Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
I love this video of a popular Japanese double-act Tetsu & Tomo. The music is from the variety show ‘Shouten’. Watch and laugh, and if you can’t view the video, you can see it here at youtube.com. I’ve become a fan of Japanese TV now that I’m married and live with the TV on permanently. While many people think that the Japanese are expression-less, everything on TV is really exagerrated. […]
In today’s Mainichi News, there was an article about a high school in Nagasaki that will start checking if applicants can use chopsticks properly. The ‘chopsticks test’ will be part of their entrance exams next year. Officials of Sasebo Women’s High School said that they wound like to see if applicants have acquired the minimum levels of eating manners by checking their use of chopsticks. The “chopstick inspections,” which include […]
Yesterday was our Halloween barbeque, which was a lot of fun. One activity we did was set up boxes with pictures of fingers, brains, worms and eyeballs on them. Inside were sausages, prunes, noodles and peeled grapes, and the kids were really quick to figure that out. The adults tend to have a better imagination and pulled some really icky faces when dipping their hands in the boxes. Two of […]
I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my best childhood friends – talk about a pleasant surprise! We last made contact about ten years ago, so it was great to hear from him. It got me thinking about how people maintain long-distance friendships. When I first came to Japan on a homestay, my great Scottish aunt asked me to track down her pen-pal, Kubo Hide-san, […]
I’m living in my sixth apartment in Japan so I’m a bit of an expert on neighborhood noise. Here’s my list of the seven most annoying noises I’ve had to live with over the last nine years. 7. The food trucks. Late in the evening these guys come round with music blaring from their little trucks, hoping you’ll rush out of your apartment to buy whatever delicacy they’re selling. Not […]
One of my students is an elementary school teacher, and she loves talking about her job. Saturday was Dreamwork Day at her school so she was a bit tired by the time she came to class. “Dreamwork Day? Sounds fun!” I said, but then she explained that all the teachers had to clean the school to give the students a dream… erm… yeah, a clean school should encourage children to […]
In What is Yakudoshi? I told you that Mami and I were looking for a house and being a foreigner, I might encounter some problems with getting a mortgage. This post is an update on that. Assuming I wouldn’t be able to get a loan from a Japanese bank because I don’t yet have permanent residency, we took a break from house hunting for a while. However, we still got […]
I’m sure most of us at one time or another have stayed up all night studying for a test or preparing for an important event the next day. It’s 5:40 in the morning, you’ve got all your work done and can finally go home for a few hours kip before the big day starts. Then, just when you least expect it, somebody jumps on you from the tenth floor of a […]