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Yep, all that..

Logged Thursday, 30th December 2004 - Daily - Perma-Link - Comments (0)

Not a massive amount going on at the moment. We had a relatively quiet xmas, the highlight being lunch at Asia de Cuba. Braved the sales at Selfridges (my all time favourite store in London) on Boxing Day, but didn't end up buying anything anyway. Saw House of Flying Daggers and When the Last Sword is Drawn. Daggers was great, much better than Hero - the story line was far more engaging, but still not as good as CTHD. Last Sword was good too, a slow paced Japanese Samurai movie. It jumped all over the place through story telling and flash backs which was occassionally confusing, but the end bit was quite emotional - good flick. What is with Asian action movies always having such sad tragic endings?!

No big plans for NYE yet .. :(

I've finished my second Japanese course which should mean I am at elementary level rather than beginners, but I've definitely been struggling due to lack of study so I'm still deciding whether to pickup the next 12 week course in January, or wait a while to let what I've learnt so far sink in. I definitely need more practice talking to Japanese speakers. While my vocabulary is growing really well, sentence construction is still proving quite challenging. Japanese isn't the best second language to learn when you've never tried to learn a language before. For most of my class this is their third, fourth or fifth language, or they're half-Japanese or have Japanese partners.

Finally got around to visiting the Natural History Museum, mainly to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. This was my favourite. We had a quick look around some of the other exhibits at the NHM including their massive life size model of a blue whale. The NHM definitely warrants further visits, lots to see there - the dinosaur stuff in particular.