My Yaruki （やる気）

Had on and off problems with the sites theme randomly not loading, now I think this is sorted or at least it's not happened to me in a while can anybody confirm everything is loading ok?

Also noticed an issue with the posting a comments page loading slowly, think I may know the cause of this anybody else experiencing the same issue?

Now that I'm on the topic I have plans to change the theme in the near future to a 3 column theme as this one is starting to feel a little cluttered, I'm also in the process of brushing up on my XHTML and CSS skills so I do plan to completely overhaul the site at some point in the future.

EDIT: Sorted the slow loading pages looks like the script for the hit counter was playing up

Recently went out and bought myself a new desk as I was starting to get sick of using my bed as a desk not much room to get thing done, also I've had a 19" wide-screen monitor lying about doing nothing for the past god knows how long and thought it would be great to use this as a dual display with my Mac. Should make productivity much greater for my language studies and work.



After only a few hours of using this setup I think its excellent already finding it easier to sentence mine and keep up a Japanese environment, now I just need to get myself a 3rd monitor.

p.s. The rose isn't mine ;P

Was just reading a post over at Nihongo day by day (雨と水） and remembered just how excellent SRS software is for not forgetting things that you've learned I could read most of the article bar a few vocab, that I'll be sentence mining by the way. Now for the last few weeks I've not really added much to my sentence deck and not had huge exposure either except the 5 hours of listening I got the other day but yet I still could read the majority of that article the only thing I had kept regular was my sentence reviews.

So even though I hadn't actively been using Japanese each day for a while I've not really forgotten anything and the bits I have forgotten get picked up much easier the second time.

So for all those that worry they are going to forget everything if they take a brake from there Japanese studies don't worry about it just be sure to keep up with your reviews and when your ready to get back to your Japanese you'll be almost were you left off.

Well as some of you may know one of my largest goals in life is to live and work in Japan and no matter how hard this will be I intend to make it. So today I thought I would talk a little about what my plans are and how I intend to reach my goals of living and working in Japan.

I have nothing really special don't have a degree, haven't got much money and don't work in company that has a Japan division. First of all I've had to look at the degree front contrary to popular belief you don't need a degree to obtain a working visa in Japan, 10 years of experience in a specific field will also allow you to obtain a visa, this has set the first part of my goal I want to set off for Japan when I'm 28 at this time I will have 10 years experience in IT which comes under the working visa 'Engineering'. Although there is no denying that a degree would make life much easier for finding a job and the worst case scenario becoming an English teach, which I will talk about possible plans for me to obtain a degree before I set off to Japan in a later post.

Next up is another large obstacle 'money' my plan is when I reach the ripe old age of 28 that I will have enough cash saved to live in Japan without work for up to a year on a working holiday visa this should allow me enough time to hopefully find a job. To do this I've worked out that I need around 10k preferably more to live comfortably for many months until I find work this has to take into account there will be 2 mouths to feed as my wife will be with me. I started saving for this earlier this year and if I keep going at the rate I am now I should at least reach my goal of 10k

Other than these 2 main obstacles I just need to keep increasing my knowledge in many work related areas, my Japanese and people networking as any one of these can give you opportunities in life that you may otherwise never have.

As long as we all have dreams and ambitions we should realize that we can reach any of our goals in life if we try hard enough but we all need to think what can we be doing 'now!' not later but now as we all only have a finite amount of time.

Recently watched Tekkonkinkreet with my wife and must say I really didn't expect it to be as great as it was from the onset I thought oh this isn't my sort of animation style and oh this is gonna be another one of those mindless anime's that's got no real story and is just fighting.

How wrong I was I quickly fell in love with the anime I even like the animation style it seems to suit the story, basically its about two friends called black and white both are homeless and live in an old rust bucket of a car, black has always protected white since he was young and they both protect a part of the city called Treasure town from any sort of outer influence whether its other town gangs or the Yakuza.

When the Yakuza start moving back into the area is when all the trouble starts and black and white need to do there best to defend there city, although after white gets injured and taken away from black is when the show becomes great black is now out for revenge and the story starts to become pretty dark and twisted, black starts to lose all form of humanity as he seeks revenge he falls more and more into the dark with white being the only one that has his "screws" as white likes to say.

The story becomes a battle of black trying to stay away from becoming purely evil and white trying to gain his own screws back to saves blacks.

The show has many interesting themes that we can all take away, we all have a dark side and we all must battle with ourselves at one time or another, and even the innocent have there twisted side as we see with white and having great friends/family can help us keep grounded.

To sum up an excellent anime highly recommended to any anime fan and none anime fan alike, a surprisingly deep, twisted at times anime, if you can get past the different style of animation I'm sure most of you will find a gem of a show.

Noticed over at On How to Learn Japanese that there has recently been a sort of quiz over at revTK asking questions on how your faring with the AJATT method, so I thought I'd join in.

From Chester Zoo

From Chester Zoo

Well thought I would show a few photo's from a trip I made the other week and have a little talk about being content at were you are in life. I know most of us at one time or another have hit a wall of self improvement the point were life seems to be flying by and before you know it another year has passed and you still sat watching your favorite TV program wishing that you had gone ahead with that trip to China or put off learning that musical instrument that you always wanted to learn, and for what? the old I didn't have time or it can wait a week/month/year whatever the excuse may be.

From Chester Zoo

From Chester Zoo

Cum on do you really think that you have no time its pretty amazing the amount we can get done in a day if we put our mind to do we really need to watch a half baked show on TV that you have no real interest or the classic "I'm tired after work so dammit if I'm going to be doing anything" just a couple of examples of the many excuses most of us make at one time or another.

From Chester Zoo

I've been a victim of this many times after a long day at work I'll get home and say to myself "whoa tiring day I've earned a brake everything is going to have to wait" If you enjoy something is it really that much of a chore to do the things that you like whether its learning a new language, playing an instrument or planning that month trip to China just remind yourself what your aiming for and be sure to enjoy it.

From Chester Zoo

Now onto my point, what we don't realize is we start to become content with were we are, our daily routines even if we are not enjoying ourselves it can become very difficult for us to get up and do the stuff we have always wanted to, why? because its easier its easier to mope around doing the same routine day in day out being content can be one of the worst things for our productivity, I'm not saying being content is bad on the contrary if your very happy with were you are and have done everything you want to then your happily content which is great just don't get stuck in the trap, make sure you evaluate your contentedness every so often and decide if there is anything you should be doing now not tomorrow but now.

From Chester Zoo

You really don't want to look back in 20 years time and think wow there was so much I wanted to do but never did, time fly's' whether your happy with your contentedness or unhappy with it just going along with the flow

From Chester Zoo

From Chester Zoo