In news that I’m sure will disappoint at least one Mumbler out there, my Susan Boyle Video has given me my first big(ish) break.

This evening I met with the producer of a very well-known podcast, a podcast which sees thousands of downloads every week. It’s a podcast I listen to and enjoy, and a podcast that I did always want to be on. It was also one of the inspirations for my own podcast.

As of next month, I’ll be presenting a new regular feature on the show.

Details will follow in due course.

This is really exciting news for me. As many of you know, I see my mid-term future as being in the media industry, whether that be podcasting, radio or TV. This is not for the sake of becoming ‘famous’ etc, but because I believe that I can make a big positive difference to the world through the media. I’ve always felt drawn towards this field, but until recently have not made any real steps to create a reality in which I am working within it.

It’s only having read stacks of self-development books and having listened to hours of biographies from Audible that I appreciate that there is no secret to fulfilling my dreams. It’s simply a case of taking positive steps, acting on acquired knowledge and accumulated passion to make them a reality.

Becoming successful in my chosen field is no different from becoming successful in, say, obtaining the right to remain in Japan – in that case I invested 5 years of my time in study, $40,000 in school fees and expenses, and a lot of time and effort to persuade *Twinkle* to marry me ;o)

I don’t believe in blind ‘luck’ – I believe that we draw things towards us that we need at a given time – but we have to be in the right frame of mind and give out the right energy to draw the right things towards us (and if the ‘wrong’ things appear in our lives, they are ultimately the ‘right’ things. e.g. having unreasonable demands made of you in a job might piss you off so much that it becomes a trigger for you to pick up some long-held dream of yours that until now you’ve neglected out of fear).

So it’s good to see that my plan is working. Whilst my podcasts may take up every waking moment I’m not in my day job, whilst they may not pay a single penny, and whilst the resulting mp3 may be judged by some as a pile of pants, it doesn’t matter. They are what I have to do now. They are the natural next step.

The alternative is for me to sit here and wait for the day I’m ‘discovered’ by Fuji TV.

It’s only too easy to sit on our dreams. I’m happy that there are not so many of those kinds of people around me; most I know are either happy in what they are doing, or they are taking steps to change those parts of their lives that they are not happy with. They do this year round too, not just at New Year.

Anyways, best get on with the editing. Watch this space for future announcements.

My Japan-related History 2003-2008 in 6 short paragraphs

Prompted by the expiration of my visa (with no hope of a renewal) and a huge amount of debt, in 2003 I left Japan and returned to the UK.

I had a simple goal: to be back to Japan within five years with a university degree that would allow me to obtain a work visa (I’d previously bought a degree off the internet for US$300 but was laughed out of Otaru Immigration office).

Once back in the UK I applied to do a foundation course – with virtually no qualifications to my name and having been out of education for 7 years I needed to learn how to learn again. One year later that was complete, and I received an offer from the University of Sheffield to study Japanese at the highly respected School of East Asian Studies.

There then followed 4 really tough years of study. We started off with about 50 people in our class – 16 of us made it though to the end (above, with Nagai sensei and Kitaka sensei. Note my appallingly cheesy grin). Though though it was, it was bloomin’ marvellous, and I would recommend the course to anyone.

Last July I graduated on a Tuesday, got married to my daringu *Twinkle* on a Friday, and returned to Japan shortly after that upon receiving my spouse visa.

It took me a while to settle back in. Having rejected a job offer from GABA that I’d secured over the phone from the UK I was unsure as to what I would do for a while. Also, I’d not used my Japanese for a while and seemed to have forgotten an awful lot. It was an uncomfortable yet exciting time.

Being able to speak Japanese and the impact it has upon my life

It’s now just over 6 months since my return. For reasons given in my previous mumble I’m now feeling very much at home. But there’s another reason I feel a lot more at home now that I didn’t go into in that post, and that’s my ability to speak Japanese.

Why? Simply put, it gives me more choices in how I live my life.

