Now I read the post over on alljapaneseallthetime.com where Katz suggests starting from scratch just as if you where first starting to learning Japanese now I though hmm maybe that’s a good idea as obviously there’s going to be a lot of Kanji that I’ve forgotten with such a long brake, but the more I think about it the less I like the idea fair enough we should all know the Kanji if we want to become fluent, but to be honest I really don’t want to sit there for months again studying something that I’ve done before and that I know is somewhere is my memory. To me it would be a waste of time and I’d only get bored and give up.

Now I’ve been reading Japanese text again and watching the odd Anime I’ve noticed that as soon as I remember what a Kanji is or when I look the meaning up again it just jumps back into memory like it was only yesterday I’d learned it, like it was never forgotten in the first place. I just needed to tell my mind that I need the information again and it sticks pretty much instantly. Like they always say once you’ve learned something once it becomes much easier to relearn and remember.

So to be honest I’m not worried I’ve no plans to relearn Heisig as I know the knowledge is already there and I’ll benefit and advance much faster by learning what I want to learn. The only way to truly learn something is to enjoy it and find your own method not that I’m saying Heisig was a bad idea for anybody just starting to learn Japanese its probably the best way to start, but don’t worry about having to do it all again if you have a brake you will find it will soon pop back into memory without any real effort.

As long as you keep in mind that learning a language is easy all it takes is a little time and effort then you’ve nothing to worry about.

So my basic study plan at the moment as I’m going to have to fit this around a tight schedule with my other duties/hobbies is to have a quick scan through a few of my Japanese grammar books to relearn the bits I’ve forgotten (especially recommend Japanese In Manga Land for grammar) and then to start my sentence mining again now I have a better idea how to sentence mine it should be more fruitful. To supplement the study I’ll starting watching some anime again oh and I’ve gotta re watch the GTO live action series easily my favourite Japanese live action so far feel free to recommend others!

I leave you with a funny robot

Even with the long brake I’ve noticed my Japanese hasn’t really left me its just been relegated to the archives of my mind and just needs a little push to start bringing the knowledge out again. So starting this week I’m going to gradually start adding Japanese study back to my daily routine I’ll start off slow so I can fit it in with my other study’s/interests then over time ramp it up so its back to the old days .

Oh I can still read Hiragana/Katakana pretty much as fast as english so all that reading in the past payed off on that front.

The town I stayed in Portugal, beautiful place

Well from health worries to being busy with work I’ve just being putting it off, but here I am to blog again and hopefully still have some interested readers, I’ve still being following fellow bloggers and have been pretty active on Facebook and occasionally Twitter which I’ve also started to post more often on.

Decisions

I’ve been trying to make some big decisions lately on what to do in my life to get to where I want to be which I know with 100% certainty I don’t want to stay in the UK there’s just too many things here I don’t like, that don’t suite me and frankly I owe it to myself to achieve my dreams in life. As my readers will know my number 1 ambition has been to live and work in Japan which I’m held back by the fact that I don’t have a degree, thus making it difficult to obtain a Visa when I move there, although there is one other option to obtain the Visa that a surprising amount of people have no idea about and that’s that you can get a Visa with 10 years experience in a particular field which in my case is IT I’ve already got 7 years so not far off.

Then it would just be a case of finding somebody to employ me in IT which if I had a degree I’m sure would be easier as the worst case senior I could take an english teaching job and search for an IT job while working there. So onto the decision I’ve been looking into starting a degree with OU (The Open University) which is a program that you can do from home while still working a full time job to earn your degree the obvious disadvantage to this is having to juggle full time work with part time study at a high level and I can’t afford to quit my job because of some debts that needs to be payed. On that note my biggest advice to anyone if you can avoid it don’t get into debt it seriously hampers your quest to fulfil your dreams as its currently making it very difficult for me to afford to pay for the first course.

I’m currently trying to find someway to pay for the course while trying to get my finances in order which is working out pretty difficult only slightly helped by a pay rise starting next month but the deadline to start the degree is literally days after pay day, so much to sort so little time. More on the Degree later.

I’ve so many plans for the next year or so its crazy the only thing holding me back is income so I’ve also been looking into passive sources of income a few ideas but nothing concrete yet…

I’ll have another post up shortly regarding my love of travel which is burning even more brightly after my trip to Portugal last month and not to mention plenty of pictures.

Habari

Just wanted to mention that shortly I’ll be moving from Habari back to WordPress. I love Habari and its nice clean interface and nothing getting in the way but when creating new posts or looking for a helpful plugin its just way too time consuming, I’d rather be spending that time on writing posts, not to mention that the development time for new versions seems to be way too long so many features I’d love to see but nothing seems to happen. So if you notice anything break in the coming week please let me know

Me and the Wifey in Portugal the wind made my hair look funny

한글 – Hangul – DONE!
This one’s already done learned all the characters within a day or two and have already got to the point were I can read without needing to refer to anything to see what a character means all thanks to the power of an SRS.

