Two Years in Japan Review

With the spring comes the end of another school term in Japan.

And with that came the decision I’d have to make about whether I’d stay on another year or not. While a part of me would love to continue on for another year, the rest of me knows that it’s time to move on.

There were many great things about living here, and the job was fun, but it’s no secret that teaching English in Japan is not a great long-term deal. So while I’d love to stay, I’d also love to go home. I haven’t seen my family in two years, and it’s about time I paid them a visit.

In a week I’ll move out from the apartment I’ve lived in for the last two years, here in a small city in Nagano Prefecture. I’ll spend a little over a week in Tokyo (giving me the opportunity to see all of the cherry blossoms there for the third year in a row) before leaving Japan.

Blog Post #649

Once again I wanted to write something, and now that I’ve managed to finally catch the little moth that kept appearing and disappearing in my room, I can focus on my laptop without the moth dive bombing into my face from the darkness.

But I wasn’t sure of what to write about, as always. Didn’t see any real good writing prompts to work off of and couldn’t think of anything, but I’ve been keeping my eyes open anyways.

So it’s just a general purpose blog post this time around.

Unexpected changes in my life after moving to Japan.

Felt like writing a blog post, so here we are.

Since moving to Japan a lot has changed in my life. I mean really I could never have fully anticipated how everything would go. I’ve made attempts to go out and do more, learn more, experience more. And compared to how I was in Canada, I’d say I’ve managed to do much more on that front.

But anyways, there have been some unexpected changes, some of which I could never have expected.

So I’ll share some of those with you all.

Diplomacy in Reviews

The other day I was thinking about what my biggest pet peeves are when reading a review, and while there are a few, instead of listing them I figured I’d write about what I consider to be the biggest one.

And that pet peeve is when someone writes in a way that completely lacks diplomacy.

How To: Write a WordPress Post Using the Gutenberg Block Editor

It feels like it’s time for another post on the “new” WordPress post editor: Gutenberg.

I’ve written about Gutenberg several times before (first this, then this). At first, I forced myself to try it due to the various benefits that had been told to me by Lynn “The Early Adopter” Sheridan, AKA The Otaku Author. I flip-flopped back and forth between it and the Classic Editor, ruining many posts (don’t convert from the block editor to classic, it ruins your post and you’ll have to fix so many things), and then eventually gave in again and went back to Gutenberg.

It’s been a hotbed of criticism from other bloggers, but I feel like maybe some other bloggers haven’t taken the time to learn how to really make use of the block editor’s features when it comes to constructing a post. And so, I’ll go over how I use the editor to make posts in what I consider to be a very easy and convenient way.

Why are you embarrassed?

Another idea has crossed my mind in a similar vein to the last blog post I wrote about life and how anime stories can alter our perspective / expectations of it.

But this one tackles something else that we often see and experience in life.
And while the idea was inspired by an experience I had here in Japan, the topic itself is far from exclusive to Japan.

The Plague of WordPress: AI Generated Posts

There’s something that’s been happening on WordPress for a while now.
A real plague.

One that you may not realize exists, because you don’t know where to look.
But just you wait, because it’s only a matter of time until you see it too…

Blogger Recognition Award 3: Blog Hard With A Vengeance

Well well well, look what we have here folks.
Another Blogger Recognition Award.

I don’t mean to brag, but, this is the third one I’ve won now.
Look, some blogs are just better than others. That’s just how it is.
And this happens to be one of the best blogs to ever exist,
second only to The Joe Rogan Experience.

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12 Random Japan School Life Tidbits

Let’s get into some random tidbits about school life in Japan.
No rhyme or reason to them, these are mainly just quirks of school life here that weren’t really a thing in Canada where I’m from.

So here we go with 12 Japan school life tidbits!

Japan Life Update: School Edition

So I was going to write another list post about random tidbits you maybe didn’t know about Japan schools, but first I figured I’d give an update on where I’m at and what’s going on in regards to that!

Also because I ended up including a bunch of disclaimers that took up half the post last time before realizing I should just throw this info all in one post. So the list will come later.

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