Spring time...

...is here in Japan.

Evening, sports fans. Spring break began for me last Wednesday after school. The last day of the school year, and at 4:20 I was out of there. I had after all an enkai to go to. Well, no tales of my drunken shenanigans (revelatory though they were). I woke up the next morning at the crack of noon.

HANGOVER: Enter, stage left.

Actually, thanks to some precautions it wasn't too bad. So, what did I do for the next four days?

hikkikomori

That comes from the combination of two words. The first is hiku, which means to pull away from. In this case, it means to pull away from society at large and social interaction specifically. The second word is komoru, which means to coop oneself up somewhere, in this case at home.

Its actually a social phenomenon that is affecting a number of otaku-types in Japan, and is the harbinger, dare I say, of a very serious pestilence affecting Japanese society in this post-modern world.

But that's not what I'm getting into in this post, so we'll leave it at that.

Indeed, I stayed home for the last four days, and by day four I was itching to go out. I was going to go see a dance recital (gods that makes it sound so lame) done by some of my graduated students, but inclement weather kept me home. Well, they got their ticket money from me, so my appearance was optional.

I did have a plan though, and that plan started to come to fruition today. This week I have all afternoons off (not free mind you. I'm using up my vacation days). So this week I will be organizing and cleaning my apartment. I purchased today a wonderful new bookshelf, which now houses all my magazines, English books, and art books, as well as my 1/100 MG Gundams (and other sundry things). This too was revelatory, because I realized that I have inherited by mother's crazy desire to clean. I nearly had a panic attack when, towards the end of the move, I looked around at the disarray I had created. Well, unlike my mother, I know how to deal with a panic attack. One slug of whiskey later, and I mellowed out, grabbed a trash bag, and gathered all the clutter that was pissing me off.



Well, that's the new shelf. Holy crap I've accumulated a lot of...crap.

Tomorrow I tackle my pantry cupboard, as well as perhaps start sorting through the all the paper in my house.

On an unrelated note, I paid off some more bills, and I came to the realization that, at virtually no impact to my lifestyle here in Japan, I've reduced my consumer debt by a considerable amount. When I first came to Japan, I had something like $2700 debt on one of my Visas alone. All told, I think I had something close to $5000. But as of today, I'm down to under $1800. Total. Spread over 3 cards, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That makes me pretty damned happy.

And last, but not least, to placate my many gourmet fans, I present tonights dinner (sans the beer, which is only for show).