I discovered another Japanese language resource from my time in Kumamoto! I'm pleasantly surprised it's still around, given it's 20 years old. Behold! Erin's Challenge: I can speak Japanese! "エリンが挑戦！にほんごできます" Duo, eat your heart out. That owl's got nothing on Honigon. www.erin.jpf.go.jp/en/

The skills that make me a valuable asset lean heavily into being a cook and a scholar. Growing up in the Montana wilderness, living in a van, being broke and unhoused in a city, hoarding books on subjects related to sustaining a community? If I need to pack and go, I'm ready to pack and go.

Quitting Facebook is right up there with quitting drinking as one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. It's been over a year since I deleted my account, and I don't miss the unhinged walls of text you'd find in people's comment sections.

Who wants to come over and watch Ghost Stories? 🤣

新しい小さな友達ね?

Since I'm on to hoarding as much knowledge and resources to sustain a community, I stumbled across the "Quantity Recipes for School Food Service" cookbook on Internet Archive. Want to make the school lunch of your childhood? It's all right here. Including the pizza~ archive.org/details/CAT9...

This dusty old laptop may be the start of my homelab era. Time to bump up my data hoarding beyond external drives and onto an actual server~

我慢できなかった。🤣

新しい日本語だけブルースカイアカウントを作った! I figured it was high time I made a Japanese-exclusive account. The more practice the better, amiright? Feel free to give me a follow if you're down for chatting it up! I'm always down to practice! bsky.app/profile/road...

It's been almost ten years since I lived in a van and went through the lowest point of my life. Even after you re-integrate into society, there are some things that you can never shake off. Certain feelings, certain experiences... You never fully forget what happened. But it does get better.

Remember. Just because you think you lost a skill doesn't mean it's not lying dormant. Like a muscle, you just have to re-train it.

The ōzato radical "阝" in certain kanji characters always reminds me of the German letter ß. You typically find it in kanji characters related to places. Specifically places like buildings, cities, states, or districts.

It's kind of hilarious that the Japanese word for explosion, 爆発(Bakuhatsu) is made up of the characters 爆 for bomb and 発 for departure. Made even funnier when 爆 also means "uproarious laughter." So what you're saying is last year, a box truck had an "uproarious laughing departure" in Chicago?

Taking pictures of my kanji practice sheets is taking me back to that time I snapped a picture of my homework from a late night study sesh at a Yoshinoya in Kumamoto.

In my search for not only my old Japanese textbooks online, but further additions to my hoard of resources? I should make mention that MIT offers free Japanese course materials! ocw.mit.edu/search/?q=Ja...

"wEre yOuR eYeS iNspiReD bY kAsH pATeL?" I don't know why someone would say that about a fursuit, but a quip like that would automatically make them the most punchable person in the room.

Hotpot time! Got some of that spicy fire with that buzz from the Sichuan peppercorns up in here. Co-starring my Costco rotisserie paitan broth!

俺の漢字教科書を製本した!　練習へ行くぞ!!!!! I just bound my kanji textbook! Let's fucking gooooo!!!!!

Holy shit. Free PDFs of the Basic and Intermediate kanji books I used while going to college in Kumamoto? NOW we're talkin! That dull and rusty linguistic blade is about to be polished and honed back to the edge it once had.

A $70 commercial 3-hole punch for four bucks??? YES PLEASE.

A cryptobro will try to convince you that money sinks like NFTs and AI are a good investment. A crypto-anarchist will teach you how to rip blu-rays onto a NAS and give you a flash drive filled with PDF copies of every resource you need to start a self-sustaining off-grid commune.

A good no-subscription printer is a worthwhile investment. Like a Brother laser printer for $200. Stacks of copy paper are only $5. Then you can thrift a three-hole punch along with a 90s trapper keeper and fill it to the brim with several free PDFs of textbooks that you parse with divider tabs.

It's funny... For years, I've been so used to living alone. Being perfectly okay with being alone. But lately? I'm craving connection so much that it's starting to hurt...

Screw katanas. Get me a fucking tetsubo.

