New week, new me, and all that. Some new routines are settling, and the combination of not making plans and a few people returning from leave has left me with time, for the first time in a while. Time I have already accounted for.
Firstly, I received an actual letter in the mail, about how to write a letter. I kind-of want to frame it. And now I feel inspired to buy a typewriter of my own.
Weather was so perfect and delightful for the week, right up until the weekend! I can’t tell if I am slowly adapting, but this summer is more pleasant so far than last year.
Monday brought an interesting meet, where we spoke about community. One particularly striking takeaway was that you can just lean into community as a support (and route) for learning something new. This is something I have never done before, because I don’t like being bad at things in public, but I have decided that I want to try!
Another weekday night, however, I turned down an invitation to do exactly that. Instead I went to the gym, and for the first time since 2022 at the big Waitrose in Putney, I bumped into someone I knew at the supermarket.
This week had three superb lunches. When did I stop having lunch with people? It’s great. Let’s do more of that?
As a lark, I have built my own spaced-repetition tool to support my classwork. It’s somewhere in the middle of Anki and WaniKani, and I’m already finding it useful. In fact, I wish I had it this time last year. I'm toying with opening it up to other people.
Also: There is now a robot posting daily reading practice in my times channel. It’s deliberately stretchy, and again, I wish I had done this sooner.
That’s input and memorisation basically sorted: I need to find more opportunities to speak (and write) Japanese in a low-stakes way. Lightning didn't strike twice, and avoiding the booze has taken away my most plentiful opportunity in snack bars.
Thursday brought Tonkatsu, Friday brought Tonkotsu. Both were pretty good. Mocktail in Shibuya was powerful.
Kanda Bon Odori was a strange but good time. I spent 3 hours struggling to copy the right moves, as our concentric circles compressed into a mess of people. Something about mirror neuron activation.
