久しぶり～～

I thought I would be back with a book update this month, but I didn’t read a Japanese novel between the end of October and now. I did, however, get myself a Scribd membership and read a few books in English. I just started on the book Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I’m not yet far enough into it to say how I feel though.

In Japanese related news,

The JLPT N1 is about two weeks away. I’m not 100% confident I can pass. However, I’m going to keep dedicating as much of my time as possible to studying. The good thing is that the grammar gets more comfortable each time I review it. However, I don’t see a lot of the syntax at this level in daily life, so it can be a challenge to get perfectly. I took a break from reading light novels so that I could focus more on newspaper articles and interviews. The language was slightly more difficult than the books, which makes it good practice. It has also helped me pick up much more vocabulary, which I need.

Even after the test is over, I have to keep up my reading in both languages because…

I’ve decided, seriously this time, that I want to be a Japanese to English translator.

It’s a slightly scary thought, though. I’ve only done one translation job, and I have no official training besides translating things privately for fun. So, I have to come up with a game plan to make this work.

I also decided, to get back into photography.

I’ve been making a lot of decisions, it seems.

And yet, I still have more to make.

• My boyfriend wants to get married
• Whether or not to leave Japan next year
• What my next steps will be

A lot is going on as I finish up the year. But, I plan to end strong and start 2019 even stronger.

I’ll be back after the JLPT. So until then…