Well the last couple of weeks of the semester have been a hellish fight for survival, but I’m thankful that I can say … “I made it”. That is at least until the exam period in January, then I’ll be completely buggered.

So lets start out with the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). This is an exam taken all over the world at the same time (give or take several hours for time-zone differences) to assess your level of Japanese (not spoken). Here in the UK it’s held at the School of Oriental and African Studies down in London, so for some of us a trip down was needed. Me and a friend went down a day early to do some filming for LSTV (I won’t say exactly what for, but it’s a news story on textbook prices), so I spent the night at YHA London Central. It was definately one of the more comfortable hostels I’ve kipped at, bar the snorer in the bed above me giving me dreams about zombies in an “I am the only one left” kind of fashion.

When applying to take the exam, of which only 1000 people can sit a year, I thought I’d have time to study and revise properly for it. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case and I arrived in London horribly unprepared. We headed to a couple of Japanese book shops and bought a past-exam paper and a grammar book recommended by one of my teachers. My intention was to spend the night going through the past paper and cramming as much grammar and vocab into my tiny fragile mind as I could … but again this wasn’t the case.

Sitting in the lounge next to the big ass telly with books spread across my lap, the guy sitting nearby watching the rugby has a look at one of my books. “Do you speak Japanese?” he asks. I look up and bam, instantly my interest in studying goes as my interest in Japanese oral practice increases. By chance I was at the same hostel as a guy who lives very close to where I was living in Osaka! After a few hours of fun conversation he went to bed so once again I cracked on studying … until a new group appears, curious about the text I’m reading. To be fair I did get a fair bit of studying done, but not enough to leave me with confidence for the next days exam.

I woke up in the morning and wanted a full English breakfast. I checked out of the hostel and ventured in search of a Wetherspoons. After a few hours of gormlessly wandering around London (with help from a relative on the phone with the internet), I eventually found the Shakespeares Head in Holborn. Though the service here was fine, the when the breakfast came out I had to look in the direction of the kitchen to make sure the building wasn’t on fire. The vast majority of what was on the plate was burned and almost uneatable, even the black pudding (I’ve never seen a burnt black pudding before). I will say however the sausage was fantastic, too bad I left the rest of it on the plate.

I met up with a friend and we went to face the exam. I left the exam with the feeling that I did as well as I thought I would.

Some of us who came down from Leeds then went to a bar for a post-exam drink, but as they were pretty costly I just had the one. Since a few of us were getting on the same coach back, a suggestion was put forward that we carry on drinking in Victoria so we wouldn’t miss the coach when the time came. For me, I’d spent the entirity of the two days walking around London rather than taking the tube (when did tube prices shoot up so much!?), so I said I’d walk it. After being mocked a bit, I gave my bags to the others and proceeded on foot towards Victoria.

I really should have learned from past experiences that my natural navigatory skills get tempered somewhat when the sun goes down, but more than that I get in trouble whenever I stop for a bog-break. It seems I normally have a tendency to flush away my thoughts about the ‘hear and now’, and normally start off going in the wrong direction. Once I hit the river I knew I was pretty buggered and started running the correct way.

Arriving at our meeting point, the Wetherspoons at Victoria Train Station, there were two things I wanted: a pee, and a pint, I’ll let you decide which came first. There must have been something generally crappy about Wetherspoons in London on that day. I ordered a pint of the Christmas ale, but the guy at the bar poured it with such speed and vigour that instead of a decent head I got a mass of bubbles. Much in the same way a kid would blow bubbles into a chocolate milkshake. I let the pint settle and asked for it to be topped up so I could get a head on it (by a different server of course). It was better, but still very very crap. Leaving the bar area I did overhear the first guy ask what was wrong with it, but was no longer within earshot to hear her response. After speaking with my waiting friends it seemed that they too received service from the same guy that was “rather lacking”. Normally I can associate Wetherspoons with being a great experience, and have always had high praise for both Cuthbert Brodrick in Leeds and Thomas Botfield in Telford, but I think next time in London I’ll have to venture elsewhere.

This week saw me battling with my old nemeses, “history” and “academic reading”, in order to pull out a 3000 word essay on the US Occupation of Japan. Though I thoroughly believe that my essay itself was a massive load of fudge, I’m pleased to say I did learn a good amount of what happened. That is until the several parties over the weekend to celebrate the end of the semester. Great hangover cure by the way, have a big controlled vomit (that is get yourself prepared, glass of water, mint, position yourself, vomit on your own terms) followed by a bit of kip. Or an even better way to avoid hangovers, cut down on the booze ^_^.