Weight Training – In Progress!
Have gained almost 2 pounds in weight (having to eat over 3000 calories a day to gain) and improved my lift on the bench press to 3×6 of 60KG not a huge weight but great for me ^^

JLPT – Temp Hold
Not worked on this yet as have concentrated on Hangul and a few other things but will get round to full on study at some point in the very near future.

Climbing – Future Plan
Aiming to give this try within the next month or two when some funds have been freed up.

Blog More – In progress
Trying to manage a few posts a week depending on time constraints.

Go Abroad – Funding Pending

— New Goals —
Going to start adding any new goals I have planned at the end of any goals update posts.

LPIC-1 – Linux Professional Institute Certification
Not done any new IT certs in a while now and wanting to further my knowledge and potentially my career its about time I did. Linux has always interested me and after setting up my new Linux box to act as a home media server and playing around with the likes of Samba, Cups etc I’m becoming more interested. So I’m going to start studying for this cert using an SRS to remember anything obscure.

Just came across this anime recently and thought i would post what i thought about it, its basically a love story were a boy meets the love of his life and are constantly seperated as they go from high school to being adults, but no matter how sepperated they become they still never forget each other and the love they shared.

Also thrown into the mix is another girl from school that has fell in love with the lead character and no matter what she does she just cant find a way to express her love for him, untill she eventually realises that he always seems to be waiting for somebody and will never notice her for anything more than a friend.

Even though there are probably many shows out there that are similar in story and so on, there is just something about this that keeps you watching from begining to end whether its the top notch animation that makes you feel warm inside, or just wanting to know if they will ever stay together its a worthy watch and deffinatly recommended.

Quick rundown: Worthy Watch
Very nice animation, great sound effects and music, an ok story if a little same’y

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A good slice of life with a twist that’s what’s on the agenda today, recently i finally got off my arse and started to watch some of the new shows out in Japan from a random selection of shows like ToLoveRu and Macross Frontier I thought I’d choose some random show i new nothing about and give it a try and this is what i ran into other than the fact I’d never remember the name in an entire lifetime.

There is just something about the show that keeps me watching whether its because of the twist of it being set in a believable Japan and there being people who can use magic or if its just because its so nice to watch, here are a few of my musings of the first two episodes that ill be sure to keep up with it as its released.

It starts on a small countryside farm in Japan in a place called biei, with who i assume to be the main character of the show Suzuki Sora and from what we see from the start she seems to have been chosen for her magic ability to join a magic school in Tokyo, she visits her mother as she is tending to there crops when her mother brakes the news to her that she wil be leaving for Tokyo to join the magic school, other than the twist of magic everything about the show makes you think its just your normal everyday slice of life anime.

Then we follow Sora as she go’s about her daily life in biei and see that she is leaving a good friend and her way of life behind to go to busy hot Tokyo.

Episode 2

Arrival in Tokyo, we finaly get to see some more of Sora’s magic in action as she saves an old lady and a guy who we are soon to see is also part of her school but doesn’t seem to be too talented from initial impressions as Sora finally arrives at her school although a bit late, we soon see that Sora seems like she could be very talented but faces competition from two other classmates.

Animation!

Definitely one of the strong points about the show is the animation it mix’s really pretty animation with real life photo’s that blends so well to bring together a believable world and if you like me and love everything about Japan it gives you a nice view of what its like to live there.

Summary

Excellent my graduation back into the world of new anime has been a good one if there are to be other shows like this one, I welcome all suggestions if there are some more i should be adding to my watch list , to end my post all i have to say is go watch if you like your slice of life anime then its a must see even if not its at least one to take a peek at.

~because we only get one chance~

Seems I never actually finished this show, will have to try and get a hold of it sometime.

or two

This week to start off my Korean movie viewing is the film 3-Iron you could say that’s its not the best choice to practice listening comprehension as there isn’t actually much talking throughout the film but what it lacks in dialogue its makes up with the story and interaction between the two lead characters.

The film begins with us following around a guy who travels from place to place on his motorbike, at the beginning of each day he goes around a neighbourhood sticking flyers to peoples doors which he then returns to later that night to see which door hasn’t had the flyer removed, which would suggest to him that nobody was home. He then proceeds to brake into the house and makes himself at home for the night, in return he repairs things around the house and leaves everything as it was before leaving, never taking anything although as you can imagine he does run into the owners on occasion which lead to some sticky situations.

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Eventually he brakes into a house and finds that he is not alone he meets a wife who has been beaten by her husband, when her husband returns home some events ensue and she runs away with the traveller living the life that he does staying in different houses with all sorts of backgrounds and events that they must deal with. It’s just such a nice movie to watch and one I highly recommend even for people who have no interest in Korean movies the main focus is the interaction between the characters even though they never speak to each other you can still feel what they want to say.