December 2019 and end of year wrap up

I have just realized that I did not post anything for December and that 2019 already ended before I could post this lol.

The last month of 2019 was a blast. Extreme things happened (will be explained in another post) but good and nice things like watching Christmas fireworks in the middle of winter happened as well.

Highlights

Watched fireworks in Beppu for the first time in my whole university years. I only watched it because I’m about to graduate lol.
Experienced my first breakdown, which was not pleasant.
Successfully submitted a job application to a company I’m interested in. Wish me luck in the interviews!
Went to Gotenba and Hakone with two of my other friends.

2019 for me was …

Tough. I didn’t feel that job hunting was that scary until I had to undergo it. Having to multitask with thesis writing was and is really taxing as well.
Fun. I think I traveled the most this year. From Osaka and Tokyo to my first visit to the US in Chicago!
Full of love. I realize that I do have friends and family who are willing to support me every time I stumble and fall.
Quick. To be honest, I didn’t expect the year to end this quickly. I guess time does fly…

I’m grateful for

My friends who always gave me that push when I needed it.
My family who made everything I wanted to do possible.
You, who have been following me on this blog, may it be a passive reader or a frequent commenter. It always gives me a reason to keep writing. Thank you so much. ♥

Happy New Year! Hoping that 2020 will be a good year for all of us.

November 2019

This month was hectic and tiring. My calendar has never looked so crowded and I feel like I’m always out and about physically and mentally. So many things were happening and it’s hard to process what’s really happening around me.

Highlights

Went to the States for the first time!
Fell on my knee and earned a huge bruise (still not fully healed yet)
Successfully finished my TA job
Nailed my midterms
My MacBook battery died on me

I’m grateful for

My friends who helped me catch up with the lectures while I’m away
The chance to be a TA
My parents who’re always there for me when I need them

I need to

Take thesis writing more seriously
Start weeding out the companies I want to apply for
Stop surfing websites (to prevent me from splurging)

I’m looking forward to

Going to Gotenba again (specifically Hakone)
Receiving my salary! 😆
Spend the end of the year with friends that really matter ♥

How did the month of November go for you?

Schaumburg, IL

The event ended in the afternoon so we had a couple of hours to explore the city. I decided to visit Woodfield Mall, which is the biggest premium outlet in the area (apparently). My newly made Korean friend decided to join me since she had to do some shopping as well.

The shuttle bus (but they call it ‘trolley’)

We took the free shuttle bus from the hotel to get to the mall. Once again, this transportation system had no announcements indicating which stop we are at currently. Are all public transportations like this? Lol.

We had our late lunch at the famous Cheesecake Factory. The food was good but the waiting time was just horrible for us especially because we were starving. It’s nice that they provide us bread for free service.

And shopped at Sephora for the first time

After our meal, we headed out and did a conquest for our bucket list. My friend got a sweater from Abercrombie for her boyfriend but was unable to get the new Airpods Pro since it was out of stock. I was grateful that they had a Fossil store in the mall and that I was able to get my hands on the smartwatch that I have been eyeing for a while.

We made Sephora as our last stop. Actually, I’ve been into one in Indonesia but I just never shopped there since the price looked ridiculous in our currency. The variety in this particular shop was wider and we spent a good one hour just looking at things.

We decided to go back to the hotel afterward since the mall closes at 6 PM. We ended our day then and said our goodbyes since both of us will be staying at separate hotels for another day before flying back home the day after. I told my friend that I am planning to go to Korea (one day) and she said she’ll gladly be my tour guide. Lol.

That ends my log for the Chicago trip!

Chicago, IL

I was in Chicago (to be exact, Schaumburg) for a week from 29th of October to the 4th of November to attend the Global Leadership Summit held by Beta Gamma Sigma.

Obviously, the event wasn’t the highlight of the whole trip. It was more about the places I visited and the new friends I made, food eaten and window shopping experiences.

The hotel that the event was held had a pretty lobby with a huge fireplace in the center to warm up. It’s quite fancy, I must admit. However, I don’t know about paying $150 a night to stay here. It’s a very steep price.

A day before the event starts, I and my friend decided to explore downtown. Since the hotel was in Schaumburg, I had to take the metra to reach my destination (Union Station). Ordering and paying Uber to get to the station itself already posed a lot of problems for me since I had no sim card and credit card. In the end, I had to rely on Paypal and free Wi-Fi to survive. It wasn’t the most exciting experience ever since it was also snowing really hard and I was underdressed.

The weather was horrible and my legs were freezing for an hour and a half inside the train before I got off at the last stop. I met my friend at the nearest Starbux and headed for Willis Tower despite the shitty weather.

Of course, we couldn’t see much. It was just all white. $25 for nothing, anyone?

