Well a lot of us followers of the AJATT way of learning Japanese seem to swear against doing tests like JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) which personally I cannot see why, its a great measure of progress, not really expensive and also great for us wanting to live and work in Japan to stand out from the crowd of CV's. I don't know about you but aiming for a test keeps me motivated and to work on my weak areas much more than if I was just studying because I'm interested in learning Japanese which is great but means I take my time much more than I would like.

Obviously I'll always be using the AJATT method but also I'll be studying the specific things I need to know for the JLPT especially grammar! so both methods combined it should be pretty easy.

So I've decided to finally get my ass into gear and get the test booked which I'm going to keep my progress logged here as always. Now I seem to have hit one snag I've done a few past papers and a couple of online JLPT graded tests and it seem I can do JLPT 4 easy with only struggling on a little grammar which I can easy brush up on, but I seem to be quite far behind on the JLPT 3 in both vocab and grammar now the question is can I Learn enough to pass the JLPT 3 before the exam date which is December this year or do I just do JLPT 4 as a guaranteed pass and aim for JLPT 2 next year?

So recommendations do I push for JLPT 3 or breeze the JLPT 4?

Don't think I've made a post about my love of Ramen specifically chili chicken Ramen I really can't think of any food that I like as much as this in comparison the majority of British food is bland and boring and I get tired of Chinese because I have it so often, so when I do get a chance to have Ramen its a great change and if its cooked fresh and not the stuff from the supermarkets then its very healthy.

I've found very few places local to me that I can get 'proper' Ramen the main place I know of in the UK is Wagamama great set of restaurants that are based of Ramen places in Japan and have a great Japanese menu from things like Ramen to Ebi Katsu and not to forget SAKE!

The only thing they are missing which I wish they had is 寿司(sushi) but I've seen another Japanese style restaurant close by that I'm gonna check and see what's on there menu.

An old photo back from 2005's trip to Whitby in the UK going back there shortly so will take many more photos.

Mentioned in a previous post that I would put up my reasons why we should see the world, whether its a new place in our own country or some far distant land we can all experience new things and grow from these experiences. Even in the places closest to home we can find a different way of living, meet people that can change our way of thinking or make us view things with a different perspective, see sites and relics of the past expand our reality we can all obtain a deeper understanding of the world. Try different foods and experience different cultures all expand our reality in some way basically keeping an open mind will make us all more well rounded individuals and not stuck in some bubble of our everyday selves.

As I'm sure we all want to try 納豆（natto) fermented soy bean hmm yummy.

I really cannot understand how people can go to some foreign country and not try any of the local cuisine always going out of there way to find the nearest KFC because of fear of the unknown perhaps, better to have tried it than to never have tried it at all I always say, we all need to go out of our comfort zone to experience new things how do you know those fish eyes on a plate wont be nice might be the best thing you've ever tried at least gives you something to talk about with the locals if nothing else.

Again this stems to the people that stick to there holiday resort, hotel, apartment whatever it may be and barely leave or just stick to the tourist spots this also seems to be down to the fear of the unknown that they don't know the language or that they won't get a long with anybody. Really how do you know until you try there's going to be natives who can understand you and I'm sure many will get a long with you, you will probably learn much more about the country and it's way of life this way and will probably find out many interesting places and facts that the average tourist will never know about with the potential of making some good friends a long the way.

Anybody have any interesting holiday experiences they'd like to share?

From Public Whitby

From My Yaruki

I've read and seen many ways that people do there reviews for there sentences, people recommend different things like "you only should pass a sentence if you can read everything" and "you should click hard for every review unless you can read it instantly". I've adapted many of the principles and completely thrown some out depending on what I thought suited and worked best for me.

Now the way I review goes like this,

1) I first look and see if I can read the main word of the sentence (the part I'm wanting to learn) which I usually bold for emphasis.
2) If I can read the word I go onto trying to read the rest of the sentence and try to understand how the word is used in context.
3) If I can read it quickly without much thought it gets an "easy".
4) If I can only read the word I'm trying to learn and maybe some other bits of the sentence it gets a "Good".
5) If I struggle to read the word but manage it after some thought it gets a "hard".
6) Obviously if I don't understand anything its an "again"

Now here is were I may differ to other people, if I can read the sentence and the word but mispronounce or just miss out on the exact reading and go "haha damn I new it was that" I give it a hard. Really doesn't help me to fail every card just because of a little mistake if anything it makes me feel down and have less urge to get more done but meh people might disagree and say we should understand it 100% or we might make future errors when speaking etc.

But this is were I disagree again who can speak, read, write there native language 100% without any areas or without picking up bad habbits? So look at it this way if you cant be 100% perfect in your own language how can people expect this from a foreign language?

The advantage is even though you may make little mistakes here and there think how easy it will be to correct this when you have the general knowledge of how something is read/spoken, much better than not knowing the word at all or getting so frustrated that you cant learn it perfectly that it effects your learning in general. It will correct itself in time either via somebody pointing out your mistake or your mind working a way in the background clicks when it realizes its wrong and sticks much more easily than repeated 'again, again, again" in an SRS.

From Edale

Its always been one of my greatest ambitions to see the world not just the tourist hot spots they tend not to interest me too much, I prefer to see the culture side the more out of the way places these are the places that have all the character for the place your visiting. Don't get me wrong when I visit Japan I want to see a lot of the touristy places like Tokyo, Kyoto and so on but I also intend to visit the more rural parts like the country side and smaller villages, especially looking forward to places Hokkaido and coastal towns.

So far I've yet to leave the country, still have yet to get a passport and find the funds on top of my Japan trip savings to actually go anywhere outside of the country so I'm stuck to going to place like the above image which is a nice little village here in the UK called Edale has some great views probably one of the few nice places I've found so far here in the UK, just always very gloomy so pictures tend to not look very vibrant.

Do have a trip planned this month to visit Whitby for a few days one of my favorite places in the UK has a lot of character the only issue is its starting to turn into a bit of a tourist hot spot but hopefully going mid week it will be a little quieter will be sure to take some photo's to put up.

Now most of the site is sorted I'm going to be putting more effort in more photo articles and self improvement articles a little bit for everyone I suppose. Will have up my views on the advantages of traveling and why we all should more often in the next day or so.

From Edale

EDIT: Now sorted feel free to add and amend any rss feeds ^^

Currently until the site is fully moved out of the Habari folder on the server there is no point signing up to the current RSS feed as this will change again once the site moves, will let you know when this is sorted.

Finally after many months of putting it off I decided to get off my ass and move from blogger, way too many limitations and having to setup hacks to get things working the way I wanted wasn't helping with the speed of the site etc

I've decided to go with Habari as my CMS by recommendation of Michael Flux, its a very light weight, not bloated (Like Wordpress), uses modern web technologies and very quick and has an ever growing community of plugins and themes.

The web host I have chosen is Versus Technologies taking advantage of the coupon code over at Michael Flux so far they have everything I need, cheap and excellent support.

The theme I have decided to go with is Green Park 2 by Cordobo which I am editing to suit my needs changed the nav bar to orange (my favorite colour before anybody asks) also lengthened the content area to allow larger pictures and easier to read. This will put me on nicely until I have to time to make my own.

I've pointed the domain name to the new site now even though everything isn't completely finished but this way it allows people to give me feedback if any issues are found, other features like the blogroll, tags and comments etc will be moved over in the coming days.

Many more changes to come over the next few days so bear with me