You have always heard about the wacky celebrity endorsements for Japanese products. Heck, there was a whole movie that featured a Western celebrity endorsing a Japanese product. And it's a staple joke that has gotten around, a few times. Compare this to

After writing about my experience last month, a few of you mentioned that you rarely studied kanji individually, but instead got used to kanji from reading. I do feel like a lot of the kanji I've really made automatic was from reading, doing lots of readi

Okay, so I said I had a top 10 list of things I wish I had known and I did have a top ten list of things. But, through the process of writing up and thinking about those top ten things, I happened to come across 5 more things I wish I had known before ...

3 months ago I said I was making changes to try to reduce my studying time. And I have been able to meet that goal with a little success. I've also noticed a lot of benefits of dropping the drills and being a little more mindful of my studies. The bigges

 A month ago, I published the first half of this top 10 list of things I wish I had known before coming to Japan. And a few of you commented on some other things that you wish you had known as well. But, as promised here's the rest of the things I wish I

We are just a couple of months away from the July test here in Japan and I'm starting to look forward to it actually. I've started a slow change to the way I study and I'm interested in seeing if it makes a difference for better or worse. One dramatic ch

If you are going to be staying or living in Japan for any length of time. You want to make the most of it. The problem is there are a few things that the natives know that don't show up in too many guidebooks. Things that I found out about the hard way...

Back in January I made a fool-hearty challenge to learn 550 kanji in about 3 months. I've been using iKanji for all my kanji studying. It is a very nice looking and simple kanji studying app for iOS devices. I've been tirelessly drilling myself with it. S

Japan gets a lot of flack for being a small and crowded place, but is it really that small? It all depends on your perspective of things. Yes, by land size, it is pretty small, roughly the size of California. But it definitely has a lot more variety than

Last month, I talked about the need to do some pruning here and there. I put that advice to action and ignored some of the words I had been studying on Memrise that I either knew pretty well, didn't see really helping me in the future, or I could recogniz