Day 6 - The Last Jedi

I got the opportunity today to watch episode 8. Personally, I found it more enjoyable than A Force Awakens. The story line may have been simple, but I think it sets things well for episode 9. Maybe it's just me, but the humor in The Last Jedi seems reminiscent of a Marvel movie.

After that, it was back home to get some work done before heading to the gym for another leg day. I focused mostly on leg accessories (vastus lateralis if I'm not mistaken), before heading back home for the evening.

A few games of SC 2 to round up the evening before my daily dose of my jdorama sums up my evening. There wasn't much going on in episode 5 of reverse, but the cliffhanger ending was tempting me to start episode 6...

Self control... self control...

And that's Thursday! Hard to believe that break is almost halfway done... yet it seems to be going by slowly at the same time...

Day 5 - When did left turning on a red light become legal?

Woke up early, not because I was motivated to do work, but rather to get ready for my 8:00 dental clean up. For the past couple of years, I've had my appointments on the weekends so that it doesn't interfere with work. However, I haven't seen my regular dentist in a while (since he doesn't work weekends), thus booking an appointment slot for a weekday.

Like yesterday, it was hard to get my car started. I'm assuming it's due to the cold and that my battery has a minuscule 330 W of cold cranking power. Nevertheless, it was able to turn, thus allowing me to make it on time. The cleanup went like always, two units of scaling (I believe that means 30 minutes?) followed by polishing and fluoride treatment. Bite-wing x-ray and dentist check up at the beginning and shortly after scaling commenced, respectively. Fortunately no cavities! =)

After my appointment, it was off to drop off a friend at the airport before heading to the gym for back day. It was a short session due to me injuring my trapezius muscle. Rolling out again midway through my session helped, but being the cautious person that I am, I decided to skip a couple exercises.

At home, I completed another set of notes before heading out for the evening. I got the opportunity to try out a different Japanese restaurant: Tokachi in Dragon City Mall. It was better than I expected, and portion sizes were quite generous for the price. After a stop for bubble tea next door, it was off home.

Now in terms of the title... as I was driving to dinner, I saw the most peculiar scene. I was third in line, waiting to turn south onto Barlow Trail from 36th Street NE. Normally, the left turning light doesn't turn green right away, even though West bound traffic turns green. It's normally a pretty short wait (30 seconds or so), but the CRV at the front of the line turned left after seeing that there was no Eastbound traffic, despite the left turning traffic signal being a solid red... The taxi behind the CRV (2nd in line) thought it was alright to do so as well, so it turned left on a solid red as well! Ironically, as I pulled up to wait for the light, it turned green pretty much five seconds later.

Other than being out all day pretty much, I was able to fit in another episode of reverse. The more I watch it, the more I understand why it won the best drama award: it's a great suspense series with a main character that people can relate to. I'll most likely elaborate once I finish the series!

But that's it for now!

Day 4 - Squat day on Boxing Day

I cannot recall the last time I woke up early to go shop on Boxing Day. With the advent of online shopping, that's what I've been using mostly for goods on-sale during Black Friday/Cyber Monday or Boxing Day.

As such, I woke up and headed off to the gym for a grueling squat session. 10 sets of 8 reps of 225 lbs. It's been a while since I last felt as light headed as I did during those reps (especially between set 4 and 5). Nevertheless, they're were completed, though some sets had haphazard squats that borderline dangerous in my books...

Other than that, went home and continued on with Pokemon Ultra Moon before getting work done (making notes for my grade 9s and answering some email).

And onto sleep! Tomorrow will be a busy day once again!

Day 3 - Merry Christmas 2017

I meant to post for Day 1 and 2 (Saturday December 23rd and Sunday December 24th), but I've been too lazy.

As for the past few years, we had a Christmas celebration at one of my cousin's house. Each year has scrumptious food and drink with good conversations with people that I haven't seen in a while. As years go by, I feel like I'm getting less and less time to interact with others!

Anyways, after lunch, it was off home to relax for the rest of Christmas Day. I got in episode 2 of my most recent drama series: Reverse. It's a mystery/suspense drama about four men trying to move on from the death of their friend during a ski trip. It won an award at the recent Television Drama Academy Awards (I believe it's a magazine that polls people and experts) for being the best drama, thus stoking my curiosity.

