Hello everybody,

First of all thank you very much for your comments to my last entry
I've been so freaking busy this whole week. I guess I'm still not used to work that lasts from Mo-Fr without a break C= (-。- ) フゥー
I know I shouldn't complain, that's your normal work schedule plus it's only every other week anyway, but I feel that I don't really have enough time for ANYTHING!
Yesterday I finally managed to finish another step in my Japanese studies, doing almost (see later) nothing but studying.
Today I won't have so much time to study as I have to clean my apartment, wash my laundry, answer e-mails, write entries etc.
It's amazing how fast time runs and you never have enough, huh? (And here it's September again! )
I was invited for lunch today by one of my Japanese coworkers, but I had to turn her down as I was way too busy. Such a shame :/

My usual day looks roughly like this: (~ means until in this case)

• ~8:00am: getting up (I usually set my alarm clock around 7.50am, but in the end I can't get out of my bed before 8am, sometimes I even sleep until 9am *sigh*)


• ~10:00/10:30am: after finally getting up I get ready for the day (brushing my teeth etc.), prepare my breakfast, eat my breakfast while browsing the internet (lj, news, japanese sites, e-mail etc.)


• ~12:30pm: what happens now depends on what I need to do (laundry, shopping, cleaning, run errands of some other kind etc. and/OR study Japanese)


• ~13.30pm: prepare and eat lunch while usually watching something on my laptop


• ~14pm: getting ready for work which starts at 2pm


• ~22:00pm: I come home from work, but I often can't leave at 22:00 and have to stay a little bit longer


• ~0:30/1:00am: I browse the internet one more time (sometimes I have to wash my dishes at night, so I watch something on my laptop while doing so) / I watch a drama/anime and around 0:00am I go to bed to read some Japanese material (just started another novel last night)

As you can see that leaves me with a MAXIMUM of 2 hours to study Japanese per day, usually it's way less.
I also want to do some light exercises / jogging / some kind of sport ... and cook from time to time.
I just have no idea WHEN TO DO ALL THESE THINGS!!! Luckily I don't have any other MAJOR hobbies, but it's REALLY difficult to finish everything I actually had planned each day and it's kind of frustrating. I wouldn't say I feel stressed, but really rather frustrated. Especially (and that's the old story again) concerning my Japanese studies. It definitely helps that I have days off on Thursday, Friday and Sunday every other week, but acutally it's 2 weeks that way and the following 2 weeks it's a "normal" working week and those weeks are quite busy! I'm not complaining about the fact that I have to work from Mo-Fr in general, but that I don't have enough time to study Japanese that way (and that's one of the main reasons I came here - as you might remember).
I'm not yet sure if I should recontract or not. I'd love to stay another year at that school, I hope I can reduce my working time even more (byebye salary), but I'm not sure if it's possible as we got quite busy lately (more students again). We'll see.
Recontracting time is soon as we have to give a 4 months notice if we leave/quit.

So anyway ..is it only me who feels that there's almost nothing but work from Mo-Fr? What about the other people on my f-list who also live in Japan? I sometimes have the feeling that you guys have more free-time, but that's probably just my impression.
Of course it also has to do with my work time which is until 10pm every night.

Work itself has been superbusy that week as well. While one of my coworker is complaining that he's bored I'm just running from one class to the next. It's a little bit unfair, but oh well. And stupid me is making things for me even busier: I'm helping to translate the self-written speeches of our students (Jap->Eng). It's really tough. Although I can basically understand their essays it's another story if you have to translate them (plus it has to be EASY English!). Understanding something or also translating it are really two different things. It took me forever to just translate one short speech properly (x___X)> It's good practice, though. (esp. considering that none of these languages is my native language anyway)

One more thing concerning work: One of our students (well, actually more than one, but that's the newest story) is being bullied by her classmates in her elementary school (she's in 6th grade). She's such a nice and smart girl, I swear!!! I can't understand why anybody would bully her AT ALL!!!!! We have two other girls that have stopped going to school because of that (yet they come to our eikaiwa, because we're all nice to each other ;P)
I really don't see why Japanese students bully their classmates so often. I know that bullying is no Japanese thing, but I have the feeling that it's nowhere as extreme as here?!
I feel so sorry for that girl and wanna beat up whoever is bullying her :/ GRRRR!!!! フザケルナ！凸(￣ヘ￣)





Friday night I wanted to go to bed early so that I could get up early on Saturday to study, but then I got caught by the last few episodes of "Smile". I never write about the jdramas I watch anymore, huh?
Smile was horrible to watch and I almost wanted to stop watching it at some point, because it was so hard to watch and bear it. At least "1 litre of tears" warns you with its title, but you don't expect THAT from a drama with the title "Smile", right?
I'm not going to give you any major spoilers, so don't worry. I think the drama has at least ONE good thing, though. It's very self-critical about the Japanese society in general, but prejudices (against foreigners) in particular. I also hate the fact that Japan still has the death penalty!! I'm completely against it! And I heard prisoners often won't know their execution date until the morning of the actual day!!! (SPOILER FOR SMILE LAST EPISODE: and it was the same in Smile .... SPOILER END)

What about your country? Do you have death penalty and what do you think about it?
Jesus, I really should update my "watched jdramas" page (x_X) ....... *headdesk*



Regarding my last entry: I was not very lucky!
It seems it was on TV after all! On Thursday one of my Jr. high students told me. She didn't say much about it, just that she saw me, so I'm not sure if it was horrible or not. Good thing I didn't see it.
Ever since then I haven't heard anything about it anymore, so I just hope that the people who saw it will forget about it soon again.

