started making friends with a classmate, she's also a foreigner and likes anime and seems nice and sane and friendly so far. i think in 3 more days i can be done with N3 level on "readthekanji", and i'll be at least halfway done with N2. definitely by the end of this month i can, theoretically, be done with ALL the words on that site, even N1 (about 2,000 words) and stuff. then i can focus on grammar (by studying) + vocabulary upkeep (by simply reading books) + individual kanji study. i've been reading at least 1 short story from Aozora Bunko a day too.

harada's "yamamoto" ended. it had a really theraputic, decent-happy ending. everyone got a happy end, even though it's just.... everyday happiness? slight happiness? like smoothing things over with your wife or getting a job. this entire series was about how people are super messed-up and abused/abusers and have problems and stuff, so i really feel like a happy ending is sort of giving hope to all those people (like me) who have actually had a lot of problems in life... at the same time the manga's still like 80% porn so you can't really recommend it to anyone even though this mangaka consistantly has the most accurate portrayal of abuse/dependancy/etc types of personalities i've ever seen in fiction. even with this happy ending you're left wondering, are they really going to be able to be happy?

i messed up on making a ton of nattou but i know what went wrong. and i really have to buy a pressure cooker, it takes 6 hours or so to steam the beans and then 24 hours of incubation so at least i'd save those 6 hours...

it's april. the swedish proficiency test is in may...? i think class ends in may too. the japanese test is in july. i'll be going to japan in august probably. so:

1 month: swedish test, class ends
2.5 months: japanese test
5 months: go to japan

i need to get to N1 before i go to japan. i can do this....