just watched 10 hunter x hunter eps in 2 days, since animelon updated with some more. in the beginning of july i was looking up like half the sentence for every single sentence, but now i'm only looking up a handful of words per ep (sometimes there's a whole string of sentences where i'm missing lots of words, other times i get all of it).

by my estimates, this show is JLPT N1 level (=hardest level). my original goal was to make it from N3 to N1 from june to september (=4 months); in the end i couldn't/can't make it to N1 but i did get to N2 at least. i have a whole year of living in japan to get to N1 so it's fine, but i hope i can make it there before the end of the first semester.

lately i've been doing stuff like watching/reading product reviews and reading "what to buy/do as a tourist" blog posts in japanese even without a dictionary. i'll edit this post and link a couple examples later once i'm on my own comp. i've slowly been automatically upping the amount of hours i practice japanese; as it gets easier to write/understand, i just naturally spend more time doing it without even thinking about it. now i'm doing 4 hours a day or more on most days (a random mix of typing, reading, watching and listening).

now that i've finally finished that cat book it's time to complete the highschooler's book about "the marketplace" (=basic economics) that i started some months ago and never got back to... it explains things REALLY simply, as if you're a kindergartener and not a highschooler, and that seems typical of japanese (swedish is the same way) so i'm pretty glad. using textbooks for native speakers is a good way to improve your language skills in general (it's how i improve my faroese at least), but for me it's a bit more meaningful than that: i always wanted to go on a high school exchange to japan and couldn't, on top of that i got a very different education (=Very Shitty) compared to the average person/european and always feel super stupid, so reading highschool textbooks is kind of like making up for that time. i never took chemistry, physics or calculus for example; required subjects in most countries. i never learned about or don't remember anything about most historical figures and places etc.... so if i eventually read about all that as language practice it's a pretty good deal.

out of nowhere some japanese person liked one of my OLD twitter posts about nålbinding (i hadn't even written in japanese on it), so i checked out her blog and they'd just started learning like, this week. had some posts about how they keep going back and forth between different kinds of instructions trying to figure it out, which is/was exactly my situation. so i found a recent, clear video and started translating the instructions for her (+ any other japanese person who's interested); i figure any mistakes in writing i make will be cleared up by the screenshots anyway. then i checked out her instagram... she's some old japanese grandma(-aged person) whose ENTIRE DAY is apparently spent doing textile work (crochet and weaving mostly), and she's visited Turkey a bunch of times apparently! it really doesn't seem like she's the person you can be "friends" with online though, kinda sad.

anyway, this is really the first time i've felt confident enough to write a "real" tutorial in japanese about anything. and it makes me want to pick up nålbindning again...

a member of the sendai esperanto club had checked out my twitter and blog (i gave the club the links) and saw i was trying to buy bedding, they said they have two beds they don't use that they'll just LET ME BORROW and that they can drop off at my apartment whenever! that means FREE BEDS! (= saving at least $100 USD). now i've asked what "beds" exactly entails (if it's literally just mattresses or if i also get blankets/pillows) so i know what else to buy when i'm out shopping. he said "everyone at the club is eagerly awaiting your guys' arrival!" ;_;; i also got info on where a bunch of secondhand shops are, so we can go buy stuff (= clothes, plates etc) right away when we get there.

i had hesitated a bit on giving everyone my twitter link because who knows what off-putting stuff i've posted or will post there, but in the end it was a good idea eh!

before this month is over i need to finish watching Shinsekai Yori, Death Note, Chobits and possibly one other series: i'm going to assume i can't watch anime in japan due to not having internet at home among other reasons (the irony!). it'll be sad since i won't have a TV at home either so i can't just watch normal japanese TV... i wonder if they have super cheap movie-viewing places or something i can go to...