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What’s the connection between Sasaki Nozomi (佐々木希) and Dekotora? Well this is because she appears in the photos that has dekotora. Pretty straight forward right 😛 ? Well recently I found these interesting photos of Japan popular model Sasaki Nozomi posing in front of Japanese unique decoration truck, so I decided to post it up and share it with you all.

I had been fascinating about Dekotora for some time. It is huge, bling bling and cool (kakkoi!). According to Wikipedia, The Dekotora or Decotora (デコトラ), an abbreviation for “Decoration Truck”, is a kind of loudly decorated truck most commonly found in Japan. Dekotora commonly have neon or ultraviolet lights, extravagant paints, and shiny stainless or golden exterior parts. I’m for sure the truck will get a lot of attention when it was full lit and cruising the street at night.

There are some sites that talks about Dekotora too, more over there is a photographer call Masaru Tatsuki which released a photo book all about the beauty of Dekotora. You can read more about Dekotora at PingMag and Pink Tentacle.

Enough talking. Please enjoy the visual excitement of Dekotora paired with beauty Sasaki Nozomi! 😀

Note: Picture posted are just samples. For introduction purposes only.

One important expect in learning Japanese language is to master the Japanese Kanji. Learning Kanji might be a tough and painful process, but once you learnt it, it can become very useful. To learn Kanji effectively, you have to learn to memorize the character and better if you can learn to write it as well. In the Japanese Level Proficiency Test (JLPT for short), each level has to learn a certain amount of Kanji, the higher the level, the larger the quantity and more difficult too. Well, with the sites and tools that I introduce today, you can learn and test your Kanji level for free.

Renshuu is one recommended Japanese language learning site. Not just Kanji, you can also test your vocabulary as well as grammar. We will focusing on Kanji this time. You can choose either to learn or running through the quizzes. Lessons are separated into different levels and you can choose how you want to learn too. Pretty great site.

Besides that, there are many sites that offer free Kanji learning service too. But among of them, I recommend The Kanji Site, because of its clear and easy to use interface. It’s a good site to learn and exercise your Kanji proficiency at fast speed.

Not only sites, I also found some Kanji PDF resources on Scribd too. Just search JLPT Kanji List, you will have several documents talking about Kanji, for example Kanji list for Level 4, Level 3 and Level 2. You can download the PDF, print it and read it while off the computer. Pretty handy.

Another effective way to learn new words including Kanji is to have a dictionary in hand. However a good dictionary might be costly and it can be heavy and hard to carry around too. So “Kotoba!” will come for the rescue! It actually is a Japanese language dictionary for your iTouch and iPhone. It’s free to download and I downloaded it too. The words database is huge and I think it’s very useful. If you have iTouch or iPhone, I would really recommend to download this app.

Above are the sites and tools to learn and test your Kanji effectively. If you have any other nice suggestions, please drop me a comment and tell me and other readers about it. The JLPT test is just weeks away and I’m becoming nervous! Hope I can handle the paper! 😀

Yesterday I came across this interesting website, introducing the 51 types of characters that you can find in Japanese. The characters is cute and each of them having very distinctive and unique characteristics. I think it’s a very good site to learn Japanese culture through the characters. Characters are available as postcards as well as upcoming posters. Buy them if you like it.

I really like Japan – the food, the urban environment, technologies, conveniency, the designs… everything is designed and created to cater for all needs. In my country here, there are a lot of things are influenced or derived from Japan, but there is top three priority that I really wish to have: Hitokara, Japanese flip phone, and Uniqlo.

Hitokara

Hitokara is derived from the word “Hitori Karaoke”, which means karaoke for one person, or go to karaoke box alone. Sings in a group of friends is fun, but it is much more interesting to sing by myself without anyone. I can sing the song I want to sing without waiting and release my stress and have fun in this little room. I really love this hitokara idea.

Japanese flip phone

Japanese style flip phone is so nice! I really like the rectangular-ish and slim flip phone because it looks stylish and classy. While in Malaysia, I can’t really spot anything like this.

Uniqlo

UNIQLO is Japan’s leading clothing retail chain, and I hope to see them opening a branch in Malaysia! I know I can buy on the net but seriously I hope to see them physically in my country. Uniqlo design rocks.

Picture credit: Kanshin | NTT Docomo | TokyoFashion’s Flickr