Things that made me happy this week #6

A little bit late with this but oh well! One of these days I will actually write this post on a Sunday.

1) Having my husband at home on both Saturday and Sunday!

Yes, recently he has been working at the weekend so much that this is actually a cause for celebration. We celebrated by staying in and doing nothing. Huzzah! (We both actually had to spend quite a bit of time working on Sunday, but we got to eat lunch and stuff together, yay!)

2) Establishing a proper skincare routine

Seriously my skin is so nice at the moment. If I could just stop picking at anything that looks like it might turn into a spot it would be even better! I spent years just using really cheap face washes/moisturisers etc., figuring that as long as my skin wasn't rejecting them outright it was fine, but having actually taken some time to research what would work well for my skin and actually spending a little bit of money my skin feels better now than it has in years! YAY. I have also been remembering to actually wash my face properly when I wake up, rather than forgetting and doing it around midday, haha.
If anybody is interested I might do a different post about what my routine actually is, I am always really nosy about other people's routines for this kind of thing, hehe.

3) Travel plans

I'm going to Australia next month for a friend's wedding, and I AM SO EXCITED! I sorted out my visa and stuff at the weekend (I can get a free one, but my husband has to pay for his. Mwah ha ha ha! Yay for being from Europe!) so it really feels like we're going now. Whoop whoop!

4) Actually cooking

Okay, so I do actually eat most of my meals at home, and there is SOME cooking involved in this, but normally I am only cooking for myself so I really don't try very hard or make proper food. But at the weekend my husband and I cooked lots of nice things and it was lovely. Yay! I just need to find the motivation to do this during the week too...

5) My shiny new camera

I FINALLY got a proper camera (as in, not a point and shoot one, and not my phone!) after wanting one for the last 10 years. Yayyyyyy! So I have been taking pictures of EVERYTHING, and realising how boring my house is. (I have actually had this for a few weeks, but I hadn't written about it on here and it's still making me happy, so whatever!)
I'm also really grateful to my dad and brother-in-law (who has a side business doing wedding photography) for giving me lots of pointers while I was in England and borrowing my dad's old DSLR. In fact, I am just about to go for a walk to my local park to see if there is anything worth taking pictures of there (and because my lungs finally feel up to walking!!! YAY!)

Things that made me happy this week #4

Ellie is off jetting around Europe this week so I doubt that she will be posting, but I thought I would write a happy things list this week anyway. I am finding this really helpful in making me appreciate the good, even when everything seems pretty dark and gloomy (like it did last week).

Onwards!

1) Beautiful sunsets

Sunset (with bonus Mt. Fuji). Beautiful!

jimjamjenikoさん(@jimjamjeniko)が投稿した写真 - 2015 6月 9 3:08午前 PDT

I don't know what it was about last week but for whatever reason, on clear days the sunsets have been pretty spectacular. Plus, I have been able to see Mt. Fuji way more often than I normally can this time of year, which always makes me happy.

2) Walks in the park

Okay, I say walks, I've only really been on one.. but whatever. About 3 minutes away from where I live there is a pretty massive park which I went for walks in all of the time over the winter, but have avoided since it got hot out. But I decided that I was going to go for a walk after lunch today, sweat be damned! And I am glad that I did because it was BEAUTIFUL. There were loads of flowers out (mainly hydrangeas), and while I was walking I could hear Japanese bush warblers (鶯 (uguisu) in Japanese) chirping away (click here for a video of one. Awww), and honestly it was lovely. Even though I had chosen a slightly silly sock/shoe combination that led to getting pretty painful rubs on my ankles. It was TOTALLY WORTH IT!

3) Being in a feast month

Nothing to do with eating, but more to do with the amount of work I have to do! I had heard before quitting my old job that freelancing was a bit of a feast or famine kind of situation, and that is definitely true. I have actually been doing way better than I predicted I would, but there's still a little knot of worry in my stomach at the beginning of every month that I won't get enough work coming in (the nature of the kind of translation I do means that larger projects are few and far between, and most things come in suddenly)... but this month I definitely have enough already, with more work on the horizon. Huzzah!

4) Spending quality time with my husband

I think I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but my husband is working insane hours recently, and has also been going in at the weekends. This means though that I appreciate the time that I do get to spend with him SO much more, which is definitely a good thing! Hopefully this will only carry on until the end of July though...


I am super busy this week but hopefully it'll be a good one!

Things that made me happy this week #3

Another week, another list of happy things! As always, you can find the things that have made Ellie over at Lit Nerd happy this week and see links to other people's lists here.


1. Chihayafuru 

I think this is from the anime rather than the manga, but whatever!

