Well its that time of the year again where most people go out of there way to set new years resolutions whether its the usual lose weight or to become a millionaire most of us have set some sort of resolution in the past only to find a few months later we have given up and completely forgot about our resolutions, which then leads to "oh I'll wait for next year and it will be my new years resolution". We set our self's up to fail waiting so long to put some sort of plan into action to get to were we want to be, as a wise man once said via twitter Dannychoo don't put of something for the new year instead start it now or you'll never get it done. Thus leading onto the topic of the post usually I would note down my resolutions for the years as I tend to be pretty good at sticking with them but instead I'm going to be more vague and list what I want to do/accomplish this will give me a reminder of everything I'd like to get done otherwise I'd probably forget some. Some may just look like a normal resolution but the difference is I won't be putting them off for a year if I don't get them done straight away I will refer back here and when time allows I'll start the next on the list. Blog More Yes something I've not been doing lately for various reasons but will be pushing to post much more regularly on my language progress and my self improvement in general not to mention any other ramblings I can think of. JLPT lvl2 Aiming to take the JLPT lvl2 at the end of the year seen as I missed the one for last year I'm going to push myself for this as a good challenge is the quickest way to learn. Improve fitness/weight lifting Something I've been doing for a while now you only get one body so it should be looked after. I've always been underweight for my size and have gained some weight over the last year through weight lifting but this year I intend to take it up a level and finally get to the build I want, especially now I'm training with Kettlebells very fun and physically/mentally challenging form of weight lifting. Take up climbing Always wanted to try this looks so much fun climbing on those indoor rock faces so will be giving this a go. Go Abroad Even with my love for travel and seeing new things I've still yet to leave the country my plan is to at least visit one foreign country this year even if its just in Europe. Get a tattoo Yes some people don't like them and yes they can look ugly but personally think some look very nice and have always wanted the Kanji's for 決心 (determination) on one of my shoulder blade's. Learn to read 한글 Hangul A...

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.