So far I'm really enjoying my time in Tokyo. I started up a blog over here especially for my time in Japan ( Read more... )

Just a small life update. I've been thinking about making a new blog specially for this year's experiences, but in any case, I finally arrived in Japan ( Read more... )

Exams are over! The listening exam was OK, and my Society module exam was great, but the written one... was horrible. We haven't even done half the kanji that came up in the translation, and the reading was passable at best. I felt my composition wasn't bad though - the topic was もったいない ("wasteful"), so I wrote about people wasting food and water ( Read more... )

Next week I have three of the most important exams of my life, one day after the other. On Wednesday is a one hour listening exam, for which I can only hope for the best. On Thursday I have a three hour writing exam consisting of reading comprehension, Japanese->English translation, and composition on an unknown topic. Then on Friday I have another ( Read more... )

So I've just found out where I'm going for next year's Japan placement - Tokyo! Chuo University, to be precise. I get to be in one of the biggest and most expensive cities in the world, and a view of Mount Fuji too! It's safe to say I'm excited. It's finally sunk in that this time next year I'll have been in Japan for over three months. It's the ( Read more... )

Wow. I haven't posted anything here in over a month. Sure, I've still been stalking my f-list and such, but for the most part this year is keeping me pretty busy. The Japanese is intense and I've already done a couple essays for other modules. But I think it's actually better this way. First year had a pretty rigid structure, and it needed to be ( Read more... )

...is the best way to describe year 2 Japanese. The workload is a lot greater, the new kanji and grammar is increased, and then there's weekly presentations to do in my only non-language module. On top of that I already had my first exam, in my one Linguistics module of the semester. Fun times ( Read more... )

Week 1 isn't even over yet but already a ton of stuff has happened. Grammar classes weren't as bad as I was dreading, probably due to Nagai sensei being such a wonderful teacher. I genuinely enjoyed the writing one, though to be fair there wasn't much writing being done. Speaking on the other hand was a little bit of a shock to the system, it's ( Read more... )

Year 2 of uni is finally here. In just two days I'm back into the language, the writing, the kanji... and to be honest, I'm a little bit terrified. From the intro meeting I get the sense that this is a whole new level from last year. I'm excited of course to be learning more practical Japanese, but also worried. My kanji really isn't up to scratch ( Read more... )

Whew. Big sigh of relief - year one at uni was a success. I somehow managed to pass that dreadful final on the Japanese side. Barely. I'm gonna do some serious kanji over summer so I can get a good start next year. At least I don't have any retakes to worry about, since that would have been a bit of an issue (I'm working 6 days a week through the ( Read more... )