The Spärrows had been on my radar for ages and each time I was in Manchester, I was going to go, then ended up not. This time though, I did manage to go and I am so happy I did. Now, the food was good but the service is where the restaurant shone. I love good service, I think it’s from living in Japan so long and it is quite hard to find in the UK in a lot of places.
It’s a bit of a walk from town – I’d say more Cheetham Hill than city centre, they say ...
Learning through puzzles. ‘You like doing puzzles in English, so why not Japanese?’ (these were my initial thoughts). I’m not sure it really worked out that way…
Some good crosswords:
Crosswords that weren’t so useful:
Ultimately, this book was never aimed at me. It’s for children in primary school years 1-3. Whilst I might not be very interested in learning what different insects are called in Japanese, children in Japan certainly are and would have no trouble naming them. As I don’t know many insects (in Japanese or English), I would need ...
I’ve had this book lurking around for a while. I originally got it when I was going through my, ‘I need to learn all the basics in Japanese’ phase. It does have phrases that I don’t know, so I am happy with it. Top tip, if you haven’t realised by now, you cannot just learn words in Japanese and string them together, you have to learn phrases. I wish I had been told that when I first started learning.
How I use the book
I started off by going through the 覚えましょう section. I would either use their example sentence, ...
It’s a controversial topic – to JLPT or not, but like it or lump it, it can be quite useful when it comes to job hunting. Of course, it’s a double edged sword because the JLPT doesn’t test speaking, so you can have N1 but be terrible at speaking. People have their own assumptions about your abilities when it comes to your JLPT level but sometimes, their expectations can be a little unfair. Of course the JLPT doesn’t test writing either, which can be considered quite a useful skill.
Anyway, I wanted to compile a list of resources that have ...
A thing you get asked over and over and over and over again in Japan is (and this is no matter on the age), ‘What are your hobbies?’. To me, this is an odd question to ask an adult but maybe I’m the odd one? My usual boring answer is, ‘reading’. And watching TV and Netflix and YouTube AND of course, eating. This actually annoys me because my hobby is reading. I like to read and I do read. I am under the impression that lots of people say reading is their hobby but then they never do it. ...