Kirapedia - for all your useless knowledge

And happy end of Blogtober. I pretty much failed this year, I guess. I tried but...ahaha. Better luck next time. I guess I'll just try to keep blogging whenever I can and feel like it. So expect the same pace as before, 1 blog post a month. So yeah, Halloween 2021 is over and with it, October. It's kind of weird to think about the fact that this year will be over in about 2 months. It felt both fast and slow at the same time. Time is weird. The picture is a set of cookies I got from a student. His wife takes lessons at that bakery. Super cute and the cookies tasted really good, too! Which is not always a given with the decorated stuff. So yay! What really made today a happy day, though, is the fact that is was my last regular work Sunday! No more shitty kids. At least at this school. Hope the new one will be better *knocks on wood* It feels so good. I'm so happy. I'm just gonna roll around. Speaking of happy, one of my adult students gave me this calligraphy. She did it...

Hello. It's been a while. I just haven't had any energy to write nor have I really had anything to write about. Fun fact, Blogtober is over in a week. Other fun fact, my personal hell will also hopefully be over in a week. I can't wait. Today was my regular scheduled hospital day. It went okay. You win some you lose some, right? Both doctor and I can't wait for my schedule to be less of a f---k up so that I can go back to getting things under control and focusing on my health. Numbers were mixed this month, too. I tried, I really did but it just wasn't happening with how things are. On top of it, I started my period today, so in terms of checking my body weight, this is the worst day all month because this is when I'm at my heaviest with all the water and other gunk having collected in my body. On some days the 'thought' of getting a sex-change becomes oh so tempting and maybe more than a thought but a consideration. Seriously. But I hate pain so... *chi...

I know I have my food blog for this kind of stuff but... Today I'm going to write about hot pot (aka nabe). Most people like to eat hot pot during the colder months of the year (like, starting from now). I personally love to eat nabe all the time. Even in the summer. Although for the summer months sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant is an additional condition to be met lol Apart from being one of the best foods, I have many memories connected to nabe. Eating hot pot was always a thing that we did at my late grandparents' place. My grandfather would always bring out a pot that was heated with charcoal. A very traditional contraption. I haven't seen one ever since. Sometimes I miss it. Don't know if it was the charcoal but the taste of the nabe was always a bit different from when we'd eat it out of a regular pot. My first ever home-cooked meal at my host-family's place back in 2004 was also nabe, sukiyaki to be precise. So that's also a very memorable me...

Today I met up with some friends and we played board games for almost the entire day. I know today's weather should have been used for some outdoor activities but schedules. I love board games and I have grown up playing them. You might know that I'm not a video gamer (and I suck at video games a whole lot) but board games or card games are a whole different story. At my parents' house, I have a board game collection that takes up several shelves. Germany is a country of board games after all and let's face it, when I was younger, we didn't have the means for fancy new things like video games. Not that those were very developed back then (packman on a floppy disc, anyone?) And I am almost proud to say that my family's never owned any gaming consoles. So I played board games growing up, with family and friends. And that never got old. I got together for 'game night' with friends in university still and obviously even now. Frankly, in Japan I didn't re...

Autumn means "Undokai" (Sports Festival) season in Japan and I've never been more thankful for them ever before in my entire life. Thanks to the festivals, a lot of my kids didn't show up for the early classes today and for once, I was able to have a wonderfully peaceful Saturday. It was still work and all but it wasn't as emotionally draining as it has been up until now. It also wasn't just me who was having a wonderful time today. I was able to bond with some of the other kids in my classes, who unfortunately don't get as much attention as they deserve usually because I am stuck dealing with...the monsters. It's awesome. And yet it's also pretty sad because I know we're going to have to go back to the 'regular f-ing chaos' for the last 2 weeks that I'm at this school. Woe is me. One of the blergh kids is also not coming tomorrow, so I will hopefully have a more or less okay Sunday (albeit busier than usual because I have not just ...

