Shanna

While I read it on and off, 6 years is still indeed a long time to take to finish a book. So it’s still baffles me how I can take 6 long years to read 309 pages, out of which I completed 60 odd pages in this month. Reading a book for that long also meant that I could really see how much I’ve improved over the years. To not know the modern history of Korea is equivalent to not knowing about today’s (Korean) society and is tantamount to know knowing ourselves (Koreans).

If you are looking for a low-intermediate Japanese textbook that uses English explanations, furigana and also dedicates a section to teaching Kanji, you have found the one. Personally, I find that Japan-published Japanese textbooks tend to focus on a certain area (e.g. speaking / reading / writing / listening / grammar / vocabulary / kanji) and I haven’t quite found a book that does somewhat everything. Each chapter consists of the following section: I found it interesting how the same dialogue is presented in both comic strip and the usual prose form. The comic strip form comes first and it does not include the furigana, which serves as a good exercise for the learner to try to figure out how to pronounce the kanji, and can check it against the prose form dialogue (with furigana).

I’ve actually walked past the mart several times and didn’t realise there was a restaurant o. O. Happy that I was intro-ed to this place by my friend The rice cakes were the right kind of chewy, and there’s also fish cake 어묵 and cabbage in the sauce. This is steamed egg done right – looking like it’s overflowing 🙂 There’s also some sweet potato and rice cakes (I think) in there.

It’s been a long while since I actually have enough time + motivation to sit in front of the computer to spruce up the blog and to type an actual blog post. I pretty much spent most of the time doing nothing, taking the same one-hour walk from Namba Subway Station to Umeda Subway Station in the winter cold. Perhaps the idea of a new year does help in fuelling the motivation and desire for change, but so far I think I’ve done pretty well in trying to spend some time daily on languages. For those who were wondering what happened to my so-called attempt to learn Russian last year, I think it was pretty much a failed attempt.