I got accepted for a credit card! There was some shenanigans with my long foreign name but guess it’s all resolved now. Just need to wait for it to arrive.
Youngest was taking to toilet training like a duck to water, wanted to sit on the toilet, wife and I were getting excited for toilet trained by two.
Until she got curious about the washlet buttons.
1 – That was a lot of screaming.
2 – That was a decent amount of water to mop up.
3 – Now she’s quite toilet shy.
4 – The whole thing was so damn funny, my wife and I were taking shifts leaning against the wall laughing, then taking care of her and cleaning up.
The week started bad, ending good for the most part. Even with the rain and all.
I love this country! Clean trains that run on time, extremely safe streets, cheap and relatively healthy food available everywhere, excellent customer service. Life is beautiful.
Enough complaining and whinging from the people in the complaint thread yesterday. Focus on what you have and what you should be grateful for.
my new BF has so far been a collection of green flags. I can’t believe how refreshing it is to date just… a normal, functional adult. (dating apps are so full of weirdos and manchildren.) I keep telling him one of the big reasons I like him is just that he’s so *normal,* and he finds this hilarious.
more IT department silliness: they bought some (expensive!) kopi luwak coffee. they are all so giddy and excited to drink poop coffee, it’s adorable.
I also gave them some leftover coffee beans my mother brought from the states, and one of the IT jijis gave me some fancy pudding omiyage as thanks. my next business trip is to Seattle, so they’re all getting fancy-ass artisanal coffee omiyage!!
Have my flight booked, looking forward to spending 3 months with my parents and my son! Very nervous to fly on my own with an infant (will be 7 months old when we go) but excited to see family and friends!
Thanks to the Kawasaki folks whom apparently read the complaint thread; they mailed me yesterday to say I can come in to do paperwork on my new bike anytime this month and receive it in the last half of June.
Thanks to /u/bloggie2 for suggesting I look on Amazon JP for a SIM to use whilst in the US.
Driving school gave me a call yesterday to arrange my <400cc bike classes’ schedule and Jun 18 will be the first day. HYPE
As much as I dislike going to the office, at least I no longer have to worry about my unwanted omiyage/snack purchases going to waste. These people will literally eat *anything* that you leave in the break room. I just dumped a bunch of cough drops in disgusting flavors that no one in my household could stomach, and they were gone in like a day…
New FFVII Rebirth trailer dropped.
あびがどござばすスクエニ様
My son finally came home.
We have a lot of doc appointments coming up, and he still has a cough.
But he is home and is cuddly and playful.
My local Starbucks finally got rid of the plastic dividers!! Both at the tables and at the register.
I am honestly over the moon, I seriously thought that those things were going to be there for the rest of my life. One more step closer to normality!
Successfully confirmed that my furusato nozei money was properly counted in my residence tax deduction. Time to keep an eye out on what to get this year.
Shit on My Number Card all you want, but it actually saved me from being denied boarding my flight back to Japan from my home country because me dumbass didn’t bring COVID vaccination certification that I got in Japan, which is required.
Not happened this week, but still.
Praise to whoever selectively bred ajisai that now we have this deep-blue/purple variety. These blooms look almost alien but I like them a lot.
I’ve begun to feel like a special regular at the coffeeshop I go to about 1 a week. They’ve offered to use a different blend than usual (one they bulk sell but don’t use in-cafe) for me when I order my to-go drinks since I like it more, and one of the baristas asked to trade instagrams. I’ve been feeling down a bit socially recently, so it’s nice to know that the baristas aren’t just being nice to me bc its there job but bc they actually kind of like me, even if its just bc I’m a solid regular.
Speaking of coffee, I took a latte art class in Shimokitazawa, and while my art sucked, I was surprised at how much of the class I understood! My Japanese is still far from fluent, but I guess my listening is in a better place than I thought! Little wins 🙂
“Why does the morning schedule always need an 20 extra minutes in it?”
Those 20 minutes have taken the hit of bed-wettings and bedding-washing, a mistakenly-programmed rice maker, NK Misile launches, moderate quakes and more, but my wife still asks me. Until today.
