Japanese 3, 4 and sleeping on the subway

So, my placement test put me into Japanese 4! Yippee, right?

WRONG!

Evidently they consider the level of Japanese I do actually posses to be enough to get by in a lesson taught resolutely, and entirely in Japanese. Which would be fine, I would be able to deal with that - until I realised that the method for the semester in this class is "learning Japanese from the news."
This sounded really interesting, and indeed is. However, when you're trying to understand key-words that'll be used in the recorded snippet, and the definition is only in Japanese with the occasional charades-style mime... Methinks I'ma be in trouble!
However, I muddled through the lecture with poor-to-average success and attempted to engage the teacher in conversation afterwards about whether it would be productive for me to remain in the class.

ビル: 英語で質問を聞いてもいいですか。
先生:ごめんなさい・・・英語が全然できません。(or words to that effect)

Bill: May I ask you a question in English?
Teacher: I'm sorry, I speak no English.

So, after failing to get an answer to my question, asked in poorly-phrased Japanese, I say "また来週・・・" -see you next week- with (what I hope was) a "determined-to-improve-my-Japanese-post-haste" sort of expression on my face. And thus, cursing fluently under my breath I leave Japanese 4.

I have, however told this story in reverse - I had Japanese 3 (speaking) before this, and it was great! I'll be forced to talk Japanese, but on easier topics than was dealt with in Intermediate Japanese at Leeds... Phew! We talked about food (yum) and did a bit of grammatical conjugation, which I've already addressed at A-level, so marginally less homework for now :)

Post lessons I did a spot of shopping around Iidabashi, purchased a couple of Japanese DVDs (Phonebooth and Pirates of the Caribbean!!) which I shall watch for "revision" purposes at some point, in the same way that reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has been used - I'm 4 pages in and I bought it about 10 days ago. Finally found a bin, because I'm sick of using carrier bags strewn about my room and I also invested in a couple of folders because the epic amount of sheets received after just one day (in which two lectures were had) is plainly riddukulus (see what I did there?).

On the subway back to 南葛西 I was wedged between two Japanese females, one of whom must have been about 80, and the other was in a school uniform so she can't have been much more than 16 or 17. In any case, the young lady to my left promptly fell asleep no sooner had we left 日本橋 where she'd boarded the train. It only took a couple of minutes for her to completely slump over and find my shoulder a particularly comfortable place to lay her head. Being British and also somewhat shy in a country where I don't know how to say "Wake up, wench!" I was incapable of finding any way of extricating myself without disturbing the sleeper...
About 15 minutes later, the old-lady to my right noticed this and tried to give me (what I'm assuming was) some advice, to which I must have looked totally blank because she reached across and poked the sleeping girl in the head repeatedly until she awoke! They exchanged something in Japanese and I distinctly heard the word 外人 thrown about a couple of times. As we pulled into 西葛西 station, the young girl - blushing heavily as she did so - apologised to me and left the train with some degree of haste.

With hindsight being 20-20 (not to mention the dictionary open at my side) I realise that I actually do know how to wake somebody up, though whether or not it applies to anywhere but beds is a mystery. But lesson learned, in any case. Next time I shall wake the sleeper with a poke and a 目を覚まして！And if she's attractive I'll then ask her for her phone number.