It's pretty interesting so far, seeing that the screenwriter piques interest by having a mysterious stranger stir up the past with letters calling the four men murderers.

And that pretty much sums my evening! Off to sleep and onto Boxing Day! 

Last Day of November 2017

A blog post a month. Not too bad... I promise to get back to it daily when I turn 29 next year.

Life has once again reached a comfortable lull; work --> work out --> sleep and repeat. I've been plateauing in terms of weight loss and strength gain, but hopefully a change in my program would shake things up.

Other than that, I had my first student teacher finish her practicum. It was an interesting experience being a mentor. It's similar to teaching students, yet different since the student is a full grown adult. I admit I was initially wary of getting a student teacher because I heard horror stories from others before (which makes me wonder if my mentor teachers had a similar feeling of foreboding before they met me). Fortunately, things went smoothly throughout the five weeks she was here.

It's a little bit difficult to get back to teaching a full schedule again...

One last thing: I upgraded from my iPhone 5s. It has lasted through me throughout the years, including two trips to Japan, to Mexico, camping, falling on concrete, falling into a bathtub, and many more stories. Personally, I find it quite quick still, just that my rear camera hasn't been working since... end of April? It was pretty much after the camping trip with the grade 6s at my school.


It's nice to have a phone with a rear camera.

The tempered glass screen protector is a bit beat up, but once again, phone is in relatively good shape!

Late 6th year anniversary post

Six years and four days ago, I started this blog. I used to blog more frequently, but a mixture of boredom and a lack of time has made posts more and more infrequent. It's hard to believe that six years has passed. My initial intent with this blog was to improve on my writing, which I hope has improved somewhat over time. A rather stagnant blog, in that it hasn't evolved dramatically over the years, but it's something that I like for it keeps things simple.

I'll get back to it on a daily basis when I turn 29... which is not too far from now sadly. 

Anyways, it has been over a month since I started my first year as a grade 9 homeroom teacher. Like a couple years back where I got the opportunity to teach a previous grade 7 class grade 8 material, it felt a lot easier since I already had a bond with my students. As for my assignment this year, I have one grade 7 science class, three grade 8 classes and one grade 9 class. So far so good. I'm enjoying teaching grade 9 despite all the prep work that I need to do for it since I never taught it before. 

Other than that, life has been pretty ordinary. Routines are never bad, but perhaps I need to find some way to spice it up!

Till whenever I write again! =P 

Japan 2017 - Or should I say Kyushu 2017 - What I learned this time around and what I hope for future trips

Work started last week, but students don't start till tomorrow. I've been lazy in terms of blog writing for no apparent reason. Either way, time to start my reflection blog for this year's trip!

***

2016 was the first time since 2012 that I didn't leave Calgary to travel elsewhere. Wanting to save money for a house, it was a choice I soon came to regret for Summer 2016 was one of my worst summers in a long time. It didn't help that there was rain throughout most of the summer. I didn't feel ready to start work again back in August 2016.

Fast forward to around March of this year. I knew I had to travel somewhere, anywhere to be honest. With the goal of a house still in mind, I thought of taking a short week trip in Canada (either Vancouver or Toronto/Ottawa). Deep down though, however, I wanted to travel overseas, so my brother and I thought of a two week trip to South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. 

With certain events going throughout the world, I was hesitant on travelling to countries that I had on my list, thus falling back to my initial plan of Canada 2017. Lo and behold though, come middle of May while I was bored at home, I found a seat sale to Osaka for around $800. Excited, I started playing around with dates to see what would work for my brother and I. After meddling with it for a couple days, and having a friend come join us, I realized that there was an 11 hour layover in Vancouver on the way home. Not wanting to spend all that time in Vancouver, I wondered what it would be like for a direct flight to Narita. 

Long story short, flying to Narita was about $1250, which was considerably cheaper than what I've paid in 2014 and 2015. With tickets booked at the beginning of June, I started planning for our trip. We initially had plans to visit the Tohoku region of Japan, along with Okinawa, but the distance between the two didn't make it plausible. Therefore, we stuck with Okinawa and Kyushu for a week, while heading to Okayama for a couple of days before returning back to the Kanto (Tokyo really for us) region.

