Adventures in the Looking Glass

It appears I still have the miseries.


Anyway, words I use:

genki (energetic/bouncy/all the things I don't feel right now)
hanami (cherry blossom viewing time)
momiji (autumn leaves - esp maple leaves)
sakura (cherry)
shinkansen (bullet train)
onigiri (rice ball)
sugoi (wow!)
yokatta (that's great!)
cha (tea) - as in uron-cha, soba-cha, o-cha, ko-cha etc

There must be more, but I can't quite remember at the moment.



The upside of being pissed off (and I was given even more reason today by the dumbass gynacologist I have to put up with) is that it gave me enough energy to complete Week 3 of the Couch to 5K thing I started.  I was so full of hate that I pushed myself to a 4 minute run to finish things off.  Sounds sad - a mere 4 minutes - but progress none the less!!  I figure for as long as I'm grumpy, I'm just going to hurl myself into the gym and attempt to burn off the hate.

Oct 28th -

natsukashi - nostalgic
mochi - soft sticky rice cakes
anko - red adzuki bean paste

I've been in a bad mood for about 3 weeks now. Much of it is related to money. I don't really want to go into the whole situation, but I discovered in this month's paycheck that I now have to pay residence tax every month to the tune of about £75. This doesn't seem like a great deal, but when (after various obligations including loans, bills) you end up living on £350 for 5 weeks, you may understand my misery. I'm a bit pissed off that no one saw fit to actually warn me about this, and that after a year and a half working for this company I still haven't got a payrise, even though I'm well aware that other people have, and despite now being at the biggest school in Japan. Apparently, I'm meant to console myself with the thought of earning elusive bonuses by interviewing new students, keeping the old ones and helping the school make its astronomical financial goal every month. Despite having achieved this for the past ten months we didn't do it this month, which meant one of our managers was in tears to her boss on the phone on Wednesday night, and was receiving serious sounding phone calls from Kaicho yesterday. My birthday window-shopping trip with my friend Kazumi was postponed owing to visits from head-office and I had to miss the first 20 minutes of my Japanese class to entertain a time-waster of a visitor in the hope of making some money. I should work as a hostess for all the sweet-talking I do. I'd be better-dressed and better-paid too.

My problem, as Kazumi pointed out to me, is that I'm too nice and am not very good at saying no, as I'm so convinced that everyone will start to hate me if I do. So I get taken advantage of. This may sound like a bit of shock to certain people who think I already am one, but I think it's about time I became a Bitch.

So I've been advertising for private students, which is not something I want to do as I like having weekends. I'm meeting two of them tomorrow for trial lessons. One is an elderly lady and the other is a law student. the former I'm meeting in Yokohama station, the other at Shinagawa (at 10am).

What pisses me off most of all is that I am unable to do the things I want to do. I've been unable to go swimming because I can't afford the gym membership; I can't go to Japanese lessons (I want to take the JLPT test in December and I can't really do it by myself) but I can neither afford them, nor find the time for them since trawling for private students, and I can't go to visit my friends or anywhere in Japan. Moan moan moan.

I've been looking for other jobs but so far there's little on offer with better pay, though the working hours and pressure are a bit better.

Oh, and here's a story about being worked to death.

On a more positive note, and yes I have budgeted for it, I'm visiting the Kirin Beer Factory this afternoon with some students. We're having a factory tour, then a 20 minute "beer-tasting" and finally a trip to the Kirin restaurant, where the food had better be cheap, or it'll be rice and miso soup for the rest of the week. I would like to drown to sorrow, but as I observed in a pub somewhere once, "sorrow knows how to swim".