I feel somewhat obliged to share with you this video of Danny the stormtrooper dancing in Shibuya. It does seem like a basic requirement of anyone blogging about anything to do with Japan. But, good stuff it is.

In other news, the impending doom that is my departure date is finally beginning to have some effect on me. Up until now, while I have been aware that the difficulties I face will are beyond comprehension - they have been just that. I cannot imagine how difficult it will be, therefore I don't especially fear it. However, it has begun to dawn on me that all my friends won't be coming along, and I have become to appreciate my time with them more than ever. If there is something I fear it is the, hopefully initial, lonelyness.

Not necessarily the fact that I will have to face a myriad of problems alone, since that is only to be expected, but that I wont have my friends to support me. Just going to hang out with friends to relax won't be such an easy option. Instead I will be blundering (or gaijin smashing) my way through many social situations, hopefully making friends with the more patient of my peers, or those wishing to practice their English with me. Those will be in for a dissapointment as I am (at least currently) adamant that I will learn the language, and will insist on exclusive use of nihon-go. Luckily for me, Japanese are apparently rubbish at English.

It amuses me how many people are shocked to find out that my host family probably wont speak English, and that I will be going to a Japanese school. Such an attitude in my opinion, misses the essence of an exchange trip, which I think is throwing yourself into a challening adventure from which you emerge as a stronger person... or  a gibbering wreck.

Now I'm not usually a huge fan of flash animations, but every now and then I stumble upon something really quite cool, and in this case, surreal. Speaking of stumbling, I recently joined stumbleupon.com, which is essentially a way of directing you towards websites it thinks you might be interested in. When you join, you pick your interests from a load of topics, and are given a toolbar for your browser. This toolbar has, among other things, a simple "Stumble!" button, which trips you up on a random website, as well as buttons for indicating whether or  not you like the page you are visiting, which also help it to learn what kind of sites you like.

When surfing regularly, and you click on the "I like it!" button on a website where no one has previously done so, you will be made the "discoverer" of the website and will be given a chance to write a review for it. Incidentally, my blog isn't on stumbleupon yet and I would feel a bit lame if I were its discoverer.

Click on the image by the way to view the flash.