I've now been in Japan for somewhat over 3 months. To be honest the first thought that comes to mind is I am really dissapointed.

The very moment I touched down in Narita I had to scoot up to Akita via Shinkansen the very same day. It wouldn't be so bad missing out on the cool spots in Japan if Akita actually had something to offer but it's pretty much what I feared...it's in the middle of nowhere. The only thing for miles is trees. And when people say "local" here they mean around 20 minutes away by bus. It wouldn't be that bad if not for the mandatory english requirements the university imposes for the Japanese students here, so they all have a minimum level of English proficiency that is pretty high-as a result my Japanese has basically seen no improvement at all. In fact 1/4 of the students population is not even Japanese. Talk about getting a raw deal!

Angered by the slow pace of the courses here I decided to drop several of my classes and instead start cramming for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. This worked very well at first and I was able to learn at a much faster pace without getting bored. Unlike my courses I felt I was going at a pace that wasn't babying me.

However without motivation it wasn't long be the bottom fell out. My sleeping patterns became highely erractic and I stopped going to classes and even caring about Japanese. I would actively avoid using it (which in this place isn't really very hard at all given that everyone speaks English much better than I speak Japanese) I even pretended to not understand it. I became non-responsive and stopped participating in class (when I actually WENT to class that is, something which I've barely done anything over the last few weeks). I went from disliking the place to loathing it, hating the people, EVERYTHING. I complained to everyone that would listen; my advisor, my teachers, everyone. It felt like no one was on my side; everyone said I was doing well in classes and shouldn't worry, but I had tonnes of free time and wanted to LEARN. I burned with thirst for knowledge. However nothing would quench it and I couldn't motivate myself to learn even though I wanted to because each day I studied I felt that Japanese was increasingly useless; how can you come all the way to Japan and FIND Japanese USELESS?. I can't relax here because it feels like I should be learning; I came here for a reason. Anything short of learning is purely a waste of time.

In the end I did take the test. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the test centre having had almost no sleep. Or rather I'd given up the idea of taking the test a few weeks earlier but was wrangled into it at the last second. I think I passed the Listening and Kanji but the reading is never gonna happen (I actually just guessed the answers for half of them then closed the paper and tried to sleep). Shame cos reading is my strongest suit, but I was so sleepy that I was reading without comprehending at all.

To be honest if I had known that I was going to actually take the test I would have kept up the study over the last two weeks prior to the test and with that I would have stood a confident chance of actually passing. As it stands I don't care either way whether I passed or not because it seems to me that the test doesn't really measure proficiency at all.

I am still have sleeping issues and seeing a coucillor for what I assume is a case of culture shock. Not that the culture itself is shocking; this particular college is after all highly Americanised. It's more that I just can't find my niche here, I don't fit in and worse I don't feel like I am learning anything either.

I approach the winter with some hope though; I feel the promised faster course pace as well as the chance to be boosted into a much more challenging class may finally bring about the change I want to see in my Japanese. I still am not sleeping properly and I am swamped with end-terms (for some reason I feel strangely calm about that, perhaps becuse my grades here don't actually matter).