I got paid quite a lot of money the other day for not a lot of work. This pleased me until someone robbed me back home. I’ll get onto that in a minute.

Last night I went to an informal Japanese class with David from Yasuda. Ironically it was run by Kondo sensei who is one of MY students from my advanced English class. I learnt a few useless things about hiragana (mainly that my reading is woefully slow) and a phrase or two. On the way home we stopped in at his place as Nahari David was celebrating with the Japanese girl Yasuda David lives with as she had just past a driving test thing. I’ve forgotten her name but she was a good laugh and spoke excellent English with a twist of an Aussie accent. I’m always forgetting names these days even though I’m usually quite good with them. I think it’s because I’m focusing on processing and pronouncing all these new foreign names that when it comes to remembering them my brain breaks.

Yesterday I sent some emails back home trying to organise paying off the last of the rent from my flat last year. I got one this morning from my parents that suggested there had been some dodgy business going on with my bank account last week. A few hundred quid had been used to buy some stuff even though I’ve been living away in Tano with my debit card in my wallet. They’ve obviously gotten my details from somewhere and used them to purchase stuff off the internet. I’m slightly confused as to how this happened as I tear up every single bank statement into a thousand pieces, set them on fire and then throw the ashes into a lake. Secondly, I’ve never let the card out of my sight when I used it so that no freeloader could try and steal all my lovely details. FURTHERMORE! I’ve been away for almost a month now so someone must have had the details for a certain amount of time and then used them.

So it has been a bit of a crappy day so far. It was interesting explaining to the office the concept of credit card fraud because a) Japan is a cash society and nobody uses them and b) People don’t tend to steal as much here (generalisation warning).

To try and sort the situation out I’m attempting to establish this GoLylods thing which will allow me to send money home and pay the rent but I need to jump through more hoops and waiting periods for that too. The exchange rate is bloody woeful too. Damn you pound sterling, damn you to currency hell.

On the upside I had an exceptionally nice peach yesterday.