STILL the first week

Although Japanese beds are mainly wood, with only a very thin matras, and I have some trouble to get asleep except for when I'm very tired, do I have a good time here. It actually is quite frustrating, the talking around me, and all the writing around me, and I don't have a clue what it's about, most of the time. It just looks and sounds like random lines and sounds. However, yesterday (thursday) I went to a Japanese class, intending to learn to speak and understand some Japanese. However, the first lesson was to learn to write (and thus read) hiragana, I still don't know a word more Japanese than I did, but this evening I have been running around my appartment scanning text for characters that I recognized. I still can't recognize all 50 hiragana, but already it was a real amazing experience to see a text recognize characters, remembering the sounds and seeing those texts aren't just a collection of random lines. Actually, the best moment I had, was when I recognized 3 character in a row (in one word). Even though it was only part of a word, it was SO amazing to READ those characters and SAY the "word" out loud, it sounded so much like Japanese! ...Although it STILL sounded like a random collection of sounds ;-)... I think that was the best experience this week.

Also "strange" is when you walk on the left side of the (very small) streets, and cars come from behind, pass you, and steer LEFT!!! I guess it would be kinda similar in England, although the streets can never be as small as here in Japan, which adds to the confusion!!!