In creative news I’ve done a bit more work for Lotaku in that I have finally finished the design for the WebComics Tarot Project. I’m hoping to spend a bit more time on the comic over the winter break and crack out a couple more pages before classes start again. Likewise I’m very close to completing the Learn With Anna animation, just having a few snags with exporting.

And so to play us out, the literal version of The Safety Dance!

Today’s music comes from L’Arc En Ciel and is called Daybreak’s Bell. It’s a tune I’ve found quite fun to relax to, drive to, do homework to, clean to … honestly, I find it very open. Most listeners might know it as the theme tune from Gundam 00 (don’t worry not all the music I’ll be putting on here will be from anime themes, or always in Japanese).

So starting off at the Torikizoku (the everything 280 yen (£2.01) place), actually no, starting off at a convenience store, two of us bought a can of beer (each) to get the night kicking. In Japan it’s not uncommon for people to drink on the streets, but it still felt quite odd to be, especially as my alcohol wasn’t concealed by a brown paper bag.

Heading out in the direction of Osaka’s Hep 5 building, where we were to meet another buddy, I soon realised I should have worn more as a vicious wind blasted a shot of cold air right down my back. I can’t wait for the days of being able to just wear a t-shirt (and bottoms ¬_¬) again.

After joining our third amigo we then made our way to Torikizoku. Being a Friday night we’d expected for there to be a bit of a wait to get in, though to be honest this didn’t worry us. The central area of Umeda alone has plenty of branches, so if one had a hellova queue, we could have just headed to another. It’s not quite as bad as the number of Starbucks in a city center (in Birmingham’s Bull Ring you can see one easily from sitting within another), but there are a fair few. After endulging in many an over-sized glass of beer and assorted bits of a chicken (my favourite part being the heart), and an alcohol fueled conversation (of which I can remember very little of) we were soon on our way to Sam and Dave, a bar and nightclub in the area.

The rest of the night was filled with dancing to a good variety of music (this is the only place I’ve been to that had Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” followed by 50 Cent’s “In Da Club”), drinking (mainly beer and Malibu & Milk … yum!), and a lot of conversations (shouting to be make sure people could hear me and being shouted at for the reverse reason of course). Sam and Dave is a very international club. The bar staff were from all areas of the world with a mixed knowledge of Japanese, some customers (ourselves included) were also from abroad, and the Japanese customers who go there seem to use this as a good time for English practice as well as me for the other way around. For a while I was talking to one woman in Japanese while she replied to what I was saying in English. It made for a very interesting conversation.

We left at about 4 in the morning on some very wobbly legs and headed into a nearby Matsuya to complete the night. I couldn’t find Curry Rice on the vending machine, so picking a random button I ended up with a random meat-rice dish, of which I found I could only eat half. Matsuya also proved to be a good time to practice speaking as my trio conversed with two girls who had also been at Sam and Dave that night.

Coming back to the dorm, taking care not to wake anyone up, I turned off all alarms on my phone and put my head down to sleep.

I’ll always remember that the strangest hangover I’ve heard about happened to Dave Gorman when he did his Googlewhack Adventure, where his Texan hangover was in his arm (which turned out to be a very badly done tattoo). For me, waking up totally fine at about 4pm, with the exception of being a bit thirsty a hangover was no where in sight. Sitting at my desk, my stomach slowly started to dance on it’s own accord. It was as if a village of Hula Dancers were putting in the extra overtime. Since I had no orange juice and had skipped breakfast, I made my way (very tenderly) to the 99 yen shop to pick up supplies.

To spare you the details, shortly after arriving home and having some OJ, I found myself very thankful to the fact that I had something in my belly. The strangest part about this hangover, is that it wasn’t really much of a hangover. In fact, it was just like I’d caught a bit of the flu that has infected the majority of the dorm. Truth be told I wasn’t feeling too great before Friday night … hmm … yeah, that’s what I’ll put it down to. Trying to rest, I didn’t wake up (get out of bed) until 11 o’clock this morning.

So welcome to March, and for those readers in Wales happy Dydd Gŵyl Dewi (St David’s Day). I’ll be boning up on some kanji today for this week’s midterms, as well as making a start on tidying.

Also thanks to the family back home for the socks, jeans and chocolate I got through!