Regarding the curtains I bought a while ago, I managed to send them back successfully.
Now it's time to look for another set of curtains. They should be thin and white or lightpink(?) to match the curtains I already have. The most important thing is that they are almost transparent so that I still can see what's going on outside.
Something like this, just cheaper. I'll let you know once I've decided what to buy in the end :D I hope this time I get the right ones ┐(-。ー;)┌ヤレヤレ



Regarding healthy food in Japan:
Some of you seem to have misunderstood me back then. I didn't complain so much about gaining weight, but about the fact that Japanese food might not be so healthy after all. If the entry gave you another impression than it was probably my fault, sorry.
Anyway, I've been trying to keep my eyes wide open and find healthy food whenever possible:



left: Pasta sauce without any food additives :) (無添加)
middle: Chowder wannabe soup (you have to buy and add the vegetables, though)
right: that's nothing new: Honey lemon drink (a long time ago leviosa8 let me know about this): vitamine love for winter ^-^
below: Rice Pasta!!! Have yet to try it, though :D

I'm thinking about buying brown rice as well, but the thing with brown rice is (that's what I read) that you have to put it into the rice cooker the NIGHT BEFORE YOU WANT TO EAT IT and that sounds quite bothersome. But it is way healthier than white rice.
A coworker also gave me the tip to use wheat/grain which you can buy and just add to the rice before you put it into the rice cooker. I'm definitely going to try that out :D



Lately I'm drinking soy milk more often (although I don't really like it with my muesli!)
Fresh cheese!! It's way too dry and doesn't taste like anything. Nothing compared to what you can get in Europe :/ ..... but better than nothing, I guess ^^; ....



I also found "dark" bread again (I'm not sure what exactly that greenish bread was, but it was quite dry). It's genmai bread again, but this was really awesome and I'll definitely buy it again ;o;

In other news I cooked yesterday, FOR REAL!!!!



Took quite a long time, but it was really nice :D
(Bacon, carrots, onions and potatoes)



Brocolli! I love brocolli! It was not sooooo~ expensive, so I might try to cook things with one of my fav vegetables again soon ^-^



The only problem with my kitchen is that it's too small. Only one cooking plate and NO SPACE where I could prepare / cut food!!! The plates and dishes were spread throughout my whole apartment (-___-') ... really annoying, but I have no other choice!



Tada~ the finished product :3 (yepp, it's the chowder soup thingie of the photo before ^^; ...)
Of course 750g are ment for 3-4 people, so I couldn't eat the whole pot in one day. It'll be dinner tonight again :3
It was super yummie!! Fresh vegetables / selfmade food DOES taste good after all :D (I just wish I had more time to do things like that more often .... and a bigger kitchen would definitely be helpful as well ...)


Concerning Japanese green tea:
Wow, I haven't written anything about it in a long time. It seems that ever since I came to Japan I didn't care so much about it anymore. Of course I still drink green tea every day, but I didn't care about the quality or the way of drinking at all although I cared so much about it when I was still back home in Germany. Strange, huh?
Lately I became interested in it again. What's the best way to drink Japanese tea? What's the healthiest way? (aka without destroying all the good stuff in it!)



Back home I used something like in this picture. I got rid of the filter because I heard the leaves should be able to spread in the water, but I kept my tea warm with the little tea light you can see which is right below the teapot.
I read now that this is not good for Japanese tea as the candle keeps boiling the tea. It might be okay for fruit tea etc. but not for the sensitive Japanese tea!
I asked my female coworkers about how they drink their green tea. Actually they use something like this:



It's a really small teapot and there's a filter in there as well. You put the tea leaves into that filter and than pour water in the teapot (of course the filter is already in there). Then you wait for about a minute (depends on the tea of course) and then you pour everything into a cup (so you have to make sure that there's no water left in the teapot). You can repeat that several times with the same tea leaves, but the problem with that is (that's what I've read) that the healthy stuff in the tea is gone after the first infusion.
That's why I prefer to do it like this: Use more tea leaves and let them swim freely in the teapot (I have a huge glass one), then add the water, wait a minute, get rid of the tea leaves inside with a filter (I just pour the tea into another pot using a filter).
That way all the tea I drink is healthy (because it's the first infusion).
The only problem with that method: the tea gets cold quite fast and I have no clue what to do about that. Like I said the method with the tea light I used in Germany is apparently not good for Japanese tea plus I've never seen any teapots with tea lights here in Japan anyway.
Anybody has any idea???
And a question for those of you who are quite advanced in Japanese: 有機 ,たとえば有機煎茶ってどういう意味でしょうか。(it just gives me organism as translation o_O ..... organic tea?)
Thanks :)


Jesus, what a long entry. Sorry! And so random, too!

Pikachu? Raichu? No, it's a bye☆⌒ヽ(*'、^*)chu　(((((￢_￢) ....... ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=┌(;￣◇￣)┘