As I sat in the meeting room above the local gym, I had a little out-of-body moment. There I was, sitting in a room of local Japanese grannies and grandads, participating in a meeting to discuss how our local park should be run.

Wow! This is pretty cool! I thought. Six years ago when I used almost nothing but English in Japan I wouldn’t have been able to participate at all. I wouldn’t even have had the choice.

At work too I’m now using more and more Japanese. As my English telephone conversation classes peter out (it’s the end of the season) so I’m doing more work on creating marketing materials. This means working with the sales team, none of whom speak much English. In meetings with my (Japanese) boss I now find it far more natural to use Japanese – wow, I’m doing business in Japanese! OK, so I make a tonne of mistakes and my keigo is going through one of those non-existent phases – but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is I can communicate (and I’m continuing to study before work to help fill the 3 billion cubic metres of room for improvement).

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to spend some time with a friend of ours who was made homeless a couple of years back and now sells the Big Issue outside Shibuya Station (East Exit, Ogura-san). He’d not been there for months, but yesterday, in accordance with what some call coincidence, he was there as we dashed to change to the subway. I quickly arranged to meet him after work, and last night, I did. I’ll talk more about what happened on the podcast, but just to say it was an enlightening experience – and something that could never had happened had I not learnt to speak Japanese.

I can sort stuff out at the bank by myself, I can run errands for *Twinkle* (where previously I would have had to get her to run errands for me). I can volunteer to help at the local city hall, I can speak with non-English speakers at parties and bars… I can do anything that I couldn’t do before due to the language barrier.

Speaking of *Twinkle*, it gives her greater freedom too. I don’t want there to be a language barrier between us – statistics show that intercultural couples are far more likely to divorce than others, language difficulties being one of the causes. I want her to be free to choose to use the language that most suits her feelings. I want to be friends with her friends, to communicate with them on the same level as she does. I want to be able to do stuff with her that requires Japanese language skills. I don’t want to be a husband who needs constant translations and explanations, or whose input needs to be translated back for others.

(I’ll repeat here that I’m not having a go at people who don’t speak Japanese. I don’t see Japanese speakers as being in any way ‘superior’ to those who don’t. We’ve all made our own choices and we all have our own priorities, and the way we lead our lives is entirely up to us)

Life is hard enough as it is without an optional language barrier making things more challenging.

And for me personally, I have another big reason for learning Japanese: for our (as yet not-conceived) children. I feel it is very important for me that I be able to communicate with them in their native language (which is likely to be Japanese). Yes, I’ll probably be using English with them a lot of the time as well, but I never want to be in a situation (probably later on in their lives) where I can’t understand what they are trying to tell me, or where I can’t respond in Japanese if the situation suggests that that would be best.

Take away all the benefits I feel on a daily basis, and that alone is enough.

So, no matter what the time and financial costs, if you are considering learning Japanese, I’d say go for it! The pay-back is potentially so enormous that it will dwarf the initial investment.

And of course the good news is, if an idiot like me can learn Japanese, anyone can!

頑張りましょう！

Not a great photo, but one of the first blossoms I saw this year.

It’s been a super-productive day today.

It started on a really positive note, with the warm sun streaming through the trees, through the glass doors that make up a whole wall of our bedroom, and onto my face. It made me realise just how fortunate we are to be living here – and living here legally too what with our new contract having come into effect yesterday.

At about 9am Twinkle and I headed out, she for work, me for Naka-Meguro for a couple of hours of voluntary stuff at the city hall – providing feedback and suggestions for a section of their English website. I enjoyed that, and it gave me a good opportunity to stretch my language muscles (although they couldn’t strain so far as to give a coherent description of RSS. I’ve found that both here and in the UK people who don’t visit a lot of websites often have trouble getting their heads round the concept, which is kind of understandable. In the end I just borrowed a lan cable and demo’d my MacBook’s RSS reader. That worked!).