My underdressed self and my friend took another 30-35 minute walk from the tower to visit the Bean. My hands and legs were freezing but still, we marched forward. It was a bit annoying since it was drizzling and it just ruins the field of view from my glasses and my friend was taking pictures of everything every 3 seconds.

We had a great but overbearing lunch at Giodarno’s, a famous deep-dish pizza chain. It was a mistake for us to order appetizers since we ended up finishing it but couldn’t touch the pizza at all. We only ate one slice each and brought the rest of it home. We developed a trauma for cheese for the next 3 days.

My friend wanted to go to Trader Joe’s in order to get his acquaintances a bunch of shopping bags. Apparently, it’s a thing in Japan to give shopping bags from the States as souvenirs. While we were searching for the ambiguous entrance, I stepped on a steel railing and slipped, falling knee first to the ground while everyone was just staring at me. After that, “FML. It’s gonna be a horrible bruise. Oh, fuck it hurts.” was the only thing that I kept thinking about for the rest of the evening.

We tried going CVS for ointments dealing with bruises, but apparently they didn’t have it. In the end, we spent the last two hours just going around Target and Best Buy to search for something to buy and ended up going home empty-handed since the items we wanted weren’t in stock. We just decided to give up and go home.

Going home from Union Station was a scary experience. The trains didn’t have any announcements of which station they’re currently stopping at (unlike the train I took before) so I had to stay alert and count the stops. At some point, I just fell asleep and luckily, I woke up one stop before Schaumburg. God does exist.

To be continued next post.

October 2019: Lots of trips and an empty wallet

This month was a rollercoaster. I have never traveled so much in my life and it was also the first time for me going to the States. My wallet is the emptiest it could be right now.

Highlights

Received a 1000 USD scholarship to participate in the Global Leadership Summit organized by the Beta Gamma Sigma organization
Got accepted as a TA and currently working for a school program
Went to Tokyo for 4 days and 3 nights
Walked for around 7km during the trip
Made a new friend!
Decreased expenses on skincare and makeup
Increased expenses on travel fare and hotels (ugh…)

I’m grateful for…

My friend who accompanied me all the way to Tokyo
The opportunity to participate in the Summit
Another friend who supported me to obtain the visa and provide transport around during my time in the States

I need to…

Start working out and diet properly
Study for N1
Study for TOEIC L&R
Decide whether I’m getting a job or a master degree
Write my thesis

Just a random wish list

Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch
Nintendo Switch ver. 1.5 or 2
Fire Emblem Three Houses game (does this game give you motion sickness?)

Looking forward to a great new month. One more month until Christmas!

My 2020 Hobonichi

I visited Tokyo last week to work on some visa applications. I visited Ginza Loft (possibly the biggest Loft in Japan) while I’m at it and … bought new Hobonichi covers when I told myself I wouldn’t buy it …

The soda water cover (left) has been in my wish list ever since they released it last year. I never brought myself to buy it since it was expensive. This year, they kept the A5 cover for this version but didn’t carry over the A6 size. When I saw the A6 size for sale in Loft, I immediately got my hands on it.

I’m sticking with Hobonichi Weeks as my school planner as well. I got this year’s cover in ‘ramune‘ (right). It’s a very pretty blue.

Housing my 2019 Hobonichi in the new cover

Since I was so excited, I immediately switched out my 2019 planner and fit it into the new cover. It looks very pretty that I did not regret the purchase even though it left my wallet flat.

I also bought the 2020 A6 planner and have stuffed inside my old cover for now. I’m planning to use it just as a daily planner like how I’ve always used it.

Also, it wasn’t in my to-buy list but I ordered myself an old A5 cover from the 2019 lineup through the online website to house a free planner I got from my university. I’m really excited for it to come!

Tokyo 2019 Pt. 2

On the second day of our stay, we visited Hamarikyu Gardens. I must say I had a pretty bad experience here since it had rained the day before and the paths are all muddy.

Aside from the muddy roads, the view and weather was actually very nice. The garden has a lot of tea houses floating on top of the lakes. They still use these tea houses to conduct tea ceremonies. There were a lot of tea ceremony events for foreigners to try out as well, but I wasn’t that interested so I didn’t go for it.

The garden itself was humongous. We took around one hour to go around it. Our last stop in the garden was this flower field. However, since it’s October, there weren’t a lot of flowers blooming. Most of the fields looked sad and dried up.

We then made our way to Odaiba, an artificial island that was once used for self-defense force. We took the yurikamome train to get there from Shinbashi (330 yen-ish). The train goes through the Rainbow Bridge and it looks exceptionally nice at night. We originally wanted to visit a light show exhibition but the lines were too long and we gave up. In the end, we decided to just go inside the Unko Museum (lit. Poop Museum).

