This month, I visited China for the first time, and then had a bit of a new year's reset when I got back. I've been getting stuck into some language learning and a proper gym routine. As a side effect things turned out to be a bit quieter on my blog. I’m also still trying to figure out, what is a newsletter supposed to be? I suppose I’m treating it sort of like a personal (yet public) monthly diary. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to hear about from me!
My China trip
I kicked off 2025 with a holiday to China and its south-western province of Yunnan. We spent time with my partner's extended family and did some sightseeing, visiting the Western Hills, Stone Forest and Swallow Cave.

I'll admit I'm used to solo traveling or only traveling with my partner, so a 10-day trip with his family was a little overwhelming at times. Don't get me wrong, they are super lovely and welcoming people (couldn't ask for better in-laws) but I don't think I would spend that long even with my own family! This was also the first time I was in a country where I couldn’t understand the language, so I think there was a little culture shock involved as well.

But I'm definitely keen to visit China again, especially to go on some proper hikes next time.

Learning Mandarin
After coming back from China, I decided to get started on learning some Mandarin. My partner's grandparents can only speak Chinese, so this time I wasn't able to communicate with them at all, but I want to learn for next time!
Right now, I'm focusing on doing Pimsleur, a language-learning course based purely around speaking practice. There are 150 30-minute modules, and I got through 18 of them this month. I’m a bit skeptical of actually how much I will learn, but it’s very easy to get stuck into. Since it's purely audio, I can do it while doing other things like chores, so the barrier-to-entry feels a lot lower than having to sit down and crack open a textbook (which is never fun).
Improving my Japanese
I told myself there's no point setting a lot of new year's resolutions because I can never keep them, but I can't help but be swayed by the new year's vibes and before I knew it I had a second goal in mind - to improve my Japanese.
One of my main issues is with reading the kanji (there are 2000 of them), so I've jumped back onto using Wanikani, a kanji flashcard app. You have to reach level 60 to finish all 2000 kanji, and I was already at level 36, so I'm thinking if I do 2 levels a month I could be done by the end of the year.
... Unfortunately, since the last time I used Wanikani was several years ago, I had 1300 existing cards to review. With their spaced repetition system, you have to review each card multiple times, and so even doing a couple hundred a day meant I only finally managed to get my reviews down to 0 towards the end of the month. Hopefully from February I can start learning new stuff.
My first hike of the year
I also kicked off my 2025 hiking season with a hike up Mt Tonodake. This is one of the mountains in the Tanzawa mountain range, which is a favourite of mine in the colder months since it has great public transport access and you can get some nice views of Mt Fuji.
I also posted a new guide to winter hiking in Tokyo with a couple of my experiences and personal recommendations.
What I’ve been reading
My trip to China was a great time to get some solid reading in - I’ll be honest in that I haven’t done much after that. But a clear standout for me this month was In Acension, a worthy winner of the 2024 Arthur C Clarke award. The book attempts to answer why life exists on Earth and seemingly nowhere else. I also liked the human side of it too - the main character is a scientist who dives into her work, at the expense of her relationships with others, including her ageing mother. A great sci-fi read, and would definitely put it up there as one of my favourites.
What I've been watching
Although I’m a big sci-fi fan, I was definitely sleeping on Apple TV, which has quite a few sci-fi shows. This month we finished off season two of Silo, which I loved, and have started watching season two of Severance - which I find to be interesting, but I have slightly more mixed feelings about since it just leaves you with so many unanswered questions.
In a completely different genre, my guilty pleasure is anything romance-related so we are also watching the new season of Singles Inferno, which is the Korean version of Love Island - i.e. put a bunch of hot singles on one island and see what happens. Not sure I’d recommend it, but I love it!
Finding balance
With the new years vibes, I've changed up my routine a bit. Previously, it was more like:
finish work → get stuck into my blog
Now it’s more like:
finish work → go to the gym → do some Pimsleur → do some kanji flashcards
So now I’m finding it a bit hard to get in that solid block of time to work on my blog. But at the same time, I was spending a bit too much time on it towards the end of last year (once I get stuck into something, I go hard at it), so this is a better balance.
Looking back, I did put out 5 posts this month, so that’s still more than one a week and nothing to scoff at. Oddly though, it feels like I didn’t write that much?
I do think there are things I can improve with my time management, but on the other hand, these are all just hobbies, so if I over-correct on trying to be “productive” and efficient with my time, I don’t think that’s not good for my well-being either. Should I be setting less goals? Let’s see how February goes.
January in numbers
Finally, some stats to round off the newsletter, inspired by Rach Smith's numbers posts:
🏋️♀️ 12 visits to the gym
🏃♀️ Ran 12 km and hiked 24km
🇯🇵 Wanikani Level 36 → 37
🇨🇳 Lessons 1 → 18 of Pimsleur Chinese
📚 Read 3 books
📝 Wrote 5 blog posts
Until next time!