Grouse Grind Again. I broke my personal record from 51:47 to 49:15, 2 :32 shorter! Well, that was still the 3rd challenge though. Now I want new trekking shoes, and a sportswear. The more I improve, the better equipments I want. Through the 3 times experiences, I found my weak point. My cardio is okay, but thigh and calf muscles are damn, since I got cramp in them every time. Someone said, bananas help avoiding to get cramp, so next time I'll bring them.

Age Of Tomorrow I was really looking forward to watching it. I had already read its manga version published by Shonen Jump, and I also had started reading the novel before watching. Overall, The movie was very nice, much better than Godzilla, which I watched last week. Compared to the manga and the original novel, the movie got changed many things. Age Of Tomorrow is known as an adoption of the Japanese novel, All You Need Is Kill, but my impression of the movie was that the movie wasn't simply adopted, it's based on the novel, added many factors to the mass and cut down many key parts as well. I wouldn't mention its specific part to avoid spoiling the secret. However, there is one thing I'd like to mention. If you watch it without reading the original novel, you can still enjoy almost the whole part of the movie, but the ending. There are some parts in the movie to show the respects for original story. I think the ending is one of them. Only the ending, It doesn't consistently connect to the story right before. By the way, watching 3D movie from a front seat with angles for a long time made my eyes so tired.

Soccer While everyone was watching World cup, I was eating Sushis in a Japanese restaurant run by a friend of mine from badminton. There were a lot of customers standing in front of a TV, yelling and screaming every minute. I wasn't so into soccer, since I didn't have a good memory of soccer when I was a child. I was pretty bad at team playing sports, especially soccer. I still remember that school friends of mine sometimes made fun of me when I did stupid movements such as miss shoot and being taken away a ball by oppornents in soccer.

A Motivation of Learning English In a coffee shop, I met a Canadian guy who I have talked in somewhere before. He was friendly as we met last time. Since we had the common interest of Japanese cartoons and movies, we were taking about mostly them. I had been growing up in Tokyo with Japanese cartoons while he had in Canada with Canadian cartoons, our memorable childhood cartoons were different. I thought our Japanese cartoon was aired widely in the world, so foreign children watched the same one as we Japanese watched. However the thing was that they had more channel options than Japan and of course they had non-Japanese cartoons, so you didn't watch the Japanese cartoons unless you or your parents intentionally chose the one. By the way, through this topic, there is one thing I have just realized. Apparently, my English speaking level is still stuck at intermediate level according to my Canadian friend. This realization really discouraged me. He didn't mention it to me directly, but it was obvious since he was explaining about the difference of his way to talk when he talks to native English speaker and the others. He intentionally chooses easy words for English learners, including me. Not to mention, I know my English is not enough having a comfortable conversation for natives. Well, okay. Stay positive. It just motivated me to study harder.

Grouse Grind Tor The 2nd Time I went to Mt. Grouse to trail alone after work. This was the 2nd time in this season. Compared to my 1st time, I made it much more easily. My time was 59 mins for the 1st time, but this time was 52min and I still had much energy left when I got to the top. There are a couple of tips that I found for Grouse grind. 1. A water bottle isn't necessary while hiking up. 2. Take small steps. Chose a gentle, long slope. 3. The first quarter is the longest part and takes time. I think I still have a big room for growth. Next time when I get to the top, I will buy a new trail shoes. To prevent getting cramped while hiking up, I'm going to start one-foot squatting after recovering from a muscular pain.

Ramen With Jealousy I went to a Ramen restaurant with 4 my friends. 2 of them were girls. The Ramen I ordered was okay, tasty, but there was one thing I was concerned. One of my male friends seemed like he was into a girl among us. She was thoughtful and cute. Since I was still new to this member, she often took care of me when I had nobody to talk. While she was talking to me, he became quiet, didn't smile for me at all. Obviously, he got jealous. I felt bad and sorry for him. I wanted to say like "there is nothing between us! You know, she is just kind! Don't worry". More importantly, she wasn't into me! Me neither. Although I admitted she was cute.

Language Exchange Meetup Last evening, when I was heading to a grocery store nearby, I bumped into a friend with his two friends who I had never met. Since it had been a while to see him, we started having a small conversation on the street. At the end of that, he invited me a Meetup which they were heading to. At the time, the time was already 9pm passed, but since the location was nearby, I decided to go there. The Meetup was held in a food-coat of a mall nearby. There were about 15 people already gathering. The concept of the Meetup is language exchange. 50% of Japanese learner and 50% of English learner. I sat on a chair available between 2 of Japanese women, then initiate a conversation. After having a nice conversation, I was invited to watch Godzilla next Tuesday, gladly accepted it.

Relaxing Sunday I woke up around 9 am. After getting everyday housework done, I went out my home without no destination I had decided to go to. As I was about to pass through a bus-stop, I recognized a bus coming in, which is to a natural park known as one of the famous sights-spot for visitors. I jumped on the bus, got to the park by spending 15 minutes. Fortunately, the weather turned out fine on that day. There was one thing I had been dreaming of. Reading books under the sun like white people do in summer season. When I walk around a beach, coastline, somewhere in nature, I always see white people reading a book nicely. From my perspective, they seem like people knowing how to relax truly. The time surrounding them seems like going slowly. I found out a bench to settle down after 10 minutes walking around in the park. From there, I could see a bay, ships floating on, birds flying, lots of nature and also skyscrapers in downtown from the distance. After 2 hours in the park, I was satisfied with feeling nature while reading, then went shopping.

My First Teaching Japanse After a registration and a brief interview that I did a week ago, I finally was allowed to teach Japanese as a volunteer in one of a Japanese travel agency. Yesterday, I went there for my first lesson with anxiety and anticipation. The lesson is one-on-one. There is one big lesson room provided that is supposed to share with other teachers and students. Your student and table are randomly chosen by the staffs. My first student was a 18 old high school girl from Romania who were native Romanian and English speaker. So Japanese language was a 3rd language for her. When I was guided to the lesson table, She had already been sitting there. "Hi, are you xxxxx? My name is xxxxx. Nice meeting you." I said. "Konnichiwa, yoroshiku onegaishimasu ( hello, nice to meet you )" We initiated the conversation.