{"id":1159,"date":"2012-05-06T12:03:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T03:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/life-in-japan\/?p=1159"},"modified":"2012-05-06T12:03:42","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T03:03:42","slug":"an-end-to-the-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/?p=1159","title":{"rendered":"An end to the magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, the Gilded Week has now come to an end, and we get to all go back to our normal lives bright and early tomorrow morning. We also had Cinco de Mayo<\/em> thrown in for good measure, which reminded me that I really need to make Mexican food again sometime soon (like the awesome party I threw last year with some of my coworkers at the time.. need to find people in the area who have also love tacos.)<\/p>\n

So, how’d it go? Well, as I’m pretty sure you all already know, I’m just not terribly exciting. Especially when the entire country goes on vacation, accommodations and public transit become pricey, and everywhere you go is crowded. No, I’d rather just take a vacation later in the year when everyone else is toiling away at work and school.<\/p>\n

Me? I went to work! And cleaned my apartment! And ran errands! Of course, as I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion, I really have no idea what to do with free time. I like having stuff to do and being busy, so I try to find something good and productive to fill my time when I’m off. \u00a0I also was able to finish off that.. umm.. interesting<\/em> book on writing\/translating Japanese contracts. It took a lot of coffee at the local doughnut shop, but I got through it. So yay for that!<\/p>\n

It wasn’t all pathetic and boring, however. I am, whether you believe it or not, human! I met with an ex high school student of mine for lunch on Thursday (she’s in university now and studying Chinese. You know.. despite all that English we taught) and then went out to afternoon tea with an ex student of mine from my conversation classes (she was in Tokyo to visit her grandchildren.) It was nice to have a chance to catch up with people and to see how they’ve been growing up (in the case of the former) and how life has changed in my old adoptive ‘hometown’ (in the case of the latter.) Apparently one of my other adult students found a boyfriend, got married, and is now pregnant.. all in the 7 months I’ve been gone! Impressive.<\/p>\n

And on a semi-related note.. that original sentence was written as “…and got<\/strong><\/em> pregnant” but after reading it several times, I just can’t shake the weird feeling that comes up from saying someone got<\/strong> pregnant. \u00a0It gives the impression that either it was something that one was actively trying for or, a bit more negatively, sounds like one disapproves of it. I wonder if that’s just me, or inherent in the way we use it. Anyway, yeah.. had to change that.<\/p>\n

What else? Not a whole lot going on! Looks like it’s gonna be getting a bit busy here and on through the summer for various reasons (then again, I always<\/em> say it’s busy nowadays, so I guess nothing’s changed!), but I’m trying to see if I can swing a trip to Disneyland at some point later this month. Why? Dunno! But I went to Disney Sea last year in May, so it seems like something I should do. The only problem is that I still need to recruit someone for this endeavor, since it’s just kinda pathetic to go to Disneyland by yourself. Haven’t been there in 8 years, so it can’t hurt.<\/p>\n

That’s all I’ve got for now.. I should get on with the rest of my Sunday and run the last remaining errands I’ve got and get ready for the rest of the week.<\/p>\n

Later!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, the Gilded Week has now come to an end, and we get to all go back to our normal lives bright and early tomorrow morning. We also had Cinco de Mayo thrown in for good measure, which reminded me that I really need to make Mexican food again sometime soon (like the awesome party I threw last year with some of my coworkers at the time.. need to find people in the area who have also love tacos.)<\/p>\n

So, how’d it go? Well, as I’m pretty sure you all already know, I’m just not terribly exciting. Especially when . . . → Read More: An end to the magic<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1160,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}