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.