My schedule at the start of the third month works out in twos: two days left; two classes each day; two sets of exams to mark; two sets of exams yet to get; two threads of sanity remaining.

However, I’m also looking ahead to the end of March when I enter a period of house arrest where I’m supposed to be working on things that help me at the school where I work by researching and creating things that help the company I work for. This will involve researching more about the town where I live and running around taking pictures of things and then writing about them. (Spoiler: At least part of the research will be on pen shows in the Tokyo area…)

Somewhere in all that I also have to do actual work to prepare for next year. (Note for the uninitiated: Japan’s school year runs from April to March with a three week break between the school years.) I’m going to experiment with a different note taking system that lets me see at a glance what I’ve done and which classes I’ve done it to. My current system, which I’ll write about later, involves lots of pieces of paper and folders and it’s easy to lose track of who has done what.

In addition to the analogue part of the system, I also need to upgrade the digital/electronic part of the system. Although I tend to use a tablet in class to record marks on the fly, the system I have doesn’t let me use a version of Ms Office or a version of Google Docs. Instead I’ve been using a clunky program that, well, clunks along and has failed to save enough material correctly that I’m wary about using it. I’ll either upgrade the tablet or the software.

All this assumed the final two threads of sanity hold. If they don’t then things will get crazy.