After not recieving an essay homework last week, I felt as if I’d let you, the reader, down, as I know everyone loves nothing more than sitting down on a Sunday evening and reading about what insanity Mike has got himself into this week. To redeem myself, today’s essay has two whole seperate parts! This week we learned about the plain form, which is a more colloquial speaking manner, as well as a style of writing commonly found in diaries. Our task was to write a diary for two days, and I thought I’d do it in my usual insane fashion. Nothing too bizarre this week.

Before I begin, I have good news. I was worried about the midterm exam, but I managed toget 86%, which is a First (The top grade, I’m not sure what it’s called in the US). Hurrah!

木曜日 、

毎週木曜日 、私の日本語のクラスは11じにはじまる。たいてい、あるいて行くが、きのうかぞくのうちにとまったから、バスで行った。でも、私のめざましが1じ間おくれているから、私はおくれた。
8週間おくらないでクラスに行っている。でも、今週の木曜日に、 ながい先生のクラスを休んだ。12じ10分前にクラスについた。はずかしかったよ。私には木曜日のぶんぽうがとてもむずかしかったから、クラスの後でともだちにきいた。
それから、ともだち ときっさてんに行った。きっさてんにかわいい女の人がいた。かの女はかみが長くて、ちゃいろかった。かの女と話したかったが、かれしがいた。ざんねんね。
6じにパブに行った。パブでベンさんにあいた。パブはあまりにぎやかではなかったが、とてもうるさかったから、好きではない。でも、パブの食べ物はやすくて、おいしい。私たちはカレーをちゅうもんした。でも、午後7じの後で、たくさんちんぴらがとうちゃくしたから、カレーを食べないで、パブを出た。

Thursday,

Every Thursday, my Japanese class starts at 11. Usually, I go by foot, but last night I stayed at my parents house, so I went by bus. However, my alarm clock is an hour slow, so I was late.
For eight weeks I’ve come to class without being late. But on this Thursday, I missed Ms. Nagai’s class. I arrived at 10 to 12. It was really embarrasing! For me, Thursday’s grammar was very difficult, so after class I asked my friend (about it).
After that, I went with my friend to a coffee shop. In the coffee shop there was a cute girl. Her hair was long and brown. I wanted to talk with her, but her boyfriend was there. It’s a shame.
At 6 I went to the pub. I met Ben there. The pub isn’t very busy, but it is incredibly loud, so I don’t like it. But, the pub’s food is cheap and tasty. We ordered curry. However, after 7pm lots of hooligans came into the pub, so we left without eating the curry.

金曜日 、

今日のじゅぎょうが1じにおわる。それ後でインフォメーション・コモンズで一人でピンクのしゅくだいをした。きのうのじゅぎょうを休んだから、とてもむずかしかった。それ後で、ともだちとゆうめいなクラブに行くつもりだったから、フランクさんはねこがびょうきだったから、くすりを買ったから、フランクさんのうちに行った。うちでテレビを見た。おもしろかったが、クラブに行ったことがありません。来週行くつもりだ。
フランクさんはりょうりが上手だから、おいしいピザを食べたから、さらをあらった。
しゅうまつしゅくだいをしたり、プールでおよいだりするつもりだ。

Friday,

Today’s class finished at 1pm. After it I did the pink homework on my own at the Information Commons. Because I missed yesterday’s class, I was really difficult. After that, I planned to go to a famous club with my friends, but Franks’ cat was sick, so we bought some medicine and went to Frank’s house. At his house we watched TV. It was fun, but I have never been to that club. I plan to go next week.
Frank is good at cooking, so we had some tasty pizza, then we cleaned the dishes.
On the weekend, I plan to do things like do my homework and swim in a swimming pool.

Some what of a random ending there, but I like it. None of this is true, of course. If it was, I’d be too busy performing emergency cat surgery to write this update.

December 2nd: Wow, I made a lot of spelling mistakes on this… I changed the ones I could find.

Don’t you hate it when you finish an exam, hand in the paper, then get that crushing feeling you threw away some easy marks on stupid errors? Well over the last two days I sat three exams, and after all three I realized to my horror I’d made some incredibly stupid, obvious mistakes. I thought I’d run through them here, partly to get them off my chest and partly so future generations of Japanese students won’t make the same mistake. That’s not to say I’m going to post the exam online or anything. You future Sheffield Japanese students have to work too!

The first paper was the Listening Exam. To my knowledge I only made one mistake here. The question required us to write down what the speaker said, then finish the sentence. It started “私はおきて、歯をみがって、” (watashi wa okite, ha omigatte,) which means “I wake up, brush my teeth,” so a correct answer would have been something like “then eat breakfast” or something. The problem is I failed to realise that “ha o” were two words, and wasted a lot of time wondering what on earth a “hao” is. Curses. Thankfully that was the only dumb mistake I made as far as I could tell.

The second exam was the big, mean Midterm Exam, designed to test all parts of the course, and carries 10% of our final grade with it. The annoying mistake was simple – we were given the translation for はしります, to run, but in the test it appeared as はしらないで、which means “without running”. Sadly I only read the translation and somehow managed to gloss over the conjugation, leaving me with a rather bizarre “I left the restaurant with running”. Oh dear.

The final exam was today, and was the Kanji Exam. Two rediculously stupid mistakes here. The first was adding the reading for 八日, which is よっか. I wrote that. It was right. Then with about 10 seconds to go I thought it would be an awesome idea to change my correct answer to はつか, which means the 20th. I’ll never know why I did that and I will never do it again. Gah. The final mistake was writing the Kanji symbols for “ふるいもの” (furuimono) , which means “old things”. I forgot what ふるい (furui) meant. At first I thought it meant cold, even though I knew the word for that was さむい (samui), and ended up writing 長い物 (nagaimono), which means “long things”. The sentence ended up as “I like long things“. What will the lecturer think of me?!

