. Some of those earlier experiences come from part time jobs being common for American students, often thankless jobs that donāt require an education. Sure they are unpleasant but they teach you a lot about life and people. Back in college I thought I had āgraduatedā out of minimum wage food service work then promptly couldnāt find a job doing anything else. The universe made sure I was humbled lol. That day forward I learned and really took to heart that nobody is too good for any job. In the US we say that everyone should work a service job at some point in their life, which is something I definitely agree with. I wonder if anyone else in my lab has worked for minimum wage at a fast food restaurant beforeā¦
On Friday I had to give up almost my whole day to watch presentations from the second year masterās students. A lot of really interesting research happening. There was even one international student so we got excited about one presentation we could understand, then the dude rocks up and delivers the whole thing in Japanese. Super impressed but also not sure what that means for me next year. We also thought it was a girl based on the name and our knowledge of other international students, so when the boy sitting two desks away from us got up to give the presentation we were dying of embarrassment a little because he definitely heard us 
. Iām sorry sir, we are still big fans though. One of the professors called him (name)-kun instead of (name)-san, which I thought was disrespectful, even if others donāt pick up on it. Anyway I hope he is treated well because he does great research.
My classes are over but this was a mini reunion of our class (only 2 week after our last class lol). Something I probably havenāt talked about is the other international students in my class. There are three of us total, each from a very different country, different backgrounds, and at different points in life. We are early, middle, and late twenties, one is married with a kid, two of us work in the same building, two researchers and one doctor, all speak English plus some other languages, zero, some, and whatever my level of Japanese is. Because we are all international students itās harder to do everything, so we work together. Our joke is I can understand the Japanese, one girl can read the kanji, and one girl is a doctor, so when we put our brains together we can figure out the lectures, homework assignments, and asking professors questions . Whenever our classes got canceled we would sit around and talk until our professors expected us back in the lab. Thereās a lot of value to just sharing normal life with people from all over the world. Hopefully we can find a way to continue our friendship beyond regularly held classes.
Also finally met the mysterious extra people who never showed up to class! Heard this when a couple asked questions and also one of them took the attendance sheet from me. This was very interesting to me because once I found out that person was actually a fellow masterās student, it made me realize that my daily classmates treated me differently than the classmates who only ever heard me in the background sometimes. Our regular classmates were running the presentations but one of them came to me with the attendance sheet to pass around. I got all my international student friends names on it and after doing some counting realized someone hadnāt signed it yet, but donāt know names well enough to figure out who, so I posted to our party group chat that I had the sheet. My plan was to just hold onto it until one of my other classmates came back for it but a lady sitting near me was like āIāll take thatā and kept it on her desk instead. I had no idea who she was and didnāt exactly want to give it to her but there are often things I donāt understand so I just let her take it. During the lunch break the person who missed signing it came to me so I directed her to the lady who took it, but that lady LOST THE SHEET. Like lady this is a required attendance day and you just took the attendance sheet from someone the students running the event trusted with it . Do you think Iām too stupid to be responsible because Iām foreign? It did later get returned to me by my classmates and I made sure to take it to the girl who hadnāt written her name yet because shocker, I have my shit together like that. Then a DIFFERENT lady took it from me, so when my classmates came back I pointed out who took it and apparently it WAS the correct person this time XD. Shout out to my regular classmates for treating us foreign students like regular people.
There are a few stray cats around my neighborhood and one of them is pretty friendly! She meows at me and flops over for pets but also runs away sometimes. Still working on befriending her, treats will probably help.
Okay so Niigata city has a big river slicing the city in half right? (this is very similar to my home city of Portland, OR actually) On the path along the river, there are these big stickers counting numbers of kilometers from the Bandai Bridge toā¦somewhere. From what the stickers say, itās somewhere 14km from the bridge, presumably along the river? Today I decided to just ride as far as I could before the sun went down/it rained too much for my brakes to work. I made it about 4km down the path at which point the river and the bike path splits into multiple branches. This is also the boundary of where Iāve been in a car and understand the layout of the city. If I understand correctly, the river continues south and veers inland but to where I am not sure. My bike ride did bring me into a different ward so the mysterious destination is likely outside city limits. That said, I lost the bike path. I couldnāt find more stickers but did go a ways down a street car route turned bike path. The end of the path being more than 14km away means going there and getting back in the same day will require close to 30km of biking in one day. Right now I can easily do 10km in one day but Iām not sure how 30km would go. Maybe something to work up to.
Interestingly, this bike adventure scratched my adventure itch. The smell of wet soil from the high humidity, not really knowing where Iām going, and the wind whizzing by reminds me of all my adventures in Tanto-san (today was specifically of my journey to Sendai last year, idk how to describe it other than it smelled the same ). Like obviously I could look up what is at the end of the trail or pull out google maps to try to find this bike path, but half the fun is wandering around trying to look for street signs. The road system was all designed before gps so they have to be navigable without it. Itās supposed to rain for the next ten days and Iām working late a lot recently so I donāt know when Iāll get the chance to try again, but I hope to someday figure out what is at the end of the path.
Also, anti-Takaichi (current prime minister) and anti-war protests going on at Niigata station. Being a small city the organizers used a projector to show the main protest going on in Tokyo, which is a really unique take on protesting. The anti-war protests always make me a bit awkward as I am from one of the countries causing the wars, but one of the demonstrators saw me trying to read the signs and gave me a pamphlet. I know this doesnāt seem like a big deal but pamphlet people approaching you shows they are a, not afraid of you and b, are assuming you understand Japanese. All good, so I guess these are pro-immigration protestors in a sense. I also saw an immigrant support group as one of the ādonate a portion of your purchase to charityā options at AEON. There were only 3 receipts in it including mine, but the fact that it is there at all is remarkable. From what I can tell, it is part of the same organization that teaches public Japanese classes.
Anyway, hopefully I can make some progress toward the 10+ homework assignments I still have and the 1000+ Wanikani reviews waiting for meā¦
I think the fact alone you willingly live your life as an American away from America while learning the culture and the language of Japan is a political statement in itself. Of course, itās only the start of a dialogue and itās up to how you interpret the invitation to take part in protests how that dialogue will develop, but as usual I really appreciate the fact you donāt turn away from the sociopolitical topics in your study log ^^
