SUPER LASER PISS

Shadow the hedgehog pissed on my wife!

Look, I'm not even going to pretend that the old Sonic Adventure battle 2 live dub has anything to do with today's blog, but it is what I thought about after a certain thing happened to me this week, so there we go. I've been really enjoying the song I posted this time lately too and I'm probably going to buy the album it's from after I get paid again, but that too is a topic of today's blog, so let's get into it.

So, a few days ago, Dogen released this video about what being an ALT in Japan is like and it is acutely painful to me because I'm pretty much going through this for the first time this year. The gist of it is, I get paid less in December, January, March and April. Because you're paid for the previous month in the next month, that meant that my most recent paycheck was effectively nothing. It was enough to cover my bills, but I literally didn't have the money to buy food this month. Just about everything I've needed I've put on my card because what little I have has to go to other bills that are due later in the month.

This is of course mostly my fault because I decided I wanted to go to the Expo while I had the chance and blow all that money that could've been saved for now, but that aside, this is the first time this has actually happened to me. I started my first year and you get paid for all your training days and the days you work in April on your first paycheck in May. Which, btw, you need to be prepared to get through that first month and most of the second on your own because from hiring to first paycheck is about a two months gap. I lived in Shimane which has a pretty significant welfare fund, and at the end of the year they just gave me like 70000 yen out of the blue. I would eventually pay some of that back in taxes the following year, but for some reason, I had that and it gave me the ability to get out of Shimane and move out to Yamaguchi. In that April, I received my deposits for the apartment back, so I actually had plenty of money at the time to do whatever. I ended up going to Hiroshima for the first time during that golden week and I saw the dome, visited the pokemon center and all that. It was a pretty good time.

So, this April rolls around and I'm caught flat footed. I had hoped that I'd start my new part time job well before then and I'd have some extra money, but the government, for the first time, took its sweet time getting me my work permission and what should have been a 1-2 week process ended up spanning an entire month. I submitted my application on April 25th, and didn't get permission back until May 22nd. On top of that, they fucked it up and I had to go back on a lucky week day off that I happened to have to get it fixed. I'll do my first day tomorrow, and honestly I'm a little excited about starting this, but we'll get back to that.

The point is, in terms of money, we have no money, and we won't have money for another three weeks. While I'll get my normal pay next month, and pay for this first lesson on Saturday, this month has been a very harsh wake up call and I am now in the process of cataloguing everything I spend whenever I spend anything to make a proper budget for the coming months. June-July ought to be fine, relatively speaking, but August which will consist of heavy AC use and no school lunches, is going to be expensive and I'd like to actually be ready for it this time.

Another thing that I am certain of is that I have to get out of my current company and into a new one in a different and cheaper apartment. I could be paying what I do now for an apartment twice this size and with more amenities if I had found it on my own. I don't really need more space, but I could definitely take two or three hundred dollars off my rent every month by moving somewhere cheaper, which I'm going to do. This is another thing where your ignorance is taken advantage of so the company gets a cut of your rent when you pay it, effectively paying you less wherever they can. It's only because I've come so far along in learning Japanese and getting to know people in my area that I feel comfortable enough to get out of my current situation. However, what I'm unsure of is what I'll actually end up doing next year.

Provided it goes well, and I believe it will, I could just change my visa and work full time for my part time job. It's less hours for more pay and I could move close by for cheaper than where I am now and just do that next year. I'd like to get into translation work, but after reading some things about that kind of job, I'm not sure I could pass a Japanese interview in six months. I'm pretty confident in my ability to get my N3 certification here in July but when it comes to actually speaking and using the language, I'm just not fluent enough to like, speak in a business setting. It'd be me hobbling along with my broken Japanese, so unless I work somewhere that speaks English predominantly, probably not going to get hired in the first place.

