disgruntled. dreams. dread.

I can feel the panic and sweeping fall of unit test approaching. The pressure is wracked up by the Foundation and discussions over grades and how-many-hours-a-day-are-you-studying chat. If I fail I repeat the last ten weeks of tedious boring chapters.

Instead of expanding over the last few months my mind seems to have shrunk and narrowed. It is familiar with transitive and intransitive verbs. It talks about making verbs into nouns. It can memorise stories to help me cram for the two daily kanji tests - but it no longer seems to think or create. This system is not about creation. It's about the repititation of perfect carbon copy sentences with no meaning but the grammer structure they are supposed to indicate.

Just as that pressure increases a whole host of oppotunities are beginning - and I feel torn between the pressure of needing to pass this exam and needing to be involved in all the reasons that I came to Japan in the first place. Just as Japan opens up to me, the stern hand of the foundation and the school drag me kicking and screaming back to mindnumbing tests that aren't about talking, remind me that it doesn't matter if I can't talk Japanese as long as I can fill in a box and arrange my multiple choice correctly.

From across the world people's lives after months of grind now blossom out into the ends and the beginnings of semesters and jobs and universities. And I dream travel along with them and hang on and on and on -