1. What will I talk about when my language level is so basic? Benny the Irish polyglot have some interesting things to say about this.
2. If I ever feel a bit lost on the internet, I pop over to Zefrank and play with the little games. So much fun, and slightly useless, but none the less, very fun, eh… stuff!
3. Gunvor makes really nice monster zines!
4. From the weekly wiki-binge-pile: In geography, the antipodes of any place on Earth is the point on the Earth’s surface which is diametrically opposite to it.
5. Back in November, Gala Darling wrote about how to get calm in a world full of crazy.
6. More from the weekly-wiki-binge: Japanese Career Woman. Made me smile.
7. Kojima Mayumi’s songs over at grooveshark. Funky stuff!
8. Youtube video about Canada’s polymer notes. That is high-tech money right there.
9. Cats and the internet. Pusheen the cat is adorable.
10. And once you are overwhelmed with internet surfing, you can always go to the quiet place.

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 just have to recommend a shampoo – the Lush Big Shampoo. I rarely write about beauty products, I just don’t think I know enough about these things to write a lot about them, but this one just need to be mentioned. My hair is pretty thin and fine, so whenever I am in Japan, it turns completely flat, frizzy at the ends and oily at the top, and I have been trying to fix it for ages. I went and bought this shampoo (even though it was kind of pricey… ) – and it really did make the hair BIG! I was really surprised, because I rarely find products to actually live up to their descriptions and expectations. The consistency of the shampoo is really weird, with lots of big salt grains, and your hair ends up smelling like a mojito, but it did make the hair fluffy and removed the excess oil from the hair.

日本にいるうちに、よく居酒屋に行きたいです。友達と食べ物をゆっくり食べて、お酒を飲んだら、嬉しくなります。日本人にとって、居酒屋に行くのが普通かもしれませんが、私にとっていつもすごく楽しんでいますよ。♥

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