Okazaki

Japanese suburbs. There are mountains in the distance I can't seem to quite reach on my bike and a nice enough river with a semi decent bike path. The only pool I've found, that you don't need a lifetime membership for, never seems to be open. I keep longingly riding down to this delightful open air pool (a rarity in Japan) in the middle of a pretty park. Unfortunately the pool has a big high fence around it and I wish I was still in uni and had some friends with whom I could climb the fence with in the middle of the night.

Other than that the place is intrinsically bland. A good place to hunker down and study.

My apartment is about a third the size of my place in Marugame, but is functional and does have the luxury air conditioning, which has actually been really nice during the record breaking heatwave that has engulfed most of Japan this summer. This week the temperature has finally dropped below thirty for the first time in a couple of months, which means I have been able to enjoy the other bonus of my apartment: a nice deep bath with room to stretch out your legs. My last bath was cube shaped and I could just about squat inside it! This evening I went for a decently long ride, which quickly turned into a ride through the rain, and when I got back I filled the bath, turned on the rice cooker and soaked whilst waiting for my dinner. I think I could get used to the Japanese habit of night time baths. Unfortunately I'm leaving soon. However I'm past regrets and really looking forward to going home.

Study has been equally rewarding and frustrating. As a result of living in the country without a formal study regime, I have learnt to survive well using a mixture of verbs and nouns. Thus my language comprehension is much better than my production. In fact my grammar is incredibly confused and confusing.

The school I am studying at works on two-week modules that run from friday to thurday (even though weekends are still holidays). Before you start, and at the end of each module, you are given a placement test. If, at the end of a module, you don't get 70% in the test, you can't move on the the next module.

When I first came I got placed into a class, looked through the book and realised I kind of knew everything we were going to be studying for the next two weeks. I spent my first couple of days staring out the window and begging to be moved up to the next class. I had to study really hard for another test to go up, in which I messed up all the simple stuff: bad verb conjugation and illiterate use of particles (the Japanese equivalent of prepositions). But I was convinced I could do it and cause I was probably something of a brat, they let me move up. What I didn't know was how strict the teachers are. Thus I spent the next two weeks after school had finished studying a minimum of an extra six hours a day, trying to catch up with everyone else. Naturally when the end of module test happened, I bombed.

I went home and had a good hard look at my ego and my expectations. Me have unrealistic expectations of myself? Never. Me make life too hard for myself so that when I f*&k up I have a good reason to hate myself? Course not.

I had two choices: repeat the module I had just done or swallow a chokingly large piece of humble pie. I grudgingly admitted to myself and my teachers that I had messed up the test, not because I didn't get the stuff we had just covered, but because even though I knew about the principles of verb conjugation, it wasn't something I was comfortable with, and could in all honesty do with some more practice. And about particles I'm still confused, but maybe getting there slowly.....

So I went back to where they wanted to put me in the first place and have just aced my test. I'm feeling much more confident about my communication abilities even though I'm not yet on the verge on intermediate, which is where my ego wanted to be, but its given me some time to focus on other important things, like looking after myself, getting photos photoshopped, slideshows created and blogs up to date.

I have a week more of school, and in the meantime am starting to muse about what to send home, what to bribe the airline officials to let me bring and what sort of presents to get people.

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