Some updates after being MIA for a while.

FIRST: Nihongo classes are over! Which means free time. Nihongo classes are in the morning, so now that they're finished, I don't have to wake up early anymore. I can sleep at least eight hours a day~ Oh my god, I'm so happy~ *O* Though I still have to do some work for our newspaper. Japanese IV's final project is a newspaper, for which I volunteered to be Chief Editor, thus the "BUSY-編集長中" status in Y!M.

Other classes ended last month, too, but this month I still have a presentation, exams and term papers to finish. Our Directed Independent Study course's deadline's also fast approaching (the end of this month) so I must make some progress on that 30-paged academic essay.>_<;;

SECOND: I'm in for two more trips before I go home. First is the Mt. Fuji Climb with the other AIKOM students, a sort of post-graduation trip to see the sunrise on the summit of Mt. Fuji. Second is the Kyushu trip with Viet Thi, and we plan to go to Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Nagasaki and Fukuoka in ten days.

THIRD: I'm finally going home in September. I've booked my flight on the 20th. So yeah, I can see my friends again! (^.^)/~ Terry, Mikai and Alex are, of course, going to meet me at the airport, and we will go and have lunch together or something.:D

There's so much I want to blog about, but I don't know where to start. So much have happened during the past months: Singapore and Malaysia trip, Kii Hantou trip, and then stories about AIKOM students, about my workplace, my colleagues and students in Gaba. I know I can't blog about all these due to the lack of time, but I know that if there are people who should know what's happening to me, those people would only be Terry and Famusu. I'm happy I still get to talk to Famusu, even if we're miles apart. It's really amazing how we can still talk about trivial things when I'm here, Ali's in Dubai and Mikai and Alex, even if they're in the same country, they don't get to see each other that often.

I do want to apologize to my friends whose birthdays I have neglected, though. I'm sorry if I wasn't able to greet you or post a shoutout for you. I really don't have the time to post  anything, even as little as "happy birthday" in my blog. For some reason, I've lost the enthusiasm to blog about anything.^^; Anyway, if you guys want any souvenir or whatever, I'll try my best to get them for you, if that can make up for not being able to greet you.^^;;

Pretty soon I'll be leaving Japan. But I won't say any concluding remarks first, because it's still too early to say goodbye to this country. I still have three months, and in those three months, so many things could happen.o(^.^)o But I am looking forward to coming home!\(^o^)/

Ohisashiburi desu.

All I've been doing since the start of March was work in Gaba. I started work last March 1 and since then I've been working from 10am till 5pm. I'd always get up two and a half hours earlier to prepare my lunchbox and commute to the Tachikawa Learning Studio, where I was placed. I had preferred teaching in Kichijoji since it's only a twenty-minute bicycle ride away from my dormitory, but looking at the number of instructors there, I was glad to be placed in Tachikawa. That school's almost as busy as the one in Shinjuku, with at least thirty-five Instructors working everyday.

Having thirty-five Instructors in the same Learning Studio's tough, especially if there are Clients who take two or three lessons in a row. We have this chart in the LS where you can see all the lessons booked for the day. In Kichijoji, you have to scroll down the page to see if your Client has another lesson after yours, while in Tachikawa, you only have one page and that's it. Plus, the fewer the Instructors, the more chance you get to teach. Most Instructors teach at night, because there are lots of students at that time. I can't do that so I teach in the morning until late afternoon. I get a fair amount of students, and I try my best to build my Client base from those students who take my class.

I taught straight from the 1st of March until the 9th. Weekdays are really quiet, while the weekends are really busy. We have at least five Instructors working during the weekends, and most of them are fully-booked. Gaba's getting a lot of Clients and Instructors now that's Nova's gone bankrupt.

I scheduled for B1 Belt Modules tomorrow and the 13th, and the B1 Certification Test on the 14th. I'm doing this because our Senior Instructor Support Leader suggested so, since most of the people in our LS have belted up. There is also the higher pay incentive. You get 1700 instead of the Belt A 1500 for lessons taught during weekends. After the B1 Certification, I'm off to work again on the 15th and the 16th.

I won't be here in Tokyo from the 17th to the 23rd since we will be going to Kansai. We'll be staying in Micchan's place in Osaka. But we haven't got an itinerary yet. We can do that when we're there. I've scheduled this week only for this trip, so I have to make the best out of it. I just wish people'd stick to the schedule when one's been agreed on. I've been getting it since winter break and frankly, I'm getting tired of fitting my busy schedule for other people.x_x;;

After the Kansai trip, I'll have a one-day break, then I'm off to work again. Hopefully, my lesson slots get filled up, so I don't get that much idle time at work. Although, I'm not complaining much since I get to catch up with manga titles I haven't read for a while.:P

After that week, there's the Tokyo International Anime Fair on the 29th and 30th!
I've known about this convention for months now, and I've marked it on my planner since then. It's funny how people tell me about it as if I don't know how to search the Internet for anime events.XD Anyway, I've bought my tickets already (yay~) and Micchan and I (and Trish, too I think) are going on both days. I have to remember to save money for this one. There are lots of exhibitors again:

TAF's going to be the first convention I'm attending that's got an entrance fee. Jump Festa and Comic Market were free so I didn't need to pay money for admission. This is okay anyway, because I got two eco bags with the TAF logo. I can use that when I'm buying stuff in TAF.:P Anyway, to those who want anything bought there (because there will be lots of original goods, again) I (finally!) have a Paypal account, so you can just transfer funds there. Just make sure to add an additional 200yen for the transfer fee to my Japanese bank account.^^;;

In other news, relief goods have arrived! I received yet another package from my mother last Saturday containing: 10 packs of Lucky Me! Pancit Canton, 10 packs of Lucky Me! Beef Noodles, 1 dozen Head and Shoulders Shampoo, 1 dozen Pantene Conditioner, 1 bottle of Hot Oil Cream, 2 packs of Hany and Spicy Dilis (yay!) and read this: 10 packs of sanitary napkins.DDD: I probably won't need to buy napkins for the rest of my stay here in Japan.

3 packs of spicy dilis from FaMusu also arrived yesterday, in a battered long brown envelope:


Notice the note taped at the left? It says something like the package broke (in this case, the scotch tape Mikai used to seal the envelope didn't do its job) on the way to the post office, so they had to repair it (reinforcing it by adding another layer of masking tape). No wonder your letters/packages to Yanagi do not arrive, Mikai. The contents get lost on the way.:D Peace! Thanks for the Valentine's Gift, anyway.<3

That would be all for this update. I can't think of anything else to add anymore. Oh yeah, congratulations to Kate Janagap for becoming the nominee for being next year's AIKOM Prorgram participant! She's going to be my kouhai, haha! Too bad for her, me and my senpai's both small so our winter clothes aren't not going to fit her.^^;; But we've got a lot of appliances here so lucky Keto.:D

Ijyou desu!

Which means that I only have 8 months left in Japan. Have I gotten better in Japanese? Most Japanese friends said I did. As for my opinion, I think I became better, being able to talk in Japanese straight (though still not spontaneously), than the me who had forgotten all her Japanese and could not talk at all four months ago. とにかく、日本語がペラペラになるように、頑張ります！

Last week's schedule had been very hectic. I had to write report papers for the Relay Lectures and History of Science and Technology classes, do presentations in Japanese Literature and Nihongo, and write the proposal for the Directed Independent Study course for Summer Semester. I was supposed to give a presentation in the Lit class earlier, but I couldn't finish the book I chose, so I just asked Ellis-sensei for a shorter and much easier story. That was okay, since she warned me about the complexity of the book I chose anyway. For the presentation in Nihongo, I did my best. I even think I overdid it a little. I think my presentation was 20 minutes long, but I realized that only after watching the video of the presentations. The proposal for the Independent Study was easy for me, since I'll try working on the same topic as my thesis. Having a Todai professor whose specialty is language change will be a big help for my thesis come November when I have to continue writing it.

So yeah, I was so busy I didn't even had the chance to blog about my first snow in Tokyo so I'll just put up the links to the pictures and video here.

Sorry for being such a dork. It was my first time to see snow after all.:P Anyway, Miggy and I will be going to Yuki Matsuri on the 5th so we'll be seeing large snow sculptures there.(*o*)/ Nagi will be going with her friends, but we're going to meet in Sapporo.:D I'm getting excited, after seeing the snow sculptures they're going to have (and a biiiiiig snow slide and snow maze, too!!!) I'll try my best to record videos of the festival, using my DVD camcorder. But I still have to buy blank DVD-RWs for it, and one blank 8cm DVD-RW costs 1000yen.

We still have to pass two term papers, one for the Japan's External Relations class and the other for the Lit class. But I think those'll be easy since for the JER class, we only need to pass a 500-800-word essay and in Lit class, a 2000-word essay, which is what I consider a normal term paper in UP. But for the time being, since I have a loooooong break (Spring-Summer semester will start on April) I plan to travel a lot.:D After Yuki Matsuri, we have the overnight trip to an onsen in Hakone, then two days after, Viet Thi and I are off to Nagano Prefecture to ski~!(^.^)/ There is also the plan to go to Kansai region with Karen and the others, since we were invited by Micchan, who's studying in Osaka GaiDai.:3

Of course, I'm still doing part-time jobs. I've been able to save quite a lot, but I had to spend 10,000 for the Ski Tour.>_<;; I'll definitely return that to my savings when I get my allowance on the 15th. My student who lives near my dorm also contacted me again, after having a hectic week at work. I have online conversations with the Algerian guy almost every night, and meet once a week for the payment. The third one is an employee in an insurance company, a Todai alumnus, who wants to improve his conversation skills. We also talk online, and he'll be depositing his payment to my bank account every month.

I don't know what else to write here. I just want everyone to know that I'm going fine and still alive! But I lost weight, actually. In three months, I lost 3 pounds.D: I guess not eating fastfood for a change helps.^^;;