That said, I am pretty set on moving to either Saitama, Yokohama, or somewhere I could afford in Tokyo when I do get to that point. I'd been debating on there or Osaka somewhere, but honestly? All the money is in Tokyo, and I'm more likely to actually meet someone in the biggest city in the world too. I want the money to go out on a regular basis, and to live in a place where I can actually meet people my age, and that's just not a thing here. Of course, those are just goals for the moment, but what I'm doing now is not sustainable, so something has to change.

Speaking of change, an acquaintance of mine has recently been talking about supplements that have fixed a chronic issue he'd been having where he would sleep for more than 12 hours a day without ever getting any rest. After reading his big post about the issue and what fixed it, I recognized a lot of the same symptoms in my self and I bought everything he was taking. So far, I've been doing it for a week, and save Wednesday and Thursday, I've felt great. B-1, B-complex, Potassium and Magnesium are the vitamins, and the first five days really, I felt much better than I had in a very long time. He and my other friend take a lot of B-1 though and I started with a low dose as per his recommendation. I felt like it was wearing off by Tuesday since I felt the need to crash and take a nap. It was a shorter nap than usual, so I was content to wait it out and only up the dose on Friday, but then Wednesday happened. I got home, I took my nap, and I didn't get up for five hours. Not what I wanted out of this, and that's more typical of me; a random day where I just crash.

So, Thursday I upped my B-1 from 120 to 240mg, and I had a strange encounter in the bathroom. Apparently, taking extra B vitamins has the side effect of turning urine a very bright, almost florescent yellow. I felt alright that day but that worried me and I still got tired around 5. I had to go to Japanese class after that and made the poor decision to drink a coffee at 7PM. I got home and slept like shit, and that day I felt mostly horrible. I believe it's a combination of taking too much (it's not harmful, the extra B1 is literally pissed out when you don't absorb it) and not sleeping well. It hadn't been a problem, but I also had an upset stomach a few days around then, and I think that's also because I'd not been taking my vitamins with food either. So, we had another day of super laser piss Friday, but Saturday I lowered the dose and has helped immensely. I'm taking about 180mg and having my pills with all my morning drinks and a banana. The combination of things worked out well over the weekend.

Speaking of working well, let me tell you about my first lesson at the part time Job. On the Saturday before last, I was late because I got the start time wrong. Boss sent an email about the lessons being from 6-7 and I misread that as 'at 7.' So, I took my time to get ready, wanted to make sure I showed up early and took the 6:30 bus to the place only to realize that I was a half hour late. Luckily, I was not supposed to teach the lesson and just watch, but I pretty much already had a plan for what I was going to do, so all I really did was meet the family. A father and his 8 year old son, and his 6 year old daughter.

My teaching style is 'fuck it, we ball,' and I normally decide what I'm doing the hour before I do it, and I usually take the first class to figure it out and have it perfected by the second pass. Once again, this Saturday, I was nearly late and realized just in time that I was going to be late if I didn't leave right then. Missed the bus too, so I threw what I needed in my bag, slapped on my roller blades, and bolted for the school. Luckily, it's almost completely down hill to the school from my apartment, so I made it there in about ten minutes. That only gave me a few minutes to spare to get what I needed, and worse yet, the saw me taking off my skates as they arrived early. I played it off well enough and I did have a vague plan before hand, but it was chaos.

I ran through colors, I bullshitted my way through a preamble before figuring out exactly what I wanted to do, and then ran through phonics. I definitely over complicated it because I actually know a lot about where letters and sounds in the English language come from so rome and old norse came up, but I speak enough Japanese to actually explain that, which is something other people who work here do not have. If nothing else, that's a skill I can leverage going forward even if I stick to teaching English. Phonics went mostly well and I got the boy to sound out a few words, but next time, I'll focus harder on the sounding out part, and I should have a text book to work with too. They had one at the office called Mr. Bug's phonics or something like that, and it seemed to have exactly what I wanted.

[Rant about phonics in japan in 3, 2, 1...]

