Jlpt Boot Camp The Ultimate Study Guide To Passing The Japanese Language Proficiency Test

This last month has been pretty rough on me to be honest. There was a lot of last minute planning for my vacation. And of course, right when you want to go on vacation, everything seems to need extra attention. More work to do at work. More fires to put out. I haven’t had as […]

When I first moved to Japan loved the city. It was nice and compact and everything is in one place. As long as you are a decent walk away from a train station you can get anywhere pretty easily without the use of a car. If you needed to buy anything that can’t be found […]

I’ve always found summer to be a more active time. Despite the oppressive heat and humidity we have here in Japan, I still think the increased sunlight and ability to walk around the house in a lot less clothes just makes me do something more than keeping my nose in a book. People always ask […]

I grew up in white bread America where the corn grows high and hills don’t. I spent most of my time in a city of a mere 10,000 where everybody knew each other (and who was doing what to who). It was not uncommon to go downtown to run some errands and run into a […]

It’s a story you’ve heard several times – we don’t talk to each other like we used to. Because ya know, back in the good ole days we used to chat it up with our neighbors and everybody knew everybody right? It was always better back then. But these days, we tend to ignore each […]

Ukiyo-e, if you are not familiar,  is a Japanese art form that was popular from 17th century  to 19th century Japan.  It basically consists of woodblocks used for mass production of pictures.  Ukiyo means floating world, and e means picture, so they were literally “pictures of the floating world.”  They generally depicted daily life, landscapes, […]

In school, I always had a hard time paying attention in class.  The teacher would lecture away and we were suppose to be taking notes, but to be honest I could never proper filter out what was important and what wasn’t.  Half the time I left the class knowing that I had listened to something […]

A few years back, I was working at a school and we were trying to arrange a farewell party for one of our fellow teachers.  One teacher found a great Indian restaurant that wasn’t too far away from the school.  It seemed like a great place.  It had a big room to accommodate everyone and […]

I’ve been taking it pretty easy with my studies recently due to some re-prioritizing of my time. I’m chugging away on Hirugao and Harry Potter but I’m giving myself a little more time to digest things. I felt a bit rushed of late trying to get through study sessions and I’m finding that is not […]

I should start off by saying that I’m not getting divorced.  I’m still happily married and probably will be for the foreseeable future.  Some of my fellow expatriates and Japanese friends haven’t been so lucky though. Which, to my naive self, seems a little surprising.  Don’t get me wrong, I come from a divorced family […]

I’ve been spending (or wasting depending on how you look at) with keeping my streaks up on Memrise. I think it is great to have that daily goal, but I have busy days and not so busy days and it can make it hard to keep up with keeping a good streak going. This has […]

There seems to be a small subsection of the expat population in Japan, that likes to shower the world with negativity and tell you about how horrible it is to live in Japan.  Some of them came over seeking the easy profits and seemingly easy lifestyle of teaching the language that they grew up natively […]

I’ve been trying to keep my studying pretty steady over the last couple of months and not really piling on and changing anything. This has a lot to do with me just having way too much going on for me to focus on going in a different direction. I’m also not entirely sure where to […]

A couple of weeks back I had some free time to take my family to Baymax (US title: Big Hero 6).  It is a cute little movie about a boy, named Hiro, who befriends his brother’s robot and ultimately goes on to fight the bad guy and save the day with his trusty team of […]

December in Japan is always unbelievably busy. There is the Christmas/Bonenkai party season. Then, you have New Year’s cards to design and write. And finally, the big cleaning where you throw out as much of the old as you can to make way for the new. Then after New Year’s, you have your first visit […]

Last month, I ranted on about 5 things that I think Japan could import from other countries. One thing that I missed on that list, and this list as well, is a work-life balance. Japan definitely doesn’t have anything resembling a work-life balance, and with the recent belt tightening, it has only gotten worse. I’ve […]

I celebrated Christmas a little early again this year. The 23rd is a holiday here in Japan. (It’s the Emperor’s Birthday). It is the one day that we officially have off and get paid for it, so it tends to be the day my family and I celebrate Christmas. Yes, I know it is a […]

Japan has a lot of great things to love about it. There are convenient train systems, relatively low crime, and 24 hour vending machines. These all make life extremely nice for us all, but if I may I’d like to add some tweaks that might make it a little better. And of course these are […]

It has been an incredibly busy couple of weeks. I was incredibly busy with Halloween and the little one.  We were actually able to go trick or treating twice.  Trick or treating is not yet a standard thing to do in Japan but we always arrange a small trick or treat event in our neighborhood […]

At one time, I used to teach an English class to some public servants. And it being a government sanctioned event, everything had to start incredibly early, 8am to be exact. This was not a normal time for me to be up and around, needless to say the life of an English teacher usually doesn’t […]