Well I finally tried my hand at my first Japanese exam on Sunday - and I'm pretty it was waay beyond me. There weren't even any letters - it was just full of squiggly lines all over the place. I won't find out the actual results until March but I can guess what it will be. There were 80 or so other students taking the test at my level as well, most of them Asian meaning they were taking a test for their third language. A couple of other students were 10 years old max which I found amazing because the test included questions with some pie charts and graphs, none of which I would have understood when I was that age even if they'd been in English. The test is only held once a year so I'll have to wait until then to try again. Anyway thankfully the whole thing is multi-choice so I'm almost guaranteed, statistically at least, to have got something right.

How am I only now finding out about this surreal anime series featuring a ramen-making cat?? I've only just watched the first Neko Ramen but I'm in the mood for more. There's a whole series of them, a dvd, a comic, and (just for good measure) a live action puppet version! If you can brave the kanji konfusion, the official site is here

Its Cherry Blossum (Sakura) time here in a big way. People going out for the day to see the trees; it seems to be a pretty big deal - they even cover it on the news every night. The trees do look nice and I guess its understandable seeing as they stand out in a big way in a country that so often seems smothered by concrete. Signed up for a free test Japanese lesson next week. The whole course seems pretty expensive but seeing as how its twice a week, two hours at a time, I'm hoping I'll actually pick up some useful Japanese and maybe, just maybe, be able to talk to some Japanese people. Still haven't found out where an indoor swimming pool is (really itchin' to go swimming). I asked one of my students in class the other day and she said theres a good one near Koshien. Unfortuantly, unless I get really good directions, being "near Koshien" isn't a huge amount of help. But I hope to know my way around there eventually because it turns out to be the location of the Hanshin Tigers stadium. They've a huge following around here and narrowly lost the baseball championship here last year. The games are supposed to have a great atmosphere and I definetly intend on trying to go to a few.