I feel more and more like an empty shell at work. There's nothing that brings me joy and everything just f-ing sucks. And Wednesdays are my good days. Like, my 3 weekdays are really okay. It's just the weekends. Every day that passes brings me closer to the weekend. And this weekend is looking like it's going to be busy af. Usually, I wouldn't mind getting more classes on a day that isn't super busy but getting 2 more KIDS classes crammed in there is just going to make me want to shoot myself. ...then let me use this space to rant about one of my co-workers a bit. Not the disaster lady from before but a newbie. They're like CHAOS. They're a good person but they just leave a trail of messy GARGH behind wherever. We only have limited space in the teacher's room but they have now claimed an entire corner of it and it's their 'zone' now and nobody else can really use it because it's just a giant pile of crap. Everyone around them is getting f...

Today was uneventful and yet a lot of things happened. It's kind of strange, in a good way. I slept in (still need all the sleep and then some guh) and then puttered around just doing small stuff here and there (I accomplished laundry and some cooking!) and then wrapped my presents (desserts) that I had made for my friends, who I was going to meet later in the day. Since I'd made extra, I decided to poke my head into one of my old schools on the way and give them a share as well and say 'hi' to some people. I wish I could go back to that school but alas. It's always nice to have hopeful 'omg are you coming back, please come baaack's' thrown at you when you go to a school. The feeling of appreciation gives me strength to move forward. Anyway, the main thing today was going to a cafe event for one of the Thai actors I like. Incidentally, today was also the 6th Anniversary of the BL couple he is one half of. Happy 6th Anniversary Max and Tul! The event was ...

This weekend is all about friends and finding some happiness and catching up on life. So today I met with a former co-worker and their partner and we had nabe for lunch (so full, so good) and just talked about how life's been for us and our other co-workers and whatever else. It was nice to do that. Some of you might know the co-worker from my little saga titled "Help, I think I'm living in a BL drama". If you'd like to know more about that, just ask me. I have it written down somewhere lol I also got to talk to my mum and dad for a bit - couldn't get a hold of them after the big earthquake last week (we messaged, though) because my mum was sick. She's better now, though, so that's good to know and it's another worry off my chest. SIGH. We're all waiting for borders to open properly again so I can go home for a visit. I want to go home so bad it's not even funny anymore. The homesickness wasn't made any better by Japan throwing 31 degre...

Today I took half a day off to go to BANQUET's 5th Anniversary Live. And for the first time in a long time, I don't feel like complete and utter shit on a Sunday night (my kids classes today were a nightmare as per usual but let's not talk about that again). Aside from BANQUET, it's also due to the fact that I was able to meet friends again after a long time and said friends came to BANQUET with me. I can't say it enough but thank you so much. And that goes for my other friends, too (you know who you are). You always humor me, listen to me, let me rant and rave and drag you along to things. Thank you for dealing with this me and putting up with all my shit. ILU. I'm not going to talk about the live here because I said I won't be talking about fandom stuff on this blog (and I have my separate place for BQT related stuff). Just... I enjoyed it a lot. It felt good. I will enjoy these few moments of rest an respite in my happy place.

Yeah I failed and could not post yesterday. And I am cutting it close today. Weekends suck. And yeah today was complete and utter chaos for some classes and I just couldn't be bothered anymore. I will miss some students, yes but for the most part I am looking forward to getting the hell out of there. Three more of these dumb ass weekends to go. I can do this. But yeah my mental state yesterday was pretty shit so I couldn't really get anything done or deal with anything in general and to be honest, it took all of my willpower and whatever shreds of sanity I still had left after work to not fall back into some kind of self-harm other than over-eating and then feeling sick and regretful and...other fun stuff. Lack of sleep also not being very helpful. La la la. Tomorrow will be better. Once I get those 2 shit classes over and done with I can look forward to seeing friends again and then seeing my boys. Getting to see them has been what has gotten me through this shit. Ah, one thin...

Okay so we just had a big earthquake. It was an upper 5 where I am (or between upper and lower 5) and I don't think we've had something that strong in the greater Tokyo area since the disaster in 2011? Ugh I'm still feeling kind of wobbly. Earthquakes are scary. I was going to write about something different tonight but I guess I'll just put this here for now. Writing calms me down. But I also appreciate friends reaching out and calling me to keep each other company and calm down and ... it helps. It helps to not be alone.