So there you have it. I have no idea when I will get my results back, and I shall post them here when the time is right. I also have some rather exciting news reguarding the Japan society and their events thoughout the year, but I’ll leave you in suspense as it’s about time I knocked out a review of the book I was forced to read for my “understanding Japan” module.

I forgot to take my nice camera again. I’m so sorry it won’t happen again will happen lots of times in the future.

Anyway, yesterday saw the annual “World Food Festival” invade a few of the university buildings, and all the societies representing various nations got together in a whirl of cooking oil and cardboard stalls to sell their delicious cultural wares.

Once I had entered the hall, it became apparent that overwhelming customers into buying food was the order of the day. Basically, the stalls were all so cramped together that everyone had to take fight their way along a set path, which wound it’s way in front of every stall in the room.

The Japan Society, for whom I am now a committee member and thus wield terrible powers for, were out in force selling Sushi, Yakisoba and Karaage. They seemed to be doing rather well, but I was on a tight budget so I decided to try some food I’d never sampled before. Or at least, I planned to. As I was making my way around the hall, I was leapt on by a member of the Chinese society, who sold me a fortune cookie for 50p. Cheap, you may think, except the thing had no fortune in it. I’m not a huge believer in luck or fate, but that can’t be good, right?

Having absolutely no fortune saddened me, as I was hoping for a good omen relating to my upcoming midterm examinations (tomorrow!). Disheartened but not yet defeated, I fought my way further around the hall.

It was then that I discovered the festival continued into another room. This room contained, amongst other stalls, the Korean society stall. They were serving Kimchi, which is a traditional dish consisting of spicy vegetables. It also happens to be the most delicious food ever, and for 99p it was a steal.

So there you have it. Sadly I didn’t have much time to spend at the festival as I had to run home and study lots of difficult words for Monday’s exam, but I would heartily advise anyone to go to the festival, if only to purchase food from the Japan Society stall and fund my global domination attempt.

I nearly didn’t go to this gig. £16.50 is a lot to pay to see a band I’m not really sure about, and even now I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan. Still, it would likely be my only chance to see these guys for a while, and having heard and enjoyed their new single DOZING GREEN, I took the plunge and went to a concert I had no idea about.

The Sheffield Corporation is, quite frankly, disgusting. It’s a dark, dank warehouse, with a cramped stage, dodgy drinks, and top it all every wall in the entire building is covered in some unknown substance that makes them incredibly sticky. It’s actually quite famous around these parts – the place is like a giant flytrap. Not only did they expect us to survive walking into this accursed pit, they also banned all cameras! People were searched upon entry, and if they couldn’t get rid of their camera to a friend, they were turned away from the concert without a refund. That’s £17.50 to be told to get out. They then went on to say that if anyone used a mobile phone to take photos or video, they would take the mobile phone and eject them from the premises. I’m not sure if it’s badly worded, but doesn’t that mean they are threatening to steal your phone and run away? Great customer relations there, guys.

So that’s why I have no photographs. Anyway, the concert started late, with everyone waiting on the street in a queue that winded around the entire building, whilst the bouncers searched everyone in the queue one by one for cameras. I’m aware the band have stated they don’t like people using flash photography, but for £17.50 they really should suck it up. Regardless, the support band, Raging Speedhorn, raged onto the stage about 40 minutes late. Without being too negative, I wish they’d raged into liquid concrete face first. It would have sounded better. The sound quality at the Corporation isn’t too bad, so there’s nobody to blame here except the band. Every song was a winding Drop-D “look how loud we can shout” affair, and frankly I would consider this one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen in my life. I would not be upset if this band were destroyed giant shrimp. Or something.

Finally it was time for Raging Speedhorn to get off the stage and back into their parent’s attics, and Dir En Grey took to the stage. As I’m not really a huge fan I can’t talk too much about the setlist as I’m not sure of it, but the best song of the night was The Final, which can be found on the band’s Myspace. Even though most of the set was from their newer albums, which are pretty dull in my opinion, the band themselves were so animated it totally made up for it. Front man Kyo was bouncing and shrieking all over the place, and I was amazed a man of his stature could go from a mind blowing growl into an incredibly clear high note. He’s a great vocalist, and the entire band were fantastic performers. His antics were concluded with him jumping on top of this red box he always stands on, pulling out a razor and slashing his stomach a few times. Showmanship aside, it was quite a spectacle.

So there we are. I didn’t really know most of the songs, and towards the end of the set I got an elbow in the stomach that really hurt, but I had a great time. This band really do know how to entertain, even if they’re not for the whole family. Oh, and if you do go and see them, there will be an awful lot of shrieking girls dressed up like rabid Barbie dolls who just love those cute Japanese boys.

Having just completed week seven of my course at university, it’s time for us to face the ultimate challenge – the midterm examinations. On this coming Monday and Tuesday, I will be tested on listening, comprehension, grammar and Kanji. It’s somewhat worrying then that everything I seem to attempt to memorize goes in one ear and out the other.

Thank goodness, then, for jMemorize, which is a fantastic free flash card program. Basically, if you are willing to take the time to create ‘cards’, you can then flick through them relatively quickly, checking your knowledge of grammar and so on along the way. Whilst it is quite a simple program, it does have an awful lot of flexibility and various options to help you focus on particular parts of language.

Here’s an example of it in use. I’m using Darren’s flashcards, who is a guy from my course with far too much dedication and not nearly enough slacking off…

So there you have it. Sorry about the length of this update, it was just a break from copying out thousands of symbols over and over. If you’re wondering, the DIR EN GREY review will come very soon :)