Got our first property tax bill since buying our house in 2024, and at 36,700 yen (230 dollars) for the entire YEAR, it's less than the automobile tax for a regular-engine car, and less than half of ONE MONTH's property tax for a very modest house in my home town. This is why I live in Japan 👍

I just got a new novel series to work on (yay!) and the writing is possibly the best I've worked on so far (yay!) but the character names are SO BAD! I think the author set her keyboard to katakana mode and then had a seizure 😱 It's just random katakana smushed together 😂😂😂

Kids' first movie theater experience: Super Mario Galaxy. Listening comprehension is my weakest skill so I have to admit I only understood about 90% of the movie, but it was good 😅 Kids were surprisingly well behaved too!

Yesterday we went for a walk to another shrine in our neighborhood, I think this is number four in a 10 min radius of the house.

It's really annoying to be in between projects with all the different companies I freelance for at the same time, but knowing that if I register with another company suddenly they'll all send me work at the same time and I'll have to turn something down. 🙄

Today's my 10 year wedding anniversary ＆ 12 year anniversary of moving to Shiga (I've spent 13 years in Japan including 1 year study abroad in Nagoya, but I went back for a year in between to finish my degree). To celebrate I recreated the 'strawberry vanilla custard tart' currently @ starbucks.

Out of 739 applicants, 20 were chosen by raffle to participate in a special "Night at the Manga Museum" event to celebrate Kyoto Manga Museum's 25th anniversary. Incredibly, I won one of those 20 spots! I'm abandoning my kids (with their father) to go to a giant sleepover in a manga museum!!! 😍😍😍

A happy weekend with good weather. They're closing a Starbucks location that we have a long history with because it was the first and one of very few in our area up until recently. So me and some of my child-free friends I rarely get to see anymore got together for a coffee date 😍

Welcome to second grade kanji 😍 They are wobbly cute elementary schooler letters, but I'm so proud of him. At age 4 I thought he'd be non-verbal for life. When he entered 1st grade in special ed I worried he'd never learn to read. But he's absolutely thriving 🥰

I bought two cheap old DS's from メルカリ for my kids to play with on the plane ride to America this summer because they're obsessed with Mario 😅 They are enjoying 'practicing how to use it.'

Mr. T helped me make cinnamon buns the other day. I forgot to get a picture of them after baking but of course we slathered them in an ungodly amount of cream cheese frosting.

I'm now up to four different militaristic groups in the novel series I'm currently translating. 1.護衛 (MC's bodyguards) 2.軍 (the national military) 3.私兵団 (territory's private army) 4.自警団 (city militia). Any more and I'm not going to be able to keep them straight!

We visited the US consulate in Osaka today to renew this cutie's US passport because he's turning 5 soon! 🇺🇸

Every year me and my equally non-Christian friends gather at my house on the appropriate day and have a taco party to celebrate easter eggs, because we're millenial Americans 😅👍

Obligatory Sakura pics.

Another play date with local foreign/mixed family friends. Goodbye all my money, is spring break over yet?!

Strawberry picking! This place is free to enter, pay by weight for what you pick,which works better for us. 2 containers, just over 500g came to 2660 yen.

I was translating tentacle porn after the kids went to bed but my 4 y/o came down for a drink. While I was getting it, he opened my mostly-but-not-completely closed laptop and asked "Mommy, what's that? Is that a mean snake?" "YES! Very mean snake, it's too scary for kids so don't look!" 😱😱😱

Kazuma's been really into going for walks lately so since the weather's beautiful and I desperately need to be more active, we've been exploring the hidden corners of our neighborhood. Like the shrine with a randomly placed tunnel to hell...

Kids and I planted the garden today. We're trying direct-from-seed this year. I know it might seem strange to cover the dirt with weed sheets and plant in planters, but I have OCD and weeds are easier to keep under control in the planters. I'm grateful to have space to garden at all.

Spring break day 2, playdate with foreign mom friends. Our kids only see eachother a few times a year now that they're in school, but they are BEST friends. There's something special about people who look like you, speak like you, and are different from everyone else the same as you. ❤

Everyone talks about the racist "Japanese First" nutcases from sanseitou, but I've been seeing a few of these political posters pop up in my neighborhood lately. I'm not sure the best way to translate it but maybe "All Contributing Members of Society First"? 😅

I'm not great at hand-writing kanji from memory (I have no visual memory whatsoever) BUT I have improved a bit over the past year due to writing approximately 200 pages of 連絡帳 back and forth with my son's special ed teacher 😂 Maybe by the time he finishes 6th grade I'll be a master?

