Weekly Weekend Thread – 04 July 2022

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1. Monday morning and the reception ony AU phone is still intermittently out.

2. Got my first ever bonus and finally bought a gaming monitor.

3. got stuck early Sat morning with the Sobu line down, didn’t get home until after 2am and spent the weekend recovering cause I’m old

4. Finally had a couple of days off work. Relaxed, played some games, and did a little work in the garden. Poor cucumbers are done for, I think. Peppers are doing well. Wasn’t feeling great yesterday so I hope I’m not coming down with something.

5. saw Ajikan in Nara and it was fucking awesome! Heard from my friend how great they were live and they still somehow blew all those high expectations away. Absolutely fantastic band live. The Nara Centennial Hall is actually a pretty great venue for that type of show, surprisingly intimate. Probably should try to see more shows there from now on. I’m glad I opted for that instead of Kobe World Hall (that was Friday anyway, no way I would have made it out)

   Ran across a ramen shop that banned you from the premises for two weeks if you go there four days in a row. I thought that was amusing. Drug dealers gotta take care of their customers I guess.

   Sunday was spent inside all day because of the rain, so I just read papers and worked on research. I didn’t even step out of my genkan

6. Woke up hungry last night. Half-awake, I looked for the nearest thing to snack on, and bit HARD into a multivitamin🤢

7. Pretty sure I bombed the N1 this weekend. But I pretty much expected that as I didn’t study as hard as I should have (partially due to lack of motivation/partially due to pregnancy symptoms making it harder to concentrate).

   Though I gotta say the listening thew me off a bit. I’m still confident in most of my answers, but for about 1-2 questions during the choose the best response part my mind went blank and I had to just guess as I didn’t hear the conversation. That plus another 3 or so questions on the listening I have 0 confidence in.

   If I pass it’s purely by luck, but not holding my breath.

8. We took our daughter to Asobi no Sekai and let her jump in the ball pit and bounce off the walls in the bouncy castle for a good hour and a half. She had the time of her life.

   I gotta say I miss weekends in Canada though. If you make any sort of trip out of the house here in Kanto you’re gonna be standing and waiting in long lines to do just about anything, especially eating at restaurants.

9. Went out to Akiruno to see some fireflies, and it was wonderful. According to one of the other people at the spot, it’s near the end of the season, so there aren’t as many as last week and before, but it was really, really good to be surrounded by nature.

   It was also a great escape from the heat and humidity. There had to be at least 5 degrees difference in how the temperature felt between the river area and the street area.

10. So much Monster Hunter. I think I might need to move my PC set up out of my bedroom for the summer though, as it generates enough heat that even with a fan going out the window it’s been very hard trying to sleep the past few nights.

11. I presented at an academic conference this weekend. It was my first virtual conference and I suddenly got the “you’re being watched” dread while presenting and became nervous… it was so weird, didn’t anticipate that at all.

    Friends had a beach outing while I was home doing the conference. I was a little bummed but I’m working hard. D1 and four conferences this year, feeling motivated.

    Now I’m off to baito and drained, hope the day goes by quickly.

12. Canceled my NURO contract because 2 months had passed and there was still not a word about construction.

    Went to Yodobashi, got sensory overload and ended up signing up at Softbank Hikari (had to come back there because they needed my passport).
    Construction is scheduled for the 11th. So much quicker.

    edit: Mosquitoes also ravaged me. Ow.

13. I was stuck in a massive conference room with a bunch of foreigners taking some test about some language people speak on occasion.

14. Invited a friend for Netflix and chill but we actually did Netflix and chill so I’m a bit disappointed, oh well, at least we got pizza.

15. Spent the weekend chillin with one of my friends and just exploring Tokyo and doing random things.

16. finally collected my motorcycle that’s been in the shop for over 6 months. (mostly my fault due to indecision and being a cheapo). The bill came up pretty big, like 150k lol

    but damn, it feels good to ride that bad boi again. The ride home was pretty fun, looking forward to going on long rides with it.

17. I played Airsoft for the first time ever. It was so much fun. I have little welts all over my body. But it was a blast! I hope to play more!

18. My 5 year old daughter planned her whole outfit to match the cotton candy in Harijuku and it did not disappoint.

19. I’ve always enjoyed the bags of 天狗製菓 ピリカレー snacks you could buy at Daiso for 100円 or sometimes a bit cheaper at some supermarkets. Well, they disappeared for a short time and now they are back. They were 85g, but now they are 60g for the same price. How disappointing. Still they are cheap and delicious, so I guess I’ll just buy two bags.

20. Why am I so sleepy all the time? I spent the whole weekend napping.

21. Stuck in loops trying to build a house: the builders say the architect will do something, but the architect says the builders will do it. As a result, no progress in our home project for the past 6 months or so. We’re at the stage where the layout is ready, the equipment is chosen, the wallpaper color was decided, pretty much everything is ready. We just want to see a damn detailed quotation now.

    How can we get a lawyer involved? Any recommendation of someone who specializes in this type of issues?

22. Started a new job a month or so ago and last week I was able to fulfill my duties. I was so scared thinking my Japanese skills wouldn’t be enough specially on a professional setting but my boss said I did a good job. So I was able to enjoy the weekend knowing there’s no deadlines/important meetings to prepare for this week.