The tonal whiplash between the serious nature of the Pioneer dub and the OG Streamline dub of Akira is like going from a cup of black coffee to a 100oz big gulp full of Baja Blast.

Okay. I've watched Akira I don't know how many times. But this is my first time watching the OG Streamline dub that played in US theaters in 1989. I gotta say. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I am. It evokes the OVA dubs of that time period in all of its unpolished and campy glory. 🤣

OH YEAH. In 1888, katakana was set up so there literally was no difference between オ and ヲ. They were both simply "ヲ" and what is currently エ was originally ヱ. A character no longer in use. Goes to show how mutable language can be across a century and a half alone.

If you're just starting out with learning Kanji, or in my case doing handwriting drills to improve my muscle memory? kanji.sh is a wonderful resource for free worksheets! No need to spend $20-50 on books. My favorite category is the practice sheets based on frequency of use.

I need help to afford our monthly bills and remain housed. 🙏🔄💚 I am struggling to keep up with the high cost of living while I job search. If you are secure and able to safely make a donation, any gesture big or small means the world to me right now, thank you all so very much.

Physical pain sucks... But psychological and emotional pain? To me, it's honestly worse... Even moreso when the world around you denies that it exists just because you can't see its effects. Words. Can. Hurt. In more profoundly awful ways than a cut, a bruise, or a slap in the face.

It's kind of hilarious when a person has all of the followers, all of the members, and all of the popularity they could ever ask for. Yet they still hate you and they're still jealous of you. All because they can never be you.

I only decided to taper off to one can of Celsius and some tea, but even that is giving me caffeine withdrawals that are kicking my ass. X..x I'm just going to spend all day tomorrow doing nothing but sleeping in bed and playing Super Nintendo games.

DBZ in raw Japanese? YES PLEASE.

Looking forward to going to that big annual book sale the library does at the fairgrounds. I wonder if I can score deals on some Japanese textbooks.

I remember seeing a quote along the lines of "Hedonism is good actually, rich people just suck at it." Adding to that, so is audacity. Audacity is actually a good thing when you use it to embody your authenticity in a way that inspires others to do the same.

This is the loading screen in my brain whenever I take a moment to think.

New favourite clip from Japanese news just dropped

Okay. I really overdid it with the Arnold Palmers. X..x I'm just going to stick to stevia lemonade for now. Cut back my caffeine consumption a bit.

High time I upgraded my media storage. xP

Gentle reminder…

I just realized... Between games, movies, shows, and music? Multiple media drives, an mp3 player, record player, SNES everdrive cartridge, Anbernic RGDS, and a hoard of VHS tapes? I have enough offline entertainment to keep me occupied for years. If not decades.

The biggest downgrade in human history

Out of all the Japanese records I've gone back and played from my collection? The live performance of Kaientai at Budokan is the one I've gone back and played the most. It's so...SO good.

YOOOOOOO I have a new toy! Now I can bring KBBQ/Yakiniku to a potluck!

Nomfing on ramyun out of a yangeun naembi and getting back into eating kimchi straight out of the jar like I did in college... It has me going back and listening to T-ara like it's 2012 all over again. One of several Kpop groups the Korean exchange students turned me onto while living in Japan.

Pokemon family business

Homemade sugar-free Arnold Palmers and HK Lemon tea galore. But now I'm thinking about making sugar-free switchel. I'm guessing brown stevia as an alternative to molasses. Many cheap homemade beverage ideas a brewin~

Tried my first homemade Arnold Palmer with stevia and it's soooo good. Though for my next batch, I might just add lemon juice and stevia to a whole gallon of oolong tea instead of the half-tea half-lemonade I just made. Probably won't be an Arnold Palmer at that point. More like HK lemon tea.

n the absence of a gym or fancy equipment, there's always a way to get a workout in. There's always a way to build strength. There's always a way to make use of your own body weight to get stronger when you're unable to lift weights.

Don't go out of your way to mess with someone unless you're willing to accept the consequences. There are always consequences for messing with someone. Whether immediate or not.