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

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.

Oh my! I can not believe how quickly time passes! We are over one week into the new year already, and I never showed any pictures from the party I went to on new year’s eve!

Chu-hi on the train is always bliss.

Cheese and crackers and lovely christmas goodies…

…and I got a new ring!

I envy girls who have friends who can take pictures of them. I probably stood in the bathroom for 7 minutes trying to get a decent shot of my face.

And luckily for us, the trains were running all night to get people home.

My escapades in the kitchen continues! Above, cauliflower mash and chicken Parmesan. It is super easy to make. Boil cauliflower until it is soft, remove it from the water, and while it is still hot you puree the cauliflower together with salt, pepper and a lot of butter, and you are done! The chicken part of the dish is just as easy. Fry up lots of bell peppers (cut into squares) in a pan together with chicken, a little bit of leak and baby asparagus. I wanted a richer taste for this dish, so I fried it all up with butter instead of olive oil. Drizzle a bit of powdered Parmesan cheese over the veggies and chicken, and fry it all together in the pan for the last minute or so, and it is all done!

Mango lassi: cut up one yellow mango and puree it together with natural yogurt. Toss in a couple of chunks of mango before serving. Super yummy!

Ok, I didn’t make the sushi in the picture above. I just love taking pictures of sushi.

I thought it would be cute to use half of the bell pepper as a container for the cauliflower mash. I fried the bell-pepper-cups a bit on the frying pan before putting them on the plate.

I had to test the new lens I bought right away, I couldn’t wait! These are all taken in super-low light in Shinjuku in the evening, and I am pretty stoked, because with 800 ISO I could have shutter speeds way over 100. A little quick fix of noise in the camera raw software afterwards, and tamtam! Now I wonder why I didn’t sell the two other lenses earlier and just bought this one. That being said – it is a bit of a hassle getting used to not having the ability to zoom again, but for all the light this lens lets in it is totally worth it.

I just finished making a this for Madeleine. She is super-talented in the kitchen, so check out her blog with lots of yummy recipes.

Sushibird.com is one year old today! Happy birthday blog-baby, you’ve made it through the first year! Here are a ton of flowers to celebrate 🙂