ooosakaaaaa

I wouldn't say I always wanted to go to Japan. I always wanted to go to China, because they had pretty dresses. I don't think I quite knew the existence of Japan when I was a kid. Anyway, ever since I was say... 15 I was really into learning languages. I went from Spanish to Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, Farsi, Chinese, Japanese then nothing. Until last September when I sucked up my nerves and dragged Shelley to a night time college course in Wolverhampton. I can't really say I'm too brilliant at Japanese still, I can't seem to spout out random conversation when people ask me to. But ask me something in Japanese and it will ring this vaguely familiar bell. Anyway, it looks like I should be going to Osaka next August with Tom, which could be utterly cool or completely scary. I'd love to go in a largish group of friends and rent out a huge apartment for a couple of weeks, but I'm all too aware that it's a costly trip. £500 at least for the flight, £300 at least for the accomodation and then there's all the food and kawaii stuff that needs to be paid for. Budgeting for about £2k is going to be tough going for the next year, but it will be well worth it in the end. I'm slightly nervous about speaking Japanese, in Japan, to actual Japanese people because I do remember the giggles that used to come from my teacher Eiko whenever I'd say something not-so-right. I think I'd like to get it perfect first time I ever said something to someone, but that can't really happen. I remember sitting in 6th form with my Iranian friend Sahar, every now and then we'd launch into a discussion about the meaning of the various slang terms we often used, and being unable to tell her what they meant. I was never really gifted when it came to describing things, speaking in general, which actually makes blog writing extremely difficult.