my stomach was making rumbly noises yesterday afternoon in the middle of Japanese class, cos I had left my wallet at home when I was actually supposed to dine out for lunch. and so had to try hard to keep attentive despite being rather hungry. turns out that it wasn't all that difficult, because the sheer amount of time/effort I was expected to put in for my JLPT 2 prep class soon made me quite intimidated and worried. and so after a semester and half or so of relaxing Japanese lessons, I now have to memorize tons of Kanji each week and practise all that we learnt in class on my own, too. This course basically tries to squeeze in 2 yrs of Japanese study into 1, such that by the end of the year all conscientious students would be well-equipped for the JLPT 2 test. I so look forward to the end of the year... cos I dreamily forsee that my Japanese should be waaay better than it is now... but on other hand also fear that I don't have enough perseverance to pull through! oh well. we shall see :) in conjunction with my accelerated Japanese study starting this month, I have also resolved to check out more independent Japanese restaurants from this year onwards. have been relying so much on chains and have been eating the same kind of Japanese food all the time... it's time to be more adventurous with Japanese cuisine too! only that it might burn a small hole in my pocket...