さいきん きちじょじ に すんでいます。*
by mikka
As if Japanese wasn't hard enough, my book has apparently been printed backwards.
This photo is pretty unimaginative, but it is a pretty apt embodiment of our return to Tokyo. Since arriving on Saturday to a tiny, warm room in trendy Kichijoji, we haven't been up to much other than study. In part this is because we're taking an intensive 4 week Japanese course at ARC Academy that meets every day and has quizzes (I haven't had a quiz in ten years! I can already feel myself making those 'beginning of the semester' vows that I used to make at the beginning of every class in high school, the kind where you do all your homework and write super neatly for the first two weeks before sliding back into your messier, less overachieving ways) ; and in part this is because we are not getting paid again until the end of April, and so are embarking on a life of monastic asceticsm. Now that we've paid our rent and tuition, we're settling down to see just how cheaply it's possible to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It's not that bad - Tokyo is too cold to explore, or at least, too cold to explore when you have six more weeks of it; the awesome Lenora will be coming to visit in two weeks so we can explore then; and, as my as-yet-unread level TWO (I've almost made it to level TWO!) book in the picture shows, we're kept quite busy studying. Or procrastinating studying, by writing in blogs, for example. So much for those vows.
* Or, "These days, I live in Kichijoji." I think.