Tokyo, Singapore & Malaysia (The Short Version)

Tokyo: Walked a lot, shopped a lot, and had a lot of fun! The Ghibli Museum was AMAZING! If I lived closer, I would go there at least once a month!

Singapore: Scorching hot & humid. Did a lot of shopping, mostly books and (English subtitled) Japanese TV series.

Malaysia: Visited a lot of relatives. Ate WAY too much. Did a lot of shopping, mostly books and (English subtitled) Japanese TV series.

Summary: Am very tired and have a lot of laundry and "stuff" sorting to do! Will write more when I have recovered.

Playing House

It's official: I'm moving into an apartment in May! I haven't actually signed the rental agreement yet, but I informed my office today of my intent to move.

The timing is pretty bad--I just wiped out my account paying for my Golden Week trip(s) to Tokyo and Singapore--but I'm nonetheless very excited to be setting up my own place! True I've been living on my own for the past eight and a half months, but since the house came pre-furnished, it's not like I got to decorate it myself (although, of course, I did add my own touches).

So yeah, even though my original plan was to come straight home today to do laundry--my whites and towels in preparation for my parents and friends' visit--I ended up going to a bunch of stores to check prices on appliances for my apartment.

It's hard, though, because I have to remind myself that this is NOT my permanent home, so I should err on the side of frugality when buying things for the apartment. I need to purchase things thinking about what will give me good value for one or two years of use, but also looking for durability for up to four years.

The area I find this the most difficult is washer/dryers. Since I've been spoiled having a dryer in my house now, I decided that I'm going to buy a washer/dryer combo, even though there's a washer in storage that I could use. There are quite a few in the low 20,000 yen to 70,000 yen range (plus I found one at the recycle shop for 17,850 yen), but what I really want is one of the newer, front-loading models.

K's Denki has one on sale until Friday priced at 120,000 yen, and the regular price for an older model is between 130,000-170,000. ^^;; Considering that I'm just barely going to be able to make my initial payment (including first month's rent, brokerage fees, damage deposit, key money, etc.) of 204,000 yen, it's pretty silly for me to be looking at such high end washer/dryers (particularly since the 9kg capacity is far more than I need), but I'm still tempted. I guess it's because my dream has always been to have a front-loading washer and dryer (they're more water-efficient). But really, it would only be worth it if I ended up staying the full 5 years (meaning I'd get 4.25 years use out of it). And I think it might be hard to find someone to sell it to when I do leave, since I wouldn't want to sell it at a dirt-cheap price to an ALT.

Besides, I haven't even begun pricing essentials--like a bed--yet! I do have the couch I got from Weldon & Crystal which I can use first (I'm sleeping on it instead of my bed right now anyway), but it probably makes more sense to buy a decent bed rather than a super expensive washer/dryer...

Maybe if I end up getting a tax return (which I would keep as savings), I could assuage my guilt at using my paycheque to furnish my apartment rather than putting it into savings?

Anyway, if things go according to plan, I'll be able to sign the rental agreement on Apr. 21st. I'll request a May move-in date so I can start moving my stuff, but I'll stay at the house until the end of May (rent's cheap here anyway!) and schedule all of my bills and utilities to change over on Jun. 1st.

I'm a little worried, though, because I don't know what questions, if any, I should be asking when I go to sign the agreement. I guess I can ask my supervisor to come with me, but she's so busy getting into things at the office, I'd feel bad... Well, I guess I can ask her about it when I'm in the office on Friday and see what she thinks. I mean, doing this kind of thing is part of a supervisor's job...

But yeah, I hope everything works out!! ^_^

Lucky Number Seven?

I suspect that I have come down with bronchitis for the SEVENTH time in my life. *sigh*

The first time I had it was in high school, grade 10. I had a dry cough for over two weeks (and endured many "Melissa, you really have to stop smoking" jokes from Mr. Sawicki) before I finally went to a doctor. I got it again the next year.

My lungs took a break for a year before I got it again in the winter vacation of first year university. I got it once more in university (in third year, I think? maybe fourth year).

Then I hit the bronchitis jackpot and got it twice within one (school) year--once in November (a particularly nasty bout that was a double punch of bronchitis-laryngitis) and then again in May (when my parents were on vacation and weren't home to take care of me =/ ).

There was a time in November when I was worried that I might get it, but it ended up being just a minor cold (it went away after about two days).

This time, though, all my past experience is telling me that I've got bronchitis yet again. Monday night I developed a sore throat and the next morning I had sinus congestion and a dry cough. The cough has gotten worse and I'm coughing up a storm as I type. Wednesday night I felt slightly feverish and this (Saturday) afternoon I'm pretty sure I had a mild fever.

So yeah, everything is pointing to bronchitis.

I kind of wonder though, if it might be somewhat psychosomatic? I mean, every time I have a sore throat and a bit of a dry cough, I wonder "Could this be the onset of bronchitis?" Maybe my body gets tired of my mental breath-holding and says: "What? You want bronchitis? I'll give you bronchitis!"??

Otherwise I really don't know how to explain getting bronchitis (probably) seven times in ten years. I don't get it often enough for it to be chronic bronchitis (I think), but I get it frequently enough to wonder...

*sigh* Anyway, it's a good thing I brought lots of Ricola (for dry coughs and for sore throats) as well a bottle of Benylin with me in October. I've got a bunch of end of (the school) year enkai's right now, so I don't want to worry people by wearing a face mask or by coughing a lot.

Even though I was coughing pretty much all day today, thanks to the Benylin and Ricola I managed to not cough for nearly the entire length of the Kirita PTA enkai and nijikai (second party). I started coughing a bit towards the end of my time at the nijikai (being in a smoky room and being asked to sing karaoke probably did the trick), but it wasn't bad enough to make people seriously worry.

