Akiko

Akiko's avatar'

speaks: Japanese

learns: English

likes: reading, travel, cooking, language learning, health, art, cinema, language exchanges, philosophy, music, history, tv shows, programming, movies

Akiko's avatar'

I live in Toyama, Japan. In winter it snows a lot and we have to dig our cars out of the snow. I was a single mother raising my only son. Now he is independent and lives in Tokyo. Later then, I have started to relearn English during the Covid lockdown period and also started playing guitar at the same time. I am a web engineer and working remotely for a company.

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More About My Work

The CMS I mentioned in my previous post is called a-blog cms, and it has a market share of only about 1% in Japan. Here is my interview from when I was still a freelancer. It's only available in
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Nov 18 - 1 min. read

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About My Work

I got into the web industry about 25 years ago, just after the birth of my son. It was just when the Internet was beginning to spread, so there were a lot of jobs available. Having said that, finding
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Nov 17 - 1 min. read

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I’m In Nagoya

I work for a company in Nagoya, central Japan, and I'll be there for business for the next two days. I have a lot to write about after reading so many interesting posts, but I'm in a hotel and
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Nov 14 - 1 min. read

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Comforting And Beautiful Season

When I was a child, November was almost winter, but now, especially this year, it's a comforting and beautiful season. It was such a bright day yesterday that I drove to a park for lunch. My
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Nov 9 - 1 min. read

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Rest In Peace, Kazuo Umezz

It was reported that one of the giants of Japanese manga, Kazuo Umezz, died at the end of last month at the age of 88. Among the numerous masterpieces he left us, "The Drifting Classroom" is
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Nov 6 - 1 min. read

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The Same Guitar Strings That Elliott Used

I'm a new fan of Elliott Smith. When I first started playing guitar, I watched a lot of solo guitar and vocals videos, and the YouTube algorithm recommended his. I immediately fell in love with his
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Nov 3 - 1 min. read

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Dance As Therapy: Part 3

The night before the recital, the incidental musician came from Tokyo, and we did a dress rehearsal. We painted our bodies white and wore the white outfits we'd made on our own. The music for my
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Nov 2 - 2 min. read

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Dance As Therapy: Part 2

I was set to perform both a group dance and a solo at the recital, but I particularly want to focus on the solo in this series of posts. The choreography my instructors created for me was so simple
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Nov 1 - 2 min. read

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Dance As Therapy: Part 1

I ended up taking a butoh dance class for a couple of years. I hadn’t planned on joining something so unusual and intense, but before I realized it, I was fully immersed in it. Those were my craziest
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Oct 29 - 1 min. read

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The Chinese and Japanese Languages: Part 2

How we read ancient Chinese As I previously stated, Japanese high school students study ancient Chinese literature and poetry, but the grammars of both languages differ greatly from one another. So,
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Oct 26 - 3 min. read

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Taking Over Work for a Friend

I haven't had the energy to write posts lately because of a sad experience. I'm sorry to bring up such a serious subject, but I want to write about it. Journaly has already become more than just a
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Oct 19 - 2 min. read

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The Chinese and Japanese Languages: Part 1

My previous post received a lot of interesting comments from Journalers, which motivated me to write more about the Chinese and Japanese languages. Simplified and traditional Chinese characters
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Oct 7 - 3 min. read

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Can We Japanese Understand Written Chinese?

Sometimes I get asked how well we Japanese understand written Chinese. My answer is that I can only guess 30% of it. We studied ancient Chinese literature and poetry in high school, so I understand
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Sep 29 - 1 min. read

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How To Learn Japanese

I received a comment from a Japanese learner who asked me for recommendations and advice in learning Japanese. However, to be honest, I'm not sure whether I can make any useful suggestions because my
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Sep 23 - 1 min. read

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English Reading

I'm a slow reader even in Japanese, let alone in English, but finally I've come to feel that it's easier to read in English if the content was originally written in English. I used to frequently
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Sep 22 - 1 min. read

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My Short Trip to Ueda: Part 6 What I've Learned About The Wind Cave

In this post, I'm going to write about what I found out about the Wind Cave online later on, as well as what I heard from Motoshima-san. When was it created? The oldest record of its existence is
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Sep 19 - 2 min. read

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My Short Trip to Ueda: Part 5 Wind Cave

After checking out of our guesthouse, we all headed to the Wind Cave. It was me, again, who suggested visiting there, after seeing a tiny photo and a brief description in a brochure for
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Sep 17 - 1 min. read

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My Short Trip to Ueda: Part 4 Earthworks Guesthouse

The Earthworks Guesthouse was a cozy and lovely place to stay. It's owned by a couple, Roberto and Rumi, who are both ceramic artists. It was originally an old silkworm farmhouse and they totally
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Sep 13 - 1 min. read

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My Short Trip to Ueda: Part 3 Three-Year-Old Kan-kun

On the first night, Motoshima-san and his family visited our guesthouse, and we all had a great meal and chat. The Hitonoma children had all grown significantly over the past seven years. Some of the
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Sep 10 - 2 min. read

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Interlude: Strange Calendars in Japan

Unfortunately, all of my friends who came with me to Ueda disposed of the calendars we received at the Anraku temple. So I found similar calendars online: 自分の使命を生きるための 日めくりカレンダー あなたの人生はあなたのもの What's
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Sep 6 - 1 min. read

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