First Day of Lessons at ICU & Watching Shameless

So here I am, having just finished my homework after my first day of lessons at ICU!  The lessons were more fun than I had anticipated!  I had two Japanese lessons this morning, from 10:10 until 12:40 (with a ten-minute break at 11:20), as I have every day from Monday to Friday.

In the first lesson, everyone from level 3 Japanese was in the same classroom, where we each wrote a 作文 (sakubun, or creative-writing piece) on any topic we wished,  with a checklist of all the grammar we should have learned prior to level 3.  In the second lesson we split up into two groups, A and B, to do smaller group activity.  In group B, we did some self-introduction stuff, like 'I was born in X, grew up in Y,  Y is famous for Z, its climate is...', and learned some grammar on transitive and intransitive verbs.  

I'd covered all of this back at Leeds a few months ago, and I could understand everything the teachers said during the lessons, so I found it quite easy!  I might be speaking too soon, though, as it's bound to get harder!  But at the moment, it's all good revision.

I was all done at 12:40, so I went home, stopping off at my local konbini to buy some sushi for lunch.  This afternoon I watched the two latest episodes of Shameless online.  I was worried that I would miss out on a lot of new British programmes whilst in Japan, because BBC iPlayer, 4OD and the like are unavailable outside of the UK;  they don't even work through UK proxies.  But I found a way to watch all my favourite programmes through ahem, certain websites.  *Cough* Sockshare *Cough*.  A big thank you to the person who uploaded every episode of The Inbetweeners onto Youtube, as well!!

Tomorrow I have my two lessons of Japanese again, as well as English as an International Language, which is during the so-called "4th super-period", which is an hour and 45 minutes long and cuts into lunchtime.  

Tomorrow evening I'll be going with a few friends to a British pub in Kichijoji!  I was going to go on Wednesday, but everyone else ended up being too busy.  I'm looking forward to seeing Japan's take on our pubs!

James