Nihongo Notes

Asian Kung-Fu Generation

Asian Kung-Fu Generation (アジアン・カンフー・ジェネレーション), or "Ajikan" (アジカン) for short, were the first Japanese rock band I came across in my search for Japanese music. My favourite songs are 君という花 ("Kimi to iu Hana" / "a flower named after you") and アンダースタンド ("Andāsutando" / "Understand"). The title of the latter is amusing because, well, I don't understand any of the lyrics yet! However I can appreciate good rock music and they are one of my top 5 favourite bands.

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Sanja Matsuri (Three Shrine Festival) in Asakusa, Tokyo

I was lucky enough to be in Tokyo during the Sanja Matsuri (三社祭, "Three Shrine Festival") at Asakusa. It was my first full day in Japan and what better way to start the trip than with a festival! I ended up walking down some of the side streets waiting for the parade to start and found some interesting shops and a very peaceful garden. Once I returned to the temple area it was packed with people waiting with cameras in hand.

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Boring lunch beaten by bento

My lunches used to consist of boring sandwiches, but they will be boring no longer! This is about my 4th attempt at bento and I freakin' love it! It's a lot healthier than the chicken mayo sandwiches I used to have! If you want to see a few more bentos that I've made check out my Flickr Food set. I plan to keep it updated with most of the bentos I make.

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Plurk your Japanese

I have a confession. I've been slacking. I memorised the Kana at the end of last week and since then I've only done about 2 hours of reviewing Kana. I should be moving on to the Kanji. I'm still immersing myself in Japanese but not as much as I could. Don't even get me started on my writing practice... In an effort to keep myself on track I'm giving Plurk.com a try!

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8 random facts about me

I thought the 8 facts meme, which spread wildly across the blogging community a while ago, would be a good way to introduce myself and for me to get to know others within the Japan-related blog community.

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Packing for Japan

This was my first time abroad on my own and with nobody around to ask for advice I had a lot of unanswered questions about packing. Thankfully we have the Internet! Here’s some of the packing advice I found online and things I found out during my 2 weeks in Japan. Rucksack, Holdall or Suitcase? I guess [...]

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