Day pass into weeks, weeks into months, and now we find
ourselves in the closing stage of the reign of the Heisei emperor. If you didn’t know, the emperor of Japan is
retiring at the end of the fiscal/school year, so the traditional Japanese
calendar will start from year zero next April.
Who knew the emperor was allowed to retire?
So I have largely been neglecting my blog as my life has
settled into a routine that feels very little like the adventure of my first
year or two here. Work has settled down
and classes are finally as easy as they were by the end of my first stint in
Japan. My kids know me, and the fear of
being hit with ever-present balloon seems to deter most bad behavior. My large apartment is nice, although these
days few of my friends come to visit. I
started running again almost daily in October, because I signed up for a relay
race in February. I’ll be doing it right
here in Ogaki with some old buddies that I used to run with years ago. My time is widely expected to blow. Oh well, my teammates mostly have full time
jobs and kids. I learn a tiny bit more
Japanese every day, although I don’t really use much at work. I passed the top level of the Japanese
language proficiency test back in July (I got the result in September). I now feel fully qualified to read a
newspaper article and answer a multiple choice question about it with 70
percent accuracy. I’ve done a number of
things that I’ve blogged about in the past, but don’t really feel like
re-reporting. I went to the Ogaki
festival in October and caught flying rice balls. I went to thanksgiving at a coworker’s house
and cooked mac and cheese this time, which outperformed last year’s crappy
potatoes. We had a Halloween party for
the kids and I crossed dressed again, this time as a witch. Our Christmas party is coming up next week,
and I’m going to be sort of an anti-Santa; I basically plan on walking around
with a big sack of crappy presents like newspaper and old socks. Should be a good time. I’ve been on a couple mediocre tinder dates,
which wound up feeling more like language exchanges than dates (that is to say
work, where I get to speak Japanese!) I’ve
done some bike rides and hikes as well, but at this point it just feels like
normal exercise rather than exploration…
If this blog seems like a bit of a downer, don’t get the
wrong idea. I’m enjoying myself more
than last year or even the first half of this year. I just haven’t done much that I feel like
bragging about on the internet.
Looking forward I’m coming home as usual for Christmas. For the second year in a row I got super
cheap tickets, this time $740 for the 12/24 to New Years. Speaking of cheap tickets I also snagged a
$250 ticket to Vietnam for our January break.
I’m going for 4 days to Hanoi with the same two friends that went to
Malaysia in September. I’m pretty stoked
for that because it seemed like they weren’t going to have enough money to make
it happen for a while. Plus who knows
when the next time I’ll be able to travel Asia with two 25 year old women
again??
Well, we are nearing the end of 2018, so have a merry Christmas,
jolly Chanukah, festive Kwanza or whimsical pagan solstice celebration. Let’s start 2019 on the attack!