Meet me half way

The last month of spring vacation proved to be as busy as I'd predicted. When I wasn't travelling, I was working to pay for travelling, but I like being busy so this suited me fine. I am never good at having too much free time and I hate the thought of sitting around idly dwiddling my fingers.

The highlight of the month was undoubtedly the ski trip, it was heavily subsidised by the law faculty and was a real bargain at fifty pounds for 3 days' skiing. If I'd known that lawyers get such a cushy ride then I would have opted for Law rather than Politics. Bristol lawyers are always being treated to a free bar at their balls, whereas politicians are lucky if we get a polysterene cup of Lambrini.

The rest of my travels around Japan has been brilliant too, it has boosted my confidence in my Japanese especially during the last week when I travelled by myself. It was just me and my bad Japanese to get me by, and much to my relief I didnt get lost or boarded the wrong train once. When I was hiking up the mountain, the signs were all in kanji and I came to a fork in the trail where I had to choose between three equally baffling kanji. Not wanting to get lost, I backtracked to find a sign with furigana and took a photo of all the signs for later reference. That was a good move since the trail was split into three directions and one of them had led to the carpark below rather than the summit. That would not have been fun.

Having spent half a year in Japan, I feel like I have definately matured and learnt a lot from my experience. It has made me more appreciative of everything I have, my friends and family. Nothing tests your independence as much as moving half way round the world to live in a country where you can't speak the language.

My love/ hate relationship with Nagoya is now leaning towards a great fondness for all the idiosyncracies of this large city. One of the things I missed while I was travelling was the lack of rubbish separation. Now, I tut at the blatant waste of a non-recycling lifestyle and I would say to myself, that wouldn't happen in Nagoya.