EAT FEWER DOUGHNUTS

My dear friends and followers, I bring to you, from the farthest reaches of the Orient: "The world map according to a Japanese professor of Tectonic Sciences":

(Mid-lecture on tectonic plate separation in central Africa)

"By the way Thomas, have you been to Lake Victoria?" (Ie, Kenya/Tanzania)

"Er... no..."

"Oh, I just thought since it's pretty close to Europe you might have..."

Thinking of taking the JLPT 2 (2nd highest level) along with a couple of other exchange students this summer, but I kinda have to decide quickly because the application deadline is about the end of next week. JLPT 1 (top level) is crazy hard. Like, really really crazy hard. Absurdly hard. The Kanji section is pretty much designed to screw over Chinese people who have read them their whole lives (Although my teacher insists this is gives everyone else an advantage). One of my classes is an example class for the JLPT 1 test. I understand about 20% of what's written in this class without my dictionary. If I'm lucky. Just for an idea, here's some of the thing's we're supposed to read: 解熱剤 which my dictionary tells me is an "Anti-pyretic" My dictionary sadly does not tell me what an Anti-pyretic is (Anti-fever drug?). 主従, which is "relationship between master and servant" (Only the Japanese would have a word for that...) and 弔砲, which is apparently a funeral gun-salute "in a regrettable sense".

So yea, JLPT 1 is still a wee bit off...

My Physics classmates talked to me! Without prompting! Yay! That said, the first thing they said was "Hi", which was quickly followed up with "Are you French?". Apparently I have a French nose to go with my French hair from last month... (Incidentally, Ryota explained this as "For the Japanese, Big nose = French"...). Woo :-)

Oh, and the English Speaking Society (ESS) ambushed me the other day. I heard them talking behind me: "Quick! Ask him about the ESS!", shortly after which one of them came up to me, started leaning on my shoulder and said in (actually pretty good) English "Hi, which country are you from?". In what I believe is a thoroughly praise-worthy piece of intuition saw where this was going and replied in Japanese "Is this about the ESS by any chance?" to which he replied, I kid you not, with "No, no. But entirely coincidentally I am a member of the ESS. Do you know about us?". I guess this is what Chris calls an "Eigo-Bandit".

The people sitting next to me in Mister Donuts (On a side note, I have WAY more points on my loyalty card than I really should...Bad Thomas!) were playing linguistic-chicken with me today. I was working on my Planetary Science notes (which are in Japanese funnily enough), so first they kept staring at them, then started talking rather stiltedly in what I eloquently call "That-way-the- Japanese-talk-when-they-know-the-random-foreigner-next-to-them-will-understand-that-causes-discussions-of-Touhoushinki-to-sound-like-spy-talk", then dropped all pretense and just started talking about "Foreign student guys" (Nicely I add). I was unimpressed. Final Score: UK 1: Japan 0.

On another occasion in a completely separate shop which coincidentally happened to be frequented by people in search of coffee and doughnuts, I was reading that manga that Tony lent me and I still havn`t finished 3 months later ("xxxHoric"? Yes, I`m reading a Manga. It makes a change from all my other Japanese books which are mostly Earth Science textbooks. Hang me or whatever.). Anyway, the Japanese person sitting next to me happens to be a Japanese-language teacher and so says to me "Can you get meaning from that?" "No, I`m just staring at the pictures...." (Actually, this being Japan, it is a distinct possibility for people "Reading Manga" to be ONLY looking at the pictures but we won`t go into that at this time... thankfully.).

It`s rather disheartening that there seems to be a certain number of Japanese language teachers (I am of course not in any way referring to any of the teachers I had last semester...no, not at all...) who seem to go into the job with the preconception that their pupils ARE NOT going to succeed in learning Japanese to a significant level. I get rather depressed by this.

Fortunately, Samurai-sensei and the new bunch are not so affected :-) It`s very nice to be treated as an intelligent human being after a semester of level 3 classes :-). That said, my composition sensei did ask me if I had the right classroom when I turned up to a room full of Chinese people and Monica. My case was not helped by "Early morning Japanese inability" syndrome which caused me to say "Yes, I took the placement test, I was Thomas Arnot"...