Following that there was the really exciting changing-of-address thing at the post office, the returning of a video, the long-wait-to-not-get-served-at-the-overly-busy-Softbank-store*, and the paying of multiple bills at the convenience store. On the way home I stopped off at the little local tofu-makers for the first time ever, and had a nice chat with the owner who kindly went through all the names of the different kinds of tofu with me.

(*Softbank have just launched an ‘iphone for Everyone’ campaign, which sees subscribers to a 2-year contract getting a free 8GB iPhone. My friend bought one today – I don’t think *Twinkle*s that far off doing so either)

I was also able to listen to 6 short podcasts – 3 episodes of J-Wave’s Power Your Morning, and three of Takumi Yamazaki’s Takuraji (both highly recommended for Japanese listening practice, being short, easy to digest and interesting).

This afternoon I actively used productive procrastination to tidy the house and make a great lunch, then get on with working on illustrations for a new website (using permanent marker and watercolour pencils, a scanner and photoshop) – I’m very happy with the results. I now know I will publish a picture book within two years.

I then spent a good deal of time faffing around with code, affiliate accounts (thus the links to Amazon on this blog), and setting up / linking new social networking sites for the podcast. I’m pleased with the results. I also fired off a few emails to prospective interviewees, and am delighted to have received a positive response (just a few minutes ago).

I also read a little more of Branson’s new book, Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur.

The only unfortunate thing that did happen today was this evening when I accidentally ran the bath without turning the water filter on (we turn it off when washing the bathroom as that’s one thing that the bonus chemicals are good for!). Going into the bathroom I was hit with the smell of chlorine, and sure enough my skin is now about as dry as a hair-dryer in the Sahara dessert.

Right now I’m listening to Dick Gaughan, whose album ‘A different kind of love song’ was the first one I ever owned (copied from my brother actually). Hauntingly beautiful. Handful Of Earth is another of my favourite albums.

OK, bed time now. Night night.

George and I at work

Just one more day of work at the office remains this year. Whilst I usually work alone on Saturdays, taking calls from those students of mine who are unable to call during the week, tomorrow the rest of the office crew will join me. They’ll be turning up in their casual clothes for the annual oosouji – cleanup – traditionally carried out at the end of the year in all homes and workplaces in Japan.

I’ve chosen to work much of my week off at a private school in order to scrape together the rest of the money needed for moving house – we’ve decided that we’ll definitely be leaving our apartment in February. With our current place being very old and not insulated in any way we’d rather not stay here. Had there been no costs involved in staying, we’d put up with it, but with a contract renewal fee of 180,000 yen (approximately £1000) it just doesn’t make sense. It’s an absolute con, and encourages us further in our mission to become property owners (to create a passive income, and provide a comfortable place for people to stay when visiting Tokyo / temporarily homeless. It’s partly inspired by dear John John who always had an open-door policy).

I’m really looking forward to my few days off work next week, as it means I can put some serious time and effort into working on the two web-based projects I’m feeling really fired up about. One is the online publishing company that we started last year, the other is a podcast which I’ve desperately wanted to create ever since I got back, but have been lacking in a podcast partner. I found the ideal person in the phone booth next to me at work. He’s crazy. Crazy George.

I’d also like to redesign The Daily Mumble – move it over to WordPress 2.7 – but that’s going to have to wait. I’m seriously considering using some paid holiday to work on this and the other projects.

Next month will see planning / work commence on a new website (and hopefully podcast) for the company – an idea long discussed but never acted upon, until myself and crazy George got all hyped up it a couple of days ago. I’m excited about that. Another great opportunity to be creative, learn a lot, and have something to show for our efforts at the end of the day.

It also happens to be exactly what I have long-envisioned doing.

I’m getting real excited about 2009. I feel it’s going to be a great year.

2008 has been a pretty spectacular though, personally speaking. I got married, graduated from uni, returned to Japan with a proper visa thus successfully completing a five year plan. I’ve started exercising regularly, I’ve got a fulfilling job, and earlier in the year I had some big successes in my work at the University of Sheffield.