Engrish in the wild, snapshot from a friend of mine. Idk what this is even from, maybe some kind of free promotional notepad or calendar?

I got my annual 'countdown to summer vacation in America' sticker calendar made up. First had to decide the dates of our spring/summer camping trips!

The picture leaves a lot to be desired (sorry!) but I was so amused to see this kei truck pulling a trailer that is essentially another entire kei truck. Is this even legal?! How can the engine bear the load when it's full of 荷物?! I never saw this before...

New word of the day: ビロード ＝velvet (the fabric)

I finally have a 'look at me localizing!' non-literal translation to share: さすがだ! ＝ Impressive!

Any idea what I witnessed? They were playing some kind of flute music and doing a dragon dance? In front of a real estate development company, not sure if it's relevant.

Graduation season means a few half days and days off for kids NOT graduating so teachers can attend the ceremony. And time off during the week means a Costco trip! I got my sister an entire case of Takenoko no Sato, and hid it in the under-floor storage to hopefully not melt before summer. 😅

Today's new word 殺人未遂罪 (さつじんみすいざい) - (the crime of) attempted murder 😁🔪 Been trying to expand my vocabulary beyond my bubble of childcare and romantasy by reading ~the news~ 😅

There's something so surreal about teaching my supposedly-native-speaker child to read and write Japanese. I think I'll be fine up until the end of JHS, but when the kids get to HS we may be studying together 😂

Today I made deep-dish pizza. As is often the case, I had a craving for something I never would've bothered to try and make in America, but because there's nowhere to buy it here, I had to get creative. It was amazing. Next I have to figure out how to make sausage...

Starbucks Japan released the limited-time Cream Puff Frappuccino today. It's delicious, highly recommend. Will add a description and my impression as a comment.

Touma is a flight attendant passing out snacks. He gave me a tupperware lid and told me it was my passport.

I made nachos for dinner for the first time tonight. My husband has some odd ideas about what counts as a 'meal' so I worried he would reject this but he liked it! I also really enjoyed it, but couldn't finish even half 😅

🚀 VIZ Media is hiring an Editorial Acquisitions Manager. Full time, hybrid in San Francisco Bay area (remote considered), $85k-100k. Fluency in Japanese and English required. #jobalert #comicjobs www.viz.com/company-jobs...

Bittersweet feeling of knowing a monsterously long series I've been translating for 4 years (and only halfway through still!) is finally approaching the conclusion.

Mr T making his favorite drink "hot chock" before school this morning. I looove the preschool uniform and wish our elementary school had one. It was expensive to buy up front(~60,000 yen for the full set) but we spend almost nothing on clothes for him.

Filed my Japanese taxes online for the first time. I'm not sure if I did it wrong or if I'm tragically underpaid, but they are giving the taxes I already paid back to me. 😂 "Yikes sis, you need this even more than us."

🚀 Yen Press is hiring an Editorial Assistant (Manga - Minimum JLPT N3 Required). Full time, hybrid in NYC, $45k-49k. #comicjobs #jobalert www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=b...

Goodbye all my money 😭 Hello 52 days of summer vacation in America. 🇺🇸 I really hope we do not regret this...

I don't usually pleasure-read in Japanese because I have the impulse to look up every word I don't know the pronunciation of even if I know the meaning and it ends up taking so long it's no longer pleasant. But I'm challenging myself to read this book just for fun without looking anything up.

And Touma has fallen to the dreaded Influenza B. Daddy is the last man standing... for now 😂

Influenza B has gotten me as well. While I can barely move sounds like the perfect time to try and figure out how to file Japanese taxes online. Pray for me, I have no idea wtf I'm doing.

From another relative.

My hometown is completely burried! (pics from family)

Influenza B is going around at the moment. We can't get in for a test until tomorrow because everybody's celebrating the Emperor's birthday, but I am fairly certain that's what we're dealing with too. Fingers crossed we don't all get it.

I can't express what a miracle this feels like... my ASD child who is triggered by having his teeth/hair touched can now tolerate dental care (and haircuts, though obviously not at the same place). So proud of him 🥰