It has been an incredibly tough month for me. I had some more medical issues I had to deal with. Nothing serious or life-threatening just incredibly time consuming. We are also running into some family issues that are taking up a lot of time. Again, no...

Phew, that was a bit of a long train ride. It seems like Matsuyama is such a long way from most of the major cities in Japan. And it really feels like it too. I heard there are around 500,000 people here, but it is a pretty sleepy town. It's good to get a

I used to be a huge Garfield fan growing up. I read all his comics and thought that they were the best. For my 8th birthday, my parents even made me a Garfield shaped cake and decorated it perfectly. I had a stuffed Garfield toy that I dragged with everyw

For a lot of people, living abroad is a temporary thing. Most come for a year or two to work, or to go to school.  Then, they hightail it back to their home countries to start their 'real' lives.  Or some family emergency pops up, and they hop a plane h

I've recently been really mixing up my studying to try to do some more things. I can never seem to keep my motivation up for passing the test between these lulls in action of between taking the test and getting the results back. So, I've turned to doing

My wife and I had just arrived in Paris for our honeymoon. Due to our flight being delayed, we were about 2 hours later than we originally planned. We were both fairly hungry, but it being a strange place we weren't familiar with, we couldn't find a pl...

About a week ago, I went up to Kyoto University to take the test again at their somewhat poorly cooled facility. I covered my first impressions before earlier, but in general I felt more confident about the test.  I've started to take test day a little..

This post is a continuation of last month's top 10. #80991982 / gettyimages.com 5. Purikura This is one of those things that most people probably don't know about outside of Japan, but can be the source of  a lot of good times with friends and signifi

With the July test just around the corner, I've switched off all of my 'fun' studying which is a bit depressing. I'll basically be reviewing and really perfecting everything before the big day. It's still frustrating because I really don't have the time t

10. Karaoke Box or Clubs Karaoke boxes or clubs as they are sometimes called are practically everywhere in Japan.  If you are downtown, all you need to do is walk a few blocks at night and you will inevitably bumping into someone handing out tissues adve