My biggest criticism of teaching English in this country is that they don't give children the tools to read before teaching them the language. English teachers write on the board, ALTs write on the board, the children only vaguely recognize the letters, and if my own experience is anything to learn from, sometimes you just look at a foreign language and straight up ignore it because it takes too much effort to process it. Path of least resistance. If Sounding out words and reading aloud is one of the first things they're taught to do, however, they learn much quicker. This is what happened when I got the chance to focus on phonics last time I taught elementary and I had an entire class improve significantly over a month like that. I can understand why this wasn't in the case in the past, kids didn't start their English curriculum until middle school before 2020, and even later in highschool before that. Now however, they're starting in 3rd grade, and IMO, this is the first thing they should be learning. Since I'm in charge of the curriculum here, that is what we will be doing, and these kids are going to have a way better grasp of the language than their peers because of it.

[/rant]

Anyways, after getting through all the letters and their consonant sounds (re: I talked about vowel sounds and even explained that C, Q and Y are bullshit letters using 'yummy' as an example, which I probably shouldn't have) I gave the kids stuff to color while I worked with their dad. IMHO, he could probably use phonics too because him being about ten years my senior means he didn't learn that shit in school either. However, phonics for an adult is totally different and I'm not sure how to go about it. That will be an investigation for this week to complete. Instead I taught him some basic conversation questions that can be linked together like where when and what revolving around schooling and work. Typical things you'd ask someone you don't know. What I want, and what I'll need to put together, is an overall outline to my curriculum, and part of that is going to have to involve me writing dialogues to read and pick apart. Mostly, it will be work, and work I'll have to do instead of writing or practicing for my JLPT or playing games on my weekends/time off.

I have the down time so I'll use it, but it sucks because I have also been making good progress on my Beach story. It is slowly ballooning, but not so much that it will turn what was a 10/15K story into anything more than 25-30. I've made a couple characters for it which was always going to cause expansion, but they're kinda important to the way the story goes, so it is what it is. I was 10K short of my goal last month and chances are that is going to be a trend. Between trying to consistently draw, games with my friends on the weekends, picking up work and worrying about finances, my writing time has diminished a lot which is sad, but, you know how it goes.

Wake up, you need to make money!

Any commission I get is more I can put away in case I run into what happened last month again, and the more I produce and the more consistently I produce it, the more likely I am to get the attention of somebody who wants something from me. I even have some ideas on how to make a niche for myself, but that will have to come later. I've some experiments I want to do art wise that I'm working on now... Anyways, for the moment, I'll have a solid extra 12K yen next month which isn't a lot, but it's enough for like two weeks of food. There's a new client who wants to do after school lessons she's been talking to, another small child, and that may end up being my second lesson during the week. I can have a max of three lessons a week because of visa things, but 3K an hour is a lot more than the 1.5K an hour (may actually be less than this, I don't remember the exact hourly rate, but it's low) I'm getting from my current job. Provided that expands to the maximum 36K a month sooner rather than later, I may even be able to afford that motorcycle I want while saving up too. But that's a big if, and we have to get there first.

I need to investigate what full time looks like and see what my full time coworkers make and all that, but we are working on an exit plan that has a real foundation now, do I may even get out of the hole I've dug myself into. This is probably a common thing for my generation in particular, but I don't think I ever really felt like much of an adult until last year. I'm all there is to me, literally on an island, and I can't just go back home if I screw something up. I have leverageable skills here, but not back in the US really unless I can find a position working in Japanese translation. In a year's time maybe I could get to a decent level for that, but definitely not right now and having to move back to the US would be an absolute nightmare. This is all I have, so I have to do with what I've got, and it ain't much more than me.

Anyways, that's all from me for now. I haven't been very regular about these blogs as of late so I'll try to correct that this month. Tuesdays are always fairly light for me, so if not on Mondays, I'll try to get these written then.

Until Next Time~
-KCZ