Year of the Bunny!!

Happy New Year to all!

I have to say that I am having a low-key, not quite, but almost, boring New Year's Eve here in Tokyo! My friend-boy felt he needed to use his days off to "do" some freelance projects he has been putting off, and work on some musical things as well. Certainly he could be "doing" me, but I suppose, I will still be around on Jan. 3rd or 15th, or February...and these other projects have some sort of deadline...(Actually February 3rd is Chinese New Year, so he is NOT getting out of that one! If I have to beg, yell, cry, or drag...I WILL get a New Years date somehow!)

I have managed to clean and organize my closest, throw out an ever-growing collection of magazines, and pare down my English teaching textbooks a bit. In an apartment the size of a shoebox, this helps quite a bit! I've also organized the bathroom linen shelf, washed dishes, and sent holiday greetings to a variety of people.

I have many hours left of 2010 - so I am trying to "clean up" many things before the new year. (Of course, the first day of 2011 is still useful for this...) I'm about to organize my next month's appointments, balance my budget/make a budget, and start "grooming" a previously published article for submission elsewhere.

Also, I am going to spend time looking at flights, hotels in Beijing. Yep, the friend-boy - and I are going to his hometown of Beijing for a few days in March. Partly to meet some Chinese business acquaintances I am working with online. Partly to visit a friend. I asked him to suggest a decent hotel...his suggestion? "I'll call my mom. We can just stay in my home with my parents."

Hm....all articles I have read say that the Chinese mother is rather difficult to impress. I need to start worrying about this now. Or not...

Learning Japanese

I am very lazy! Why do I say this? Because I have lived in Japan for 16 months and my Japanese skills get me only as far as a brief self-introduction and a mental "bowl of words" that I can pull out as needed and combine with gestures, props, and facial expressions to get some point across.

An example - when I need to buy my monthly train commuter pass: I put the old pass on the counter. With my hand swirling over it in a sort of "shopping channel" gesture, I stammer out..."ano...shin...passo...ogikubo/kayabacho...ichi tsuki...kudasai" A new commuter pass is promptly obtained.

Or I go to the au store. Flipping out my cell phone: again, I use a swirly hand gesture over my phone. "uh...keitai...shiharai" They pull up my number, show write down the amount owed, I pay, and mission accomplished.

My friend-boy says "You don't wanted to learn." I feel it is more, "It was not my first priority."
My excuses: the first 7 months living here, I was working long hours at eikaiwa hell/GABA, and had my daughter living here - so free time was spent going to her school her activities, and general mom/daughter/life items.

After she left, my first priority was to find better paying job - which meant hours on interviews, commuting. One of my jobs including a one-way commute of 1 hour, 45 minutes. My days were blown between work and commute time!

Now I have the following to do: full-time job (40 hours per week), private lessons (8 hours per week), my new self run business (8 hours per week). Friends...and friend-boy. Going to the gym. I refuse to give any of it up!

I do welcome ideas on better efficiency, time-management...but as you can see, taking actual sit-down lessons with a teacher - no time! I finish my day job at 7pm, that puts me getting to a lesson around 7:45pm anyway...too late!

I have decided to actually organize my "work" day to allow for study time. Each work day gives me a one hour lunch break, mandatory lunch break!

I want to break up my lunch as follows:

20-30 minutes - Japanese study
15 minutes - update my twitter (business account) and facebook statuses (for family/friend account and business account
15 minutes - an invigorating walk up the stairs to the top of my work building, and back down to ground floor. Get the brain working. Probably should move this to the first activity during lunch!

Here are the sources for my self-study material.

NHK Let's Learn Japanese - This series has two seasons. First season was made in 1984 and has 26 lessons/episodes. Second season was made in 1995 and has 26 lessons also. All the video lessons can be found on VEOH and YouTube. The textbook can be found on a variety of bittorrent places - although, I now have them downloaded, and can send it to you as an email attachment, should you, the gentle reader, want a copy.

Textfugu - This is a site written by Koichi of Tofugu fame. The site has lessons, videos, cheat sheets. Basically, the first few lessons are free for all, then you can convert to paid subscription to continue to higher levels. With my current level, it will be quite a while before I need the paid levels.