Dear X,

You wouldn't recognise me for all the things I've done this week. Where to start? Well I'll start with last week. The new academic year started last Wednesday, so there was a freshers week, much like the ones back in the UK, only madder with more people, more noise etc. It was really fun walking around the campus because people kept coming up to me, trying to convince me (in English varying from bad to terrible) to join their university clubs (which over here, are bizarrely called "circles"). A typical hopeful Japanese would come up to me and say "Yes, enter our circle, please. It's

better and good." So in other words, the reason I liked walking around campus last week, is that I got to laugh at everyone and feel smug that my Japanese was better than their English. Seriously though, it was a lot of fun. Naturally they try to recruit everyone, but it did seem that us few foreigners (around 100 in a university of 30,000) got proportionally more attention.....

So which circles did P join? Well he decided not to be his usual "I'll do my own thing thanks" self, and talked to some of the people who were all very enthusiastic. So I've joined the Golf circle (v. Japanese), a musical circle (medium Japanese, but the musical will be sung in Japanese. Trouble is of course, I can't sing in any language. still not quite sure how to get around that one. They said "no problem"...Hmmm). The tennis circle (They all seemed like a very fun bunch. In fact, I was a bit overwhelmed by their enthusiasm, to the point that I forgot I didn't like tennis - Now that they're not here, I've remembered and decided to leave that circle). The last one I joined was one where you take children with severe learning difficulties to the park on Saturdays. Since everyone has been so nice and helpful to me since I've been here, I though I should really do my bit to help others. I've got to face it, it's been take-take-take since I've been here.....

Friday was horrible at first. Our Sensei gave us a 1000 long kanji list, and we had to mark the ones we'd forgotten. Not a nice exercise to do after a 6 week holiday. After that we went to a nearby river to watch the cherry blossoms. Japan goes bananas over cherry blossom. All these trees you never noticed suddenly explode with pretty white flowers, and when the wind blows, it looks like snow. It's really touching to see how the locals react. I wonder if it's a London thing. But I feel we don't so readily go ahhh" and "ohh" at such things. If anything, we (do I mean "I"?) mock those who make cooing noises at fireworks et al. It was nice to see so many people display genuine pleasure at such a little thing. Although it's really not that little over here, it's on the front pages of news papers, it's on TV special reports, it's on the weather forecast.

Then for the fun bit. We had to compose a poem about the change in seasons. Fuck. That's what I say, and since fuck rhymes with its self, I'll say it repeatedly. I wouldn't want to have to do it in English, let alone Japanese. Oh and there's an added twist. We had to write Haiku, which involves strict rules about grammar, what type of words we can use (for example, any words which have come about in use in the last 300 years, are out) and the first line has to contain exactly 5 syllables, the second exactly 7, and the third 5. As I was saying:

Fuck fuck fu,

Fuck fuck fuck fu,

fuck fuck fu.

Well, it took me nearly 3 hours to do (my real one, not the "fuck" one) Only to find out that my last 2 syllables were too contemporary. Ahhhhhhh. Luckily I could replace them without rewriting the whole line.

I'm also taking a "modern" literature class. Our first "modern" work was written 180 years ago, which means it was written before the government reformed the writing system, so has lots of old characters, which quite frankly don't look like any of the ones we've done. After having spent the best part of 3 years to try to get to grips with the modern 2000 characters which are used to make up words, I wasn't too pleased to find that I am going to have to start again with a new (old??) bunch which aren't in the dictionary. Oh well. I suppose I've got nothing better to do with my life. After having pulled out all of my hair (you think I'm joking, don't you!!!), I resorted to asking (begging?) for help. 2 Japanese friends obliged, and after initially admitting that they couldn't read it, because it was too difficult (providing me with a much needed ego boost), they asked their parents who are much better than they..... So in the end, they did get me the answers...... Hmm, me thinks I might drop out of that course, thank you very much.

I went cherry blossom viewing again with the 2 helpful friends on Saturday (still very pretty), and will go again next Saturday.

Oh, I've just thought you might want to read my poem:

kimi no hana

sakura no hana mo

kirei kana

which means: Is your nose is as beautiful as the flower of a cherry tree.

The good bit being that "hana" means both "nose", and "flower". Yes well, I though it was good anyway.

That takes me to today (OK it takes me till Monday), but Monday was boring classes, and I took Tuesday off because I wanted a lie in. We don't have classes on Wednesday which let me do another piece of literature and learn the vocab for tomorrow's test.....which really does take me in until now....

So I'm going to sign off. Hope all is still well. Drop me a line sometime...

Love

P xxx