We are now moving into the final stretch before the July test.  I've switched a lot of fun studying into more aggressive drilling and practicing vocabulary and grammar.  I think it is important to get into that mindset of answering questions.  One of t

Living and working in Japan for a few years, you get to have a lot of adventures. Living abroad in general just encourages you to go out and experience life. For example, I never used to travel alone before coming to Japan, but I did plenty of it once ...

I've got a good start on the first book of Game of Thrones (氷と炎の歌１). It has been a lot of fun because I really like that particular story. I think there are a lot of people that will probably find it way too difficult to struggle through. For

I've been married now for 5 years. This is after dating my wife for about 3 years before we got married, so we have been together for a grand total of about 8 years. It has been a sometimes interesting, often times fun, occasionally difficult mix of situa

You were probably advised when you were very young to not eat the yellow snow. What about yellow sand? It's that season again in Japan, and we are again being blessed with the wonderful dirty, gritty sand from our neighbors here in Japan, coating every...

I have finally finished off the two elementary school level books that I had lying around the house. They were novelizations of "Toy Story" and "Surf's Up" that I had picked up awhile ago. These novelizations tend to be pretty easy reads for N2/N1 leve...

When I first came to Japan, I was, like so many others, fascinated by the vending machines. I mean there are vending machines absolutely everywhere in Japan. And they will vend absolutely everything from soda to fried noodles. One of them that I saw sold

Okay so I officially failed the exam again. I had a bit of a hunch that I wouldn't pass but it is good to get the official results, so I can start planning out how to study this year. I want to make a few changes to how I'm doing things for a variety of r

When you visit a foreign country, the first thing on your list to check out is usually not the houses. After all, they aren't quite as glamorous as 400 year old temples and shrines. But, they can tell you about a place all the same. Houses are very perso

So the test is finally over for 2013. I was barely able to get to the test much less put in serious study time the whole month before because I was in the process of moving, which is now thankfully over. Although, there is still a lot more to get setup, I