Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
My last Ramsay Ramblings proved to be quite controversial when I touched on the topic of half-Japanese children. Today’s ramblings are far more tame. I am not your maid! This line is my wife’s favorite English expression, which she learned from my mum when we went to the UK on our honeymoon. Mami is very good to me, and even though I’m very lazy when it comes to helping around […]
After reading Thomas’ post about finding Christmas Trees in Japan on NihonHacks.com, I decided to get one for myself. Unlike Thomas, who treated himself to a real “Golden Crest” tree from a home center, I wanted a fake Christmas tree that I could use every year. Get your Christmas tree now for half-price! Christmas in Japan is a funny affair. It usually ends on Christmas Eve to give the shops […]
Japan is facing a crisis. The population is aging and by 2050, one in three people will be past retirement age. Meanwhile, the birth rate is currently at 1.25 babies per woman, much lower than the 2.1 needed to keep the population stable. The result is a workforce too small to support the huge number of retirees. Who will do all the work? Will there be enough tax money to pay […]
I love cheese, so it came as quite a shock to hear that from March next year the price of cheese in Japan will rise by up to 25%. As if cheese here wasn’t expensive enough, it’s likely to become a delicacy afforded only by the wealthy. What happened to the cows? Good question. You might wonder what would cause such a dramatic increase. Are there too many cheese eaters? Will there […]
Here’s part six of my Google Speed-Search series. In this lesson, we’ll use wildcards to speed up our searches. A wildcard in Google is represented by an asterisk (*) and used instead of a single word. Consider this search: “Mount Fuji is * high” This phrase search forces Google to return web pages with the exact phrase above, but replacing the wildcard with any word. Here are some examples of […]
Earlier this year I bought myself a little electronic keyboard so I could make up some children’s songs for my ESL classes. Like most things I spend my money on, it rarely got used… until now. Watch Rikuto play the piano for the first time ever at four and a half months old. I’d say he’s pretty good for his age! If you can’t view the video, watch it here […]
In this video, Rikuto shows his curiosity for everything and anything by attacking the camera. If I had let him have it, I’m sure he would have tried to eat it, too! If you can’t view the video, watch it here on YouTube. If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I’d love to hear from you!
Since I started JapanSoc, I’ve been adding Japan-related blogs to my iGoogle page, and you can see in the screenshot that there are a whopping 80 of these blogs that I’m currently subscribed to. Subscribing… Blogs… Feeds… What does it all mean? Some of you are probably already confused. What is iGoogle? How do you subscribe to a blog? What does “subscribing” to a blog actually mean? Basically, when you subscribe […]