明けましておめでとう！最近、今学期の準備とバイトのせいで、時間があまり足りなかったけど、満足している。よいお年を〜
Happy new year! I have been super-busy preparing for the next couple of months and working, but I am happy. Hope you all will have a great 2013!

Time for another small update! (Apologizes for all the mobile pictures recently, they just kind of piled up, all of a sudden. I got a new iPod, so I got a little bit trigger happy, I guess!) In the picture above, I went to visit my budgie. He has a new lovely home with nice parents, and I hadn’t seen him for a while, so a visit was well overdue. He is still hanging in there, even though he is probably 850 years old in budgie-years.

new shoes / old eggs

oooold pages from a notebook

sushi the cat posing / wine and cookies

mmm! sushi!

old little things discovered in a box.

…and a lovely cappuccino at Dromedar to brighten a cold and slushy day.

最近iPhoneのSiriさんと話した。笑。

I took some quick snapshots with my phone from some of the pages in my Moleskine. I swear, this sketch book and me are not made for each other. I have been trying to fill out this book for 2 years, and I still have 35 pages left. I have no idea, but when I buy a Moleskine, I can tell instantly when I start drawing in it if it is going to be easy or hard to fill the book up. The easy ones takes approximately 3 months to fill out. The hard ones – like this one – is currently at 2+ years and counting. In any case – real pictures will come when the book is completed. At this rate, it will be within a year. Jeez.

I made an illustration portfolio. Yay! You can see it here. The text is in Japanese, but what is important is the rest of the content, right?

First of, I just wanted to show this awesome video: “Skype Me Maybe” – sung in 30+ languages by 17 polyglots! Super inspirational!

Now, onto another set of language-related links. Most of them are about – surprise, surprise – Japanese, but there is also some Norwegian, French and general language links mentioned.

1. Smashing Magazine has a great article about Japanese, A Beautifully Complex Writing System.
2. Free FSI language course in French can be found here!
3. The Polyglot Project Podcast – Episode #1 – Moses McCormick can be heard here on David Mansarays site.
4. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but here is the wiki-page about Kyouiku-kanji. If you feel like the 2000 joyo-kanji is too much to grasp at first, mastering the 1006 kyouiku-kanji can really bring you a long way when it comes to reading and understanding Japanese.
5. Japanese idiom dictionary! This is great for figuring out colloquial use of japanese, which can be hard if you don’t have a real japanese person at hand to ask.
6. Japanese proverb dictionary! (You have no idea how impressed Japanese people get when you throw in a proverb or two in your conversation!)
7. A resource site for JLPT N1, N2 and N3. Mostly in Japanese. Not the easiest thing to navigate, but some good resources hidden in there.
8. Kokuji 国字 or Wasei Kanji 和製漢字 are Kanji that were created in Japan. Most of them only have KUN readings, but there are some Kokuji that have ON readings because they were assumed to have them according to phonetic association with similar characters. Here is an extensive list of kokuji.
9. Nice little blog about language learning: www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com.
10. Verbling is like chatroulette, only in the languages you are studying. Super neat idea, although I am a bit camera shy myself.
11. If you are interested in Norwegian language, you can listen to free podcasts called “Språkteigen” here. It is a program produced by NRK, in Norwegian, about quirky (and not so quirky) aspects of the Norwegian language. For intermediate, advanced and native speakers.

And here is a bonus video: 日本人が知らない日本語. Funny drama in Japanese, about Japanese. The Swedish girl’s Japanese accent cracks me up every time.

この可愛い酒グラスはファミリーマートで見つけた！安くて、甘い飲み物だった。

(last summer, Okinawa)

Snappeee

Snapeee would have to be my favorite japanese app. is like Instagram on speed and steroids! You have same community feel as on Instagram, but you can decorate your images before uploading them. When you upload images, or “like” other peoples images you will earn points, and you can use these points to download more decorations for your pictures. Snapeee also have special events and contests you can enter your images into, and you can get quite a few likes and followers if your entry is accepted into the different contests. Snapeee is available for both iPhone and Android. Download it here.　Feel free to add me as well, here is my invitation code: 3B3JRW

Decoblend

Decoblend has two great features. One feature is that you can combine your photos into neat collages, and I find that these collages look a lot cleaner and neater than other apps offering the same thing. The other feature is that you can decorate your photos and collages in the same way as snappeee. the stamps are more limited than Snapeee, but it is still a couple of great stamps and frames worth using. You can get Decoblend for both iPhone and Android.

Girls Camera

Girls camera also have quite a few neat frames worth trying out. There is some sort of community where you can share “diary pages”, but personally I prefer snapeee and instagram. Still worth a download! iPhone and Android.

eyeフィット

I just wanted to mention the eyeフィット app really quickly at the end here. It doesn’t have much of an artistic value, it is simply an app to try on different contact lenses. The interface is in Japanese,  and if you like the lenses, there is a link to buy the contact lenses. I found this app for the iPhone, I am not sure if it exist for Android or not.