Hello

This is the start to my blog. The purposes of starting this is that since I am flying off to Japan for a year to study in Kyoto, it is an easy way for my family and friends to see what I've been doing.  I'd also like to throw in any information for future exchange students to look at.  A number of students from the class have already started their blogs, so I imagine a lot of the info will be repeated, but maybe a range of perspectives would give a more rounded picture.

So, at this point, I'm still about a month away from my flight. In the process of working as many hours (from two jobs) as I can get for some last minute cash, slowly making preparations for my departure, and trying not to forget the Japanese I know already.

Searching the net looking for the cheapest deals and (hopefully) a year return ticket, to little avail. Seems all the airlines didn't offer year returns, and the cheapest one way tickets were around £400.  The I found the holy grail of travel agents, Gendai Travel http://www.gendai.co.uk/en/ who found me an open ended year return with Emirates (good airline and 30kg weight allowance) for £471! Flying from Manchester via Dubai on 1^st October.

The 'studying' side of my summer, although not really being as extensive as planned, hasn't been too bad. As I live in Manchester so have access to the John Rylands library, so have been reading a number of books about Japanese linguistics. The two I have on the go right now are about the historical structure of Japanese (not only explaining 'how' it is, but 'why' it is), and one on onomatopoeia (far more to its symbolism than any text or grammar book I've seen so far).

Language-wise I've really been focusing on grammar (the grammar of the day emails help with this while I'm at work too), reading Japanese web pages and watching movies and TV shows. Not really intensive, but it's reminding me how much I enjoy the subject (a few months ago I had become so sick of the Japanese studies dept things and lost motivation).

Got a month left and so much to get done. I will try to see as many people as I can before I go, and have a leaving do of some kind.

If I don't see any of you before I go, you have an open invite to Japan!