R2 Day 92 - Cardio Intervals

Cardio Intervals tonight, which was awesome. Cardio X last night. Fighting the urge to ditch this last week.
So as part of my New Years Resolution of improving my Japanese and passing level 1 of the proficiency test in December, yesterday I got out a few Japanese textbooks that have been sitting around for ages and trawled through them, looking for something appropriate to get me started. I decided I would start with "Authentic Japanese: Progressing from Intermediate to Advanced". All the vocab, grammar points, and readings seemed to be there, and when I finished it in about six months, I figured I would be about half way to level 1. So in the afternoon at work I closed down all the work I was doing (not much) and began. I skipped chapters 1 - 4 because they looked boring, and started on chapter 5. "Unusual Customs". *sigh* Okay, this is one thing you have to get used to when studying Japanese. Not only do you have to learn the language, but seemingly you have to learn how different and unique Japanese people and culture is too. So it begins with an introduction outlining six rules when using chopsticks, and the Japanese terms for these rules. For example, there's "yosehashi", which is using your chopsticks to push bowls and plates around the table. You can't do that. I skipped this because I would never, ever use these terms.
Next is a reading exercise. A page and a half article about udon, the fat noodle. *sigh* If the article is half as boring as udon itself is, I won't get through it. And I didn't. It was worse than udon.
So ten minutes in and I'm so bored I give up. I look at other chapters. "Japanese Children". "Shopping is Fun!" "Entering a Japanese Company". "Protecting the Environment". "Balancing Body and Mind".
I can't use this book. It sounds like a social studies textbook. And all of my books are like this. Why?
So what I did is ditch the textbooks, and this morning I bought "Spa!", a trashy sleazy tabloid magazine, and I'm going to pick a few articles from it every week and translate them. Remember "Post"? It's like that. Topless girls, outrageous stories about gangsters and sex fiends, and opinionated articles by columnists. Can't wait. I guess this makes sense, but to learn Japanese, I have to ditch the textbooks and go to the real thing. Japanese people writing for Japanese people.