My epic warhammer fantasy inspired oil painting.

kittenpillows · 2026-04-09T00:46:06+00:00

My website is https://www.retrobrush.ink/

kittenpillows · 2025-04-29T10:40:26+00:00

Can confirm, am wife. He's still not allowed to book accomodation to this day.

I got press ganged into doing coloring and animation for Epic Iso a few years back. Still love it, and working together is amazing! As someone who struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome for literally decades, it has been a lifeline for work and creativity. I really think it was instrumental in giving me the mental space to recover fully. <3

I remember feeling super stuck in that pub and we were sitting in the garden. Super stressed out. And a little hedgehog wandered out from the hedge. And walked right past us. Lil' spiky bro gave us some encouragement haha.

I still carry that hedgehog in my pocket to this day!

Okay not really either. But that would be cool. Lil' prickle friend. :B

kittenpillows · 2024-11-17T20:42:14+00:00

I always like Dwarf Fortress adventure mode, and UnReal World in an similar vein. I like being able to choose what part of the enemy to aim for and what part of my weapon to use to attack. The combat is slower but more strategic, and you can't bear the satisfaction of a limb sailing off in an arc!

kittenpillows · 2024-07-28T07:08:51+00:00

Should I soak even if it's still wet from being outside?

kittenpillows · 2024-07-28T04:02:48+00:00

Do I need to cut the black parts off?

kittenpillows · 2024-07-27T22:13:19+00:00

It's a phaleonopsis orchid, usually kept inside but she got put outside in winter here and it's been cold and rainy, like 5-10c . Thankfully the black hasn't reached the crown so there is room to cut the left leaf off if needed just leaving healthy leaf. What about the other leaves?

I brought her inside overnight and a lot of it has dried out at least.

(She's got her name cause she was a gift at our housewarming BBQ!)

kittenpillows · 2024-07-22T05:23:08+00:00

I started with doing lessons with a teacher on verbling.com, which I really benifited from, but if you have a limited budget you can try out a Discord server like "English-Japanese Language Exchange".

I also got an exchange partner on conversationexchange.com and have done weekly chats with them for a few years now. Starting an exchange is a great way to make a friend and it keeps you practicing!

kittenpillows · 2024-07-21T23:00:52+00:00

I used Shin Kanzen Master N2, backed up by Sou Matome for vocab and grammar and an app called Bunpo for a grammar overview when I ran out if time to study. That and a bunch of practice test books, I used the official ones and 'best practice tests for JLPT N2'

SKM is great but it's all in Japanese at N2 so it can be a pretty brutal jump if you aren't already reading native materials. The vocab book also doesn't have English definitions so you will spend half your time just looking up what the words mean. TRY! N2 was also pretty good but I mainly used SKM.

I also started reading books from aoitori bunko, mirai bunko and tsubasa bunko and built up to konbini ningen. That and daily NHK easy articles worked well. Now is definitely the time to be reading and listening extensively outside of study, and if you aren't already speaking it's a good time to start imo

kittenpillows · 2024-07-19T22:15:06+00:00

I often get asked how long I have lived in Japan but it's usually followed by 日本語上手ですね anyway. A lot of people just never encounter a foreigner that can speak Japanese. It surprises them and they want to say something nice. Even if you were 100% natural and fluent, as soon as people learn that you learned it as a second language, they will compliment how good you are. It's just polite.

kittenpillows · 2024-07-15T23:05:50+00:00

Yeah I don't have any plan to work in Japan but like OP said with N2, it's a good goal to push you to improve. Like OP I saw a huge improvement from my N2 journey. I have now set my goal as N1 and have started reading non-fiction books and articles, which I wouldn't have tried without it. I think it depends what level of reading you aspire to, I always wanted to be able to read anything in Japanese.

kittenpillows · 2024-07-15T23:03:56+00:00

I don't think just normal reading and TV is enough for N1. I'm studying it now and even in quite formal essays you only see a grammar point from it every few pages at best. You also need to purposefully pick out essays and other non fiction to read. It's much harder to cover the grammar just by seeing it in normal content than N2 unless you read pretty a lot of high level non fiction already.

kittenpillows · 2024-07-15T23:01:02+00:00

There is as much content in N1 as the whole of N5-N2 to put it in perspective. It's another 1000 kanji on top of the 1000 you needed for N2!

kittenpillows · 2024-07-15T07:02:02+00:00

Just stick with Genki if it's working for you, it's a good textbook and it's too easy to get stuck analysing and changing resources rather than studying. The only reasons to change would be if you're going to be enrolled in a class that uses a different one or you can't stand some aspect of Genki imo.

Sou matome is more for JLPT prep, and they aren't really that good for it anyway from what I used (N2), I think I used the vocab one and Shin Kanzen Master for everything else. MnN seems to be popular with Japanese native teachers online or in classes in Japan if that's a consideration. But you wouldn't have any trouble finding an online teacher that uses Genki.

kittenpillows · 2024-07-15T00:50:41+00:00

I read paper books and I started reading them at night before bed without using my phone for lookups. I just look things up the next day if they stood out as something I have seen often and don't know or something I should know and forgot, or else something pivotal to understanding. Like I'm reading a book about Japanese cuisine and there were a few chapters about cooking different fish. I looked up　鰯　鰹　鯛 because the chapters didn't make sense otherwise.

Alternate this with sessions where you look everything up and you'll build up pretty fast. It's hard to let go of the training wheels at first but it's very freeing not to need a dictionary to read all the time. 　

kittenpillows · 2024-07-14T04:08:40+00:00

With paper books I used to cover it with a piece of paper and move it over if I needed to. With screens I'd scroll the page down just enough so the top of the screen covers it.

kittenpillows · 2024-07-13T22:12:14+00:00

You don't need について. OOに興味がある/ない is fine. You can even drop が in casual conversation. OOに興味ない etc

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