And here I thought I'd be able to write something happy tonight but HA. Who am I kidding. I don't want to rant more about work here, I've done that on the bird app already. I guess I'll just have a sad here. My mum is sick. It's...fingers crossed...nothing serious and she seems to be recovering. But this doesn't help the gnawing dark thoughts that I've had about...you know. My parents and...saying goodbye. I've been living away from them for a long time, I haven't spent a whole lot of time with them over the course of my life to be honest but...they're still people I love and hold dear and ugh I guess not being able to see them for 3 years is pulling a number on me. (I might just really need a hug right now). Short entry today because I made myself cry thinking about this again.

I don't really have anything intelligent to say. I don't know if in such a case I should just not write a blog entry or what...but I guess my OCD kind of wants to do this Blogtober 'properly' so here goes. I was going to go out and actually go somewhere else today but I suddenly lost all motivation and reason to do so after I woke up. So after blobbing on the couch again, I just went out to walk around town. I bought some random stuff, then some stuff for my Halloween costume and then a treat for myself. Or rather than a treat, it's probably 100% stress eating. I hope that'll stop once I change schools, too. Exercising and all isn't really a stress outlet for me. It's something I need to do to stay healthy. It's a chore. I've come to not dislike it as much but yeah it is not really enough to be a stress outlet. Screaming, destroying things, hurting myself... been through all of that, too. Didn't really help. Eating doesn't really help eit...

I don't know if it's like mental exhaustion or what but on my recent days off I've just been a useless narcoleptic blob. I can't seem to sleep enough and I just cannot muster the energy to do anything remotely productive or anything at all (like watching dramas on my laptop or YouTube videos). Sometimes I find myself sitting apathetically on my couch and staring off into nothingness. It's a bit of a recent trend. I can't say I like it >_< but I don't know what to do... I think it is mental exhaustion that is bleeding into my physical well being but ugh right now nothing much I can do about it. Uh news flash. So someone got murdered like... down the street. I was out running errands (after I finally hauled my ass off the sofa and out of the house) and all hell broke loose. Giant blue tarps being put up, police EVERYWHERE and then mass media (cameras, reporters, PEOPLE). No clue what was going on until I checked the news once I got home. Fun times. It se...

October 3rd... is German unification day. Unfortunately my home is less than unified right now... lol but let's not talk about politics. I had to work today but since it's no kids lessons week, I got to have some peace and quiet - too much peace and quiet for some of it, though because I was bored out of my mind for the first few hours because I had NOTHING to do and the tasks the manager was giving me took like 10 minutes to complete. I bothered her later to give me more stuff to do because really, I was so bored and had already done everything else. She then gave me another task but was like 'omg you don't have to do this if it's difficult and everything' and it turned out to be a super simple "sort this thing" task. She said I could just do one day's worth because it was 'oh so difficult' but uh... I ended up doing the entire week's worth of stuff and she almost cried like "you are a god" (lit. KAMI-SAMA!!). I also did stuf...

Today was a good day. That hasn't been the case for a while now. So I'm really happy about that. September was basically: ９月＝苦しい　(ku-gatsu = ku-rushii)... sigh Ok a lot of stuff happened and I didn't get to finish this entry on the 2nd... I fail at this lol so forgive me for backdating it to the 2nd to make it fit. *CHEATING* ahem. So, many things happened today: 1.) I went to my old school and met some of my old students and friends 2.) I got to see BANQUET again for a bit after not being able to see them for over a month 3.) I finally got to see a dear friend again after not seeing each other in person for almost 2 years I'm not going to write much about 2. because I think I talk too much about fandom and stuff in other places already, so I don't want to annoy or bore you with that. Meeting friends is great because I mean yes, you keep in touch (more or less) online and all but it's just different to meet each other face to face and talk and catch up and hear ...

It's October! And so people were saying we should have Blogtober again. I was going to write this on October 1st but hahaha failure is me. My brain is just in no good place after work and now it's 1.35h into October 2nd. To be fair, I was planning to write a post before I saw that my trains going home were screwed and I had to take a detour, which meant that I got home extra late. Whee. But let's not dwell on work. I am looking forward to this October 2nd. I am meeting people today. People I haven't met in years and people I haven't been able to see for a while (over a month). It's a much needed rest and recharge day. So...let me cheat with this entry and let it be October 1st's. And I will write another entry later to talk about October 2nd. Hopefully I will have good things to write about.