Update: The time requirements of the cinema module mean I can’t take it, so I took out the stuff about those classes.

So the placement tests are over, the amazingly confusing registration process is underway, and the last of my long summer holiday is over. As of tomorrow, I am once again studying for twelve weeks in a row. It’s time for semester one at Sophia university!

The placement test result put me right at the borderline of Japanese 3 and Japanese 4. I think the university placed me in 3 to prevent me being overwhelmed, but I’m really up for a challenge so I negotiated with the professor and she agreed to put me into Japanese 4. It’s going to be very difficult, but if I can pass it I can move into advanced Japanese next semester, and wave all my free time goodbye! I guess I won’t have problems filling my free days anymore!

I have Japanese from 9.15 to 10.45 every day except Wednesday, which I’m determined to keep free. That means I have to get up at 7am four days a week, but we can’t all have it easy! At least I got a day off! The more astute readers of this blog may have noticed these lectures weigh in at 90 minutes, which will be the longest classes I’ve ever taken. But don’t worry! I have saved up my 100 yen coins for the canned coffee vending machine, and I intend to become it’s best customer! To put it’s little vending machine children through college.

The deepest pit of Hell is reserved for parking attendants, Glenn Beck and students in America who don’t take at least a certain number of hours of lectures a week. Sadly this rule is applied to all students, so even though Sheffield University don’t care what I take aside from Japanese (they don’t even care if I pass!) Sophia do, so I have to take other modules too. I haven’t chosen them yet, though.

As for the Japanese, here’s what the course blurb has to say about my course;

This course is designed to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced Japanese, by reinforcing grammar and expressions which appear in intermediate Japanese and reading materials dealing with current Japanese society and life. Students are encouraged to use new vocabulary and expressions in speaking and writing, and to discuss their ideas on contemporary issues regarding Japan.

Oh crumbs. Debating in Japanese. Never done that before. Quite nervous about it, really! The teacher did say if I find it too hard I can move down, but I don’t want to shy away from a challenge! (Although if in a few weeks you see a blog post along the lines of ‘I moved down’ please feel free to forget that previous sentence).

My scary looking textbook

Anyway, this post has rambled on long enough so I’ll leave it there for now. For some reason our course starts tomorrow (Thursday), so after Friday’s lecture I should have a basic feel for how it’s all going to work, and maybe I’ll put up a blog post or video. Or maybe I’ll spend all my time as I do now – drinking cheap Japanese soft drinks and sitting directly under my air conditioner, dreaming of England.

Every year, a huge show hall in Tokyo gets rented for a few days, and the big names of video game production go wild, making the most elaborate stands and cramming as many wide screen TVs as they can into one space. Then an obscene number of people come to the hall, try the games out and have a great, if claustrophobic, time. Today I went along with the volunteers and ex-volunteer Mike to the show, to see how little of it I would understand. Turns out: very little.

I made a video which is on Youtube, which shows what the event is like, but to avoid legal issues and boring people who aren’t interested in particular games, I cut a lot of footage out. So I’m going to post the video here, then do some reviews below on the blog. So if you’re interested in particular titles, I advise you read on!

Ok, reviews then. I’m not up to date on gaming, nor am I a console warrior or brand addict, so I’m just going to bust out one or two line reviews for each game / product I saw. If you want more info, leave a comment!

Assassin’s Creed 2 looks, stylistically, as cool as a cucumber. The gameplay again was hidden so it was just promo videos, but the game looked wonderful. The PSP game didn’t look quite as shiny (obviously) but overall it hit home nicely. The PS3 version was getting colossal lines to try it out (like over 3 hours!) whereas the 360 version wasn’t quite as popular. I don’t know why.

Dirt 2 is not really my cup of tea but we played it as the queue was short and it was suprisingly fun. If you like cars. Or crashing into things.

End Of Eternity / Resonance Of Fate was the most awesome looking game I saw. It looks, stylistically, like Final Fantasy meets Devil May Cry, and that’s kind of how it plays. A lot of dashing around, but with numbers. Very fast paced too. Plus the soundtrack was unbelievable. I hate myself for saying it but with Playstation 3s being so cheap nowadays I could see this sealing the deal for me…

Final Fantasy 13 was, of course, looking amazing but sadly they only showed us promo videos, no game play, but what I saw was great. Again, the soundtrack made me a happy happy orchestral bunny.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was *really* hard to play. I’m not a huge MGS fan but I really didn’t get to grips with this in the fifteen mins I had to play it at all. But I don’t really know much about the series so I don’t think I’m really the one to talk about it.

