Went for lunch again at the university today, followed by another trip into town. I actually bought quite a lot today, including CDs by Malice Mizer and Dir~en~Grey. A successful trip!

While we were looking for the Kanji reference books that Durham has required us to learn Kanji from, we ended up in the big manga (Japanese comic) store for the second time. Being in the manga store is quite an odd experience, that really brings home just how big manga and anime is in Japan. The store is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of manga (all wrapped in cellophane so you can't read them before you buy them), of every genre you can think of: girly romantic stories, children's manga, fantasy, sci-fi, an extensive collection of "boy's love" (gay male love stories) and of course explicit adult material. There's also a load of anime DVDs, collectables and, even more surprisingly, tonnes of CDs featuring music from anime and computer games.

Being among this huge collection of comics was of course fascinating, enticing and horribly tantalizing and frustrating. All of the manga are in Japanese, and at the standard of Japanese I know I cannot even read children's manga properly. Although I would love to immerse myself in the manga culture, a culture that to any meaningful extent is unique to Japan, during my year here, I am locked out until my Japanese reaches a certain standard. And even then, I may never be able to read and understand the manga aimed at my own age group, just children’s. Still, I suppose this gives me something to aim for.

This evening, after I phoned Kisako to make arrangements for buying a phone tomorrow, I saw something large and green dangling upside-down from a spider's web. It was a huge praying mantis, much bigger than the one I saw on the first night. I cut it free from the web and held it in my hands, much to the amusement of passers-by. It raised its upper body to look at me straight in the eye, and gave me an almost intelligent look - I have never seen an insect look intelligent before! Since we don't have praying mantis in England, I was naturally enthralled. I took it up to my room and played with it for a while, watching it follow my movements with a purely predatory gaze. These things are fearless - they don't look out for danger, only for potential meals. And the way it moves! It looks so refined and so calculating when it moves, that it reminds me more of a reptile than an insect.

I decided I had to see it hunt. I put it on my shelf, and found a cockroach (which wasn't hard!). I put the cockroach on the shelf with the mantis and within seconds, the mantis was locked on to its prey. When I knocked the cockroach on its back, the mantis seized the opportunity and grabbed the roach with its scissor-like front legs. I could even hear a small crunch as the mantis crushed the cockroach in its claws. Within about 5 minutes, the 5cm-long mantis had completely devoured the 2cm long roach. Its one of the coolest things I've seen!

I really wanted to keep my praying mantis, but I really don't have the facilities to keep it. I've seen a mantis hunting now, and I suppose I'm lucky enough to see that – after all, it’s never a sight I would get to see in Britain. So, I let him go. I didn't actually want to, I'd grown quite attached to my mantis by now, but I took him on to the porch and (after prodding him a little) encouraged him to fly off to the greenery below.