Mou akan - yamemasu! (It's no good, I give up!)

How I love my bike! That is one thing I am going to be really sad to come back without. Going to school takes 15 minutes and I am no longer at the mercy of public transport.

You get such a feeling of freedom on a bike. Last week, a bunch of us rode across to the other side of the city to an all-you-can eat sweets restaurant. Whizzing through side streets and down highways, swerving to avoid pedestrians and weaving between cars, I thought, this is the closest I am ever going to get to flying. I may have fantasised at various points that my chari was a Firebolt and we were a Quidditch team. And yes, I do seem to remember calling out "Fifty points to Gryffindor!" at regular and appropriate intervals.

A great many Japanese are lamenting the Falling of the Sakura. But I think it's just as beautiful lying in pink-white heaps on the ground as on the trees.

I'm almost a month into my exchange, and I've done everything I told myself I would do to make the most of this semester. I'm studying during the week, always listening in class, but making the most of the weekends to explore. I joined a saakuru and now I've found myself a Japanese tutor, a fellow student. So why do I still feel so frustrated with my inability to operate in Japanese at a more sophisticated level?

(Kill me now...)

Classes are still hard, but they're getting easier. I'm understanding now maybe 20% of what the teacher says. It's helped by the fact that today I got permission from the Head of Japanese Studies at usyd to not take any of the English-language Japan and World Perspectives classes *shudder* Don't ask, or I'll have to be non-diplomatic and non-Japanese and answer. So I have 12 hours of Japanese a week to concentrate on.

Putting yourself in an educational environment that operates completely in a different language is really, really hard. I never walk out of a class not feeling some degree of depression and wanting to give up.

But, as Khatzumoto says, "Language learning is a process of sucking. You just suck less each day."

And it's been easy to find humour in everything. Something a friend in my dorm said to me made me laugh the other day:

"It's funny - I spent my whole high school/teenage life trying to fit in. And then I came to Japan."

In her book 'Biting the Wax Tadpole', Elizabeth Little includes high school on her list of "special hells" for "those of us afflicted with the wallflower gene." Being in Japan is a lot like going back to high school. Oh how fondly (not) do I remember those years.

Are people looking at me? Do I look stupid?

And now I've come to Japan, where, as a (white) foreigner:

(a) people are always looking at you, and

(b) yes, you probably do look stupid

There's nothing for it - as in the case of my Japanese classes - except to suck it up and get on with things as best you can. I've adopted the philosophy of simply letting go when I step in the classroom. Doing some mind exercises help. I'm a sponge, and the Japanese language that's roaring around me is a waterfall. Just suck it up. Take in everything that you can and more - you're not going to have this opportunity again.

It's just a question of attitude.

But right now, it's the weekend. Our dorm are going out to nomi-hodai (all you can drink) karaoke tonight, and this weekend we plan to return to Kawaramachi for some serious spring shopping. I definitely need some more coloured tights ... perhaps mustard yellow and lime green?

Last week, I went to Kyoto Imperial Gardens with Saimonme, my saakuru, and made some new friends. Was also greatly amused to see this in the toilets of the Gardens.

Yes, good luck, stupid gaijin. Try not to pee on yourself, you barbarian.

The nature in the gardens was staggeringly beautiful (as it is everywhere in Kyoto):

Last, but not least, the requisite life-diary photo of my greening sakura:

Oh, and by the way ... at the end of this month ... during Golden Week ... I'll be going to Tokyo!!!