I am deeply interested in language learning. I grew up hearing Spanish from my extended family, and I have reached a decent level of Japanese through tea. Recently, I have been studying Russian following the Refold immersion method.
I have been wearing barefoot shoes since 2012, and I’ve recently gotten into barefoot-style sandals. I’m currently wearing Shamma Elite Warriors for everyday use and Shamma TrailStar Maximus for running and hiking.
I have been making sweets for every tea class for a couple years now. I’m still learning constantly, and failing frequently, but I’ve gotten to a point where I’m usually comfortable serving what I’ve made to the students. You can see some of my more recent sweets below.
My first tea teacher, Kimiko Gunji-sensei, just released a new wagashi cookbook in English called Wagashi: Season by Season which got me thinking about the resources I’ve used to make sweets.
My journey with tea started in 2014. I was beginning my final year of undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I was going through depression. My coursework and thesis were overwhelming, and I found myself needing a break from engineering.
I had no prior interest in Japanese culture at this point, and no prior contact with tea, but I knew I had to do something different from my regular coursework.
At the time of writing, I have put ~180 hours into learning Russian while largely following the Refold method. I am nowhere near my goal of fluency yet, but I can generally follow podcasts (with transcripts) targeting A2 learners at around level 4 comprehension.
I have had a tough time finding immersion resources for my level, so I thought that I would write down what I’ve been using. First, I will level-set on terminology with the tools I’ve been using, then I will share a (roughly) chronological list of resources I’ve used while immersing.