Cannot believe its been 1 year since my visit to Japan during the Rugby World Cup 2019. I was really fortunate to make the 2-week trip, and it was an incredible experience.

My journey now is focused on passing my JLPT N5 test (or N4 maybe?) next year in June. Who knows what the world holds for us by that time – but all things being equal the exam will be held here in London.

One key learning I have discovered over the last couple of weeks though – is that if you slip on your revision for even a day or two only, you can really see the impact to your reading/writing speed. Very surprising for me, but just reinforces that I need to set aside time every day to do revision either using Memrise, Anki or my Genki text book.

Fortunately my iTalki lessons are helping me keep my Japanese language study at the top of my priority list – wish I could do more of these. Really excellent way to move beyond learning basic parrot fashion – to making useful sentences and communicating more naturally.

On that note – great podcast to check-out is learnjapanesepod. Hear Japanese spoken in a natural way, with clear explanations and relevant topics.

I guess the new Japanese Prime Minister and finally having expats allowed back into Japan have also been common topics on the podcasts I’ve been listening too.

Though I’m not really into any anime that much – I am really enjoying デスノト quite a bit.

Death Note

P.S. – Also did my first search online typed in Hiragana! Exciting. Purely because I was too lazy to change the input keyboard back to english and was searching for the world time clock and needed to know current time around the world. Small milestone.