got my weekly paycheck of 10,000 yen. too bad 4,200 a week gets wasted on subway fare... oh well, even if we don't get any more students we'll probably switch to once-a-week teaching next month anyway which'll mean almost no subway costs, and we'll write a book which might generate a bit more income...

today we taught them "should, 'd, could, would, were" (if i were; "if i got rich" vs "if i get rich"), "too bad, that's a shame/pity, that's sad", and tried to teach them the difference between w and u while explaining that in dialectal english people say d/t instead of th. my wife made fun of me for not being able to roll my r's, despite her herself not having been able to until she was 16, and then the lady said "oh but i can't do it either even though like all japanese people can!!".

finally found out where we can buy 3m LAN cables - at the secondhand shop! got one there for 300 yen. they sell a bunch of other stuff like NES consoles for 500 yen, but i couldn't quickly find a way to play an NES on the computer monitor. otherwise, today seemed to be one of the many days where you're supposed to visit your dead relatives at the graveyard because tons of old people were going to/from them in our neighbourhood.

i've also found out that some manga, like "Sanctuary", that i'd assumed to be really difficult is actually way easier to read in japanese than in english. the political words in japanese are actually pretty simple - i mean "run for candidacy" is something like "get-chosen-batal", or in any case, "the fight to get other people's votes". it's just a bunch of stuff that might be confusing on first glance but once you actually see it in context a couple times the meaning becomes obvious.

no idea how next semester will be. theoretically i'll become a research student in japan but also take the course where i write my BA paper from my swedish school, then graduate. but i don't know if i can get a student loan from sweden for research studies in japan that aren't on an official exchange, so i applied to a bunch of random uni courses in order to get 100% studies just in case. if worst comes to worst i'll take the BA paper course and then Japanese IV which i'm way too advanced for, just so i don't have to actually "work".

then the other thing is, i still don't have proof of gymnasium/highschool-level swedish, which in daily life matters not one bit but in academic life screws me over because i can't take, say, icelandic or "translation in subtitle format" courses (if i want to get a minor in translation or something later on). i took the swedish test and failed the writing portion last time, so theoretically i only have to retake that... IF i take it in may (you only get a 1-year window to retake parts you failed - otherwise you have to retake eeeeverything and pay a ton of money). i went to sign up now and found out the deadline was 2 days ago so i've e-mailed the guy in charge and asked if it's alright to sign up late.

instead of that test, i can theoretically take 3 online courses to get the same swedish requirement. except i can't figure out how to register because all the pages say "let us physically mail you an info packet, no international addresses allowed, and btw you have to be registered as living in our county if you want to take this course". meaning i maybe can't "learn swedish" if i live abroad (you can, however, take a billion "TEACHING swedish as a foreign language" courses online : / ). i'm asking my friend who took the courses a few years ago so we'll see if they can help me.

i hate the swedish proficiency test so much. it's not practical in ANY way - they do stuff like, if you write something wrong despite still being perfectly understandable (ex. spelling "mother" in a dialectal way instead of standard swedish on accident) they still count it as an error and eventually fail you. this is particularly ridiculous because, for example, if you've studied danish or norwegian (which might be my last resort if i can't take this test) you're exempt from ever having had to study swedish, but on this swedish test if you spell words in norwegian then you'll be counted as wrong. and they claim it's to test if you have uni-level swedish but then they have reading sections about shit like the ancient uses of turf. i'm sorry but why not just give specialized-yet-general questions relating to what the student actually plans on studying? like you're supposed to know vocabulary about turf but not words like "adverb"?