Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
My general observations from living in Japan.
Foreign perception of Japan is often tarnished by sweeping generalizations made by people who lack the language skills and tools necessary to understand the real thoughts and actions of Japan’s general public. What Japan Thinks Introducing Ken Y-N, a legend among Japan bloggers and the face behind What Japan Thinks, a blog full of English translations of Japanese opinion polls and surveys. A keen statistician and Japan enthusiast, Ken has […]
On January 1st 2008, Yahoo! Japan officially unveiled their redesigned web portal. Despite Yahoo’s popularity among the Japanese (over 60% share of the search engine market), we’ve had to wait this long for them to come up with a flashy web 2.0 style homepage. Pushing slow adopters to increase their screen resolution With so many people in this country using Yahoo! I was quite surprised they dropped the old 800-pixel-wide […]
There was a ridiculously long documentary on Japanese TV tonight about Al Gore’s new cause, global warming. I sat through the first three hours; watched ants eating houses, deer ravaging Hokkaido, watermelons growing in November, hybrid iguanas and evil konbini bentos (those CO2 polluting lunch boxes sold at convenience stores). While I much preferred Al’s DVD, An Inconvenient Truth, some of what they showed was quite convincing, and would no […]
Happy New Year everybody! And what a great start… I won the Nenmatsu Jumbo lottery! Actually, that’s a bald-faced lie, but I did win $25 from Jason in his post, Time to Give Away Some Cash. Whoo-hoo! 😀 10 Predictions for 2008 in Japan Back in December, after watching how easily Brazilian “Psychic†Jucelino Nobrega da Luz convinced Japanese TV audiences of his mystical powers, I thought I’d try my […]
Japanese New Year is the season of Omikuji – random fortunes written on strips of paper that tell you whether the new year will be a good one or not. Many Japanese people are superstitious and believe in fortune tellers such as Kazuko Hosoki, and lucky charms called Omamori. Protect yourself with elephant poo For many years, my favorite Japanese lucky charm was the faceless baby monkey, Sarubobo, from Takayama. That was until […]
Recently, my wife has been interested in getting one of those high powered steam cleaners. It all started when she saw an ad for a “sample cleaning” whereby someone comes to your house and demonstrates the power of their product by cleaning your kitchen and bathroom for just 1,000 yen ($10). In this case, the product was the Domena NVT Eagle Jet 2 vacuum steam cleaner. How much does an Eagle […]
We hopped in Mami’s little pink car and took a drive out to Gujo city with our friend, Mr. H, for some traditional new year mochi making. Mochi can be described as “steamed rice pounded into a glutinous cake and used as a staple ingredient in a variety of dishes, including desserts”. This seasonal activity is a Japanese custom I hadn’t experienced until today, so I was quick with my camera to […]
England has always seemed to be quite advanced when it comes to supermarket technology. They had long, spacious, barcode-reading checkouts when I was 17 and worked in the frozen section of Waitrose. It wasn’t many years later before they introduced hand-held, customer-carried barcode readers so shoppers could check prices for themselves. People buying less then ten items have been able to go through an “express” checkout for years, and all that time, the checkout girls and boys have been allowed […]