    Also it has been 2 years since I took N1 and surprisingly I found reading to be extremely easy so I think if I fail it’ll be because I didn’t get minimum points in vocabulary.

23. Got Nuro installed (and had them swap me to a better ONU), put up some UV film on the windows, some new ACs.. been a busy weekend.

24. Got shoes to climb fuji-san ! So excited!

25. went to a department store with my mom and we unexpectedly came across a Din Tai Fung. last time I had it was a few years back in the US. so we chowed down on some soup dumplings, garlicky veggies, fried rice, etc. the mango shaved ice was also delicious.

26. Way too hot, so decided to stay in and deal with pension, taxes, health insurance stuff and set it up on the MyNumber portal. After wading through the archaic infrastructure for longer than necessary, the pension system eventually tells me my foreign name is too long for the online system and I have to go to the pension office in person.

    That was my ‘Welcome to 2022, Japan’ moment lol

    ​

    Decided to say fuck it, and play videogames instead.

27. Can’t seem to find my favorite edamame chips at seven eleven anymore. Did they stop producing them?

28. It was hot as satan’s sweaty fucking balls. But global warming isn’t real /s. Still managing to only use the AC at night, so I turn it off when I wake up and turn it on when I go to sleep. By the end of the day I’m just one disgusting sweaty mess.

29. Saw enough posts about the MyNumber campaign that I decided to sign up yesterday. Woohoo for all the free money!

30. Saturday was my last day in Tokyo and had a nice lunch at Zero Two Nasi Kandar, Otemachi. Then flew back to Kyushu and just lazed around at home the whole Sunday! ^^

31. I know this isn’t the complaint thread, but seven eleven’s large cafe latte price increasing by forty yen in one go is just ludicrous. my one daily vice. where’s the nationwide television commercial apologising for this?

32. Took N1: to copy from another thread-

    Based on leaked answers I got around a 30 on the vocab section, much much better than I thought I did. Grammar was much easier than expected, basically an N2 grammar test. Did my weighting off the 日本語能力試験ベスト模擬試験 book from the Japan Times. Would absolutely take a 30 but I bet I’ll be in the 25 range, we’ll have to see how they weigh it. Bet I get in the 90 range overall 🙃 reading carry me please

    Listening was unexpectedly tricky (as everyone is saying) and I def choked 2 of the three final questions. Which is like 6 or 8 points gone right there lol.

    Test environment was good, proctors were good and everyone was focused and in the zone. Nice change of pace from N2 when people were like, sipping Starbucks during the test and stuff.

    Here are the answers, keep in mind these aren’t necessarily correct. Test is done all over the globe so it should be alright to post em:
    https://jlpt247.com/jlpt-7-2022/

    Hopefully that’s my last JLPT, it’s an exhausting test and I just want to focus on reading books, learning business Japanese, and improving my speaking.

    Feels good to look at the N2 questions and be able to go “woah cool I know almost all this”

33. Was supposed to go sow some watermelon seeds on Sunday evening with friends but it got cancelled because of the rain..

    Went to a housewarming party for new Malaysian students on Saturday and that was great! Haven’t had nasi tomato or Ayam masak merah in forever. Exchanged contacts and it’s great to have more friends that come from the same place I do instead of just getting lumped up with mainland Chinese folks.

    Drew a bit between homework and decided that I’ll start drawing again. I think I want to get good at this.

    I finally finished and handed in my essays for this class I’m taking 😭 4 days late but still. 1200 words “what is money” and 1000 words “stagflation in the future” both in Japanese. I’m so fucking glad this is over.

34. Me and mom finally went gyoumu super since we had the car for the weekend and damn I haven’t had that much fun in a while. My local one is small but wow was it stocked like donki. We bought over 30 items and were worried we didn’t bring enough cash, but our total was under ¥10,000 and I was so surprised! Never want to shop at my local stores again but alas, I have no car 😢

    Also my mom had the hardest time trying to remember the name of gyoumu super. First she started with Oote super (大手スーパー), then remember gyoumu for a while, then ended up at eigyou super (営業スーパー). Lots of confusion, since i thought she was talking about Aeon or Costco with the first one

35. Had a stomachache Saturday night, & in a sleepy stupor, I mentioned it to my spouse as we were about to drift off. Said spouse sprang into action & flew back into our bedroom with a bottle of 正露丸 pills. Once given the vague instructions to “take three”, I poured them out into the palm of my hand. Lord have mercy, I was not prepared for that 1st waft of what can only be described as notes of black licorice, deer horn, and wait, do I detect liquid smoke?

    Turns out one should pour them into the cap to avoid your hands smelling like frickity frack for a few hours (rookie mistake, I’ve now learned). I put three into my mouth as I scrambled for water, which was of course in another room. A true comedy of errors for someone whose worst brush with nasty medicine up to this point was yellow Triaminic.

    Turns out, it works really well. I’m 5 doses in & cured by Monday.

36. Today is victory against the nemesis “G” day. Just has to show up just before I get ready to go to bed. God damn G. Eat Fabreeze!

37. Damn rain 🌧️

38. Bought a large pineapple and ham pizza. Wish I hadn’t.

39. Borrowed a road cycle from a former student. My first day riding a road bike was not a good choice. It was peak 34°C on a low usage road with almost no shade.

    Got home and pretty much crashed on the sofa for 2 hours. But, my knees don’t hurt like they do when I run!