Study has begun! We got up bright and early and I met our sensei, and we got straight into it! We were sharing the class with people from all over south east asia, I also met a man from France and a lovely man from Kenya! The class went from 8.30-4.30 and we discussed a lot about biodiversity and it's applications in agriculture, with input from all our countries. I'm still tired, and hungry despite the cheapest lunch ever from the cafeteria?! 390 yen for rice...

Today was by far the most challenging day I have experience yet. It was meant to be a simple trip from Osaka to Tsukuba, taking about 3 1/2 hours but life had other plans. Once I paid the exorberant amount to catch the Shinkanshen, we got about halfway before the conductor spoke in rapid Japanese and the scene light up with 'Delays expected'. I thought hey, 20 or 30 minutes, thats fine. Got my book, got some water, got some music - all good. Two hours later we h...

Ah, beautiful Nara! Today, I pushed my feet to their very limit (I ended up limping back to the train station as I couldn't put pressure on them) but it was all worth it. After a one hour train ride through the beautiful countryside past rice paddies and mountains, I arrived at Nara and saw more white people than I had since I left Sydney, I didn't like it. Firstly, do I regret wearing jeans? Yes. It was hot, hot, hot! It made the slow wonder uphill a bit of a c...

Just a quick update on today, as its nearing 12am and I have a big day in Nara tomorrow! I spent the evening having a hot shower, journal writing, personal updating and postcarding! Today was in it's entirety, an unepected day of wonder. I managed to wake up at 10:20am, thinking the other packers would wake me up like yesterday but I was sound asleep and had very odd dreams - I didn't know whether to apologise to the others or not, no doubt I was sleep talking! ...

What a day! I had forgotten the perils of communal living, just a thin curtin and 3 walls separated me from the other backpackers and in a somewhat less than comfortable bed - I can tell it might take another night or so to get used to it. Waking up was both very much before my alarm and difficult to get the motivation to again haul to another city. I had no idea what Kobe had to offer but I pushed through, and I'm very glad I did. The commute is the difficult p...