I’ve continued to read, courtesy of Audible.co.uk.

I’ve also got my procrastination under control. This year, I learnt that procrastination can actually be used to increase one’s productivity. Realising this, I actively sought to make my procrastination the good sort. This not only resulted in me being able to get a lot more done in the limited time I had, but also relieved me of the feelings of guilt and stress that tended to accompany my procrastination sessions.

I think finishing uni helped too…!

Looking to the year ahead, I aim to make real progress in bringing the projects I mentioned above to fruition, in addition to working more to support *Twinkle* with the further growth of our Amway business. I will avoid doing overtime at the office, but instead be very productive in my allotted hours there. I will also work to be a less grumpy husband – when I’m tired I sometimes turn into a big baby. *Twinkle* is very patient, but she shouldn’t have to be.

I also plan to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and run a quarter marathon, an ekiden and a half marathon too. I want to run the Honolulu marathon in 2010.

I don’t really have any goals in terms of ownership – it’s experiences and personal development that matter, not owning ‘things’. (Having said that, I would like a Macbook pro and a mid-range Nikon DSLR, but I think they’ll have to wait until 2010).

I see the year ahead as being pretty intense, quite tiring, but with little stress – and a lot of fun and satisfaction. I see myself growing in confidence, being less concerned by the opinions of others, and more understanding of ways of communicating in these parts. I’ll be continuing to work on living in alignment with what is ‘right’, and resisting attempted coups by my ego.

Hmmm, it’s all pretty exciting really!

For the past two months or so I’ve been working on my first ever MS Access database. It’s not especially complex – for someone who’s created databases before it would probably be very easy – it simply keeps a record of all our current jobs, and produces multiple reports detailing the status of the jobs in different ways for different staff.

For me it was a huge challenge. There’s been countless times when I’ve come up against a brick wall, unable to come up with the code that would make it do what I wanted it to do. In those situations I found the best thing to do was to think intensively about the different possibilities …then let go and sleep on it. I can recall several occasions whereby when I went back into the work the following day the answer was there, hanging in the air, waiting for me – PING! and it worked!

The past couple of weeks have been a little frustrating at times as other work has started to pile up, and I’ve been unable to put any time aside for making final tweaks to the database to get it from a sort-of-working state to a fully functional bugless thing worthy of putting real data into. Thus the overtime. It’s my own choosing – I could not do any overtime and continue along the gradual progression route, but it’s reached the stage now where I really want to make the switch.

For one thing, as of this week I’m responsible for managing certain aspects of jobs in progress. Thus, there’s a bit of self-imposed pressure to get this up and running asap so I don’t have to use the existing analogue recording techniques (paper and whiteboard). The switch has also necessitated the reorganising and renaming of a complex web of files too, something I started last week but was only able to finish tonight after a few hours on the job. ooooh you should see my hierarchical archives now, boy are they sexy!

So yes, tonight I feel good. Following a fair bit of testing I started using the database – and it works perfectly! I’ll continue to extend it over the next few months in order that it can help simplify tasks for more people in the office. The hope is that within a few months or so everyone is benefiting from it, being able to immediately obtain whatever data they need to get on with their jobs.

And now it’s time for bed.

Wow. Kinda feeling ecstatic tonight. Been reading the news about the US election, and getting very excited.

Whilst having Obama as president doesn’t necessarily mean huge changes for the better in US policy (such the entire defence budget being redirected towards peaceful solutions / humanitarian projects / environmental protection), it does give me hope.

For me, it’s not the political aspect of the US elections that excites me, it’s the human aspect. I admit to knowing nothing about US politics. I don’t know the difference between the republicans and the democrats – I couldn’t even tell you which George Bush is. That’s how interested in US politics I am.

But I do know that John McCain tends to go on about the war. And he’s 72. And if he dies in office, Palin would be president – how scary is that?!

