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This month is largely characterised by bad weather and the continuation of a general lack of progress.
At the beginning of the month I took the N4 exam. It was significantly trickier. The vocabulary remains easy, but listening is now quite difficult and I can't quite get everything. I guess some more listening input would help on that, and I think I can fix that somehow (watching a lot of YouTube videos).
It's fair to say that by now I'm clearly running into new ground and can't just rely on background knowledge built up from years of informal input, though it remains very useful for the most part. Plus, according to the course, I now know all the inflectional morphology and the rest consists of function words that have special meaning but otherwise are /as if/ nouns, verbs, &c. That's good to hear at least.
Actually speaking of which the classes definitely helped a lot. I have recently been reminded of a few songs that I have picked up before I learnt Japanese and I listened again, and I can genuinely pick out full sentences now rather than be just a barely held-together string of bare words. It's a bit shocking to hear that difference, but nevertheless there is still a long way to go.
I think my weight is stabilising at 68 kg at time of writing. I can stand to lose a few kilos more. 65 kg is ideal.
Mum has found a doctor up north that promises to be able to resolve my skin issues by prescribing some stuff simply from pictures of my current skin condition. Sure enough, a few days later I'm told to take fifty (!) Mystery Medicine Pieces a day and use some cream, all in clearly reused bottles with no meaningful labelling. I went with it anyway, and it does seem to be working for some parts. There's still a lot of flaking here and there but at least there are fewer open wounds and it's (mostly) less itchy.
On an inconsequential afternoon I was reminded that I have a car and therefore can apply to drive in South Lantau, which requires you to buy a limited-supply permit but is otherwise not restricted. So I went to apply but it turns out it was either really popular or someone's been sitting on those permits and I didn't manage to get in. As of today I put in applications for September to see if I can snag a day.
Later in September my family will also be jetting off to Sapporo for a visit around the various smaller places in Japan. Japan is quite cheap now, though obviously less so than Taiwan, but it's so much bigger that we can always go to somewhere new. I'm planning the trip this time, and I think I have a number of good places to go to. Just to keep things simple though, I won't put too many things in the itinerary. It should be a good time.