10 (LONG) LIFE UPDATES & back to blog…?

Woweee I have neglected this blog much longer than I wanted to 😦

Taking a quick peek at my blog’s front page, it looks like the last thing I posted was… back in October of last year. 2017. It’s summer 2018 now, I think I set a personal record for how long I’ve been away.

To be completely honest, with a lot that has been going on, updating my blog was the last thing I wanted to work on.

For a while, I was having a lot of personal struggles- silly stuff, like what I was going to do with my future. I second-doubted myself frequently if coming on the JET Program was the right thing I did. I passed the JLPT N2 in December after being completely positive that I had failed and would try again in July but after I found out that I passed I sort of faltered in this “do I even deserve to be considered N2 level, I can’t even hold a conversation to save my life” mentality- and because of that, I stopped learning Japanese briefly. I flip-flopped back and forth between if I wanted to stay in Japan, or if I wanted to move to another country. During winter, I was aching to go home and seriously considered doing one last year in Japan.

There’s more to it but I won’t dwell on it because now, I finally (for lack of better words) crawled out from the dark hole I put myself in. I feel like I know what I want for myself now and am content with where I am now. I’m doing my best to pass the days by doing the things I love, like studying Japanese, reading, or playing video games.

There are a lot of things that have occurred between October of last year and now- which I hope to put on this blog so that I can look back on a lot of the memories made. For the time being, some of those things have been updated on my bucket list– they’re indicated with “NEW” next to them. I can’t make any promises, but I will do my best to update those new events when I can.

For the time being, here are 10 random new things:

1) I am currently taking a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course.

During my phase of uncertainty, I decided to apply for a grant to use towards a TEFL/TESOL course. After being approved, I started taking a 120-hour TEFL course (which I’m still in the process of doing). I’m learning many useful things in regards to class management and lesson planning but ultimately, I don’t think I will (or want) to pursue anything teaching related. However, I do find the information very helpful and eye-opening. (And I’m sure this will look pretty good on my resume?)

2) I am in the process of studying for the JLPT N1.

After I snapped myself out of the results of passing N2, I decided not too recently to go for N1. My weak area in the N2 was vocab, so I started out with buying the Sou matome N1 vocabulary book. After starting the first couple of lessons, I started to feel… happy (?) again? I had forgotten how much I love learning Japanese and I sort of started kicking myself for ever having given up on it in the first place. I don’t know if I want to take the test in December, but I would for sure like to try to take the July test.

3) We renewed our Visas for 3 more years.

And I’m happy to say, we were approved! Not much more to go off of that.

4) We started going to the village’s local swimming pool.

And bought yearly passes! The weather here has been dreadfully hot lately, so while I’m not in the mood to go out to jog (any time of day), we figured swimming would be just as good exercise.

5) Trevor’s Twitch Channel is taking off.

Trevor started streaming maybe around November/December of last year. It wasn’t until late December that his channel really started to take off. He streams mostly Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and since December, has grown to become a GOG Partner and a Twitch Partner! He streams everyday Monday-Friday and really works hard to make sure all of his viewers feel noticed. He’s been doing great and I’m super proud of him to have finally found something he is passionate about. He also has a great and loving supportive community too!

6) DEADLY BUG ENCOUNTER(?!@#$$)

STORY TIME: This was maybe a month or two ago, but one day when I was home for lunch, I was in the kitchen and put my foot down. I felt something weird under my foot and when I lifted it up, I had realized that I stepped on a mukade that was crawling around on the floor. I screamed and ran into the other room while Trevor tried killing it with an electric fly swatter BUT OFCOURSE THAT DIDNT KILL IT. So he put it into a container and slowly suffocated it and told me we were going to fry it in oil to kill it when I came home from work.

Fast forward to later, Trevor gets the oil ready in his cast-iron pan, which is shallow. He tosses the mukade in hot oil and THIS LIL F&$(& decides to rise from the depths of hell (quite literally?) and CRAWLS OVER THE DAMN RIM OF THE PAN TOWARDS US LIKE HE WANTS TO BRING US TO HELL WITH IT ;____;

It eventually died. But omg that was the scariest experience we’ve had with a mukade.

7) I watched an anime for the first time in I don’t know how long lol.

I watched Devilman Crybaby on Netflix. And wowoowowowoowow I absolutely loved it, in spite of all of the crazy sh!t that went down in every episode. But I thoroughly enjoyed everything about it. It was the perfect length (10 episodes), I liked a lot of the characters, I loved that Ryo spoke some English in the Japanese dub (this probably comes from the fact that I appreciate the English exposure for Japanese viewers) and the music was pretty intense. Definitely on my list of favorites- rare since I tend to love a lot of the older anime and can’t really connect with some of the newer stuff.

8) Some shows we’ve watched recently since October (most being on Netflix):

• Fargo (started Season 3 last night)
• Silicon Valley (on Amazon video)
• Planet Earth II (also on Amazon video)
• The Ranch
• Sherlock
• The 100 (<<< Most predictable show ever)
• The Mist
• Lost in Space (the robot is the only likable character LOL)
• Arrested Development
• Altered Carbon
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (I am SO MAD that they cancelled this series!!)
• Cuckoo (but stopped watching after Andy Samberg left)
• The Good Place
• Black Mirror
• 72 Dangerous Animals Latin America
• The Inbetweeners (omg this show is so damn crude and funny)
• Mars
• The Sinner
• Stranger Things 2

9) Some games we’ve been playing or already played:

• Octopath Traveler
• Taiko no Tatsujin (Taiko: Drum Master)
• Mario Tennis Aces
• Mario Odyssey
• Crash Bandicoot series
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (new Master mode)
• Magic: The Gathering
• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game
• Final Fantasy XIV Online
• World of Final Fantasy
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Final Fantasy VII
• Okami
• Outlast II
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm
• Overwatch
• Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
• Pokemon Quest (Trevor played it for a while xD)
• Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
• Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter
• Slay the Spire
• Town of Salem

10) I bought a new air conditioning unit.

It’s not very exciting news but the one in our apartment is old and not working yadayada, so yeah. I feel like it’s the most adult-ly thing I’ve bought with a credit card. Trevor’s mom is helping us pay for part of it (thank youuu). Yeah.

Here’s a photo I took from when we went to Yoshinoyama for the cherry blossoms back in late March when my mom and sister were visiting. Figured this post needed a picture what with the lengthy wordy post.

TLDR; life has been a lil rocky but it’s fine and all good now BUT THAT’S LIFE RIGHT? xD