Hi, hello, Stefanie What. Where have you been?

Yes, I’ve been away from the blog for a few weeks. Golden Week happened, and then I decided to pick up several personal projects all at once because y’know, you either go big or go home, right?

Let’s start with Golden Week shenanigans. I will be posting separate blog posts on each of the “big” adventures, but some of the highlights included:

• Participating in a taiko performance at a shrine;
• Hitting up the hike from Kurama to Kibune;
• Going to Mt. Koya at long last, and;
• Going to Obama City in Fukui

Not bad for a week of adventuring, right?

Now let’s briefly go over the personal projects I mentioned. You probably know that there are websites out there where you can take classes on various topics for free; Coursera and Edx being a couple of them. I decided on a whim to pick up a couple of classes to see how long I could keep up with the materials. One of which is a basic Linguistics course, and the other is a study on Buddhism vs. Modern Psychology. Both of them have been pretty fascinating so far, although the videos for the courses do eat up more time than you would expect.

In addition to that, I finally finished my first Japanese book this year, and have moved right on to the next one. I didn’t mind the previous book but it’s such a relief to no longer have it over my head that I feel like I’m flying through my new reading project for language practice.

And speaking of language practice, I’ve spent the last two months using DuoLingo to study German again! It’s been a fun adventure.

So as you can see, I have been juggling a bunch of new stuff on top of old stuff.

But! I plan to get back into regularly posting here, so keep an eye out for posts on several of the abovementioned adventures, and for a book review.

See you soon!