Househunting/ TV post/ picdump
Tomorrow's the last day of summer vacation. Back to work on Tuesday.
This summer break hasn't been ALL vacation, though. I'm substitute teaching a class on Wednesday nights, teaching five businessmen at their office, while their regular teacher is on vacation. And last week I taught a five-day summer school course at a high school in Tokyo. That class in particular ended up being a really good experience. I had fun teaching it, and I picked up some new tricks for my regular lesson, while earning a few extra shekels while I was at it.
Those shekels are gonna come in handy real soon, cos we're trying to buy a house. I was finally awarded my permanent residency a few weeks ago (yay!), and since then we've been spending every weekend at the real estate agent. We found a really nice place in Totsuka. The agent said we'd probably get the loan, so we put down a $5000 deposit plus a non-refundable $75 for the privilege of trying to buy the house, I guess. We had to get all sorts of documents from our companies and from the ward office and stuff, and spend hours at the agency listening to various spiels. They wouldn't go to all that trouble if they weren't pretty darn sure we'd get the loan, right?
...But when we went back today, they told us that the first bank has apparently refused our loan because I'm not a seishain (regular, full-time employee). Instead, I am but a lowly contract worker-- every year, the schools renew my contract for another year. That's how it's been in every teaching job I've had, ever since I came to Japan nine years ago. It's the industry standard, as far as I can tell.
So we filled out 1859389 more forms to apply for loans at two other banks, and the dude said they'll do their best to get us approved, but... I can't help but feel gloomy about this whole thing. Oh well. Our current apartment is just fine in the meantime. I'm sure we'll find our dream house one of these days.
Anyway. I finished Bioshock 2! Obligatory achievement photo:
I really enjoyed it. I liked it even better than the first one, and I liked the first one a lot! Now I'm working on this,
which is also quite good. :) (But hard!)
Remember that turtle I picked up while running a while back? His name is Kusogame (Shiturtle, or perhaps Shitturtle), which is the name RooG bestowed upon him when he first came home with me. The name stuck cos we couldn't think of anything else to call him. ^^;; But anyway, he's kinda humongous now, and he's only gonna get bigger!
TV POST!!! Currently watching:
Carnivale (season 1). RooG and I are watching this together on Hulu Japan. I watched it once two years ago by myself. It's still awesome,. RooG's way into it, too.
Six Feet Under. And here is our tale of tragedy. Hulu Japan had the first three seasons up, so we watched them and LOVED them. But when RooG emailed to ask when Season 4 would be up, they wrote back and said that they have no plans to upload the last two seasons. Oh. -___-
There's no DVD version beyond Season 1, and no Japanese fansubs, either. I know RooG will be kinda butthurt, but... I'm reeeaaalllllyyy tempted to just go on ahead and watch the last two seasons by myself. ;__; I wish we could watch them together, but there doesn't seem to be any way to watch em with subtitles...
Breaking Bad. Teh final season. Can't WAIT to see how this thing ends.
Ink Master. I have nothing witty or interesting to say, except that I still like this show. :)
America's Got Talent. Is it just me, or was the talent SO much better last year? -_- Still looking forward to this week's episode though, just to see Kenichi Ebina and Timber Brown and (hopefully) the KriStef Brothers.
I leave you with me doing my post-run push-ups. I'm trying to increase my upper-body strength, you see. D-:
I hate push-ups.
This summer break hasn't been ALL vacation, though. I'm substitute teaching a class on Wednesday nights, teaching five businessmen at their office, while their regular teacher is on vacation. And last week I taught a five-day summer school course at a high school in Tokyo. That class in particular ended up being a really good experience. I had fun teaching it, and I picked up some new tricks for my regular lesson, while earning a few extra shekels while I was at it.
Those shekels are gonna come in handy real soon, cos we're trying to buy a house. I was finally awarded my permanent residency a few weeks ago (yay!), and since then we've been spending every weekend at the real estate agent. We found a really nice place in Totsuka. The agent said we'd probably get the loan, so we put down a $5000 deposit plus a non-refundable $75 for the privilege of trying to buy the house, I guess. We had to get all sorts of documents from our companies and from the ward office and stuff, and spend hours at the agency listening to various spiels. They wouldn't go to all that trouble if they weren't pretty darn sure we'd get the loan, right?
...But when we went back today, they told us that the first bank has apparently refused our loan because I'm not a seishain (regular, full-time employee). Instead, I am but a lowly contract worker-- every year, the schools renew my contract for another year. That's how it's been in every teaching job I've had, ever since I came to Japan nine years ago. It's the industry standard, as far as I can tell.
So we filled out 1859389 more forms to apply for loans at two other banks, and the dude said they'll do their best to get us approved, but... I can't help but feel gloomy about this whole thing. Oh well. Our current apartment is just fine in the meantime. I'm sure we'll find our dream house one of these days.
Anyway. I finished Bioshock 2! Obligatory achievement photo:
I really enjoyed it. I liked it even better than the first one, and I liked the first one a lot! Now I'm working on this,
which is also quite good. :) (But hard!)
Remember that turtle I picked up while running a while back? His name is Kusogame (Shiturtle, or perhaps Shitturtle), which is the name RooG bestowed upon him when he first came home with me. The name stuck cos we couldn't think of anything else to call him. ^^;; But anyway, he's kinda humongous now, and he's only gonna get bigger!
TV POST!!! Currently watching:
Carnivale (season 1). RooG and I are watching this together on Hulu Japan. I watched it once two years ago by myself. It's still awesome,. RooG's way into it, too.
Six Feet Under. And here is our tale of tragedy. Hulu Japan had the first three seasons up, so we watched them and LOVED them. But when RooG emailed to ask when Season 4 would be up, they wrote back and said that they have no plans to upload the last two seasons. Oh. -___-
There's no DVD version beyond Season 1, and no Japanese fansubs, either. I know RooG will be kinda butthurt, but... I'm reeeaaalllllyyy tempted to just go on ahead and watch the last two seasons by myself. ;__; I wish we could watch them together, but there doesn't seem to be any way to watch em with subtitles...
Breaking Bad. Teh final season. Can't WAIT to see how this thing ends.
Ink Master. I have nothing witty or interesting to say, except that I still like this show. :)
America's Got Talent. Is it just me, or was the talent SO much better last year? -_- Still looking forward to this week's episode though, just to see Kenichi Ebina and Timber Brown and (hopefully) the KriStef Brothers.
I leave you with me doing my post-run push-ups. I'm trying to increase my upper-body strength, you see. D-:
I hate push-ups.