So why do I want Obama to be president? For one thing, he’s inspiring. Have you heard him speak? He’s a fantastic motivational speaker. He knows how to tell stories. He knows how to engage with his audience. How to get them on board. How to get them laughing with him – as opposed to at him.

I’m genuinely inspired by Obama to be all that I can be. He proves that if you’re a decent person, if you have passion and belief, and if you try hard enough, if you never give up, you can achieve the ‘impossible’, regardless of what social norms suggest.

We need people like him in the headlines.

Oh, and did you know, he’s good news for tourism in Japan too?

I’m also excited by the buzz. Check out what’s happening on Twitter!

(I was shocked when I saw that McCain’s campaign crewhaven’t updated his Twitter status for almost ten days. Mind you, he only had about 5000 followers. Incidentally, Obama, with 114,143, is the world’s No.1 Twitterer in terms of followers- i wonder if he has it update his Facebook status too?)

We need a US president who knows how to update their Twitter status, and make use of the new media in general.

I’m also attracted by his efforts to not conduct negative campaigning (although I am aware that a significant proportion of his adverts have included some negativity). Positive is the way forward. Yay positivity!

I’m buzzing for other reasons too. Tonight I was contacted by the editor of a pretend magazine in Australia, and asked to write another story for them. I say ‘pretend’ because it’s only sent to about 7000 members of a penpal organisation – it’s not available in the shops. Nonetheless, I love having my stories published – this will be the sixth in a series; I think I’ll write about last year’s trip halfway around the world in 28 days.

I’ve also just taken delivery of my first ever set of professionally printed postcards, thus realising a dream I have had for some 15 years. These aren’t for retail purposes though – I got a batch of 60 as a trial, to see how my photos look in postcard format. Perhaps I’m biased, but I like them a lot.

Actually, I’m thrilled!

This encourages me to move forward with ‘doing’ something with some of my better shots. I know I’m no professional, and in fact it’s no dream of mine to become a professional either. Professional photography is tough, and I think the pressures involved rob the photographer of the freedom to shoot as they please, as amateurs can.

Nonetheless, I’m thinking that perhaps these images can play an important role in helping us achieve one of our goals: the establishment of a perpetual charitable fund. I could decide that any profits derived from the sale of any of my photographic products be placed in a bank account that we set aside for such a charity.

Hhmm, I like that idea. Yeah, i like it a lot. Mmm, it feels like the missing link. This gives me a real reason to pursue my photography. Makes it into a worthy cause, over and above making me (and possibly others) happy.

I like the idea of having multiple revenue streams. This can be one that is specifically for charity, complimenting our full time incomes, our monthly Amway income, teaching work, advertising on TGW, and ad-hoc translation jobs.

Then there’s ThreeSeeds too, our online publishing company. The website is all there, ready to go, but has been neglected in the face of the big changes that all three of us partners have experienced over the past few months. Must do something with that. Ha… if only I felt able to make the time for it!

Anyway, it’s late, and I must sleep. Up at 7am for the first of the week’s three jogs! Then work, and then I think in the evening we’re being taught Moroccan style cooking by a pro chef – perhaps I can extend my repertoire so that it goes beyond Wok Bread, miso soup and banana cake!

I look forward to reading the headlines in the morning

[EDIT: Ok, so I know who are Democrats and who are Republicans now. And I'm delighted to see that we now have a President Obama  ]

Having been granted student status again I was able to benefit from STA travel’s ‘Blue flights” – £382 to Tokyo, direct with British Airways. I’ll be leaving on the 4th of September from Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

The documents (Japanese family register, *Twinkle*s certificate of residency, copy of her passport including all UK entry/exit stamps and letter of guarantee from her) are scheduled to arrive by EMS on Tuesday. Provided they do turn up then, I can go down to London on Wednesday (Wednesday being the only day i can really take off from CELTA due to it being the only day that we don’t teach on), if everything’s in order I should then (hopefully) receive the visa by the 28th of August, about a week prior to departure.

