About

About VictoryManual.com

VictoryManual.com is an ongoing project focused on learning Japanese, and to a lesser extent Korean. The aim of this site is to provide tips, methods, and resources to help other language learners out in their own studies.

About my philosophy towards this site

I use this site as a means for communication on a broader scale. I do not place advertisements on my site unless I have tried the products and unequivocally endorse them as something that I feel is worthy of purchase. (If I wouldn’t let my own mother buy it, I won’t endorse it here)

If you would like me to review a product, I will happily oblige, but I will only give an honest and complete assessment of the product here.

Ancient History

I started the site as a personal blog in 2005 when I moved to Fukushima. The content was mostly inane monologues. In 2006 and 2007 it was focused on pop-cultural and social observations in Japan and South Korea. Towards the end of 2007 and into 2008 I started to focus on language more than culture and society.

At the end of 2008 I scrapped my entire archive of three and a half years of writings (after saving them locally for nostalgia) except for about 20 articles that I decided to rewrite. In the autumn of 2009, I scrapped most of my rewritten posts, and started to re-rewrite them in a more structured way and incorporate universal terms already well established in L2 learning discussions. In 2010 I started to review materials for learners.

About Alex

My name is Alex, and I’ve been writing on VictoryManual.com since 2005. The site has evolved with my own goals and interests.

I am a non-tenured lecturer at a university in Korea where I teach English to undergraduates. I’m either an emigrant or an immigrant depending on where you live, and I’ve spent a good portion of my life in Japan and Korea, both of which I love to no end, but for very different reasons. My primary area of study is Japan and Japanese, but more recently I’ve taken on Korean studies as it’s a field with a whole lot more ground to cover.