I haven't read any manga that I have become addicted to for a while, so it was a pleasant surprise to find Chihayafuru! I have read 14 or so volumes in the past week (in Japanese - that is an astoundingly fast pace for me) and I am actually having to stop myself from reading it all of the time so I can get other things done. Alas, I don't think there is an official English version. If nothing else, I think it would be really difficult to translate as it is based around competitve karuta, a card game that uses waka (a traditional type of Japanese poetry)... It is giving me a new appreciation for classical Japanese though (whereas up until now I have just thought I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE SAYING!!! even though I did a module on it at university, hehe).


2. Book shopping

Despite having a book based blog I don't actually go book shopping that much, weirdly! If I am in the area of one of the big bookshops with a decent English section in Tokyo I will always go and have a look, but because I am trying to read in Japanese all this month I have been going to bookshops and picking up things that look interesting to try to keep my motivation up. I forgot how much I love book shopping! I forgot how much my wallet doesn't love book shopping! Hehe.


3. Barley tea

Now that it is warmish in Japan (although having said that, it's really not very warm today), I feel like I can start enjoying all of my usual food and drink that gets me through Japanese summers, starting with barley tea. It's super easy to make, you just throw a teabag into a jug of water, put it in the fridge and wait for a few hours, but there is nothing quite so refreshing as a glass of barley tea when you've been walking around in the sun all day. Yum!


4. Realising that I can change things that are making me unhappy

So I didn't have the best week last week (in spite of all the books!), but after thinking about everything that has been bothering me, I have realised that although I can't control some of the things that are making me unhappy, I can accept things and try to make the most of them, or think of ways to stop them from getting me down. I can also take a step back and realise that although things aren't too great at the moment, overall I am pretty lucky!


Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Japanese reading to do.

Things that made me happy this week #2

1) My friend visiting from Korea

My friend Dave (that is, unsurprisingly, not his Korean name) came over to Japan to see the Kendo world championship and stayed a night at my house, and then I was able to spend the next day with him and it was really nice to catch up! He was like an older brother to me in my makeshift year abroad studying in Japan family.

From the left: Taka (my husband!), Saroda (another member of my year
abroad family) and Dave, taken when we visited Korea in 2011. I would
have put up a picture from this time but I didn't take any because I suck

2) Cleaning all the things!

So I wasn't super happy about this before I did it, but in preparation for Dave coming I cleaned my flat much more thoroughly than I normally would, and now I get to enjoy the fact that all of the places that I always mean to clean but somehow never get round to are actually clean! If only things didn't naturally get dirty again over time.

3) Realising that I might actually be developing a healthy body image

This is heading into super shallow country, but, as most girls do, I had serious problems with self-image for years, but I realised a few days ago that I just really don't care about it in the way that I used to. So although I know I'm not as healthy as I could be and still have some issues with food (I'm working on it), I don't get down about how look at all any more. I'm not sure whether I would have naturally got to this place by now anyway, or whether a large part of it is to do with living in Japan where I look completely different to the majority of people around me (I do not in any way have the same body type as a lot of girls here do, and I think that stops me from comparing myself so much! I also get lots of positive comments about how I look (but I have also been told that I look really like Nicole Kidman (I do not) so I tend to take these with a grain of salt)) This is definitely a good thing though! Yay!

4) Studying and spending free time productively

So the MOOC thing I talked about last week is going well so far, and I am actually finding it nice to have productive to do when I'm not working. I have also decided to make more of an effort to do things in Japanese, and I have signed up for a Tadoku contest. Tadoku is basically the idea of learning a language through reading a LOT - it is made up of Kanji which mean "many" and "read", which makes sense, right? The contest is basically who can read the most in a foreign language over a month in this case, although there's a massive range of learners doing it, so I think most people find someone who is around the same level as them and compete with them, rather than aiming for first place (I could probably aim for first place, but we'll see how it goes!) I am actually still in 13th place in the overall rankings for the contest, even though I haven't actually taken part in one since 2011 (I think???) - goes to show how much free time I had that year I think, hehe.

Anyway, I already finished my first book (it was only a tiny one) and I remembered that I actually really enjoy reading in Japanese. Not sure how I forgot that...


See Ellie's list and things that have made other people happy here!

Things that made me happy this week #1

Ellie at Lit Nerd has been doing a thing for a while called "Things that made me happy this week", and I thought I would join in. Yay!

1. Actually spending time with my husband
My husband has been working like CRAZY recently, including going into work in the mornings, and as he goes to work so early and gets back so late I end up not having much time to see him during the day... but that just makes the time that I can spend with him over the weekend feel more special! So I am very happy that I got to spend most of Saturday and Sunday with him <3

Ebizou Ichikawa, one of the Kabuki actors we went to see!

2. Going to see Kabuki
Kabuki, if you don't know, is a traditional style of Japanese play that involves singing, dancing, and elaborate acrobatic fight scenes. It was on my list of things to do in Japan at some point, and I finally got round to actually going on Saturday! Yay! The performance that we went to was about 4 hours long (although that includes some little breaks as they change scenery and one 30 minute break where we ate tea and another 10 or 15 minute break later), and I thought that I might get bored half way through but it was pretty entertaining!

