July 14, 2010 by Eric Nishio

Don’t Be Influenced by Other Quitters

No comments Positive Thinking, Success Story

Something happened last semester that will probably have a permanent impact on my self-esteem. It was in cold January that I enrolled in a compulsory course on information security in which we had to split into small groups of three to four members, and develop a security system. These projects are usually quite demanding, since [...]

June 10, 2010 by Eric Nishio

Easily the Fastest Way to Become Fluent in a Language

No comments Languages, Learning Methods, Success Story

How long does it usually take to learn how to have conversations in a new language? As you probably know, I am someone who tends to dislike “Learn _____ in 7 Days” methods, because most of the time these approaches just let you barely scratch the surface—in other words, they fail to provide any substantial [...]

December 18, 2009 by Eric Nishio

What Made Me Start This Blog

No comments Announcements, Positive Thinking, Success Story

To know why I started this blog, you’ll have to hear my confession. But first, allow me to tell the story from the beginning. “BBAs graduating from this program may be employed as IT designers, web application developers, IT consultants, programmers, et cetera, et cetera…” — paraphrased from a university’s website It was in February [...]

December 3, 2009 by Eric Nishio

How I Taught Myself to Read Japanese in Six Months

No comments Languages, Learning Methods, Success Story

In September 2006 I couldn’t read Japanese. Well, I could read the basic Japanese syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), but that didn’t help much since I didn’t know any Chinese characters, or kanji as they’re called in Japanese, to combine with them. If you’re familiar with written Japanese, you know that there are about 2000 unique [...]