I said I’d post more about learning Japanese and it’s been ages since I talked about week 1. It’s progressed quite well and I’m starting to feel like there’s too much to try to keep in my head! We’ve covered quite a bit; asking what things are called, telling people what things are called, asking where things are, what time things open and close, asking the price of things and saying ‘that’s too expensive’. I’ve decided if I ever travel to Japan I’ll make sure I have a watch, asking and understanding time is terribly complicated!

We agreed to learn some writing as well, so the teacher has started us learning groups of Hiragana and a little bit of Kanji.  It’s mostly memory, but then also knowing what words are once you’re able to sound them out, more complex than it sounds. I really need to sit down and work on the characters we have learned as I don’t feel like I have actually learned them at all, more I wrote them on a piece of paper a few times and then they fell out of my brain.

Andy and I attended a Japan Day in Manchester a few weekends ago, but we got there fairly late on. It was interesting, but I think perhaps if we’d been there to see some of the on stage events it might have been better. I also missed out getting a raffle ticket by about five minutes - no free flights with FinnAir for me!

I’m actually really enjoying it, it’s nice to be doing something different, and it  feels like we’re making progress too.

I didn’t know what to expect of a language evening class. The only thing I had to base my opinion of learning languages on was from school where the overbearing feeling is embarrassment - you have to say things in a silly accent infront of your peers, if you get it wrong you sound stupid, if you get it right you sound like a swot. 

As it turned out it started off embarrassing, or rather I felt self-conscious. The teacher put a lot of emphasis on “who knows some Japanese words”, “who’s watched Japanese TV”. Unsurprisingly there were a number of manga/anime addicts and it turned out they knew more Japanese than they were letting on. I think the teacher was too rigidly trying to follow a lesson plan she’d picked beforehand though, and when she’d relaxed and stopped trying to fit too many things in it started becoming more fun. 

Lesson one was about counting to 10, basic greetings, how to ask and answer “what is your name?”. We learned about the three different kinds of Japanese characters, and when they’re used (seemingly all three, interchangeably a lot of the time). She asked us if we wanted to learn about how to write in Japanese since it wasn’t actually part of the syllabus and we all said yes, should be interesting!

I came away from the lesson feeling like I wasn’t likely to have learned very much by the end of the eight weeks, I thought the progress during two hours had been slow and I hadn’t taken in as much as I’d wanted to. During this week however, I’ve copied my notes across into the right notebook (OCD FTW) and tried copying out some of the characters to make the sounds - having a phonetic language is actually really interesting. Andy and I have played some word (actually more like number) games, and watched some Japanese TV… and wow. I’m amazed how much I’ve taken in without actually realising it. It feels like a language to be learnt now, as opposed to something mysterious, just sounds that blur together. 

I’m properly excited for Tuesday evening, really looking forward to learning some more building blocks so I can start constructing my own sentences instead of parroting phrases - not sure that’s likely to be something we’ll learn soon, but anything more than having the same boring “nice to meet you” conversation over and over again will be a plus ;-)

I’m sure I’ll update here again when I’ve learned some more. For now, Sayonara :-D

I had a nice weekend. There’s a lot of assorted stress in my head at the moment but it was just good to have a nice weekend. Andy took me to see 1984 at the Dukes and it was fun, I’d not been to the theatre in quite a while and 1984 is one of my favourite books. I didn’t agree with some of the emphasis they placed, but I think I’ve always read 1984 in a particular way so it’s to be expected it wasn’t identical to how I’d imagined. We’d also had a lovely meal at Pizza Margherita, and followed up theatre with some drinks in 1725. 

Sunday was relaxing. Watched the Singapore GP which was decidedly boring, went for a short walk. The weather’s getting quite cold again. In the evening we watched the NFL match on Sky Sports 4 which was a fantastic game - went into overtime! Ended the evening watching some 30 Rock which I’d never seen before. 

The rest of this week shall be filled with many and much writing. Apart from Tuesday evening when I am taking some time to learn Japanese! Should be an interesting experiment… I’ll report back.