Today, neither kid wanted to wake up, and had pretty sour moods about the general process. Of course, they ate, got dressed, brushed their teeth and took their respective medicines, but it was all just *off*, it’s raining, no outside play time at school today.
It came to a head when the little one had to be put in her playpen during final prep time. Instant tears, which means equally crabby brother does his best to make her smile, but gets frustrated when it fails. Now it’s open rebellion about the day ahead, and that’s nothing to do.
*Except 20 minutes are left.*
So, RIP Iron Sheik, but it’s time for some Hulkamania, with a dash of Macho Man Randy Savage thrown in for good measure.
So I start to provoke my son, looking for a reaction (we play like this). He’s not into it, but he sees my grin, and knows something is up. So we start to play wrestle, and this makes his sister stop crying and pay attention. Nothing new, but I can feel something needs to be new. My wife is in the other room, finishing her prep.
(the following sentence has been proof-read, and is factually accurate.)
So I pull off underwear shirt, dress shirt (tie attached) and suit jacket in 1.5 motions (friggin’ tie) and declare “It’s time for a real fight, brother!” For two very long seconds, they both freeze, so I leg sweep my son, grab him, and as soon as I prop him up overhead and spin him a bit, he starts to lose it laughing, he’s 100% into it. Then my daughter starts laughing so hard she falls down on her butt and keeps laughing.
Right when I’m about to “break you, sucker!”, my wife walks in, sees me stripped to my suit pants, about to “shatter your spine, little man!”, with two kids trying to get the air in to keep laughing. She walked away saying “somethingsomething, hurt your back”.
Ten minutes later, we’re all cleaned up, dressed and ready for the day, kids smiling like it’s Christmas.
And that’s why we keep 20 minutes open. For if and when Hulkamania needs to run wild, it’s penciled in.
And joke’s on my wife, I only somethingsomething hurt a shoulder, and it already feels better.
Thank you everyone who posted in my thread last week about losing our dog. The compassion of strangers really helped us normalize our grief in a healthy way.
My husband and I enjoyed reading about the happy and sad memories you shared about your beloved pets and we got some good advice for cremation services.
For a sub known for being prickly and judgemental there are lots of good hearted people here.
Summer bonus.
Mini complaint: it wasn’t as outrageously fat as last year. Sad.
– It’s been all mid-term tests this week, so barely any actual teaching at all. Such a welcome respite. – Finally back running, and back in the gym after an injury setback. Feels good to be sore.
Finally finished writing the paper I’ve been struggling with for 2 months. I’ve sent it to my supervisor so there will be revisions before the final submission but at least I have time to relax this weekend without worrying about it. Yay!
Few smalls ones, but keeping an eye on the goods things is important so:
I’m really enjoying Street Fighter 6! Went back and forth on who to use and ultimately settled on Honda, as I wanted someone with a fairly basic gameplan/nothing TOO crazy combo wise so I can focus on my core gameplay.
Looking like the weather will hold up for Sports Festival tomorrow, and I have a special bento + a few side orders of super good fried chicken being delivered to it w/ the other teachers so I’ll be feasting for a week.
Things are going pretty smoothly with figuring out what comes next in life after JET. Pretty much sorted on the where and the job, just have to sort out a few details before I go all in on the apartment hunting and figuring out how I want to get my stuff moved.
Lots of events coming up, all of them good.
Really enjoying seeing the tourists back in full force – of course there are some annoyances but overall they bring a lot of energy to Tokyo.
My youngest voluntarily told us he had to go to the bathroom twice (once last night, once this morning). I might be buying the last bag of diapers *ever* sooner than I thought!
I love our new Vegeta fridge. I mean who doesn’t love Vegeta? He also keeps our vegetables fresh as fuck. Pulled out a week old cabbage the other day and it looked as fresh as the day I bought it. How is that even possible?? Technology is amazing.
For all the parents that like to play games that might make other parents/your partner stare or give a groan, outside of sudden-death morning WrestleMania, here’s a few more.
“So Anyway, I started Blasting”
– You need a kid who is old enough to bathe themselves, but still needs a parent to check if they got all the soap off (don’t want a rash and trip to the dermatologist again).
