日本語 notes・7月2日

Recently in Japanese I have been sending my teacher a couple of paragraphs about whatever I have wanted to write about and we have been going through them together. The key phrase is always, 「これのほうが自然な言い方かな?でも、意味がわかりますよ。」 When you’re learning a foreign language, all pride kind of goes out of the window. Then we move on to an article from a magazine or newspaper and just go through any bits I struggled with etc.

I find it quite hard to think of topics to write about, so this week I sent this to read – 空洞. To me, this style of ...

日本語 notes・6月25日

  • アーモンドプードル – アーモンドの粉末。アーモンド パウダー。
  • 卵白・らんぱく vs 卵黄・らんおう
  • 泡立て器・a whisk
  • ゴムヘラ・a spatula (rubber)
  • Dry (for cakes)
    • ドライな
    • ぱさぱさしている・水分や脂けの少ないさま。「―したご飯」
    • ボソボソしている –  水気がなくてひからびているさま。ぱさぱさ。「―(と)したパン」
      • ひからびる – dry up/shrivel up
  • 生焼けっぽい – underdone/half-baked
  • 少なくとも vs せめて
    • 少なくとも - 最小の程度や最低の段階に言及するさま。中立
    • せめて – それで満足というわけではないが,最小限これだけでもという話し手の気持ちを表す

Theme: Me moaning about Italian cakes and biscuits being too dry and not liking them.

...

Stages of Grief

Rightly or wrongly, I can’t stop thinking about that show the other night. I was outraged at first but now I just feel a profound sadness about it which I know seems extreme but that’s how it is.

  • I feel really let down by the judgement behind the decision.
  • More than anything, I feel as though the time, money and experience of the fans got treated as secondary.
    • People will have taken time off work to attend.
    • People will have travelled.
    • People will have saved up to buy tickets.
    • People will have received tickets as presents.
    • People will have paid
...

Beijing 2026

Day seventeen

Just travel today. Before we left the hotel, C asked me how much 15kg was in stone and I answered immediately with 9 stone to which C replied, It’s not 9 stone, Emily. I’ve not been walking around with a person on my back. I was laughing so much I couldn’t stand up. For those interested, it’s more like 2 stone and a bit.

We got to the train station and it was similar to airport security. It took ages and my passport never works so it’s always a right pain. We’d planned to go to Starbucks but ...

Shanghai 2026

Day eleven

We got to the airport and the queue to check-in was ridiculous. We wanted to sit together and the only seats available were the emergency exit row ones. We were allowed to have these seats despite neither of us being able to speak Mandarin which seemed like a flaw in the system to us. We played our game of spend our remaining cash at Starbucks in the airport, got on the plane and arrived in Shanghai.

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai on the 77th floor and for the first few days, we were scared of how ...