after doubting the air conditioner/heater when using it seemed to make my cough a lot worse when i was sick, and then even after my cough disappeared i was still waking up with a bad sore throat each morning that disappeared during the day each time, now i suddenly woke up wondering if it wasn't the heater's fault. i've never owned this type of heater before where there's a unit in my bedroom and another in my living room and it literally blows in air it's taking from outside (before i've just had floor heating or central heating or heat lamps etc).

googled and yep, apparently getting a store throat or your ears hurting is a really common problem from air conditioners. you're supposed to clean the filters, which we can't do at the moment as we don't even have a way of reaching the thing nor do we know where to buy the new filters etc, and then you're supposed to use it on the minimum level you can stand, and i'm thinking probably i shouldn't use the one in the actual bedroom and should instead leave the bedroom door open and just use the living room one even if it means it'll cost more money to heat up two rooms... in general even though it's cheap and completely full of stains and the cupboard placement is awful, this apartment's only REAL problem is that it's extremely prone to wet air, and part of that is using the heater makes tons of condensation on the windows which drips down everywhere. haven't gotten mold anywhere except the bathroom so far, but we're trying to be careful.

my winter break, despite only being a week, feels SO long because we're not really doing anything. i wanted to try seeing a random movie at the theatre and stuff but my wife's shoes get soaked through if she goes outside in the rain/snow so she's avoiding going anywhere, including avoiding to get new shoes because she "can't try them on if she has wet socks". but maybe we can try going to the manga café or "critter café" (it has owls, hedgehogs, cats and stuff i think)...

every time we go out we spend money and end up buying stuff, but for the time being, we actually do have extra money we can spend, and we haven't had money for the entire time we've been together (6, 7 years?) so this is a first. not to mention, it's all a billion times cheaper and with more variety than anything in sweden anyway so it feels stupid not to buy things while we can. and since we can't eat most of the food that's sold, we're actually saving a ton of money compared to everyone else because we're not ex. getting a starbucks coffee (600 yen? more?) and buying ramen (500) and sushi (400-900) every day.

we really want to make "taiyaki" たい焼き(fish-shaped pancakes with filling inside) so we'll try to find some silicone molds somewhere and see if it works using those in the frying pan... we don't know if the fish oven works, if so we can use that as a mini oven maybe... apparently when the taiyaki forms are shaped like pokemon etc it's called "ningyo yaki"人形焼き, and baking molds/forms in general are called "yaki gata" 焼き型. now i realized the difference between two kanji: 型 is mold and 形 is shape. so a fish-shaped oven mitt is 形, but a fish-shaped baking mold is 型, and a fish-patterned oven mitt is 柄.

one funny thing is, i know SO few people compared to how big the area is and yet i meet people i know ALL THE TIME at random on the street! yesterday it was a future exchange student at our school who was going to go grocery shopping, so i just went with her. she said she won't celebrate new year's because chinese new year is at a different time so she doesn't care about january first; japan seems to celebrate both the normal and the chinese.