Due to circumstances, i haven't slept alone for the past 7 days. i've either been sharing a room or even a bed with people. no, i haven't suddenly become promiscuous...just that the scheduling made it so.

to start with, one of the chemistry guys came to kochi with the main objective of visiting me. he stayed at my place for a couple of nights, and i brought him around the area for sightseeing. we'd wanted to go to an onsen in the next town, but they took an unplanned day off. during the nights, we mainly talked and caught up. he bought me a bottle of sake from hokkaido, which we shared. it was good! unbelievably smooth with no alcohol burn, just like drinking fragrant water. i also told him about the accursed IP firm, in way more detail than i've disclosed to anyone so far, i think. also, just before i left singapore, i'd jokingly asked him to consider coming on JET. it's become less of a joke now. if the stars align just right, he may even become my successor! he says he'll think about it, and he has until the application deadline this year to decide either way, if he wants to be my successor, that is. if he does decide to come on JET and is miraculously posted here, i can make his life so much easier. but i hope he chooses what makes him happy, whether or not it involves JET.

the past 4 nights were spent in tokyo, where i met up with my friends from the guild. it's been more than 2 years since our last face-to-face meeting, and i got to meet some of them in person for the first time too! i would say that this trip was a huge success; we managed to check off basically all the items on our itinerary, except for one, which i'll talk about in detail later.

having been to all the spots that they wanted to see, and not really being much of a shopper, food was the main draw for me. let's see, in chronological order, we had/went to the final fantasy themed cafe, honey toast cafe, dry ramen, sushi, food court, yakiniku, briyani (me and the JETs), kushiyaki. none of the meals were BAD, but the food court was by far the plainest/most normal. best for me would be a toss-up between sushi, kushiyaki, yakiniku, or briyani (only because of the cheese naan).

yakiniku and kushiyaki are basically the same thing, grilled pieces of meat. just that one is served on skewers. i enjoyed an assortment of pig organs, like tongue, heart, liver, and stomach. the gyoza were good too! my friends ordered pork belly, which i ate a few sticks of. i feel like the kushiya/izakaya experience is a must-do when visiting tokyo. as for yakiniku, we went for a buffet which was advertised as 2980 yen. unfortunately, the ad didn't mention that getting the free-flow drinks add-on was compulsory, so the actual price was 3780 yen. whether it was worth the price is debatable, but the food was good. i think most people liked the pork belly the most. it was a literal slab of meat! our server was a chinese lady, who i felt was a little overly curt/businesslike when i spoke to her in japanese at the start. but once she found out that we could speak chinese, she really warmed up to us! the power of having a common native language. i did wonder why she was in japan though, since she looks to be past studying age. maybe she's accompanying her kid?

honey toast was a new experience for me, because i normally wouldn't even think of stepping into such a place. so, what it is is a loaf of bread, top cut off, and hollowed out. the insides are cubed, and lightly toasted before being put back into the shell and topped with a TON of whipped cream. we not-smartly got one each. 2 people sharing one would have been more manageable. the thing that stood out the most to me was the whipped cream. it wasn't overly sweet, and it held its shape so well! it was thicker than the stuff you get out of a can. if i'm not wrong they used hokkaido dairy, so i wonder if that was the key. or maybe they whipped it a little more to get stiffer peaks?

last on the food list, sushi. despite planning for it, we couldn't get seats at the most popular sushi restaurant in toyosu fish market. based on my friend's intel that the shop opened at 6:00am, we got there half an hour before, only to find a queue had already formed. the staff told us that while the shop only started serving food at 6, they started taking queue numbers at 5:00am, right when the market itself opened. we were too sian to try going down again on this trip, but that's something we can think about next time. as a substitute, we ate at a neighbouring sushi restaurant. i think it was good, although perhaps slightly overpriced. i sometimes wonder if the shop is all that it's cracked up to be, or if they're artificially creating demand by limiting supply. well, i guess i won't know until i actually try it.

meeting up with 2 of the tokyo JETs was nice too. they brought me for briyani, which was properly spiced! i'd had indian food at the food court the day before, and it was disappointing. the highlight of that meal was definitely the cheese naan. reminded me somewhat of a cheese prata. maybe that's something i can try to recreate while i'm here. we also talked about our futures - one of them is going back in july, the other is staying for the foreseeable future. we came to the consensus that the way english is taught in japan needs an overhaul. but if nothing's done, it won't be all that bad either. gives JET a reason to exist, at least.

now that the holiday mood is ending, i'm kind of making peace with the idea that my normal routine life restarts tomorrow. one thing i'm really not looking forward to is the science videos thing, the subject head is asking for so many changes! depending on what the next assignment is, i might just quit after this one is completed. i won't lie, the thought of just quitting on the spot has crossed my mind more than once. but i think that i can stick this last assignment out. for now, just relaxing before an early bedtime. then, work as usual tomorrow. worrying about the science questions can wait.