If any of you ever come to Japan and are interested in that kind of thing I recommend it! Tickets for good seats are pretty expensive (we got them through my husband's company and they were very heavily discounted - we paid quite a bit less than half price), but if you ever come to Japan it might be worth going to! You can apparently go on the day and get tickets for just one act, which would maybe be about an hour and is much cheaper, although the seats aren't as good (and half of them are standing). They have English audio guides and a new subtitle thing that you can rent that explain what is going on. I actually used the subtitle thing myself as the Japanese used in the plays is pretty old and I wasn't sure whether I would understand it. My husband got an audio guide in Japanese and said that it was really helpful for him too!

3. Signing up for some MOOCs 
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), if you don't know, are courses that you can do online for free. There's a massive amount of variation in them,  but a lot of them are basically the equivalent of doing a university module. It's been a while since I was in education, but I have recently realised that although I don't mind most of the translation work I do, the translation that I actually enjoy the most is to do with health and medicine, so I have decided to take a few MOOCs to boost my credentials and knowledge so I can hopefully break into the medical translation industry (at the moment whenever I'm doing something related to medicine I just bombard my mum (who recently retired but was a doctor) with questions). Yay! You can pay for certificates to prove that you have passed the course, which I wouldn't do if I was just doing it for fun, but I definitely will if I'm doing it for professional reasons. Plus, tax write-off, yayyy!!!

If you haven't investigated them before and the idea sounds interesting, I think the three biggest sites are Coursera, EdX and Udacity, and there are all kinds of courses on there from highly respected universities, so even if you're just doing it for fun, I'm sure you could find something interesting! I kind of wish that the Japanese equivalent was more developed (there are some courses in Japanese, but although some of them sound interesting to do for fun, it would be nice to have some that would help me in a professional capacity).

YAY FOR LEARNING! I'm excited to get started, although first I'm doing a course that is supposed to help you learn techniques to learn more efficiently in the hopes that it will help me actually retain most of what I learn, hehe.

If anybody is interested in this I might do a post about it once I've either finished or am part way through some of the courses that I am going to do.

4. Lovely weather
Japan is on the verge of passing over into too hot for comfort territory, but at the moment it is pretty nice! It's sunny almost every day and not too hot, and it's nice to not have to wrap myself in millions of layers every day to stay warm. I love Japan, but houses here really really really need better insulation. Or insulation at all. And central heating! And to look nicer! Hehe. Hopefully there'll be at least a couple more weeks of this before we hit the rainy season (although I don't mind the rainy season either because I have cute wellies. Cute things make everything better!)

Super exciting life update!

So yesterday was a pretty momentous day for me. It was the last day at my job... and a busy one! I didn't leave the office until it had gone 11! This is mostly my fault as I assumed that I would have time in the last couple of days to sort out the data on my work computer and clean my desk, but I didn't vouch on new work coming in earlier this week. Ah well! It's weird how staying that late doesn't seem like a bad thing when you know that you don't have to work the next day (and that you won't be wasting most of a precious weekend day by sleeping, because it's Friday and everyone else is at work. Mwah ha ha ha!).

Anyway, I quit my job as I got to the stage where I think I either had to accept that I would be working there until I was forced to quit for whatever reason, or to actually try to do something that I've been wanting to do for ages, which is becoming a freelance translator. I have no idea if the freelance lifestyle will suit me (or if I will be able to get enough work to make this financially viable!)... I expect that the reality will be radically different from the idealised version I've been pining after for years, but if I am going to do this then I figured it was better to try now, than in a few years when my husband and I might have more responsibilities than we currently do. And if it doesn't work, then I can go back to an office job (or an English teaching job) and feel more satisfied with the decision.


In terms of books... this means that for at least the next month or so I should have more time to read! Yayyy! I haven't really been aiming to read a particular number of books this year, but according to goodreads I have finished 82 books so far (I'm pretty sure that my blog does not in any way give off the impression that I have read that much!) which is so close to 100 that I feel tempted to aim for it... but then I don't want to rush through books (which is something that I do too much anyway) just for the sake of having read a nice round number by the end of the year. So I'll probably just carry on reading the same way that I normally do. Hehe.

Also, I think that I am probably not going to be able to get that much work for the first half a year at least of doing freelance stuff, so I have been toying with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo, and I think I might give it a shot! I have an idea that I've been mulling over for a while, and although writing was always something that I really enjoyed, I haven't tried to do any for years. I realise that fully deciding to do this on the last day of October probably isn't the way to go into it, but I may as well try, right? I've been secretly wanting to since I heard that it existed (so at least 10 or so years ago?).

....now wondering what to do with the rest of my day. Maybe changing out of my pyjamas and showering would be a good start! I'm also feeling a really strong urge to clean my house, but that doesn't seem relaxing enough for a day off!