Back To Work

My wife believes wholeheartedly that the week starts on Sunday, however I cannot abide by that and begin the first full week of 2026 on Monday the 5th of January, the last day of the winter break. We originally plan to drink some energy drinks and power through from 1:00 AM all the way through to the evening in order to fix our sleep schedules which have been ravaged by two weeks of no routines or outside influences.

I heroically go to a 24 hour laundromat to wash and dry some clothes, arrive back home and make it to 6:28 AM before lying in bed “not to sleep” I assure my wife, just to “charge my phone and rest my legs”.

I wake up at 1 in the afternoon.

Damn.

Despite the setback, the rest of Monday is oddly productive. I double-check my lesson notes, we make cookies, I paint some miniatures and I enjoy some peace and quiet.

Tuesday is my busiest day, I teach two classes in the morning and then a third after lunch. I often work through my lunchbreak not out of an innate desire to be a good capitalist worker drone, but so I can enjoy my food without a time limit hanging over my head forcing me to wolf down leftovers. It’s the last month of the winter semester so it’s time to prep the classes for their final exams! One thing we’re doing is poster presentations, I’m using this as a proof of concept, and if it works I’ll try and get my film class to make them later in the year. The hope is that I can decorate the halls with some nice artwork and posters, there’s currently posters up on the walls from ten years ago and I think it's time for a change. Hey, maybe they’ll be up for a decade too, and I feel that if I’m going to leave soon I can at least make a poster wall my lasting legacy!

I’ve also been writing the New Years cards I bought last week in between classes, prepping material and the times I wake up in the middle of the night because my sleep schedule is still absolutely abysmal. I’ve also found a huge stack of Nagasaki and Kumamoto postcards that I need to send. My New Year's Resolution for this year, and in fact for every year since 2014, is to use up old stuff before I get new stuff. So the postcards, envelopes and cute little letter sets are getting used up before the end of the year! The big issue is that a lot of the people I want to write to are in the United States and due to Trump’s tariffs, posting things there is basically impossible, even with postcards. A colleague tried to send a Christmas card and it got sent back to him. This is a little bit of a bummer, as an American friend I’ve got who loves cults asked me to collect any cult-related material I got given and send it on to him. I’ve got a giant envelope ready to go but I don’t want it to get lost in the mail!

I’m in awe of how interconnected the world is and yet how hard it still seems to send and receive parcels. Sending things internationally via Japan Post is a bit of a hassle as you have to print out a form at home and they no longer accept handwritten labels. At the same time, a friend of mine asked if he could order some BLACKPINK merch to my house so that I could mail it on to him. It struck me as weird that he could effortlessly order the stuff, but that it works out as cheaper for me to mail it to him than it did to order it directly to himself.

I got some presents myself. He and another friend sent me some model kits to build in the same package. In addition, a student who I’ve been tutoring in IELTS brought me some flowers to say thank you, and they’ve made my office at work feel much nicer.

I’ve been attending Japanese classes at the city hall for a good three or four years, it’s always nice to practice my Japanese and give my brain a bit of a workout. The classes started up ahain this week. It was the first time my wife, and one of her friends, came with me for a while and it felt good to be getting out and doing an adventure together. My wife has been taking Japanese classes at the university I work at. The city hall classes were 1-1, a lot of teachers and a lot of students all working one-on-one, it wasn’t an environment she particularly thrived in and she’s much preferring the classes at university with more students to work alongside. But she came with me today as she and a friend wanted some extra grammar practice.

After that, we bought cheese.

The hardest thing about living in a foreign country is food. I miss fish and chips, I miss Yorkshire pudding, I miss Tesco egg sandwiches but mostly I miss cheese. Luckily, my wife can make bread (Japanese bread is a little too fluffy and sweet) and we found a store that imports and sells cheese. We got made some bread, bought some cheese and had a little picnic in our living room.

It was a nice way to end the day.

Then on Sunday it started snowing. I remember being a student here and seeing my teacher look out the window to see snow and gasp with astonishment because it was the first time it had snowed in a decade. I remember the streets slowing to a crawl, I remember everyone making snowmen and talking about how astonishing it was.

In the four years I’ve been here, it has consistently snowed around January or February and everyone has treated it as troublesome but routine. In some ways I’m feeling the same about living in Japan. A lot of the things I found amazing and uniquely Japanese feel commonplace, and the frustrations that pushed me to practice Japanese and change how I approach work no longer feel like obstacles I need to consider.

I love living here, don’t get me wrong, but I loved living in my hometown too, and I moved because I was feeling … not “bored” exactly, but wanting to experience something new. Maybe for me that something new is something that was old.