Being that it was the third time back to Japan in four years time, I have to admit that it has lost most of it's novelty for me. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy going to Japan, and if I had money, I would do it yearly. Despite going to different regions for most of the trip, there weren't too many surprises. At times, I was confused to whether I was on vacation, or that Japan was where I normally lived. The big thing that reminded me that I was on vacation was the fact that I still cannot speak Japanese fluently, nor even conversational. As a side note, I swore that I'll learn basic-conversational Japanese after Japan 2015 before returning back to Japan... which obviously didn't happen in this case!

In any case, despite being to Japan five times over the course of my life, I have learned some new things this time around. This reflection blog will focus mostly on what I learned, rather than a recap since I believe that my daily blog posts are in more detail than what they used to be before. 

1) Get up early and get stuff done

Japan 2017 was 17 days in total (including flight to and back to Calgary). Japan 2015 was 34 days in total. Coincidence? Perhaps...

Despite this trip being half the time as the last trip, it felt almost as long. The secret was in waking up early daily to get things done. On average, I believe we got up before 8 AM and left our hotels by 9. True, many stores aren't open at this time, but this is one way to avoid the onrush of tourist. For example, we got to Okayama Castle right when it opened, meaning that we essentially had the castle and gardens to ourselves.

Not flocked with tourists as you can see

2) Supermarket meals are amazing... same with the bakeries!

For the last three days of our trip, we went to a supermarket located five minutes away to purchase dinner. Just like the T&T here in Calgary, many foods that have a short shelf life go on sale in the evening. We would usually go around 7 PM to grab prepared meals with at least 10% off from their regular price. True, selection is not as good late at night, but the taste is as good as most of the restaurants we went to. If I were to live in Japan, it would probably be cheaper and more efficient to go eat supermarket food than to prepare food myself. Convenience store food is amazing in itself, but supermarket food tends to be cheaper. Also, there tends to be more to pick from, both in drinks and food.

The Japanese may not be as famous as the French for their bread, but they make some delicious buns in my opinion. We managed to go to a couple bakeries this time around (around Kyushu and in Chiba), and each time I wasn't disappointed with what I got. Definitely something to try when you're there! 

This wasn't discounted, but it was a really cheap dinner

3) Spend at least a night in a ryokan.

I'm not sure why I never done this earlier. One reason could be price, for we paid over $300 CAD at Yamamizuki for the night. However, when you look at the price, it includes a humongous dinner and breakfast meal plan, which I would easily value the meals to be at least half of the price we paid (when comparing it to what I predict a restaurant would charge). Another reason could be the onsens themselves. Initially, I was wary of the idea of bathing nude in public, since that is not the norm in western society. You soon come to realize though, that it's not as bad as it seems. I was self conscious back in 2015, but I didn't feel that bad this time around. Keep in mind, you always have a towel with you, one that is just the right size to cover your private parts.

Onsen Tamago. So simple, yet so delicious. I would do it here if I weren't scared of our raw eggs.

Those are the three things that I learned throughout the trip this year, in which I recommend you give it a try. Now onto my list of things that I hope I'll be able to accomplish or try next time around!

1) Learn More Japanese

First thing that popped into my mind. True, I'm better now when compared to myself in 2014, but I still have a long long way to go. Duolingo has helped me tremendously in learning basic Japanese phrases, and I have started reading Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese ebook to supplement my learning. It would definitely help in more rural areas where English speakers are not as common. 

2) Take a walk super early in the morning

That was my goal this time around, to get up at like 4 AM, when the sun starts to rise, and walk around a busy city (ie: Tokyo) and see what it's like. Lo and behold, that never came to fruit for some reasons... 

3) Third time's a charm for Mt Fuji

Climbed to the summit in 2014, but failed in 2015. Little did I know, that the summit we reached in 2014 wasn't the highest peak for Fuji. There's actually a higher point that takes around 40 minutes to get to. Also, I didn't walk around the summit because I was too cold in 2014. NEXT TIME!

Japan 2018? We'll see what the future holds in store for me. I'm guessing most likely not... but it may turn out to be an another late planned trip like this years.