I will have achieved my goal of getting back into Japan on a long-term visa. It will have taken me five years and cost me in excess of £20,000 (US$40k) – but it will have been worth it. I mean, come on, I get to spend the rest of my life with *Twinkle*. Who wouldn’t invest that amount in order to be able to do that?

Hmm. So that means that in three weeks from now, I’ll be with my *Twinkle* in our flat in central Tokyo, at the start of a long and happy life together. It seems somewhat unreal. We’ve never been in that situation before. Up until now we’ve always been on ‘one year contracts’ – not just in terms of housing, but in terms of how our entire relationship is structured. This will be different. There will be no enforced changes to act as a safety valve. I’m going to have to start working harder on our relationship than ever before. I want it to be the most rewarding relationship it could possibly be, for both of us. I’m also going to have to work harder in a job than I have for many years in order to pay back the debts we have. I think I’m going to be very busy.

Anyway, my eyes are tired, and I want to go to sleep dreaming of what it will be like living with *Twinkle*.

night
xxx

It’s been fun though. You know, I think I’m actually starting to get my head around English grammatical terms, after 30 years of being frightened of them (yep, right from birth). Did you know that a preposition is a word (or group of words) that is used to show the way in which other words are connected? I didn’t.

Spent a good few hours on my first assignment too – language analysis. I find it strangely interesting.

Today I’m creating my lesson plan for tomorrow afternoon, a 40-minute class teaching listening skills. My theme: “Mysteries of Everyday Life”. Looking forward to it.

Spent a while on the phone to my darling in Tokyo today. Crikey I think I’m rather in love with her. Anyway anyway, we’ve set aside a weekend soon after my arrival to make some life plans / family plans together. What we would like to achieve in life both individually and as a family, when we’d like to have children (being conceived in Paris so I’m told), that sort of thing. Once that’s done we’ll look at what we need in order to accomplish those goals, how we need to improve (or bring in outside help) to achieve them.

Of course we’ve both done this as individuals several times over the past couple of years, but this will be our first family plan as such. It’s very exciting!

Caw blimey, I’m going to be living with my cutey by a big pond ten mins from Shibuya in four weeks!

I love life.

Well done all of us. Thanks Sheffield!

This mumble features a fair bit of bathing in my own glory (so no change there then).

I’m delighted to say that the CILASS for Students website is complete. It won’t be officially launched until the next academic year, but I won’t be around then, so I thought I’d quietly launch it to my friends now …as I made it

http://cilass-students.group.shef.ac.uk/

The aim of the student-targeted site is to promote an understanding of and engagement in Inquiry-based Learning, raise
awareness of the work that CILASS does, and provide an opportunity for the amazing Student Ambassadors to tell the world about the incredible things that they do.

It’s based upon an original site created last autumn by all of the CILASS Student Ambassadors, with further input from the CILASS core team. Being an ‘official’ university site, last year’s attempt to communicate with students was severely limited by the uni’s CMS (Content Management System) which basically guarantees that even the most exciting of ideas end up looking about as interesting as a pile of rotting onion skins. Here’s the most exciting page on the university website :-p

I think it was around March when I proposed that we do our own thing. Take it out of the university template. Create our own site from scratch. I wasn’t really imagining that I’d end up creating a 50-page site. Bloomin’ crazy idea if you ask me, end of my final year and all. But it was something I really wanted to do, so it just sort of happened. I was able to use the material supplied by the SAN for the first site, and benefited from lots of feedback from them during the development process – special thanks to Emmy and Ali.

I must say, I’m really pleased with the result, and I’m delighted by the response it’s received. The CILASS core team have been very complimentary; seeing the site for the first time the director told me it had made her day. The university’s Pro-vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning also emailed to say how good he thought it was, whilst central support staff were also very impressed by how comprehensive it was – yet studenty in appearance.

I should add that it is still in need of a lot of padding. My goal was to create the basic structure and core content – the plan now is for the SAN to fill in the holes and make it into a great resource.

