This guy is the cutest thing ever! He went back and forth and didn’t quite dare to jump in the water.

The mountains in the background almost reminded me of Norway.

Haha, I had to take this picture for my Swedish friends. I think they meant to write “Nord kaffe” and not “Nörd kaffe”. Nordic coffee and Nerdy coffee…

Osaka from the hotel window.

Cute barber shop.

Chinese medicine!

We went on a trip to Kyoto and Osaka a couple of weeks back, and the one thing I really wanted to see in Kyoto was Kinkakuji! It was so beautiful, even though it was quite cold for being the start of March.

Hello pretty ladies (and lovely boys)! The price for the most inconsistent blogger of 2012 so far goes to… *drumroll* me! I have no excuses. I have been busy, a lot of teaching and a little bit of studying. Everything is fine and dashing, but I haven’t had much time for the blog. I have at least 60 or so photos backlogged over 10 – 15 posts, I just need to find time to post some of them! I hope everyone in the blogosphere is doing as great as me this February.  Recently I have been enjoying myself, almost a bit too much. I went to an onsen twice in a week, I had wonderful little trips around Tokyo (pictures are coming, promise!), I went to the Mori Tower (more pictures are coming right up!) and saw an amazing art exhibition by Lee Bul (almost no pictures, because it is not allowed to photograph the exhibition). I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant (I have pictures of that as well!), my friends and me had a crab-and-cheese-party, I have mixed a whole lot of mimosas together and had another party, and I decided to power-walk in Shinjuku park while taking pictures. I get excited about spring before it is even here, this time of year always puts me in a terrific mood! Spring is right around the corner guys! I can’t wait to eat strawberries in the park while frantically reading for this semester’s exams. Have a wonderful February everybody!

A big dump of pictures which I never got around to post! Mostly from Nakano, Shinjuku, Akihabara and Yokohama.

All the links in this post are related to art / design / photography. Happy clicking!

1. Mae Mae Paperie have gorgeous colors and textures, and I just fell in love with her designs.
2. LimeAmanda creates the cutest projects for school.
3. Ordinary Days shows beautiful pictures from Japan.
4. Oh My! Tokyo! posted some gorgeous shots from when it was snowing in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago.
5. Kris Atomic posts illustrations which makes me smile!
6. An exquisite beast draws everyday!
7. Type everything makes my mouth water with beautiful typography.
8. Copypastecharacter.com have great symbols to use for everything and anything.
9. Mt Expo post with pretty pictures from Hello Sandwich.

If you are in the Kanto area, they have really cheap ski trips for sale right now. I got a round-trip ticket with Shinkansen from Tokyo up to Niigata, plus a one day ski pass at Gala Yuzawa for 6700 yen. It only took about 1.5 hrs to get there, and it was super fun to go downhill skiing again. I have been wanting to try skiing in Japan for the longest time, and finally I can cross it off my bucket list! I didn’t take any pictures from the actual ski resort, because I put my bag in a locker, and it was snowing the whole day, but it was a lot of fun. It was fairly easy to rent ski equipment as well, so if you have a day to spare and feel like skiing, it is absolutely worth the money. (And the hot cocoa in the picture above is anther guilty pleasure. Liquid sugar in a can, yum!)

I have been wanting write a couple of blog posts about how to study Japanese, and what I have done so far in my Japanese studying. Last semester I finished the third year Japanese courses at my university, but I have actually only been studying Japanese for about 1.5 years myself. (I have fiddled around with 日本語 for the past 4 years, but nothing serious until I decided to make a commitment about 1.5 years ago.) My Japanese is by all means not particularly amazing nor especially great, but hopefully there can be some tips and tricks people who are new to the language can pick up and use for themselves to actually get started.

There are already tons of good resources for Japanese which can explain the technical side of the language itself better than I can, so instead I will try to collect the resources I have been using and write a little bit about what methods worked for me so far and what didn’t work at all. I can not tell you how many times I have gotten the question “Oh, so you know Japanese?” or “Oh, you speak Japanese?”. Anyone who fiddle around with Japanese know that this is not a black/white thing, and just how much or how little I “know Japanese” is extremely hard to explain to people who have not had any experience with Japanese (or another language very far from your mother tongue). Obviously, the things I write here are merely my own opinions, and feel free to disagree with me, but personally I don’t think Japanese is the sort of thing where you wake up one day and you feel like you “know” it and you are done.  so this is very much a work in progress. (This fits me perfectly, because I am very much a 90% kind of girl – once I get decent enough at something I tend to lose interest and move on. Good thing I will never reach 90% in Japanese, there will always be new things to learn, this will keep me interested and occupied for life! )

In any case, I realized that that I am sitting here with a lot of good resources and experiences, and why not share them with the world? Maybe it can help someone somewhere. (And there are probably awesome resources out there that I have not heard about myself, so feel free to share!) I know that when I started learning Japanese, I felt very overwhelmed, I did not know what resources were good  and reliable, and what was just a waste of my time. So, I will type up a couple of posts, and these are the topics have come up with so far:

• Method and how to get started, general tips and ticks in order for you to incorporate Japanese language learning in your everyday life
• Books – a variety of books textbooks I have used to learn Japanese, and what was good and bad about them
• Online resources and webpages
• iPhone apps (and dictionaries)
• Nintendo DS games and resources
• Breaking in to real Japanese literature, a collection of books and where to start if you want to start reading real Japanese.
• How to combine drinking and Japanese studies (a little collection of great karaoke songs)

If you can think of any other topics which would be fun or useful to read about, feel free to make a suggestion! (I love suggestions!) I made a new category called “Language learning” here on the blog where you will find all the posts related to learning Japanese. Learning Japanese is a lot of fun, and I actually do not think Japanese is that hard. (In my opinion Japanese is super-logical and very structured.) However, it takes a lot of TIME! And it requires a lot of effort. Quite a few people might disagree with me on this. I know it is a popular take on language these days to just have fun and watch a couple of movies and the language will basically learn itself. I am not saying you will not learn a lot from watching cartoons, but in the end, I truly believe that you can not become proficient in a language like Japanese unless you actually buckle down and study.

So, brace yourselves! More posts about Japanese language learning will be coming soon!

This is not a political blog and will never be, but certain things just need to be mentioned. You have probably already heard about how Wikipedia and various other sites will have a 24 hr blackout in protest to SOPA. Here is how SOPA works, and anyone who cares about the internet should speak up against SOPA. Compare it to the real world. If a person were to ask you where the bank is, and you tell them where the bank is, and then the person goes into the bank and robs the bank, the bank could sue you. It doesn’t make sense, and it shouldn’t make sense. Speak up against this! Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa

Two dinners. Pasta with mentaiko (明太子) roe and cream, and ochadzuke (お茶漬け), basically white rice with various toppings, wasabi and green tea. Love.