Nihongo Notes in 2009

This was a Wordpress theme I built using parts of other themes and a bit of my own style.

I eventually made my own theme from scratch with a lot of custom code. The blue color continued to be used in further designs and is now the official Nihongo Notes color scheme.

This was back when I had big plans of turning the site into an educational resource, with lessons and resources for learning Japanese. I got way ahead of myself. I had to learn Japanese first! Writing lessons would be helpful to my study but slow me down immensely.

I eventually migrated most of the articles to Mirai Gaia. I went through a few different ideas on how the site would work. I had some big ideas, which are still planned, but I recently made some decisions about blogging.

I realized I had lost all enthusiasm to post. The reason became obvious, it felt like a job, and one I didn't like. I had plans on writing tons of content about learning Japanese, whilst still learning Japanese. This was not practical, since most of that time would be spent writing in English.

So I threw those plans out, and got back to the real reason I started blogging. I wanted to help myself learn Japanese by keeping a journal in both English and Japanese. I also wanted to talk about the things I enjoy about life in Japan.

So that's what I'm now doing. The Japanese side of this site will open within a few hours. I'm now writing an article once a day about my study, sometimes I may post it a day or two late because the Japanese translation takes a while, but I plan to keep a log for each day. I will also keep posting about life in Japan and Japanese culture.

I've removed most of the advertising because I want to avoid being swayed by referral fees or Adsense clicks. If I do put any advertising up it will be direct paid advertising which is relevant to learning Japanese, and the product being highlighted is good quality. Any money goes to paying for the server costs anyway ^^

Over Christmas the wife and I flew to the UK to spend it with my family. We also had my brother's wife's family over from Australia. It was a great time!

Bye-bye Japan. My last Japanese meal of the year, a Virgin Atlantic bento box.

The flight was good, but we had a very bumpy landing. It was starting to snow and the wind was up. It looked like a tough job for the pilot.

We woke up to snow on our first morning!

We were lucky we landed the day before, because there was traffic chaos everywhere and flights were delayed.

We spent a day in Cambridge. It was bloody cold!

This was amazing! The choir was practicing and they were really good. The atmosphere made it all the more impressive.

We spotted a lot of Japanese signs in Cambridge. Some made sense, others were totally wrong ^^

It was a great day, even if I could no longer feel my hands *brrr* ^^

Compared to Tokyo the London underground is really dirty and dark. The trains are a lot smaller too, but they got us from A to B.

Daylight!

This is the Japanese Embassy in London, where I got my Working Holiday visa for Japan. It seems strange that it was only just over a year ago I was there. Feels like it was much longer ago.

Big Ben, not as big as we were expecting.

We got on this tour boat and traveled down the Thames. The announcer was quite funny. It was good to get out of the cold with a warm cup of tea.

The girls dragged us all the way to this Cath Kidston store. They left with arms full and big smiles.

I think this was the skeleton of a polar bear. It was encased in ice!

A lovely big portion of fish & chips!

It was my Dad's birthday, so we stopped at a steak house for dinner.

We finished the evening off with chocolate cake.

When we arrived at St Pancreas station it was chaos. Trains were stopped due to snow and it was starting to get very crowded.

We eventually had to go to another area to catch a different train, along with many other people. We queued up, sure we were at the right train. Turns out we were right, but as soon as other people realized which platform it was departing from they rushed past the other side of the barrier. It was incredibly rude, but to be expected in the UK where it's every man for himself ^^

One of my jobs on Christmas day was to peel the Brussels sprouts. Most people seem to hate them, but I love them. They give you super powers, like the ability to clear a room of people within seconds *frrrrp* ^^

When we flew out the snow had eventually cleared and flight schedules were back to normal. A few days after that there was another downpour of snow, worse that before. Our timing was quite good ^^

It was sad to leave family again, but we had a great time and we will get to see everyone again in 2010.