I’m not sure how February managed to pass so quickly.  It seems to have disappeared in a haze of Japanese language learning.  I can’t wait for the end of term on the 21st March, but I’m really not looking forward to the exams and speech contest. I have not signed up for the next course as the dates don’t suit so I’m going to have to find a different school to study at for a while.  I’m also looking for something that isn’t as intense as I don’t really want to spend so many hours a week studying Japanese.

Friday’s classes were really tiring as they started with the weekly tests and then an hour and half of speaking Japanese.  We speak a lot in class but this was different as five strangers were brought in to chat with us.  It wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting but I didn’t really enjoy it.  The conversation was about the work practice of after hours drinking in Japanese companies.  It was interesting to hear about some of the cultural reasons behind this but I did find it hard trying to explain the cultural differences in Northern Ireland.

This week we are being taught how to be polite when people accuse us of things that we didn’t do.  I’m not really having a problem with this as I don’t know very much impolite Japanese and since these conversations are happening in a classroom I am not likely to speak polite Japanese with a bad tone.