There's A Hole In Your Dungarees

Welcome to another entry, my lovelies. A lot to cover, so I'll plod straight on with Monday. The morning Japanese classes included learning a few expressions of the kind that generally don't appear in dictionaries and sound very strange if you try to directly translate them. For example, "気に落とさないでください/ki ni otasanaide kudasai" means "(Please) Relax," but a literal translation would be something like "Please don't lower your spirit." Similarly, in a recent conversation I said "甘いものに目がない/Amai mono ni me ga nai," meaning "I love sweets," but literally "As for sweet things, I have no eyes." We also finished watching Ima Ai Ni Yuku, quite a surprising twist at the end, but I'll not spoil it for anyone who may yet read or watch it. In fact, it may be said that the morning was one of many endings, for we also got to the end of the packet of grammar exercises we've been using since the start of the term. I wonder what we shall do now without it?

I believe I've mentioned Project Work before, one of the four current banes of my life. I had planned to print out the questionnaire I'd be using and start trying to get it answered... managed to carry out the first part of that plan. How glad I was to duck into the sanctuary of the tearoom for some cha. Not much to report about the ceremony today, it was rather laid back and enjoyable, we had the same sweets that we've had once before, but in a different container - a big ceramic pot with a heavy and fragile lid. The teacher also pointed out some things to us we may not have noticed (instances of bad posture etc) and bade us be careful of them... interestingly she didn't say they were against ceremony etiquette, just that they weren't cool.

Classical Japanese suddenly seemed a bit more difficult this week. Perhaps it's because I didn't prepare for the lesson like I usually do because I was busy with the homework set last week. Or maybe it's because we covered stuff that I didn't learn last year at SOAS. Either way, it was certainly a challenging lesson, we looked at some texts which were a bit tricky to understand, not so much because of the grammar but more the amount of mysterious vocabulary and cultural context. All in all a rather tiring day, but here's hoping it will all pay off in the end one way or another.

This fellow has nothing to do with what I did today, but it's a rather nice picture, I think.