I restarted Japanese lessons this week.

Maybe that was a mistake, but at least they’re not that expensive.

Due to a minor fortunate circumstance, I was able to pay off all my loans, thereby freeing up quite a bit of money every month to use for, well, stuff you’d spend money on.  I decided to spend it on education, because, let’s be frank, education is the one thing that can’t be taken away.

Well, I spent it on that, and a kotatsu.

Those seem great.  But we’ll see if that bit of Japanese culture can integrate with a suburban American house.

My new teacher said “you’re better than I thought you’d be”, but apparently still a level or two below “so-so”.  So I guess I’ve got a lot of learning to do.

My teacher is a man who lives in Japan.  This means, of course, that timeframes are a bit messed up, but it’s still kind of amazing how video can be transmitted literally halfway around the world in a split second, like that.  I deliberately did not choose a woman.  You can call me sexist if you want, but I thought a woman’s appearance might be distracting to me, and it might work better learning from someone that it’s almost literally impossible to have any attraction for.

He’s close to my age.  Competent, sure.  Nice, sure.  But attractive?  Hah, no.  Not to me, anyway.

Truthfully, I kinda want to give up.  I mean, no, I really want to give up.  I’ll never be good, I’ll never be fluent, I’ll never live up to anything I expect of myself.  But I might as well go down trying.

My old teacher is fine.  She’s competent.  I’ve nothing against her.  But she’s going for a doctorate right now and is very busy, and I felt like I was imposing a bit.  We’ll revisit that at some point when she’s a bit less busy.

I’ve got some other stuff to write about, but on the other hand… why bother, really?