I’d like to thank Sabine and Nicola for allowing me to do this, for giving me the freedom to pursue the project in google 20% time style.

I’m now in the process of creating support materials for the site (using the gorgeous Screenflow – OS X 10.5 only). One fear of mine (and of the core team) is that without me there to supervise the site might fall into dissaray (look what happened to the beautiful site I created for Milky House 5 years ago! Talk about cannabalisation). Thus, support material is vital.

I’d like to be able to use the site as a part of my portfolio. I don’t see myself going into website design for a living, but nonetheless, I think it’s a good demonstration of versatility (and I don’t want to be pointing employers at TGW now do i?!).

Thanks to everyone who contributed, a great team effort! I look forward to seeing it being developed further over the next year.

I worked out what I got for my degree the other day. Whilst grades aren’t officially published until the 14th July, with the results for all but one of modules (language) having been announced, it’s not hard to tot it up. I’ve guessed my mark for the language module based on my previous results and my feelings about how it went (it went very well!)

I got a 2:1, approximately 66~68%. That’s what I was aiming for, so I’m happy with that. Well done me. 5 years of study have paid off.

I remember Earl Nightingale talking about how we react to reaching our goals. Reaching goals doesn’t give us half the sense of satisfaction / happiness as working towards them does, and I’d say that that’s certainly the case here. I have this idea that I ought to ‘feel more’ about this result, but the truth is that the real achievement was in doing it. For me, the happiest days were those when we were in class, doing stuff. Those were the days of real accomplishment.

After all, what do we do when we reach a goal? Set a new goal! I find that knowing that now helps me deal with the unexpected a little better than I did in the past. With no goal ever being ‘ultimate’, if plans do go eschew, I know that that’s ok, that the goal was just a guide, and really it’s all about the journey.

That was certainly the case with my degree. It’s all been about the journey.

In addition to co-ordinating the wiki, my duties (most of which were of course shared with my amazing friends in the Student Ambassador Network) included: taking photos (that was a self-assigned role! Thanks for indulging me, CILASS), processing and uploading them to Flickr throughout the conference; ensuring that the technology was working for those presenting; uploading powerpoints to Slideshare (still a lot to do there); facilitating sessions; being available for delegates should they have any problems; watching over the luggage, drinking coffee, and eating chocolate.

Thinking about it all now, a few episodes come to mind. I’d like to share those with you.

It’s Wednesday morning, 9am. As the other Student Ambassadors arrive there’s a feeling of great excitement and happiness in the office: the months of preparation are over, and it’s too late to worry about anything. We’re blowing up balloons to tie to lamp-posts in order that delegates don’t get lost on their way to the Keynote in Firth Hall. Turns out that Jamie is a Balloon-mungster, and prior to joining the CILASS team was at the forefront of a new movement which campaigned to promote the simultaneous blowing up of multiple balloons. Jamie’s love of balloons spreads across the office, and before long the balloon bath is the hottest attraction in Sheffield.

11am, and the delegates are now arriving. They are greeted by the blue T-shirts and big smiles of the Student Ambassadors – a welcome sign of the kind of atmosphere that will embody the entire three-day conference.

Busy bee, spotted on the way back from the exam.

13 hours into freedom

So, I spent much of the afternoon feeling somewhat lost, before deciding that what was called for was assertiveness. I need to move on. No point in lingering in some in-between state. It’s too easy to comfort oneself with the idea that change takes a long time. It doesn’t. It takes a split second. The time it takes to make the decision.

Thus, I’ve spent the last few hours sorting through four years of handouts, reams of notes, kanji tests, pink essays, green essays and blue essays, and selecting a few choice morsels to keep. Included in my archive for posterity are select examples of all types of homework from the language course over all years, some classic examples of the handouts we were given, and the results of all the essays I handed in for non-language modules. This means that thousands of pages have been reduced to one folder’s worth.

