July 27, Monday
I actually lost the memory about the day. I always write some record about a day on my notebook that is a kind of business diary. But I left nothing on the notebook. I just remember that I ordered a textbook from a book retailer in that country. It was 1857JPY. The textbook itself was 857yen and shipping costed 1000yen. The shop usually sends their books by EMS, however, this time the book cannot reach me in the speed of EMS because of the pandemic.
July 28, Tuesday
I stopped preparing for Japanese teaching from this day. Although I had been doing that since the spring semester ended, I have one thing that I have to do now. That is succession of property that my dad left. At first I spent a lot of hours to understand the way of inheritance tax by looking at the web-site of National Tax Agency. It seemed to me that the process was too complicated. But I realized that I didn’t have to pay the inheritance tax because what my dad left was less than the amount that needed to pay tax. However, even if it is small amount, I have to reach an agreement with other heiresses and need to write a document to show banks. I carefully made the document so that it would not contain any errors in it.
July 29, Wednesday
So the anything in Japan is complicated and difficult unnecessarily. People always waste their time to do anything with irrational procedures. I was still continuing to write a document that would be an agreement among heir (me!) and heiresses. I went to the office of Farmers Association (JA) in the morning to check my dad’s bankbook. My family has nothing to do with agriculture, though, this area used to be nothing but a farmland in the old days. So the Farmers Association is still an important financial institution here. They gave me good information about succession of property. Since I have no one to consult with, I appreciated their help.
July 30, Thursday
My room, or my office, is a 8-tatami room. Since the beginning of May, I have been sitting on the Tatami for so many hours, working hard to make hundreds or even thousands Power Point slides for my online Japanese teaching, and teaching Japanese language beyond the national border. On Thursday, I cleaned just a little part of this tatami room on the second floor (by US way of counting floor, not by Britain way. This house is just two-story building) And then I took a rest on the bed in the afternoon.
July 31, Friday
I am not sure if I will be able to back to the University before the first semester starts. If not, I will have to continue online teaching. I will teach “new” classes in the coming semester. So I started preparing for the semester by organizing new groups on Dingtalk for class 1938, 1734, and 1735. Making these three groups has not been finished as of Sunday. Probably no teacher used Dingtalk in the last semester for the class 1735 because the 1735 students are slow to join in the group. It was not the thing to hasten; still we have one month by the start of the semester.
August 1st, Saturday
I started making the teaching plans for the reading class. Its textbook is a reading material of part of Minnano Nihongo series. I made the plans from section 26 to 33. In the afternoon, I went to a supermarket to buy some foods for supper. I bought two slices of salmon for the day and chopped chicken for the following day. After the supper, I ordered 24 cans of non-alcohol beer and Chinese-Japanese dictionary to Amazon.co.jp in the night. They were about 15,000JPY (140USD).
August 2nd, Sunday
I got up at 5 in the morning and cut the weed in the garden. Then I took shower and had breakfast. I uploaded my blog post on the goo in the morning hours. Now I just want to upload my digital photos not to wordpress but to goo because it is a little difficult to upload a photo image to wordpress blog post. It is easy for me to do that onto “goo”. In the afternoon, I worked in the air-conditioned room to make my teaching plans for the reading class. I started with the section 34 of the textbook and got to the section 41 that would be the last in the coming semester. But my teaching plan is still simple. I want to make it more elaborate, but I need to move on to preparation for another class that is for business manners. I cannot spent much time for reading class that is for second grade students. Actually the business manner class would be a tough one even to me who had worked for 22 years as a company employee. Anyway there is one thing that I have recently decided. I should not waste my precious time to write a blog post. If many people come and read my posts, it would be good to use my time for writing. But my blog is not that kind. The fact is that only very few people come very occasionally here. So 99.5% of viewers is actually, ME. This blog is exclusively to record my daily life as a less-experienced Japanese teacher. And now it is a summer break between the semesters. I need to use my time wisely for the better teaching in the coming semester.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 