Studying in the summer holidays?

Not cool! I have not got a huge amount to report on as I was stuck inside revising all weekend and on Monday AND on Tuesday. This was not what I signed up for! I did try to get outside and study in the nice weather - I went to Yoyogi-koen (the big park in Harajuku) to sit in the sun and work but gave up after about two hours as the insect world kept invading my personal space. There were so many ants that kept crawling over my books and myself (I thankfully didn't get bitten), and this guy got far too close for my liking:


I had the JSDA Sales Representative Class 2 exam this morning. It could have been worse but, unfortunately, the questions that I found the trickiest also happened to be the questions that were worth the most marks. Bummer. Major bummer. Hopefully I've answered just enough correctly to pass (I need 70%...) - I find out my result on Friday, so fingers crossed! I wasn't nervous before as I didn't care enough about a qualification that was going to lapse in 90 days time, but now that I've gone to the effort of actually sitting the thing, I would quite like to pass and be able to put it on my CV. We shall see... To celebrate the end of having to study obscure corporate law, I went and got myself a manicure. I am now the proud owner of some glittery, lilac nails.


Anyway, being stuck inside for four days did have its perks: take out food :) Here is a sample of some of the things I have eaten recently.

A lemon green tea frappuccino and raspberry macaroon from Starbucks (much better than the Starbucks at home).


A delicious selection of gyoza and sui mai.


Pancakes sandwiched together with custard.


Strange fried batter-balls with chunks of octopus in the middle. This sounds unusual but street vendors sell them all over the place and there is a bar/take out joint down the round from me (where I got these ones from) that only sells beer and different flavours of octopus balls.



And a tasty chocolate and orange mousse from the posh hotel patisserie that's down the road.


I did have an absolute FAIL moment one morning when I went to the coffee shop on the corner to buy a mocha and ended up with this instead:


It's a matcha latte - powdered green tea with sweetened boiled milk. It smelled and tasted exactly as disgusting as it sounds. This lurid green concoction was not a good way to start the day and I ended up pouring it down the sink :(

On one of my many coffee runs, I saw this lot being taken on a trip from (presumably) the local nursery. What a clever way to ferry toddlers around a city!



(For those of you with too much time on your hands, I have eventually uploaded all my photos onto my flickr account.)

Another one?!

Tokyo got another wee tremor just before 8.00am this morning. It made the floor rumble underneath where I was sitting and my rice cooker (which is balancing on top of my fridge) was wobbling about, but it thankfully only lasted about a minute or so. I think three earthquakes in one week is enough, thank you very much, Earth.

Lessons today were just as intense as yesterday and included some maths this time, too. The maths is dead simple but remembering the hundreds (okay, maybe about 40...) equations is going to be an absolute nightmare. I'm going to have to go and study in a minute and will be revising and practicing past paper questions all weekend. At least it will all be over by Wednesday afternoon. I'm already planning on going for a celebratory manicure - you can get a decent one for only £8! Actually, I bought some pretty crazy fake nails when I was shopping in Venus Fort yesterday, and I fully intend to get my nails done Shibuya-girl-style before coming home.

I've eventually got around to setting up a flickr account so that everyone at home can see my photos and won't be subjected to a ridiculously long slide-show when I get back. I've taken far too many and only managed to upload about half so far. Check them out here. I'm continually adding more every day and put them up in the same groups I uploaded from my cameras, i.e. the order is a bit messed up at times. A nice way to look at them is by area on my map. Enjoy!