Its really nice to speak with my Japanese's friends through MSN recently. Although Yukari is really upsetting me with her tales of woe, it was nice to chat with my friend Saori from Nara the other day. Even though she told me she wants a mixed raced baby （日本語で：合い子）　in Canada, it was nice to hear her sounding so happy about her prospects. Thankfully, this is a stark contrast to Yukari whose boyfriend woes are becoming tiresome.

Speaking of female acquaintances in Japan, its been a long time since Miki and I exchanged e-mails, although recently we did find each other lurking about MSN one day before she went to uni. Internet forums and MSN have to be used liberally in this sense and obviously common touches do have to be applied. Some people are out to get a boyfriend or girlfriend (which is sadly 95% of the male population that trawl these sites) and some are misleading in their true intentions.

I don't believe much in things such as internet romance, as you really have to meet the person first and build up a slow rapport. I think if everyone could get a girlfriend that quick over the web, everyone would be doing it. But certainly making the first contact on the web is no mean thing.

The amount of weird Australian and Chinese people who have emailed me in the past month has been truly bizarre, although I must say my slew of activity has decreased this week.

I really do want to maintain friendships I forge with people on online, but sometimes its difficult, given the level of you have to put into it. In 3 months of messing about for online Japanese friends, I've made about 3 or 4 decent relationships which I will definitely hope to follow up once I'm out there.

Recently I feel a tad underwhelmed considering I won't be in Japan for another 14 months, so maybe I should have increased my 'circle' a few months before I was intending to leave the UK. Don't get me wrong, its nice to practice my Japanese, but you can't help but think I should be doing that in the more tangible world. Roll on Sheffield next year please. These 8 weeks of boredom are going to kill me.