– A minimum of one (preferred three, with two being identical) water guns..
Let the kid shower with his/her toys.
When you go to knock to check, don’t knock, just open the door and start blasting. Bonus points if you have cold water in the guns.
Having two identical pistols, with one in the toys, makes the kid think they’re safe., but than boom, you have the double.
Sometimes, have the spare, but it’s empty, because “games get boring when it’s the same every time.”
Be advised, if your kid is even a little smart, they may have a bucket ready as a counterattck (I did not see it coming, I was so proud, and cleaned it up myself, a win is a win after all), or turn the hot water off at the kitchen console when you’re showering. This is all good and fair.
Nitrebuoc ed Erreip foot race.
The daily race to the door!
Stairs are off limits, and if it’s rainy, race is off, too dangerous.
Other than that, who wins?
I have a bag of burnable garbage here, can you sneak past it?
Oh! Did you pull on my bag strap to get leverage and hit my in the pit of my knee!?> Nice!
There are no losers, as both contestants are usually gasping for air from laughing so hard at the goal line.
I got a flyer in my mailbox for a horror movie opening that is happening at the Civic center across the street from me! Finally some Japanese mail suited to my taste!
Got the highest possible rating from my boss in my performance review this year which means I got my largest bonus ever today…it’s honestly a little intimidating because I’m afraid that I’ll mess something up going forward and damage his opinion of me and the work I do. But hey, I’m not going to complain about it!
Also, my other boss stood up for me the other day and got really kind of angry on my behalf for something an overseas employee asked me to do that was way above the conditions we set. It’s nice to feel like your boss is actually trying to protect you from an unreasonable workload instead of just throwing you to the wolves.
It’s Always Sunny is back and still wonderful.
A week a morning only classes because of parent-teacher conferences plus I took a sneaky day off today (with a friend at work running interference) and it looks like I got away with it!
Passed the first interview for a company I really want to go, after several rejections emails this week, this was the only news that cheered me up. I still have some hope left lol
31 comments
I got accepted for a credit card! There was some shenanigans with my long foreign name but guess it’s all resolved now. Just need to wait for it to arrive.
Youngest was taking to toilet training like a duck to water, wanted to sit on the toilet, wife and I were getting excited for toilet trained by two.
Until she got curious about the washlet buttons.
1 – That was a lot of screaming.
2 – That was a decent amount of water to mop up.
3 – Now she’s quite toilet shy.
4 – The whole thing was so damn funny, my wife and I were taking shifts leaning against the wall laughing, then taking care of her and cleaning up.
The week started bad, ending good for the most part. Even with the rain and all.
I love this country! Clean trains that run on time, extremely safe streets, cheap and relatively healthy food available everywhere, excellent customer service. Life is beautiful.
Enough complaining and whinging from the people in the complaint thread yesterday. Focus on what you have and what you should be grateful for.
my new BF has so far been a collection of green flags. I can’t believe how refreshing it is to date just… a normal, functional adult. (dating apps are so full of weirdos and manchildren.) I keep telling him one of the big reasons I like him is just that he’s so *normal,* and he finds this hilarious.
more IT department silliness:
they bought some (expensive!) kopi luwak coffee. they are all so giddy and excited to drink poop coffee, it’s adorable.
I also gave them some leftover coffee beans my mother brought from the states, and one of the IT jijis gave me some fancy pudding omiyage as thanks. my next business trip is to Seattle, so they’re all getting fancy-ass artisanal coffee omiyage!!
Have my flight booked, looking forward to spending 3 months with my parents and my son! Very nervous to fly on my own with an infant (will be 7 months old when we go) but excited to see family and friends!
Thanks to the Kawasaki folks whom apparently read the complaint thread; they mailed me yesterday to say I can come in to do paperwork on my new bike anytime this month and receive it in the last half of June.
Thanks to /u/bloggie2 for suggesting I look on Amazon JP for a SIM to use whilst in the US.