But yeah, if it gets really bad I may need to ask my supervisor to take me to a doctor so I can get a couple of days of sick leave.

The Good Shepherd

I have a confession to make: last Saturday night I made a conscious decision to stay home and not go to church on Easter Sunday. At the time on Easter Sunday of all days I shouldn't be going to church purely out of a sense of obligation and knowing that I was going to begrudge the time I spent there.

In the past few weeks I've been increasingly dissatisfied with church life here. The pastor and his wife and the couple of people who attend off and on are nice enough people but they're much older than me (like in their 60s and 70s)--the one lady who is closer to my age (but still in her thirties) often can't come because of her work schedule--so we really don't have much to talk about. As a result, the lunches after the service have been becoming more and more tiresome. I've actually left right after the service a couple of times, but each time they (the pastor and his wife) really put pressure on me to stay and made me feel really guilty about skipping out.

Then too a couple of weeks ago the pastor informed me that he had told another pastor that I would be going with them to visit them in Misawa in the afternoon at like 4pm--without asking me beforehand! I was really super pissed that he would presume to accept an invitation for me and then put a guilt trip on me when I declined to attend because I had been out late the night before (at our monthly gathering at Sakagami's drinking house) and was really tired. He actually said something along the lines of: "I hope in the future you will get rest so you will not be too tired to join us on Sundays." I have to admit I was pretty snarky and replied: "I hope next time you will ask me ahead of time if you want me to join your plans for the afternoon because I may be busy or already have plans of my own."

So after that I told the pastor (without any guilt) that I would be attending the church in Misawa(Greater Love) the following week. (I had already been planning to go back because I hadn't seen Weldon and Crystal in a while and I really needed to hear a message in English, so that incident just confirmed my decision to go to Misawa the next week.)

At Greater Love the next week I was glad to see Crystal and Weldon again but the downsides to the church really seemed clear to me: the message and focus was all very American-base-centric (fair enough since that's the bulk of the congregation); and although everyone was very warm and welcoming, it was in a rather impersonal and shallow way. I mean, I suddenly stopped coming after attending regularly for about 2 months and when I returned over a month later it was as if I was a newcomer all over again. Honestly I think people didn't even realize that I had been there before--and it's not so large of a church that a lone Asian person in the crowd should reasonably go unnoticed.

So yeah, I didn't really want to go to Greater Love for Easter Sunday either, especially since they were having a big lunch after the service; I knew Weldon and Crystal would probably go and I would feel bad if I skipped out without anything pressing waiting for me at home, but I would also feel awkward if I stayed.

And that's how I came to the decision to stay home on Easter Sunday.

To make matters worse, I also intentionally stayed up late (until about 2am) so that I could honestly answer that I was tired and slept in if asked why I didn't go to church.

But as set as I thought I was on not going, I guess I still had some doubts about my decision since I did set my alarms so that I would wake up in time for church. (I figured I would do my usual weekend thing and hit the snooze button or turn them off and end up waking up at 12pm.)

Apparently God had other plans, though, because I actually woke up when the first alarm went off and I was awake enough that I had to make a conscious decision to stick to the plan (of not going to church) and to go back to sleep.

The same thing happened when the second alarm went off; I could easily have gotten up and gotten ready for church but I decided to stick to the plan and made myself go back to sleep.

Then the phone rang at the time service was supposed to start. Again, I could've answered it, but I knew it was probably the pastor's wife calling so I decided to let it go to the answering machine. But I could hear the message she was leaving, and in it she mentioned that there was a "young Japanese lady who was interested in learning English."

When I heard that I felt for the first time that I had made the wrong decision in choosing to stay home that week. I mean, the whole reason I was so disappointed in both of the churches was because neither of them gave me the opportunity to talk with Japanese people my age who were interested in communicating with a native English speaker and the one week I decided to stay home just had to be the week when such a person appeared!

But I realized that I had two choices: I could compound my error (of deciding not to go to church) by stubbornly sticking to my plan because it would be embarrassing to go to church so late, or I could take the chance God was giving me to correct my error and get up and go to church, even if I was going to be half an hour late.

So I chose the latter and it was definitely the right choice. On my way to church I was kind of worried that the pastor's wife's definition of "young lady" might be different from mine--like someone in their late 30's--but it turned out that she, Mayumi, was about the same age as me and a fun person to talk with.

We both stayed for the lunch and for once I wasn't just watching the clock and waiting for enough time to pass that I could excuse myself without being rude. Since Mayumi needed to go to Tsutaya but couldn't drive/didn't have a car, I offered to drive her there. (She had come by bike so first we had to stuff her bike in the back of my car and drop it off at her house. It didn't actually fit--the trunk couldn't close--but I drove slowly and she only lived about 5min away from the church so it worked out.) After that I hung out at her house for a couple of hours.

Even though she won't be able to come to church because of her work schedule (she's a hair stylist so her off day is Monday), we exchanged contact info so we can hang out again sometime. I wish I could've made plans to meet up this week but with all the parties for co-workers who have been transferred to other schools/departments, I just don't have the time. (Plus I'm sick and don't want to spread my germs around if I can avoid it.)

So yeah, the whole incident made me realize again what it means when we say that Jesus is the good shepherd. Usually we only think of the lost sheep metaphor as applying to non-believers, but there are many times when believers also stray from the flock and need rescuing.

And I think it's really amazing that God made such a great effort and gave me so many chances to come back to him on Easter Sunday even though I had made a conscious decision and effort to run away from him.