2013年9月28日土曜日

Not necessarily book related things, huzzah!

So... I haven't really done this so far, but I figured I may as well do a not strictly book related post. I should come up with a name for this, as all the best blogs seem to have one, but I'm lazy so.. later. Hehe.

Work is becoming stupidly busy (I'm having to do overtime... which is completely normal in Japan, but it's not normal in Jennyland, which is where I live!), so I really don't have THAT much book reading time recently. Boo. I have, however, been ending up in bookshops with nice big selections of English books and buying too many books recently, so I'm beginning to build a good TBR collection. Not sure if this is a good thing, our apartment doesn't really have that much space! Oh well! The things that I have bought recently that I am most excited about reading are Maus and Persepolis, yay! Thank you Shinjuku Kinokuniya for actually having a graphic novels section!

Ahh, that last paragraph was almost completely book related! Hehe. Oh well...

I managed to catch up on all of Breaking Bad, and am now enjoying watching it as it comes out... but I can only get the most recent episode on Monday, and I don't actually have time in the evenings after coming back from work to watch a whole episode of something, so I might ignore the internet from Sunday evening onwards until I've actually caught up.And if you haven't watched breaking bad, it's probably physically too late to watch it all before the last episode now, but you should catch up with it if you have the chance, as it's amazing! AMAZING!

One of my friends writes a blog, mostly about travelling around Japan, called Zooming Japan, and she interviewed me and several other people about dating Japanese men. You can find it here if you're interested! There's a picture of me and my husband on there too, so that's exciting?

And finally... seeing as I haven't really talked about myself much on here, a few exciting (?) facts about me!

1) I was born in Sweden. But I'm not in any way Swedish, although I do have a Swedish person number or something, which might make it easy for me to get a bank account in Sweden should I want to. Yay! 

2) I had plastic surgery when I was.. 5 or 6. Because I'm an idiot, and decided to step off a roundabout that was still going round when I was little, fell over and split my lip pretty badly... it healed strangely, and left me with a permenantly swollen looking lip (on one side) so I had (free) surgery to make it look normal (yayy, NHS!). You can still see that one side of my lip is slightly bigger than the other if you know about it. The best thing about the whole experience was being able to eat mashed bananas with brown sugar (one of my favourite childhood snacks. Not entirely sure why) and watch a care bears film.

3) I decided to study Japanese almost completely on a whim. I think my thought process was... ooh Japanese, Japan is an interesting sounding place... Japanese is difficult, I want a challenge... YAY JAPANESE! If I hadn't gone to a UCAS fair in Manchester and seen a Japanese studies stand, my life would be COMPLETELY different now. (I was going to study English or philosophy - way to choose useful degrees Jenny!)

4) I can see Mt. Fuji from my window (as anybody who follows me on instagram will be aware of, as that's pretty much the only thing I post pictures of, haha). 

5) I also really enjoy knitting and crocheting, and although I don't have enough time to do them all of the time (if I did that, when would I read?! WHEN?!?! I'm not skilled enough to do both at the same time), I have a couple of months each year where I get hooked (get it?) again. I have a crocheted Totoro and mini totoro (the white one) on my desk at work. I would post pictures, but um, they're on my desk at work so I can't. Oh well!

6) I LOVE podcasts, and spend most of my commute walking and standing time listening to them. Obviously there are a few book ones in there (Books on the Nightstand and Bookrageous being my favourites), but my all time favourite is Adam and Joe (both the XFM one and the 6 music one), but I'm not sure they are available anymore (although I'm sure they're out there if you search for them)... 
I also enjoy Answer Me This, The Bugle, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Reviews, This American Life, The Ones Who Knock (about Breaking Bad) and A Cast of Kings (about Game of Thrones).
If anybody has any recommendations for other podcasts, book related or not, tell me!

4 件のコメント:

  1. Those are 6 awesome reasons why I'm a fan of your blog. I am a huge fan of IRL-type of blog entries!! And yes, I clicked the link and OMG you guys are cute! (ps I love that you and Taka wrote your nationalities under your names, haha). I love reading book reviews, but it's also great to see that the people behind the other side of the monitor are very much human and enjoy themselves outside of reading :)

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    1. Haha, thank you! I like that you can really tell who was brought up in a culture where people do that kind of.. calligraphy, I guess?, and who wasn't. Even though I took a class on it when I was studying in Japan, and got good marks, it's not quite the same! Hehe.

      I like reading about the people behind the blogs too, although I'm always worried that I'm going to find out something that puts me off them.. so I'm glad that that didn't happen! Yay!

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  2. Jennyyyyy! I love this post! I have many things to say, so here goes!

    1) BREAKING BAD! OMG I watch it basically first thing on a Monday, and I still FREAK OUT and can't look at any internet or anything on my phone because WHAT IF SOMEONE HAS SAID ANYTHING ABOUT IT AT ALL?! It's bad, dude. I am so sad, and so stressed that it's the finale tomorrow!

    2) I can't even believe you were born in Sweden because whaaaaaat, you are like my dream self or something! (I love both Sweden and Japan, you know, from afar). That's a pretty awesome fact about yourself, tbh.

    3) Japanese is a totally badass degree to do, and NICE LIFE CHOICES, dude! I, sadly, did both English and Philosophy, aaaaaaand yeah. We won't talk about my life hahahaha.

    4) Knitting ftw, basically. Enough said.

    5) AND- I loooooved the thing about you and your husband! Especially that you speak English one day and Japanese another because that is the kind of thing that I find super interesting. Also that seems like a good decision!

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    1. 1) AHHH ME TOO! I honestly have no idea when I'm going to find the time to watch this weeks episode, I may have to avoid the general internet (I'm assuming that my own blog is okay...) until the weekend... ahhhh!!!

      2) Hehehe, I only lived in Sweden for 6 months, so it's not that exciting! I can't remember any of it, although Sweden was lovely when we went back when I was 10 for a holiday.

      3) Hehe, thank you! I think English and Philosophy are both really interesting things to study, but they don't really open that many doors, I guess.. not that Japanese does either, heh. If I won the lottery or something, I would definitely go back to uni and do some studying just for me without having to worry about future job prospects. And I'd buy ALL THE BOOKS and have a house with a giant library in like in beauty and the beast. Ahh, I want to win the lottery (I guess I have to start playing, heh)

      4) Do you knit too? I'm not very good, but it's such a good thing to do when you're feeling even vaguely stressed out. Yay! Especially sock knitting.

      5) Aww thank you! It works for us, but I can see that it would be really frustrating if one of you has much higher language skills than the other, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone! A lot of my English speaking friends in Japan have Japanese girlfriends/wives/boyfriends/husband/whatever, and I always feel sad when they say that they only speak in English. It's a waste of a good learning opportunity, dammit! (Mind you, maybe they aren't as into the language learning as I am, heh).

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