-random thought of the day: Got so much stuff from my friends!-

Might have been the longer hours/later days because of eiken prep, or the sudden drop in temperature, but i'm sick. it started on thursday night, i think...just feeling out of sorts, which progressed to a running nose on friday. but even before that, i was falling asleep at the computer after my bath every night since tuesday. i thought it was just fatigue, but i guess it was my body giving warning signs. good news is, i don't think it's COVID. i can still taste and smell just fine (when my nose isn't blocked up, that is). apart from the nose thing, my only other symptom is a slight cough. thank goodness my throat and voice remained ok! the current self-diagnosis is that it's a cold. just hope that i don't have to go through all the phlegm-y stages before getting better. there simply isn't enough time!

while i am happy that i only fell sick after the hectic period in the schools, the fact that i'm sick just days before i'm due to travel to tokyo is more worrying. my body usually takes about a week to recover from similar illnesses, which means there's a chance that i'll be sick some way into the trip. good thing that i've already seen most of the sights that my friends want to see, so worst come to worst i can hole up in the hotel room and only join them for meals.

in closer-proximity news, i realized that a next-door neighbour moved out. their names were taken off the circular list, and their house is now empty. they were a young couple with a child, i think. it doesn't affect me very much; we didn't interact at all in the time that i've been here. i'm kind of happy for them actually, because i assume that they're moving away to chase their dreams. even now, i still wonder why people choose to live here. don't get me wrong - it's nice and quiet/peaceful, which makes it a great place to retire to, or to bring up a kid safely. but for people fresh out of school and beginning their careers, i don't think that it's the best place to live due to the limited job opportunities and chances to connect with the larger world. then again, different people have different expectations and goals. as long as they're happy, i guess.

the power company sent me a letter...something about electricity costing more due to rising gas prices. thankfully, it's only set to kick in in april or may, by which time i shouldn't need the electric blanket any more. the real worry will be in summer, where i've used the air-con consistently for about 2-3 months every year since moving here. wonder if my electricity bill will break 10000 yen for the first time?

well...i guess that's it for now. my friend is due to reach kochi city tomorrow night-ish, so i'll drive up to get him. thinking of going to an onsen after dinner then driving home. but that's a decision for tomorrow. hope that i won't be too sick to drive.

-random thought of the day: Need to pack by tomorrow!-

In fairness, E's visit wasn't as bad as i'd made it sound. one big plus was that he actually helped me clean up a little, as he wanted to make an unobstructed path through the rooms. i'd gotten used to doing a little navigation dance/obstacle course-style manoeuvring to get around, so it's a nice change. not sure how long it'll last, though.

eiken season started again, which means later days. it also means more opportunity to accrue time off, so i'm not complaining too much. i've seen 4 out of the 7 or 8 candidates, and i think most of them will be fine. for some reason, i felt more confident explaining things in japanese now as compared to during the previous round of practice, which was around last october or so...although i'm sure i made the same number of mistakes on both occasions.

during a maths class which i sat in on today, i noticed that there were some really obvious smudges on my glasses. upon closer inspection, it seems that the coating is coming off. because of my astigmatism, i always opt for the multi-coat option on my lenses. you know you have it if your glasses have a purple/green/rainbow sheen when you look at them at an angle. considering that the roughest thing i do to my glasses is wipe them clean, i don't know why the coating is coming off on its own. my top 2 guesses now are temperature differences and age. i think the general cold air, plus my warm breath causes the lenses to heat and cool, and that causes expansion and contraction. the coating might be mechanically stressed because of that. or its more brittle in colder temperatures. this hypothesis is supported by the fact that most of the damage occurred near my nose and the perimeter of the lenses.

