...erm...can't think of a headline...doesn't bode well, does it...?

Gosh what a productive couple of days. I took Monday off and today is a national holiday, it's the autumnal equinox don't you know, so today I painted myself and Minako with blue woad and we wandered through the streets of Tokyo beating each other with mistletoe and birch twigs.

Not really, but it would be interesting to see what the good denizens of Tokyo would have made of that.

But it was a productive couple of days. I have finished assignment one, which is a feeling of great...well...anti-climax really. It is done, but there has been none of the last minute, up-till-6am feverish writing that seemed to characterise parts of my undergraduate days. Maybe I'm doing this all wrong, I don't know. The other thing is that I may well feel that the essay is done, but this is probably beause I have now read it about 40 times (at least) and therefore it all makes perfect sense and the conclusions are self evident - in short, objectivity has become a problem. But then again I asked a chap in the office to read it last week and he seemed to think it was ok (and he is a 'proper' teacher with a B.Ed etc), even though he didn't get the last 800 words or so. But it has been rewritten with the suggestions of the tutor in mind, so hopefully it shouldn't fail (actually, she said that if it was rewritten with her suggestions, it should be a solid 'b', which is far greater than the 'scraping a c' that I am looking for) so fingers crossed.

But here's a weird thing. Sat and Sun were designated study days this weekend, so by Monday morning, my morning off, as it were, pretty much everything was done. We were heading out for lunch at about midday and so I after reading the paper and going over the internet, had nothing to do for what seemed like an hour at the very least! This was a most odd feeling and I found myself opening a text and starting to read a chapter that will be relevant for the next module...! Freaked me out, I can tell you.

Then I realised, take out the work and the study and there's not a great deal left.

This depressed me no end. But then we went out for lunch and then to buy a new pair of hiking boots for the trip to the lakes in October and a lot of things were suddenly ok in the world. (As you can probably guess, deep introspective self reflection is not one of my strong points). Except that I didn't get the boots yesterday as the shop we ended up at in Shinjuku (lit. translation 'new Inn) didn't have the colour I wanted (they only had bad-curry-turd brown rather than nondescript gray). So today we went back to Ochanomizu (lit. 'place for water for the tea' - no really) and bought the aforementioned boots - at 20 quid off to, pardon me, boot.

And then I got to walk home in them, about 10 kms through some jolly old bits of Tokyo, and some really quite bland bits of it as well. Still, this wander was good as it meant I got to break in the boots a little, not that they really need it as they are of the light/medium weight variety, rather than the heavyweight jobs, and also check to see if they gave me blisters, which they didn't, which is good news for the lakes.