Hey, it's July

So I am at work and I have nothing to do for two days, because the kids are taking midterm exams and thus there aren't any classes for me to go to. I mean, that isn't entirely true -- I've been coming up with stuff for me to do, like cleaning out my desk and organizing some of the flashcards the teacher before me left, and I'm making up a form for evaluating a speaking test next week, and I'm correcting papers that the students don't actually expect to get back from a game I ran last week. In the afternoon today I am going to the W5 office to fill out forms for visa renewal, and after that, who knows. (I'm thinking I may go do solo karaoke for a bit because I've wanted to try out some songs but don't really want to subject anyone else to them, and if I start early enough I can do karaoke for like 100 yen per hour. If anyone reads this and WANTS to join me for karaoke one of these days, feel free to drop a line.)

Actually, I've been ridiculously tired this week for some reason. Monday night I came home and was seriously falling asleep playing PP and was in bed by 10pm. Last night I came home and watched the Fighters game and fell asleep for the top of the 5th inning while liveblogging it, and was also in bed around 9:30pm. Though, both nights I woke up in the middle of the night feeling dehydrated, so I didn't sleep straight through to 6:30am. Yesterday at school I was so tired around 1pm that I went and took a 10-minute nap on a couch in the women's locker room. I didn't have any coffee on Monday or Tuesday though... this morning I bought coffee at 7-11 and so now I feel totally awake! But I'm not sure that's the best solution.

I didn't do laundry yet this week. The mother cat was not outside hissing at me this morning, so maybe today or tomorrow is a good time to get it done. I heard meowing last night as I watched the Fighters game though, so who knows.

Wow... 2 more weeks of school and then summer vacation. How nuts. Still haven't found a summer job, though I've at least sent in apps for a few. It's not the end of the world if I don't get one, but it might be nice.

それでもいい

Dude. So I watched the Dragons-Tigers game tonight and the Dragons won, and Tony Blanco hit this gigantic home run, and so he and Takashi Ogasawara (starting pitcher) were game heroes, and... and Blanco actually talked in Spanish, with his interpreter translating. That's really wacky, I'm not sure I've heard a foreign player speak Spanish here like that -- usually even if they're from Latino countries they tend to speak pretty good English. I'm sure he's not the first, he's just the first one I saw in a hero interview, basically.

As for the rest of the day, I went to my company's office in Shibuya and filled out forms this afternoon. The guy who's basically "coordinator in charge of making sure ALTs have their act together" is going to go to Shinagawa on my behalf sometime next week and file for my visa renewal. He has my passport, which makes me a little nervous, but I'm sure it'll be okay.

I was weak and bought Krispy Kremes on the way home, because our office is up the Dogenzaka slope right by the Shibuya KK. They have a flavor called "Daddy's Coffee Chocolate" which basically is a chocolate-covered donut with coffeebeans on it. It's much better than it sounds.

And then I went and did karaoke by myself here in Akabane. Seriously, it's 80 cents an hour per person before 7pm, and you have to buy a drink. So it was 500 yen for me to do karaoke for an hour and a half, which is about as long as I could last by myself anyway (well, I coulda done two hours I think). I tried out some songs I'd wanted to, kind of failed to be able to read a bunch of them fast enough, had to play around with key signatures for a few others. Had a lot of fun trying to do 東京ラプソディー, which is an enka-esque polka from like 80 years ago, and actually recorded myself singing　東京の屋根の下に住む because I wondered how bad I actually sound (the answer: nowhere near as bad as I think). I really should learn more crazy old songs just for fun, or at least some actual enka (it's just that the few enka singers I listen to, none of them are female).

I still wish I had a regular karaoke buddy to go with, but it's actually totally fun to go by myself in a lot of ways, aside from the embarrassment when I first arrive at the place like "...yes... one person..." I mean, I don't have to feel nervous about screwing up, and I can pick whatever damn songs I want, and skip whatever I want. The downside is mostly that I lose my voice a lot quicker, and it's nice to learn new songs with people (and in some cases, it's nice to harmonize with people, though my best harmony buddy lives in freaking Nagoya).

But whatever. Anyway, I picked up stuff at Ito Yokado and then came home to watch baseball, and I did laundry while watching the game, and the stray cats seem to be gone, though my first floor smells weird now and I'm not sure why. To me it actually smells like "this house needs to be aired out" more than anything, but I'm not sure rainy season is going to be the time to air it out. Sigh.