Driving school gave me a call yesterday to arrange my <400cc bike classes’ schedule and Jun 18 will be the first day. HYPE
As much as I dislike going to the office, at least I no longer have to worry about my unwanted omiyage/snack purchases going to waste. These people will literally eat *anything* that you leave in the break room. I just dumped a bunch of cough drops in disgusting flavors that no one in my household could stomach, and they were gone in like a day…
New FFVII Rebirth trailer dropped.
あびがどござばすスクエニ様
My son finally came home.
We have a lot of doc appointments coming up, and he still has a cough.
But he is home and is cuddly and playful.
My local Starbucks finally got rid of the plastic dividers!! Both at the tables and at the register.
I am honestly over the moon, I seriously thought that those things were going to be there for the rest of my life. One more step closer to normality!
Successfully confirmed that my furusato nozei money was properly counted in my residence tax deduction. Time to keep an eye out on what to get this year.
Shit on My Number Card all you want, but it actually saved me from being denied boarding my flight back to Japan from my home country because me dumbass didn’t bring COVID vaccination certification that I got in Japan, which is required.
Not happened this week, but still.
Praise to whoever selectively bred ajisai that now we have this deep-blue/purple variety. These blooms look almost alien but I like them a lot.
I’ve begun to feel like a special regular at the coffeeshop I go to about 1 a week. They’ve offered to use a different blend than usual (one they bulk sell but don’t use in-cafe) for me when I order my to-go drinks since I like it more, and one of the baristas asked to trade instagrams. I’ve been feeling down a bit socially recently, so it’s nice to know that the baristas aren’t just being nice to me bc its there job but bc they actually kind of like me, even if its just bc I’m a solid regular.
Speaking of coffee, I took a latte art class in Shimokitazawa, and while my art sucked, I was surprised at how much of the class I understood! My Japanese is still far from fluent, but I guess my listening is in a better place than I thought! Little wins 🙂
“Why does the morning schedule always need an 20 extra minutes in it?”
Those 20 minutes have taken the hit of bed-wettings and bedding-washing, a mistakenly-programmed rice maker, NK Misile launches, moderate quakes and more, but my wife still asks me. Until today.
Today, neither kid wanted to wake up, and had pretty sour moods about the general process. Of course, they ate, got dressed, brushed their teeth and took their respective medicines, but it was all just *off*, it’s raining, no outside play time at school today.
It came to a head when the little one had to be put in her playpen during final prep time. Instant tears, which means equally crabby brother does his best to make her smile, but gets frustrated when it fails. Now it’s open rebellion about the day ahead, and that’s nothing to do.
*Except 20 minutes are left.*
So, RIP Iron Sheik, but it’s time for some Hulkamania, with a dash of Macho Man Randy Savage thrown in for good measure.
So I start to provoke my son, looking for a reaction (we play like this). He’s not into it, but he sees my grin, and knows something is up. So we start to play wrestle, and this makes his sister stop crying and pay attention. Nothing new, but I can feel something needs to be new. My wife is in the other room, finishing her prep.
(the following sentence has been proof-read, and is factually accurate.)
So I pull off underwear shirt, dress shirt (tie attached) and suit jacket in 1.5 motions (friggin’ tie) and declare “It’s time for a real fight, brother!” For two very long seconds, they both freeze, so I leg sweep my son, grab him, and as soon as I prop him up overhead and spin him a bit, he starts to lose it laughing, he’s 100% into it. Then my daughter starts laughing so hard she falls down on her butt and keeps laughing.
Right when I’m about to “break you, sucker!”, my wife walks in, sees me stripped to my suit pants, about to “shatter your spine, little man!”, with two kids trying to get the air in to keep laughing. She walked away saying “somethingsomething, hurt your back”.
Ten minutes later, we’re all cleaned up, dressed and ready for the day, kids smiling like it’s Christmas.
And that’s why we keep 20 minutes open. For if and when Hulkamania needs to run wild, it’s penciled in.
And joke’s on my wife, I only somethingsomething hurt a shoulder, and it already feels better.
Thank you everyone who posted in my thread last week about losing our dog. The compassion of strangers really helped us normalize our grief in a healthy way.
