Well, there is nothing special to report today, other than I got the best grade so far on last Friday’s test. But, that’s a “forced perspective” good grade—I’m still a big, fat idiot…

It’s hard to believe that this was the first day of our final week—the time has just flown by and while it seems like I’ve been here forever, it also seems like I just arrived. That’s the interesting thing about time—it may move along at a steady pace, but we humans interpret it differently based on our environment. We’ve had so much to do and have been so busy, that time has just zoomed.

We worked on our speeches by practicing with the CPs and teachers to work on the pronunciation and pauses. It really helped too—I can get a better sense of the rhythm of speaking Japanese. All these things, little by little, build on top of one another and in another 5 or 6 years I should be speaking this language like I know what I’m doing…

The other big task for me this week will be to pack and ship home various books, things I’ve bought and stuff I don’t want to carry with me. I’ll report on that as the story develops.