Good evening blog. I'm in an alright mood today and can't be bothered going to bed just yet. I bought £7 worth of beef tonight and ate it all up with a nice Corona. Then I had a nice cup of tea with some Cadbury's chocolate. I'm like a king really. Recessions? Unemployment? Nah... I have steak and beer for my Monday night dinner. Cheers.

I began studying for my Japanese test held yesterday by getting drunk up in Umaji on Friday night. There was this chopstick game where you need to guess how many the other guy is holding... I didn't actually understand it. Anyway, they gave us free beer because we were foreign and then gave us massive bottles of sake to take away. I continued this trend on Saturday by moaning about being ill and watching Father Ted until returning home to study at about 9pm. I then woke up at 5am to drive Joey, Peter and I to Takamatsu for our tests. Kochi is too crap to get its own test centre so we had the joy of travelling really far just to fail miserably. We had to borrow Noah's car because our own ones might fall apart on the motorways. It was actually a really nice drive there and back. There was loads of snow on the mountains in the middle of Kochi and we saw the sunset on the return leg. I absolutely destroyed the kanji part of the test but stumbled miserably on the grammar (it's worth about half).

I was having lunch today at junior high school today and caught out some students giving me a bit of cheek in Japanese:

The conversation today went as follows:

Girl 1: This chicken is delicious!
Girl 2: I know I know!

Girl 1: Hanta ate all his school lunch for once!
Girl 3: Oh yeah! I think foreigners like chicken.

Me: chuckle chuckle

Girl 2: eeeeeeh did he just understand?
Girl 3: No! Hanta never understands!

Me: chuckle chuckle

Girl 2: He did he did!
Girl 3: Hanta... do you understand?

Me: Uh-uh

All: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh

That last bit is the exact sound Japanese people make when they are mildy shocked at something. It's also the same reason I don't really watch the television here.

Anyway.... what else. Yes, my holiday is coming up very fast. I'm feeling a bit unprepared but I think it's going to be really good. I'm not actually that interested in the South Asian countries but I thought I might as well do it since I'm here. I just hope I can avoid middle aged sex tourists, getting shot in a Thai revolution and/or dying of malaria.... in a ditch.... covered in stereotypes and cliches of the country I'm in. Here's a random picture: