JapanBlast.com

Alright, still settling in to the new place.  February will be drawing to a close before I know it.  Time to get cracking!

From a studying Japanese point of view (and non-work life in general), last year was mainly a mess.  I spent so much time traveling about to different APAC countries that my study attempts where constantly interrupted and/or derailed.  Some of this you can attribute to time management…. but in general this was not the case.

Trust me, after you continually spend two, to three weeks at a time away from home traveling to numerous countries - each with a different language and culture - and your only consistency is the English language, you’ll probably understand.

Just to see an example of an upcoming trip that I have go here:

Also, less than 5% of my work last year even had a chance to involve Japanese.  So although I “lived” in Japan, due to the demands and structure of my job, my opportunities my the Japanese language were surprising limited.  Additionally, the Japanese that is typically taught in textbooks was woefully inadequate when it came to that “less than 5%”.  More on that another day.

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Anyhow, some things that I did accomplish last year with regards to my study of the Japanese language:

• Accidentally validated my view that the method typically used for teaching Japanese is flawed
• Discovered a series of methods for studying Japanese (and languages in general) more inline with what I think would work (and how I actually learned my native language of English to the advanced degree that I have)
• Finally pulled the RTK (Remember the Kanji) book of the shelf, dusted it off, and gave it a genuine try — completely awesome!  Wish i would have done it sooner!
• Experimented with several of the new techniques - getting a feel for which worked best and how to leverage them

All of this pretty much happened it the last few months of the year.

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So, my company has recently agreed that my role (as far as how much a support which regions) should be a bit more in line with what I have always felt… I may get into the root cause of that change someday.

But bottom line is that nowadays - I have the need, new found focus, and (theoretically) some level of corporate support to spend more “job-time” focused on Japan.

With that in mind, I started thinking about the JLPT exam again.  And as this post is long enough.. go here.