If music be the fruit of love, Japan is in trouble.

Hi again.

Great news, my presentations are all done and my report on the Second language acquisition or something is finished, so it`s back to the usual exchange student lifestyle of doing very little, just now with the added bonus of not having to get up for any classes before 13:20 :-)

Anyway, Sean, my little brother, has decided to come join me for 10 days in April, and he wants me to tell everyone that I`me very much looking forward to sharing the weirdness of the Land of the Rising Sun with him.

We've been having our Japanese language exams this week, with the Conversation exam earlier today. It was a pretty odd exam. For a start, there was no speaking in it... It was half listening/dictation exercises and half "Fill in the gaps of this page of the textbook we looked at 3 weeks ago" exercises. Very bizarre... Furthermore, next week we have to take the same "placement test" we took at the beginning of the term to "examine our progress". Only thing is, I can count on one hand the number of things we've covered in class this term that I didn't already know, and none of those are in the placement test... To further deepen the mystery, I found the textbook our course is allegedly based off (みんなの日本語 ＩＩＩ) in Junkudo the other day (Japanese equivalent of Waterstones). Not only does our coursed a) not resemble anything in the textbook, but b) the textbook actually has a lot of useful grammar and vocabulary in it, though by now I've picked up pretty much everything in it... Need to go find a new text-book...

On a side note, though it is next to impossible to buy Minna No Nihongo 3 (みんなの日本語中級 Ｉ) in the UK, if any of the 1st or 2nd year Bham Japanese course students are reading this I STRONGLY STRONGLY STRONGLY advise you to do anything you can to get hold of this before you get to Japan. Pretty much every grammar point in it comes up in daily conversation and everyday writing all the time, and knowing that stuff will make things so much easier for you than if you've only done the first 2 textbooks.

Japanese textbook commercial over.

Spring has arrived in Japan! After our pretty chilly 2/3rds of December and January, it's back to muggy, humid t-shirt weather here! Yay! Not looking forward to the summer though if this is considered winter...

I think I'll take a slightly international twist with this post. Japanese music, in case you are unfamiliar with it (lucky you) is by and large terrible. If anybody is currently of the mind set of "Oh, it's not so bad" a) try listening to if for 4 months straight, and b)Understand the lyrics...

Here's some examples for you (these two are played by pretty much every store all the time at the moment)

#1: Exile (Complete with Matrix-rip-off music video and the rather odd Japanese title of "Two Lips", though sadly missing the massive-coordinated-MC-Hammer-style-dance-routines-put-to-ballads they usually do)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDwL0BYL4Fw&feature=fvw

#2: Abe Mao, who's actually a stand-in for the one I wanted to show you (Gloria by Yui) but due to Sony Music's lawyers I can't find any of the videos :-( Sort of sounds similar to this but more whinny and screechy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YebGrGzCneA

Amusingly however, Korean music, despite sounding pretty much identical (language aside) is much more entertaining in light of it's ridiculously over-the-top sluttiness and implicit lesbianism (Which the puritanical-about-anything-except-legs-and-cartoons-Japanese would never stand for)

Examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR0R_4cFxEc (watch until the end)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O5ZcZv8BWg (Not so much slutty as actually pretending to be prostitutes...)

Oh, and before I go I think I'll share the "Battle Royale/ How many teenage-schoolgirls can we get on screen at once?" AKB48 with you. As some random Youtube comment put with unintentional irony :"In the class of girl groups with over 100 members, they are without peer. "... (See what I mean about the legs by the way? Actually, these are pretty long skirts by Japanese standards...):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhlnTCb-8g

P.S Does anyone know what Hong Kong or Seoul are like in summer?