My husband and I enjoyed reading about the happy and sad memories you shared about your beloved pets and we got some good advice for cremation services.
For a sub known for being prickly and judgemental there are lots of good hearted people here.
Summer bonus.
Mini complaint: it wasn’t as outrageously fat as last year. Sad.
– It’s been all mid-term tests this week, so barely any actual teaching at all. Such a welcome respite.
– Finally back running, and back in the gym after an injury setback. Feels good to be sore.
Finally finished writing the paper I’ve been struggling with for 2 months. I’ve sent it to my supervisor so there will be revisions before the final submission but at least I have time to relax this weekend without worrying about it. Yay!
Few smalls ones, but keeping an eye on the goods things is important so:
I’m really enjoying Street Fighter 6! Went back and forth on who to use and ultimately settled on Honda, as I wanted someone with a fairly basic gameplan/nothing TOO crazy combo wise so I can focus on my core gameplay.
Looking like the weather will hold up for Sports Festival tomorrow, and I have a special bento + a few side orders of super good fried chicken being delivered to it w/ the other teachers so I’ll be feasting for a week.
Things are going pretty smoothly with figuring out what comes next in life after JET. Pretty much sorted on the where and the job, just have to sort out a few details before I go all in on the apartment hunting and figuring out how I want to get my stuff moved.
Lots of events coming up, all of them good.
Really enjoying seeing the tourists back in full force – of course there are some annoyances but overall they bring a lot of energy to Tokyo.
My youngest voluntarily told us he had to go to the bathroom twice (once last night, once this morning). I might be buying the last bag of diapers *ever* sooner than I thought!
I love our new Vegeta fridge. I mean who doesn’t love Vegeta? He also keeps our vegetables fresh as fuck. Pulled out a week old cabbage the other day and it looked as fresh as the day I bought it. How is that even possible?? Technology is amazing.
For all the parents that like to play games that might make other parents/your partner stare or give a groan, outside of sudden-death morning WrestleMania, here’s a few more.
“So Anyway, I started Blasting”
– You need a kid who is old enough to bathe themselves, but still needs a parent to check if they got all the soap off (don’t want a rash and trip to the dermatologist again).
– A minimum of one (preferred three, with two being identical) water guns..
Let the kid shower with his/her toys.
When you go to knock to check, don’t knock, just open the door and start blasting. Bonus points if you have cold water in the guns.
Having two identical pistols, with one in the toys, makes the kid think they’re safe., but than boom, you have the double.
Sometimes, have the spare, but it’s empty, because “games get boring when it’s the same every time.”
Be advised, if your kid is even a little smart, they may have a bucket ready as a counterattck (I did not see it coming, I was so proud, and cleaned it up myself, a win is a win after all), or turn the hot water off at the kitchen console when you’re showering. This is all good and fair.
Nitrebuoc ed Erreip foot race.
The daily race to the door!
Stairs are off limits, and if it’s rainy, race is off, too dangerous.
Other than that, who wins?
I have a bag of burnable garbage here, can you sneak past it?
Oh! Did you pull on my bag strap to get leverage and hit my in the pit of my knee!?> Nice!
There are no losers, as both contestants are usually gasping for air from laughing so hard at the goal line.
I got a flyer in my mailbox for a horror movie opening that is happening at the Civic center across the street from me! Finally some Japanese mail suited to my taste!
Got the highest possible rating from my boss in my performance review this year which means I got my largest bonus ever today…it’s honestly a little intimidating because I’m afraid that I’ll mess something up going forward and damage his opinion of me and the work I do. But hey, I’m not going to complain about it!
Also, my other boss stood up for me the other day and got really kind of angry on my behalf for something an overseas employee asked me to do that was way above the conditions we set. It’s nice to feel like your boss is actually trying to protect you from an unreasonable workload instead of just throwing you to the wolves.
It’s Always Sunny is back and still wonderful.
A week a morning only classes because of parent-teacher conferences plus I took a sneaky day off today (with a friend at work running interference) and it looks like I got away with it!
Passed the first interview for a company I really want to go, after several rejections emails this week, this was the only news that cheered me up. I still have some hope left lol