Disgruntlement (just a little)

There is nothing more ridiculous than a 30 year old, PHD bearing Cambridge lecturer being grilled about her handwriting.

Now, as we descend into the depths of weekly dictations/reading exercises/handwriting class I am beginning to find the whole language school just a teensy bit patronising. And as much as I feel patronised I feel equally inept at the whole language learning thing. 35 new words. 10 new kanji (the chinese characters). Every day. Homework. Leaps and bounds of grammer, that in the last two days has spiralled from reasnobly understandable to absurdly sillily difficult - and yet I still seem to end up spending my entire time outside of classes grasping for words or sentence structures to explain that 'no I don't want an extra plastic bag', and yes I do want that to take out or no I don't want a free set of paper hankerchiefs.
On the point of handkerchiefs; blowing your nose in public is seen as the height of inpolite so I don't really know why every company feels the need to send half it's work force out onto the streets to annoy everyone by handing out little packs of overwrapped paper handkerchiefs anyway - but seeing as they do, the ability to tell them that I don't want them might be helpful.

As might the ability to know the vocab for changing address at the alien registration office, the local ward office, the mobile phone shop, my bank, the commuter pass station and my health insurance office. Due to my appalling japanese I simply go back to the old trick of pointing manically at an envelope with my new address and another with my old address crying 'onegaishimas onegaishimas' in the hope that the person behind the counter will realise that I want to change my account's address. I'm sure in 6 months I'll get it but right now the whole thing seems like an uphill struggle worsened by my three hour commute (although this does mean I get to spend atleast an hour a day biking through the Tokyo suburbs which is sublimely beautiful at the moment, if slightly dangerous, due to bikes and people sharing the pavements here in a heaving, crazy mass of man and machine).

It is amazing, the abiltiy for all the petty, little frustrating things to get on my nerves at the moment is due more to the fact that my days right now seem to be without a break for fun things like exploration, or reading, or emailing and instead feel like one continual grind between bureaucracy, school and homework. In fact this disgruntlement is probably more due to the fact that I only slept 5 and a half hours last night and will probably be doing the same again tonight than that I have anything really to complain about. There is also something deeply infectious about my metro ride, stuffed in amongst the sallow eyed salary men who are working 80 hour weeks and are coming to the close of their week. I feel just so much empathy with their focus towards the glorious freedom of the weekend! But before then 'weekly testo' must be revised for! :(