Here’s just some of the work that will be going in the recycle skip in a minute.

You know what though, I am absolutely staggered how much work we’ve done. The amount of effort that went in to some of those modules (especially in the second year) beggars belief. How did they get me to sign up for all this?!

I’m glad we covered so much though. Not just in terms of language, but history, politics, social issues. I remember when I first went to Japan I didn’t have a clue about any of this stuff. It helps, to know one’s context. Still a lot to learn though, stuff that can only really be picked up by spending several years living there.

It would be nice to be there now really. Having completed the course it kind of feels natural that I go back to Japan and be reunited with *Twinkle*. No such luck though – 3 more months till that (very) happy day!

On Monday night at 9pm on ITV1, Sophie Mei, daughter of a good friend of mine here in Sheffield, will be one of 8 performers in the first live semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent.

She’s made it through to the final 40 – out of 100,000 hopefuls.

Selection for the final is based on audience votes …so you know what to do!

This act of kindness really sums up just how caring these teachers are.

It was lovely. We sang, we gave mini-speeches, we received graduation certificates. We received words of advice for our future lives. There was laughter, and tears.

What made it even more memorable was a special guest …live via streaming webcam from Japan- TANAKA SENSEI! Tanaka sensei was much loved by all of us in our first two years, but had to return to Japan a couple of years ago. He’d not used Skype before, but we managed to get through just at the start of class. It was so exciting, such a great surprise!

Seeing him, and his wife (who also taught us for a time) was a real treat. I think our teachers were just as excited to have the opportunity to see and speak with him, having not seen him since last year.

There’s more photos of our ceremony on Facebook.

We have one more class left on this course, tomorrow afternoon. Then that’s it. Just the exam.

I can’t quite get my head round the idea that we’ve finished, and that we’re all going our separate ways. I’ve not really thought about it. Until now. I’m not so sad about leaving the teachers, because I know that I’ll continue to keep in touch with them, and see them when they come to Japan or I visit Sheffield. I’ll probably spend much of my summer in Sheffield in any case, so it really is a while until that goodbye.

But with my classmates, it’s different. The chances are that I won’t see some of them again, and that really upsets me; I can’t help but shed a few tears thinking about that. They’ve been such a huge support over the past few years. Whilst I don’t often socialise with them, they mean an awful lot to me. It’s been so difficult at times, but together we got there.

In our little graduation speeches, quite a few of us mentioned the importance of our friendships. Another recurring theme was that of persevering, of battling on through the tough times. By doing so, you can conquer the most difficult of challenges.

The photo above of all (but one) of us carries with it enormous meaning, and is one that I shall really treasure.

We’ve really done something incredible here. Well done us.

It’s been a 14 hour day in the library, but we got there. I’m pretty pleased with it as I’ve been able to keep my 3000 word history – well, at least for the version that I’ll have bound for myself. The department will get the 8,200 word abridged version!

Caw blimey it’s over. Only one translation and a three hour exam between me and graduation.

Thanks so much to mum and dad who have put in a lot of time to proofread it over the past few days. Much appreciated.And thanks to my supervisors too, couldn’t have done it without you

Bed time for me now. I actually have a DAY OFF tomorrow!

I also won £30 in music vouchers for another couple of photos which won different categories – one of a rainbow over Sheffield, taken from the Arts Tower, and another of the Japan Soc Soran Bushi dancers performing in front of the Union.

I’m also honoured and humbled to have have been nominated twice for the Chancellor’s Medal. I’m not sure what to say about that, but thank you so much to the people who nominated me. I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without your inspiration and enthusiasm. Thank you.

To top it off, I’ve just had word from the library that the two library books I desperately need for my dissertation have come in. Yippeeeee!

OH OH OH and Bjork just emailed! She’s coming back to play for us on the 2nd July! Yippppppppeeee (again)!

Off to the Society Awards now – Japan soc entered for ‘Best National Society’ – and we’ve been shortlisted!