So far I’ve been incredibly impressed by Sky - I made the leap from Plusnet to Sky TV + the Unlimited broadband package last week, and today was the migration date from my previous ISP. I was a little bit worried as I logged into the Sky website and it told me my Broadband order had been cancelled. I wasn’t completely freaked out simply because I’d already been sent the Sky router, not sure why they’d have sent that if it was cancelled. 

Anyway, I was told the migration would happen today, but not really very much more than that. Some internet searching suggested that the migration could happen any time, up to midnight (semi-concerning as we’re down as raiding this evening), and it could take anything from an hour to five days. I did my research, found the appropriate number to ring if everything went tits up and sat down to wait.

10.30am my current Internet connection stopped working. I disconnected the old router and connected up the new DLink one from Sky, it booted… and started working. I think the downtime can’t have been more than 5 minutes. So far I have slower download speeds than previously, but apparently Sky apply line management for the first ten days to find the best speed for your line. Hopefully it should bounce up after a few days. The download speed is already higher and the ping times lower.

The installation engineers from Sky were friendly, helpful, and more than anything quick. The Sky box is brilliant, the HD service spectacular, and since installation I’ve watched live football, cricket and NFL. Happy customer… guess we’ll see if this continues!

Finally we downed Sindragosa!! I thought it was never going to happen, but for some reason the stars aligned this evening and with very little effort she was dead. I’m so glad I don’t have to listen to her dreadful voice acting any more. 

Now we’re onto the Lich King, seems like a complex encounter but not as terrible as Yogg when we first got there. Looking forward to my Kingslayer title :-)

Next up was a book which seems to be the “cool” thing to be reading at the moment, give or take a year - I’m a bit late to the party. I’d been recommended this book by a wide variety of people, and it appeared to fall into my broad interests as a crime/murder mystery so it wasn’t really difficult choosing it as the second book to read.

I really liked it. It was hard to get into at first, the start is.. tough going. Lots of intricate details of Swedish politics, corporate infighting and setting the backstory, but with not very much apparent connection to what you go into the book expecting to be the main plot. Then suddenly out of nowhere, everything gets interesting. The political, whistleblower drama suddenly becomes a locked room mystery, where the room is an island. From that point on I was hooked. 

My only criticism was that it all felt a bit clinical, I didn’t find myself getting completely drawn into the world in the book - I was just enjoying reading a story from the outside. I wonder if perhaps this is a side effect of the language as a translation, if only I could read Swedish and then I might know. A lot of the time the language felt functional rather than crafted? This all sounds incredibly pretentious and like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t.

All in all a cracking story, the big reveal was interesting and it’s bitten me to the extent I’m now 100 pages into the second in the series. I’ll report back when I’m done.

5/5

It’s taken me a weekend to finish this in fits and starts, I was caught between intrigue and wishing it would just hurry up and get to the point in equal measures. I don’t know whether if I’d read it in one sitting rather than in (sometimes as short as 15 minutes) bursts, but the twists in the last quarter of the book left me more confused than convinced. Particularly the very final twist which didn’t seem to actually make any logical sense.

The story was fairly absorbing but the characters were rather two dimensional. The series focusses on a group of women in powerful ‘crime solving’ positions, a police officer, an attorney, a crime reporter and mortuary doctor. Unfortunately they hadn’t yet formed in this first story, and even when they did it felt unnecessary and like their group only existed because the dust cover blurb said they should.

I don’t think I can judge James Patterson on this one book so I’ll try something else and come back to make my mind up, but I hope in future stories I actually feel something for the characters - the primary investigator in this story was suffering from a potentially life threatening condition and believed she was going to die, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

3/5

I haven’t read a lot in a long time. I used to read all the time as a child, never without a book and often reading multiple books at once stacked up my bedside table. When I came away to university I stopped having “free time” that wasn’t able to be filled with a billion other things and I just got out of the habit. 

For a few reasons, most notably the increased availability of e-books and the fact I carry around a reader (my iPhone) everywhere I go, I’ve decided I should try reading again. Unfortunately I can no longer remember what genres and authors I liked so I’m having to start again from scratch.

When I remember I’m intending on posting my thoughts when I finish a book on here. I’m no literature critic and I haven’t written a book review since primary school, but I want to remember what I think so hopefully I can build up an idea of what I like. We’ll see how long before I get bored…