HelpX, WorkAway, WWOOF

I always have people asking me what I plan to do after my job as a Coordinator for International Relations. It annoys me at times. I don’t think anyone can predict the future, and our plans will always evolve due to the changes we experience in life. Much less something as big as living alone in a foreign country.

However, my current plan will tentatively be

Ventriloquism in Japan

Not too long ago, Darci Lynne Farmer wowed the crowd at America’s Got Talent 2017 by performing ventriloquism with singing as her main act. It got me wondering to what extent is ventriloquism popular in Japan. So I typed in 腹話術（ふくわじゅつ）in the search engine of YouTube and Wikipedia. Of all the people performing, one person stood out greatly. He is いっこく堂. I am totally astounded by the level of

I received my written tentative CIR appointment notification letter

I finally received my written tentative CIR appointment notification letter. I kid you not. I just translated what I was given, word for word. I feel like there needs to be a period at the end of my post’s title… Anyway, the original text is 国際交流員採用内定通知書 for anyone who’s interested.

My office actually did send me a digital copy of all the things that are enclosed in the formal printed letter waaaay before, so

Double Meaning Sentences

Let’s have fun today, shall we?
I recommend a JLPT N3-ish level and above for this.
There are two meanings for each sentence, what are their meanings?
(I’ll write the answers in the comment section below, so make sure to try them out before scrolling all the way down!)

• 結婚したい男。
• 昨日、うちのおばあちゃんは胃の手術をした。
• コーヒーだけはだめです。
• 電車の中でゲームをしているサラリーマンに驚かされた。

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement

J.K. Rowling gave a speech of commencement at Harvard University in the year 2008. I feel fortunate to be able to hear it on YouTube now. It was witty and extremely inspirational.

Please allow me to share with you some of the words that really touched my heart. However, if you want to watch the original speech of 20 minutes here, then please do move on to the video and ignore the following.

I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.

Goldlist Method #1

I was about to start Goldlisting, or rather Bronzelisting, but I realised that I didn’t have any A4 sized notebooks. I have tons of notebooks, but they are all A5… (苦笑)

So I went out to purchase three nice A4 notebooks before starting out.
Wanted to purchase bronze, silver and gold notebooks, but さすが couldn’t find any, so I bought brown, grey and red notebooks for my Bronzelist, Silverlist and Goldlist respectively.

After ensuring that no one would come and bother me, I placed aside 20 minutes to start on my first 25 words. I read them out loud as I wrote them down, then read everything once more before closing the book. It took about 18 minutes-ish.

Planning to distill them on the 27th of June 🙂

New Methods of Remembering

Language learning still opens the door to new discoveries even after years and years of self-studying. It’s really amazing. Today, I learnt of two new methods of remembering that I have never heard before. They are called the Iversen Method and the Goldlist Method. There is no connection between them whatsoever though.

The Iversen Method gets you to remember five words at one go. It is effective in that you don’t just remember words flashcard by flashcard, as we tend to forget them straight after we are done with them.

The Goldlist Method is harder to understand, and I am rather sceptical as to