Phil's Worldwide travel in 2023/2024

Welcome to Taipei. I'm staying in Xinyi, a pretty popping area (this was recommended by a friend JY who loves Taipei). My airbnb is ok but I have to walk up stairs to the bed and the ceiling low. I did get sick as I was leaving Japan which was almost certainly from this women in my class that was coughing, sneezing and claiming how sick her kids was... grrrr I have an anytime fitness near me which is great and I plan on continuing with early morning workouts. Like Japan, convenient stores in Taiwan are pretty magical and contain everything. I did sign up for a night market food tour which was pretty good, nothing blew me away but I also didn't have their pork dishes.  Despite feeling pretty sick, I showed up for class. I am at ShuoHao Language center. The school itself was not very impressive inside, especially compared to Coto where I was taking lessons in Japan. Like a lot of schools in South America, this teacher was outsourced, which I don't like because in that case th...

Over the last week I have been enjoying Japanese classes at Coto. Initially it was a bit difficult because my reading and writing ability is quite limited, I never really paid attention to reading Kanji (the Japanese characters borrowed from China). However, having started it I see why it can give you a much deeper understanding. I was under the impression that most of my classmates started Japanese a few months ago, but now I find out some of them have been living in japan for 5 years, or have been taking lessons for many years... so I can't really understand why they are at such a low level still. However, I feel I am one of the only students actually studying after class. Although we have 8 people in the class, class would usually be around 3-5 people, high no show rate which means more attention. The class starts with new Kanji characters, reviewing new vocab, a mini quiz we do as a group, and then learning new grammar concepts (my fav part). I was already pretty familiar with ...

So far my Japan trip has been going amazingly. With so much planning, I feel there was mainly only a few hiccups. I have felt as though I have explored so much, but still left so much to see or do. The trip definitely prioritized food and doing stuff. I am now at Coto Japanese school studying Japanese, I am beginner 1 level 3. I feel like we are able to have basic conversation but enough to make the class a fun and conversational. Teachers seem a bit limited with English but it also forces us to use more Japanese to ask questions. The school is beautiful with as much roasted tea as a I want, but the class size was up to 8 one day, but it seems people miss often, today we had 3 people... I am family with most of the grammar, but I am way behind on the Kanji. I have avoided learning this as I was worried it would slow down my speaking, but now the time has come. It is extremely logical and kinda fun, but I suspect it takes a bit before it's really helping. However, as I am going to T...