a quick update...

Well, what have I been up to lately?

I don't really know for sure, I just know that I've been busy. Really really busy... Since landing in Japan and taking over the Internship at Shiramizu, I've added two more jobs on three mornings - both jobs are at Kindergartens. The first job is Monday and Tuesday mornings in Sugito and the second is a Friday morning in Iwatsuki (about 25 minutes away from Sugito by train). The second is very convenient because Iwatsuki is on the way to Omiya, where I catch the train for my Friday afternoon job in Yoshinohara.

These new jobs mean that I now have three 'proper' days of work (Tuesday; Thursday; Friday), the other two day (Monday and Wednesday) I only work a few hours. My working holiday visa only lets me work 20 hours, but don't let that fool you though. If you include the travellig time between some of the jobs (Thursday and Friday) and the fact that I train at Shiramizu almost every day, sometimes a few times a day, my week soon fills up...

Maybe at a later date, I'll put online my super-busy work and training schedule so my readers can see what I do and when...

Nihon-go
Nihon-go is the Japanese language... and it's pretty tricky. Some Japanese people like to think that foreigners can't learn their language. However, this mainly stems from the Tokugawa-era when it was made illegal to teach foreigners Nihon-go!

I've lately been studying Hiragana, which is ONE of the Japanese writing systems. There are approximately 100 different Hiragana characters to memorise (compared to 26 letters in the English alphabet!). Once I've mastered Hiragana, I'll need to learn the 100 Katakana, the writing system for describing all things foreign. After that, there is just the simple matter of learning the 6000 kanji, or chinese characters in use. Of course, this is just written Japanese, speaking is a whole lot more fun... All in all, it shouldn't be a problem really, it's all about determination...

My current objectives:

To find a few really cute Japanese lady friends to teach me Nihon-go (Japanese!)

To erm... learn Nihon-go

To fix my karate techniques

To learn the legendary kamehameha!

To survive the Japanese winter season*

*I survived the summer season with little ill-effect, BUT it's getting cold already so I'm not looking forward to winter at all!

Well... that's it for now, I'll try to write again soon...