Even though it’s named Unko Museum, it’s actually not a museum at all. There’s nothing much to do here other than taking pictures of poop shaped decorations and play poop themed arcade games. In my opinion, it’s not worth 1,800 yen to enter this place. But eh, it’s once in a lifetime kind of thing.

Our trip ended with a visit to this poop museum. It was anticlimactic, but the whole two days we spent to go around was fun. I would definitely go to more places and attractions in Tokyo if an opportunity arises in the future.

Tokyo 2019 Pt. 1

Last week, I visited Tokyo for the first time in 11 years. I have no recollection of what it looked like in the past, but I’m sure a lot of things have changed ever since I visited this city a decade ago.

I originally came to apply for my US Visa. I could’ve just came and gone back on the same day I applied for it, but my friend suggested that we could stay longer (and skip some classes *cough*) and enjoy the city more. And so we did.

View from my capsule room at Nine Hours Akasaka

I decided to stay at a capsule hotel for the first time in my life. I’ve always wanted to try it out since the pictures look nice in those promotional web articles. However, in reality, the hotel is really small and overly congested with visitors. There’s so little space to put your items and so little room to move around. It’s definitely not a good place to stay if you like chilling in your room for a long time since they have a mandatory checkout each day at 10 AM. It is, however, good for people who love going out and exploring and need the hotel as a place to sleep only.

We visited a lot of places on the first day including the famous Ginza Loft, Uniqlo, and Muji. There were so many things to look at and I was really tempted to buy a lot of items as well (*cough* Hobonichi *cough*). For someone who lives in the countryside part of Japan, the amount of people in Tokyo is insane.

Luckily, we visited these places on a Friday, meaning it’s not as many people compared to weekends. Even the Asakusa temple was actually visitable. I don’t remember if I actually visited this temple 11 years ago, but it still looks majestic and nice.

Getting my daily dose of bubble tea at Gong Cha

After visiting the temple, we went around to search for Gong Cha. Surprisingly, the number of customers at this particular branch was small so we were able to get our hands on the bubble tea quite quickly. I really recommend getting bubble tea from Gong Cha if you do visit since their tea is out of the world delicious!

I accompanied my friends on their Pokemon Go conquest after our bubble tea session. It rained really hard nearing midnight but my friend was able to catch a perfect Darkrai! We went back to our capsule hotel afterward feeling extremely drained and tired but it was a nice day spent.

Night Sea Hell

Umi Jigoku is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Beppu. It’s usually open during the daytime, but this time, it also opens at night for a special event! ‘Yoru’ itself means night.

Right as you enter, you can see a lot of illuminations decorating the place. The entrance is different from the one you usually take if you go during the daytime.

As you go along the route, you can see more varieties of illuminations. They will also play audio about the story of the little demon that has no friends and is about to set on a journey to find one.

Overall, it’s a very short attraction. For 900 yen, I think the price is quite steep. However, I think it’s still worth going to experiencing it the first time. You can barely see the main attraction of the onsen, but I guess the illumination here is the main thing.

I know my pictures don’t do justice. So please go and experience it yourself when you get the chance!

If you want to see what Umi Jigoku looks like during the daytime, I have made a separate post about it two years ago.

Shifting back to reality

I didn’t realize that my 2 months holiday will be over in less than a week and that I need to go back to university and undergo my last year to graduate. Which means I also need to do find jobs soon.

I am actually torn between continuing education and finding a job. During my first year, I thought I could just push this topic aside and leave it for the future me. Now I’m just lost.

I want to continue university but I feel bad doing it at the same time. It’s really costly without scholarships and I don’t know if I should be living an easy life off my parent’s money. I feel guilty doing that when I know my other friends are going independent and getting their own income. On the other hand, I love just being a student because I get days off and 4 months holiday a year just to go back and see my parents. There’s nothing like that when I enter the workplace.

I do eventually plan to go back to Indonesia if I start working in Japan since I’m not really a fan of Japan’s working environment. It’s just too extreme for me and especially because I’m a woman. I know Japan’s trying to fix this gender issue but I still think it won’t change much in the future until they all realize that they’re gonna go extinct.

From what I have experienced in my internship here, I think I’ll suit the working environment here better since they still treasure personal time. Of course, working here and working in Japan has its own ups and downs, but being in a place where it feels like home is a big plus for me.

With that being said, I’m still not sure with the path I’m supposed to take. If I go for graduate school then that means I need to start writing a thesis. And I don’t like writing. And I’m lazy. (The school does not require us to write thesis to be able to graduate.)

Why on earth did I wish to be an adult when I was small.