Time again to choose a book from my reading challenge list! I hesitated a long time before picking 「イノセント・デイズ」by 早見和真（はやみ・かずまさ） I would like to say a word about why I bought this book when I was in Kyoto last December. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I saw something like this: https://twitter.com/MARUZENNAGOYA/status/944492759779438592..
Motivation: ups and downs
I was not very productive this weekend concerning both Japanese and English. I haven't even read much. This made me reflect on the reasons why I sometimes feel demotivated, and I tried to find ways to snap out of it. Japanese is hard I start with this because I think that it is a red..
Japanese News: March week 3
Usually, I study a news article every Friday. But last week, I decided to change my routine and try to keep an eye on the NHK News website every day. I hope I managed to extract the news of importance, but I certainly missed a lot of information. Anyway, this is an attempt at giving..
Book Review: 「ぶたぶたラジオ」by Arimi Yazaki
When I was doing my book haul in Kyoto last December, I took this book only because the cover design was cute: I also fancied that it would be easy to read, and I was right. It took me a week to read it, and I haven't even had time to post about it in my..
Bullet Journal, 5 months later
In October of last year, I started a bullet journal for the first time. It was dedicated to studying Japanese. I promised that I would come back some months after to see if this method worked for me or not. Though I am not strictly bullet journalling anymore, it did immensely improve the way I..
Japanese News: an overview of the week (an attempt)
Today, instead of studying one article, I would like to have an overview of the topical issues of the week. I think that it would be more interesting to look at a wide range of topics and vocabulary, instead of going deeply into one subject. The problem is that I don't have a paying subscription..
I finished reading「彼女がその名を知らない鳥たち」by 沼田まほかる
I have finished reading 沼田まほかる's novel 「彼女がその名を知らない鳥たち」. Reading this book took me a long time, but even though I struggled to go through some parts of it, I enjoyed reading it. I know that some passages were above my level, and even if I could follow the story and most of the dialogues without problems, I..
Trying to remember Japanese Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is probably one of the fun and recreative aspects of the Japanese language, and I have always been assuming that most Japanese learners remember and use these cute words effortlessly. The problem Now, I don't think that I have a childhood trauma relative to onomatopoeia (but who knows?), but the truth is that I..
Japanese News: Moritomo Gakuen scandal
Although it was one of the major political issues of last year, I have not read much in Japanese about the Moritomo Gakuen scandal. It is a complex story with difficult vocabulary, and the titles of the related articles have always discouraged me. I wanted to believe that this scandal was a last-year-thing and that..
Reading Notes on the novel「彼女がその名を知らない鳥たち」by 沼田まほかる
I am reading the novel 「彼女がその名を知らない鳥たち」by 沼田まほかるand the two main characters of the story use the Kansai dialect when they talk to each other. This particularity certainly confers a touch of authenticity to the novel, but it also adds difficulty for non-native readers. I will go through some of the features of the Kansai dialect,..
Some thoughts on language learning and emotions
Emotions can influence the way we learn a language. Positive emotions and motivation go together, but it took me a long time to realise it. Being aware of how we attach particular emotions to our target language is the first step to building a better long-term motivation. I consider that learning a language is an activity closely..
Japanese News: the discretionary labour system
The last two articles I have studied were about sports, so I thought that it was time to return to more political subjects. As a consequence, even if I was tempted to study an article about the Tokyo Olympic mascots that have just been unveiled, I focused myself on another topical issue: the discretionary labour..