Quantum Theory was the biggest letdown. It’s a mix of Gears Of War-esque 3rd person shooting, but with a more alien feel to it, and a girl who runs around helping you like the girl from Prince Of Persia. It was clunky and not much fun. I guess if you like Gears you might enjoy it.

Tekken Six is more of the same but the change is big enough to justify a whole new game – the return of the side-scroller ‘Tekken Force’ is back (in 3D!), and it has co-op now! I played it for about 5 minutes and the new characters were all nice and unique, and visually it’s an amazing upgrade.

So that’s my erratic and nonsensical coverage of Tokyo Game Show 2009. Hopefully next time my blog will be so famous I’ll get into the earlier, quieter, press and business only day and be able to shoot a video that doesn’t shake all over the place. So someone ring Sony and tell them to hurry up and make Final Mike: A Doomed Fantasy.

日本語：「集中講義を履修したらどうかな〜」

Today Sophia University had their foreign students orientation, and as I’m a foreign student I thought I should probably go along. It’s lucky I did or I might not have got the billion forms I need to fill in!

Anyway whilst I was waiting for my washing to finish I thought I’d record a video and put it on Youtube, so please go ahead and enjoy ‘Mike’s totally unscripted ramble about Sophia University!’

In other news… well I don’t have much other news. As I mentioned in the video I have some links at the bottom of this site (and on the side on my Japanese blog) that are paying for the hosting this website uses. Don’t worry, I don’t intend to cover the blog with ‘Click here and win a hat for your cactus!’ flashing images or whatever.

Although if there is a shop that sells cactus hats please get in contact, it would be awesome to be sponsored by you guys…

I got a message the other day from my friend and ex-Sheffield senior Joseph Tame asking me if I’d be interested in going to watch one day’s worth of the sumo tournament, which is held in the Kokugikan, an indoor arena in the Ryogoku area of Tokyo. As I’d never, in my 15 months worth of time in Japan, been to see the sumo I jumped at the chance, especially as it was really cheap. When we got there we realized the reason the price was so relatively low was because we were sitting so far back we might as well have watched from the train, but it was great nonetheless.

Now I don’t really know how sumo works. I mean, the first person to touch the ground with anything but their feet or be shoved out of the ring loses, that much I can follow. But each bout involves both wrestlers sizing each other up and getting into the fighting position at least twice, then leaving the ring and re-entering. I’m sure this has some highly significant traditional reason, but from what I could see it was all about winding up the crowd. It really worked – even way back at the top of the arena people were cheering and yelling, and I have to admit more than once I got caught up in the excitement and cheered my favourite. My favourite being whichever sumo wrestler had the coolest mawashi on.

So here are my photos! Please click one and then use the left and right arrows on each photo to view them all. I took some video, but we were so far away it’s really blurry and not worth posting. My apologies.

Now I have to admit, a lot of the time I was watching I didn’t understand what was going on. As it may have become clear, I didn’t know who any of the wrestlers were (aside from Asashoryu, who’s amazing career is really worth reading about) and we were a long way from the action. But still I found myself really drawn in and loving every moment of this amazing spectacle of human strength and speed. I’d go again at the drop of a hat, and who knows, maybe next time I’ll fork out for better seats. Or maybe I’ll fight!

…nah, Asashoryu might get hurt.

Read Joseph’s post about the day here.

I made it! Oh me oh my it’s been quite a battle. I dressed up all nice in a shirt to visit my new university, and then sweated so much on the way there due to the humidity I had to change in the toilets. They saw me with both shirts on so that was probably pretty confusing. I’m going to do a Mrs. Doubtfire sort of thing and pretend I have an identical twin.

Anyway, the girl who met me at Sophia and was my ’student guide’ was really nice, and again it was a nice way to get a good amount of language practice in. We took the train from Yotsuya station (in the centre of the city) all the way to Nishi-Kawaguchi (outside of the city) which took a long, long time. It’s a journey I’ll be doing five times a week so I tried to look excited when all I felt inside was crushing, crushing sorrow.

When we arrived at the dormitory I was quickly moved into my room. Then we went for food with a few other new arrivals and then I grabbed some essentials. Rather than ramble on, I’ve made a highly informative video. Here it is!

‘My dorm room in Warabi, Saitama’

So that is pretty much me up to date. I have a week until university starts which I am spending visiting various friends and so on. Once something exciting happens (which is every day!) I’ll update this blog. I may even build up enough courage to step outside with my video camera, although we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. There are wolves out there.