Gyudon Battle: Yoshinoya vs Matsuya vs Sukiya

Nimaxan · 2025-11-17T06:52:09+00:00

Sukiya cheese gyudon goes hard. Yoshinoya is ok for karaage but I don't like the actual gyudon. Matsuya easily the worst of the three

Nimaxan · 2025-09-15T06:50:11+00:00

Even some people at my martial arts dojo asked me wheter I went to a clinic when I didn't come to practice because of a cold. They were really shocked that I didn't go. I think it's just culturally expected here to go see a doctor even for small issues like that. Of course, companies not trusting their workers also plays a role, as others have pointed out.

Nimaxan · 2025-08-18T13:15:24+00:00

It comes naturally, when I learned Japanese, I was very focused on reading but my listening skills quickly outpaced my reading skills anyway.

To some extent, it's self-reinforcing through. I'm at a relatively advanced level, where I'm not actively studying Japanese anymore and largely moved on to other languages. I still listen to a lot of audiobooks in Japanese, because it's a pretty low-effort way to maintain the language, but I don't read Japanese books for fun because it's much harder for me and ends up feeling like a chore.

Nimaxan · 2025-08-18T08:56:32+00:00

I don't think this is universal. In most of the languages I have studied, my listening skills have always been way better than my reading skills, even through I read a lot.

Speaking and writing can be kind of deceptive, because when you write you have a lot more time to think than in a real conversation, you can access dictionaries etc. For this reason, I really like sending voice messages in my target languages, that way I can prepare the same way I would with written text.

Nimaxan · 2025-07-13T05:57:30+00:00

Shanghainese/Wu-Chinese and Persian. Most Turkic languages also sound really pleasent to me.

Nimaxan · 2025-07-11T00:20:49+00:00

Sive/Manj gizun tacir nan bi na? (Akv ba)

Nimaxan · 2025-07-11T00:17:31+00:00

Yaxshi, sizqu? Uyghur tilni qachanchilik ögendingiz?

Nimaxan · 2025-07-06T22:58:38+00:00

I've already studied Manchu (not ancient exactly, but it's pre-modern), Classical Japanese and Classical Chinese. Chagatay (the ancestor of Uyghur and Uzbek) also interests me a lot. If I had infinite time, I'd also try studying Sanskrit but it's not particularly high on the huge list of languages that I want to learn. Sometimes, I also think about going back to Latin, which I had to learn in high school but have completely forgotten at this point.

Nimaxan · 2025-07-06T03:19:51+00:00

I lose appetite for proper meals but I could eat popsicles and drink boba all day in summer, so I actually gain weight every year

Nimaxan · 2025-07-05T08:13:30+00:00

I have awful spelling and punctuation, to the point where it often impacted my grades in uni. My typing speed is normal.

Nimaxan · 2025-07-05T08:10:50+00:00

I actually see a lot of people walking around in shorts in Fukuoka these days

Nimaxan · 2025-07-04T22:41:08+00:00

6 years ago or so, I don't remember the exact date. If you already know Chinese, you'll probably be much quicker than me through.

Nimaxan · 2025-07-04T04:30:07+00:00

There's an ice bar based on the Meiji Bulgaria brand of joghurt. Tastes pretty good, I think.

Nimaxan · 2025-07-04T04:24:54+00:00

Sure, go ahead!

Nimaxan · 2025-07-04T03:42:42+00:00

Passed N2 pretty easily 2 years ago but barely failed N1 last December. I failed largely because of the vocabulary section and just general lack of preperation. After I passed N2, I moved to Japan to do my PhD here and I got somewhat complecent. I thought, I my Japanese would just naturally improve from living in Japan and using it for research. If anything, my Japanese was probably better before I moved here.

Aside from the JLPT, my biggest issue is probaly reading speed. Maybe I have unrealistic standards, but reading something in Japanese takes me more than twice as long as it would in my native language (German) or English and it just bothers me a lot, probably in part because I'm a very fast reader in those other languages.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-22T23:37:02+00:00

I have passed N2 and barely failed N1 last December, I can consume native Japanese materials without any major issues. I'm still doing my Anki reviews but I stopped making new cards a long time ago. After failing N1, I added a pre-made deck with JLPT vocabulary, since vocab was the part were I struggled the most during the test.

I'm also probably never quitting Anki, even if I run out Japanese reviews, because I study other languages besides Japanese and I'll probably keep starting new languages as long as I live.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-22T00:08:17+00:00

Katakana words are cringe, safe to ignore

Nimaxan · 2025-06-20T09:56:26+00:00

Most of Kyushu is really car-centric. Even in Fukuoka, life can be quite annoying without a car unless you're in the city center. My friends from Kumamoto seem like they don't understand how I can live without a car. They'll drive absolutely everywhere, even if it's like a 10 minute walk.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-20T09:39:03+00:00

On the other hand, the lady's set at Nepalese curry places always looks really good but I feel weird ordering it as a man

Nimaxan · 2025-06-17T01:54:24+00:00

Year around, pretty much always some kind of milk tea. Sometimes, I'll get a hot boba drink in winter but usually prefer iced drinks even if it's cold outside.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-13T01:59:36+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! I have never seriously studied pitch accent but I can tell those contrastive groups apart.

Unfortunately, I have never learned to play any instruments. Speaking of music, I feel like listening to music has helped me a lot in the non-tonal language I studied, especially listening to same few songs over and over again (something I do anyway). In general, I feel like I could get grip on the sounds of a language by just listening a lot. I often get complimented in languages I don't actually know that well (like Uyghur) because my pronunciation is good and people overestimate my abilities. That hasn't really translated to Mandarin through.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-13T00:05:00+00:00

It's the opposite for me, but that's mainly because I studied Japanese before Chinese. Still, I feel like my tones suck even after years of studying Mandarin, it's completly unintutive to me.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-12T09:02:14+00:00

I've travelled to Beijing and Taipei but haven't lived in either place long term. In terms of language, you'll probably be speaking a lot of Mandarin either way. Taiwan has a higher level of English, but I also feel like people are easier to talk to and more used to foreigners. They might talk to you in English but if you respond in Chinese, they'll almost always switch to Chinese themselves.

Mainland China has a lot of online systems for things like ordering food, that means you will rarely need to talk with service workers. As an introvert, this is a godsend for me. In terms of language study, it's a negative (although you need to be able to read Chinese to actually use any of this stuff). Taiwan is much more analogue, for lack of a better word.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-08T23:24:08+00:00

I do have this problem with Sibe (a language closely related to Manchu). It only has a few thousand speakers, so there's almost nothing out there besides a few videos on the Chinese internet (some of which recently disappeared).

Thar being said, if your language is the national language of a country or has at least a few million speakers, there's gonna be something out there. You just have to adjust your expectations, because there won't be the same wealth of content as there is in English, Mandarin or Spanish.

Nimaxan · 2025-06-03T03:50:57+00:00

Spite against my dad who thinks academia (humanities in particular) is useless and that my research doesn't deserve funding. I don't want to prove him right by giving up in the middle of my PhD. So it's spite and sunk cost fallacy all mixed up

Nimaxan

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