Chisa

Somehow got out of the habit of doing this. Probably something to do with me bringing more (reasonably healthy) food with me to work rather than having to buy any :D

So far this year I’ve quit one gym and moved on to another – this time rather than being close to my house, it’s close to my work. So instead of coming home tired from work, going to the gym (effectively dividing up my time for doing my own stuff in the evening so there isn’t much time to do anything) and eating a late dinner, I can go to work a bit early and take an extra long lunch time to go to the gym and then eat lunch in front of the computer.

Might not sound like a big difference, but the change in my attitude towards gymming is huge. Instead of feeling like the gym is cutting into my leisure time, it’s cutting into my lunch period which I never really use up completely anyway. Instead of not feeling like doing anything but relaxing after work, I get to take a break from work and go the gym. Instead of sitting at a computer for almost 7 hours straight I can do a bit of exercise and come back refreshed.

I think this is going to work out a lot better. I need to find other ways to manipulate myself into enjoying doing these things.

As of yesterday I will be studying Japanese part time at Tafe. I’ve always wanted to, and would have started last year if I wasn’t so stingy! Four and a half hours all at once on a Saturday morning that I’d usually use to sleep in (or clean, depending on what mood my mother is in) is a bit intense for my now defunct attention span, but I survived one lesson without my mind or pen wandering too much, so I suppose I can keep on surviving for the rest of the year.

When I arrived at the first lesson everyone who had signed up for language courses were sitting in the halls waiting for the teachers to arrive – the silence brought an eerie feeling of expectancy, everyone silently waiting and not knowing how to proceed until then. Eventually I broke the silence and luckily found that the girl I was talking to was in my class, and like me was an anime fan, interested in Japanese culture and left an engineering course in pursuit of a career in design. Go me for getting over shyness! Not long ago I would have sat there as silently as everyone else, not making eye contact and staring at a wall until someone approached me.

It was interesting to see everyone’s reasons for being there – from what I gathered in the class we have a few Japanese anime/manga/game fans, people who need to travel to Japan for various reasons and want to learn the language beforehand, and a few people who’s loved ones are Japanese and want to learn it for them. The younger students (particularly the anime fans!) seemed to have a much easier time picking up the language than the older students – I guess hearing Japanese a lot, even if you don’t really listen and just like to look at the artwork like me, helps a lot, as does being in or recently out of school or uni and being used to the whole classroom learning environment. I felt a bit rusty despite only being a year out of uni, although I guess I can’t really claim I was paying much attention for the last two years of my course.

Japanese is a bajillion times easier than the Mandarin and Cantonese I tried to learn before the trip (and failed at miserably, only having the confidence to say ‘thankyou’ when we were actually there). Not having to deal with tones is a huge help – I had a lot of trouble pronouncing them with Chinese, and found I was just moving my head rather than actually saying them properly. I’ll get back to Chinese eventually, but for the moment I think starting with something a bit easier might be best.

I also just realised that we’ll eventually be learning kanji – which means I’ll actually be able to learn some words to write with my calligraphy set (pictured) that I bought from China. Yay!