Gaaaaaaaan.

I apologise in advance if this post is something of a rant. I have not enjoyed today, and am intent on telling everyone I know about it in a bid to make myself feel better. Just warning you now, you might want to skip today's entry if you want to preserve those rose-tinted specs of yours.

So, here we go.

I regret saying anything along the lines on 'My course is easy' now that I've seen the results to last week's Kanji test. Okay, I may not have quite got what I wanted there, but that's no big deal. I work hard, and I'll improve.

But it really gave voice to the doubts I've been fostering over the last two weeks. I've felt so dense lately, like people will call my name and I won't even notice, or I'll have to have instructions repeated because it takes longer to sink in. And this is in English. I mean, I've done flipping '~n desu' constructions before, so why is it so hard now?! Why could I get it then and not now?!

Today's grammar test was a bit of a nightmare, too. It wasn't a straight 'here's a chapter, here are some questions on it' quiz, they were being sneaky and hiding the right answers in far from the obvious places. One question was about keigo, for crying out loud! We haven't done that yet! I gave it a good shot, but it really threw me, and as you may have gathered I'm feeling a bit vulnerable these days so it had double the effect. It was super effective, you might say. Yes, I'll get Pokemon in anywhere.

What really didn't help is that today's Physical Education Day, or something, so every school that isn't Doshisha (it seems) had the day off today! And look at that day:


Look at it! Look! It's beautiful! How on EARTH is this fair?! We get Typhoon day off, but when it's a day we might actually WANT off we have to sit in a stuffy classroom and go over transitive and intransitive verb charts!! What are the government doing?!

I am NOT happy about that.

But it only gets worse... Well, it kind of goes up a little bit first. InterCom had us watching a film that was sort-of funny, but was all in Japanese so not only did I feel weak as I watched the smiles of the people around me who got the Japanese word-play jokes, I felt weaker the more I had to try and decypher the ridiculous turns of events, and now I have a splitter of a headache! Culture was, y'know, normal, with a brief outline of the big Japanese festivals, such as the Daimonji one which I don't get to see 'cos it's at the start of term so I'll be in Edinburgh by then... I was really looking forward to taking a picture of the big kanji for, ironically, 'big' on the mountainside, putting it on Facebook and captioning it 'Charizard used Fire Blast!!' There'll be other chances, I daresay.

Then we started to go home, and this is where the fun really starts. Signed in as normal, and found a piece of paper in my locker that asked for 2,500 yen to pay for the start of classes. But they don't want it in cash. In a stupid, MMORPG-quest way they will only accept payment in tickets. TICKETS!! What's wrong with money?! And there's only one machine in the whole university that dispenses these golden morsels of education. Luckily it was close by and so I decided to get it over with. In goes 500 yen, out comes one fifth of my education in tickets (you see, yu can only buy 500 yen tickets, so I'd need 5). Easy, I thought, and put in 1000 yen to get the remainder of the tickets.

Blasted machine ate my money!!

Ate it!!

And I don't have it anymore!!

Big error message on the screen asking (I found out after checking with the DS dictionary) for technical help from a member of staff! Gives me a contact number, which was very kind of it.

Stood there like a muppet for THIRTY LONG ARDUOUS MINUTES while the phone rang and rang and rang and DID NOT GET PICKED UP!! What are they doing?! Gone home?! What if it was a real emergency?! Huh?! Like a bomb or something?! What then?!

Utter stupidity...

So I lost my patience and went home. And did my homework. And now I'm really not happy.

Well, I feel a little bit better now.

What I don't like about all this is that all of the things I praised Japan for now get flipped on their heads. Good-quality technology? Yeah, sure. Cheap video games? Still true, but it's salt in the wound to think that I just LOST half a copy of Dissidia Final Fantasy. One 15th of a PS2. Gone. Not coming back.

I can't help but feel, in situations like this, that God is trying to teach me something, and I believe now that He's telling me to stop being so miserly with my money. Need to try using it a bit more, though obviously on worthwhile pursuits. There are parables about that, you know. Tonight my life might be required of me, and what then?

Well, no need to be so morbid. Actually, on that note, I may as well talk about church yesterday. Which I went to alone. Cheers, Mark, you nanakimono. Seriously, though, a good service on Matthew 22:15. 'Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and to God what belongs to God.' Well, I just gave the state of Japan a thousand of their precious yen, so maybe I've learnt something after all.

Sunday was quite nice, actually. Took the opportunity to Hunt some Monsters (bagged a Khezu! Yeaaah!) and sit by the riverside and take some photos of the usual Sunday crowd that gathers there. Here they are, look.



There's an embankment in the middle of the river where it joins together near Imadegawa, and you get a lot of people crossing the river via the stepping stones to bask in the sun. I'll try it some day, but I was afraid of inconveniencing the swarms of kids.



There is a river under all that grass, honest. Oh, and here's something interesting. You don't see many homeless people in Kyoto, at least not where I go, but almost every bridge has a veritable shanty town constructed from wooden poles and blue tarpaulin under one section. It's quite a sight.



So after all that I felt a little calmer. I also ended up watching episode 274 of Pokemon as well. I tip my hat to you if you know why that's an important episode, and I heartily say that it was definitely worth seeing. Very well done, though they could have strung the important part over a full episode.

And now I get to eat. Spagetti sauce tonight, simple and good. And then I'm going to watch episode 2 of Letter Bee and fall asleep, which I'm really quite enjoying so far. The whole heart-gun thing reminds me of Baroque, as does the world it's set in to an extent, and I loved Baroque a lot. Need to find and buy the manga for it. And any sequels. Ah, wonderful, nostalgic memories.

Right, food.

Thanks, honestly, for reading. Back on track next time, I assure you.