while i was thinking about the age of my glasses, i realized that i don't remember when i got them! they're from owndays, which i only started visiting after getting to know the ex. so that places it between 2015 and 2020. if i had to guess, i'd say...2016? if so, it's been close to 7 years. a quick archive search indicates 2017, although i don't remember if i swapped the lenses out at a later date. assuming i didn't, it'll be 6 years this may. i guess after so long, some wear and tear is expected. i should also get my degree checked, and if necessary, a new pair of glasses made. kind of tempted to do it at an owndays branch in japan, but the problem is there isn't one in kochi, or the whole of shikoku for that matter! the nearest one to me appears to be in okayama, which is about 4 hours away by car. i could try one of the local chains, but we'll see if there's a real need. right now, my #1 plan is to do it in singapore or australia after JET.

something quite amazing happened yesterday. i had a dream that i was talking to a teacher in the primary school. that i was talking to this teacher is already weird in itself, because while we are professionally courteous to each other, i have no reason to talk to her outside the usual greetings. what was REALLY weird was that i was talking to her in japanese! as far as i remember, this is my first japanese dream. quite proud of it!

going to go off now. tomorrow looks like it'll be a busy day, since i have to do some quick baking and deliver it to the school within the day. really TGIF; the weekend will be a more welcome break than usual.

-random thought of the day: Need to decide what to bring to Tokyo!-

E's visit lasted shorter than planned. i just got back from sending him off at the next town's train station, in fact. he spent a total of less than 24 hours in my town, in which time he saw most of the attractions/landmarks. true to form, he complained about various things, which irritated me a little. i'd say some were justified (the messiness of my house) while others weren't (the remoteness of the town - especially after i'd gave him its location on google maps!). spending extended periods of time with him makes me wonder if we'd still be good friends if we hadn't been thrown into the same JC class. like say, if we were CCA teammates, or any other situation where we wouldn't have seen and interacted with each other every day. signs point to no. anyway, i know that he's a good person deep down, and he'd help me if i really needed it and it was within his capacity. still, i'd be lying if i said i wasn't somewhat relieved/happy that he decided to cut his stay short and continue his travels.

friend #2 is due to arrive on the 19th (sunday). i'm considering taking some time off to show him around, but we'll see. he might want to go to kochi city, which i can't do with him because i have school. unfortunately, the town onsen which i'd wanted to take him and E to is closed for maintenance. was surprised when E and i drove there last night to see the entrance blocked off by road barricades. i'm actually more excited for this friend's visit. no offense to E, just that he comes across a bit...i wanted to say "high-maintenance", but that's not quite right. "difficult" isn't right, either. ah well. i think you'd only understand if you knew both of them.

so far, i'm a little worried, because E's one-night stay has shown me that i don't really like sharing my space with other people. or maybe i've been living alone for too long; it was so weird to hear movements coming from someone else in the house. it makes me concerned that i won't like living with people in singapore, regardless of who they might be...even if it's a future partner. it's probably too early to think about that now, and i also have too few data points. will see if that changes when my friend comes over. nevertheless, it's good to keep in the back of my mind when i discuss taking the next step in a relationship. idea: having common areas and private areas.

my mercari camping paid off! someone listed a lightly-used matte black pilot explorer/lightive for 1480 yen, and i got to it within literal seconds of the listing going up. bonus, it comes with a con-70, which has the highest capacity and is the most fun to use out of all the pilot converters because it's got a push-button type mechanism. that converter costs 700 yen itself, which means i'm getting the pen for 800 yen, give or take. even if it turns out to be a dud, i won't feel too heart pain over it. makes me regret getting 2 converters when picking E up from the city! but well, i'm sure i'll find uses for them eventually.

that kid in the primary school that i'd talked about previously is wearing my patience thin. you know, the one who makes a big show of moving away from me whenever i walk past her desk. it seems like she's encouraging her classmates to do the same. the sad thing is, one of the kids who i had a decently good relationship with is starting to fall under the influence. well...i think it's time these kids learnt an important life lesson - play stupid games, win stupid prizes. i can't refuse to appear for english classes in schools, because that's what the town is paying me for. but there are other things which i can remove myself from, one of which being after-school babysitting. although i only go maybe once or twice a term, it wouldn't be a loss to me if i never attended another session again. i don't expect the kids to feel bad, but it will do me more good to not have another location at which to see them.

out of the blue on sunday, the leader of my first guild in final fantasy sent me his resume and asked me to take a look. it got me thinking that i should update my own resume too, including putting my newly-acquired JLPT N2 in. the biggest change was that i moved to a two-column format, a smaller left column for skills and other "biodata" things, and a larger right column for the education and experience sections. i applied a light grey background shade to the smaller column, so i think it looks better...or more eye-catching, at the very least! the reduction in horizontal space has also made me be creative with my margins and phrasing/description. i'm proud that i've made most of my points fit within one line each. just to recap, the plan is to get in touch with 2 australian companies around may-ish. hopefully they provide more clarity on whether they're able/willing to offer visa sponsorship. if that doesn't go through, my 2 backups are japan and singapore.

nothing much has changed about my thoughts regarding working in japan. probably look for an IP firm in osaka, but not the controversial one. for singapore though, there's one law firm that's hiring a technical specialist (ie. not law-trained, scientific professional). i'd wanted to apply to that firm before JET, but it was the one where i couldn't find the "contact us" button on their site! the thing that i like about them is that they have a more personal touch, because they featured long-serving support staff on their page as well. the other prospect, the UK IP firm, is still high on my list too. sad thing is that living in singapore isn't. well...it's still too early to start thinking about plans ABCDE now. that can come later, when more knowledge is available for me to make a better decision. reminder to self for later (july-ish) - start interview prep.

-random thought of the day: Need a haircut soon!-

Games can teach us many things, like hand-eye coordination and teamwork. but we all know that. recent events have shown that games can be used to teach something that i wouldn't normally think about when gaming - moral education. let me explain.

a new ultimate raid just dropped, and as usual, there was a competition to see who could become "world first", ie. who could clear it the fastest. a japanese team recorded the first clear, but then it was revealed that they cheated by using a hack to obtain a view of the arena that players shouldn't be able to access. the player base reacted...violently, to put it mildly. one of the people involved ended up deleting their character, and i think 6/8 of the people involved have posted public apologies. it got bad enough to the point that the developers intervened and rescinded the team's achievements and titles. on top of that, the team was asked discard the weapons they got as a reward.

personally, i'm not dead set against using such things if they help (i don't use them, by the way), but i think that it shouldn't have been done in a competition. if the concept feels too childish because it's presented in the context of a game, think about bodybuilding. there are some people who use steroids because they want to look good. nobody's going to stop them, because it's their body and their right. but when those people join competitions in which steroids have been banned, they have their result invalidated when/if they get caught.

i won't go into all the underlying issues about the use of third-party tools with the game, except to say that there are instances where they can be useful/beneficial. the main point of this post was to blog about the player base's reactions. as you may imagine, the game has a large number of japanese players. in general, they go down hard on people who don't play the game as intended, to the point of crossing over into real-life, including doxxing attacks. this was a japanese team, and you can imagine how much harder they turned against one of their own. sitting in on some moral education classes, i'd heard that such things do happen. but to see it in real life for myself...it hits differently. it makes me wonder how they accused will ever show their faces online again. and extrapolating that to real life, i imagine that the yellow ribbon project wouldn't receive that much support here.

on a personal level, it's scary how easy it was to hop on the self-righteous bandwagon and condemn the cheaters. even scarier, there was a kind of vindictive pleasure in watching them being crucified, like schadenfreude turned up to 11. i don't think that's a good mindset/way of thinking. i could use more empathy to people i don't know. timely reminder that behind the game character is another human being. although a part of it could also be due to the way they handled the matter. some of them said that they only cheated after being exposed to it by foreign teams, and that everyone would be cheating anyway, so they should do it too. it's typical japanese non-apology and foreigner-blaming, and i hate it. it's hard to remind yourself to consider their feelings when faced with that, because it shows no contrition at all. like some people have said, they're only sorry that they got caught.

my main takeaway here is that trust and credibility are very easily broken. for instance, the people who cheated are now having all their past achievements called into question. and while they may have done it legitimately, there's a shadow cast on them now. i'm happy that i'm not heavily invested in or affected by the raiding scene, so this is just passing news to me. all the better; i don't need this (or any) kind of drama in my life.

-random thought of the day: The pens came!-