As promised, about me
But first, a poll!
Poll Fucking poll!
It came to me in the shower. (^_^)'''
I think I eat too much. And not in the "I'm getting fat" sense, since while I did gain weight when I worked at Suzugamine, that was mostly attributed to stress and a sedentary lifestyle. I'm still pretty sedentary (more than I should be...), but all the stress weight is gone now. No, I think I eat too much because we spend a lot of money on snacks. One problem is that I eat way too fast, so I tend to eat more than I, strictly speaking, need to. The easily-implementable solution to that is to put the fork down every couple of bites to stretch things out and also to not let things go until I'm starving before I eat. I should also look into whether there's some vitamin or something I'm not getting enough of that's making me hungry.
I've been reading a manga called Addicted to Curry lately (in Japanese, 華麗なる食卓 karee naru shokutaku. Literally "The dinner table that becomes splendid," or more naturally, "The Splendid Table," but there's an obvious pun based on 華麗, which is pronounced exactly the same as カレー, the Japanese word for curry). It doesn't have an amazing plot (high school girl and young curry-obsessed chef try to save the girl's father's curry restaurant, and while the art is pretty good, the real reason I read it is because it's about curry. (^_^)''' I always answer "curry" whenever anyone asks those, "If you could only have one food for the rest of your life..." questions, and nearly every volume has a curry recipe in it. We haven't gotten a chance to make too many of them because it's hard to get ingredients for non-Japanese curry here, but I'm saving them for when we get back to America or whenever we go into Hiroshima and have a chance to pick up more ingredients.
I've been studying kanji for a while today. It gets pretty frustrating, but I try to remind myself that, for example, I can look at through, rough, though, aghast, light, cough, draught and ugh and instantly know how to pronounce the 'gh' in each of them. There are times in learning where there are no tricks or shortcuts and you just have to memorize a ton of things. This is one of them.
We had Chiharu (one of softlykarou's fellow teachers, but younger than her) over for dinner last night. Last time we had Mexican food (which she had never had. That's completely outside my experience, but I suppose Japan has fewer Mexican immigrants than America :p), and this time was Italian, mostly prepared by softlykarou--I did the salad and bread pre-meal course, she did the pizza and pasta. Chiharu had never had olive oil with bread before. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised--bread as a cultural concept in Japan is a lot different than in America, being mostly composed of dessert breads, breads with filling, and so on--but it still caught me a bit off guard. Then again, I suppose people are going to be really surprised when we have gari as a side with our meals in America and eat a ton of stuff with chopsticks. :p
One random thing is that I really wish I had Chiharu's courage for speaking English. She doesn't speak it that well (for an English teacher--her English is far better than my Japanese), but when she comes over she brings a notebook so she can write down anything we say that she didn't previously know, and unlike my students used to, she writes it in English without trying to put in furigana for pronunciation. If we define something using Japanese, she writes the Japanese, but that's only natural, really. I have been studying a lot lately (at least an hour a day, usually more, not counting any time I spend out and about talking to actual people or reading signs), but I need to really buckle down if I ever want to learn it to conversational level.
Another sleepless night...I guess I'll try to nap when Rachel wakes up.
Poll Fucking poll!
It came to me in the shower. (^_^)'''
I think I eat too much. And not in the "I'm getting fat" sense, since while I did gain weight when I worked at Suzugamine, that was mostly attributed to stress and a sedentary lifestyle. I'm still pretty sedentary (more than I should be...), but all the stress weight is gone now. No, I think I eat too much because we spend a lot of money on snacks. One problem is that I eat way too fast, so I tend to eat more than I, strictly speaking, need to. The easily-implementable solution to that is to put the fork down every couple of bites to stretch things out and also to not let things go until I'm starving before I eat. I should also look into whether there's some vitamin or something I'm not getting enough of that's making me hungry.
I've been reading a manga called Addicted to Curry lately (in Japanese, 華麗なる食卓 karee naru shokutaku. Literally "The dinner table that becomes splendid," or more naturally, "The Splendid Table," but there's an obvious pun based on 華麗, which is pronounced exactly the same as カレー, the Japanese word for curry). It doesn't have an amazing plot (high school girl and young curry-obsessed chef try to save the girl's father's curry restaurant, and while the art is pretty good, the real reason I read it is because it's about curry. (^_^)''' I always answer "curry" whenever anyone asks those, "If you could only have one food for the rest of your life..." questions, and nearly every volume has a curry recipe in it. We haven't gotten a chance to make too many of them because it's hard to get ingredients for non-Japanese curry here, but I'm saving them for when we get back to America or whenever we go into Hiroshima and have a chance to pick up more ingredients.
I've been studying kanji for a while today. It gets pretty frustrating, but I try to remind myself that, for example, I can look at through, rough, though, aghast, light, cough, draught and ugh and instantly know how to pronounce the 'gh' in each of them. There are times in learning where there are no tricks or shortcuts and you just have to memorize a ton of things. This is one of them.
We had Chiharu (one of softlykarou's fellow teachers, but younger than her) over for dinner last night. Last time we had Mexican food (which she had never had. That's completely outside my experience, but I suppose Japan has fewer Mexican immigrants than America :p), and this time was Italian, mostly prepared by softlykarou--I did the salad and bread pre-meal course, she did the pizza and pasta. Chiharu had never had olive oil with bread before. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised--bread as a cultural concept in Japan is a lot different than in America, being mostly composed of dessert breads, breads with filling, and so on--but it still caught me a bit off guard. Then again, I suppose people are going to be really surprised when we have gari as a side with our meals in America and eat a ton of stuff with chopsticks. :p
One random thing is that I really wish I had Chiharu's courage for speaking English. She doesn't speak it that well (for an English teacher--her English is far better than my Japanese), but when she comes over she brings a notebook so she can write down anything we say that she didn't previously know, and unlike my students used to, she writes it in English without trying to put in furigana for pronunciation. If we define something using Japanese, she writes the Japanese, but that's only natural, really. I have been studying a lot lately (at least an hour a day, usually more, not counting any time I spend out and about talking to actual people or reading signs), but I need to really buckle down if I ever want to learn it to conversational level.
Another sleepless night...I guess I'll try to nap when Rachel wakes up.