A Brit in Japan
Back in April, I’d made my mind up.
Despite slowly learning Japanese, I didn’t actually have anything to prove the language skills I had. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t particularly like exams themselves, but I do really like passing them.
Continue reading “26. | 5 Tools I Used to Pass the JLPT N5”
If you’ve kept an eye on this blog for the last few weeks, you’ll probably have seen that I recently had my 25th birthday. Back in January, I was riding the train home from New Years’ celebrations in Tokyo and watching the sun rise on the beginning of 2018, and in that moment I realised that in eight months’ time, I’d have lived for a quarter of a century. That milestone has come and gone, and it made me look back on the last 12 months. What with quitting my job, leaving my family, and starting a new life in Japan; it’s probably been the biggest year of my life so far.
I’ve had a lot of learning to do so I figured I’d share some of the things my experiences have taught me. Here are 25 things I’ve learnt in the 25th year of my life… Continue reading “25. | 25 Things I Learned in my 25th Year”
So, it’s time for part two of my birthday blog! Part one can be found here, but, where was I again? Oh yeah…
In less than two hours from the end of my workshop, I was standing at the gates of DisneySea, my ticket in my hand and a smile on my face. It may have been a different park; it may have been a different country but the Disney magic I knew and loved hit me in an instant.
By the time I go back to England, I will have been away from home for nearly fourteen months, meaning that I will have spent one Christmas and one birthday away from my family. I recently turned 25, and if I learned anything from Christmastime, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.
(You can find part one of our trip to Hakone here.)
The ropeway is a direct route to the Lake Cruise Station, Togendai, but instead of patiently waiting for the next boat, we had other ideas…
Continue reading “22. | Hakone [Part 2/2: Lake Ashi, The Checkpoint & Hakone Shrine]”
Recently, I’ve been sorting through old photos to upload to Facebook and given that I take way too many, it’s not exactly been a quick five minute job. Because of that, I currently still have photos from three months ago still hidden on my laptop. While looking through April’s pictures, I found the ones from the trip to Hakone, and I figured it was about time I actually documented that day.
Continue reading “21. | Hakone [Part 1/2: Gora and Owakudani Volcano]”
I’ve been planning on visiting Kamakura for a long time now. Because it’s one of the main places that appear when you research Kanagawa Prefecture, I knew I wanted to check it out. However, every time I had any free time, I kept postponing it and postponing it.
In the winter, my excuse was waiting for the warmer weather. It is a coastal city after all, and even if I’m used to freezing grey beaches back home, I wanted to choose a good day for it. During the school holidays and Golden Week, my excuse was that crowds of people from neighbouring cities would be descending on the Shōnan coastline for a little dose of escapism. This is especially true seeing as it’s only an hour away from Yokohama and an hour and a half away from Tokyo, the two largest cities in the whole of Japan.
Fortunately for me, fate decided to step in and make sure I wouldn’t keep procrastinating.
