Minimalism - Online Income - ESL - Japan
Quite often, you start searching the web for one thing, but end up with something far more interesting. That happened to me today when I randomly came across a number of Japan related stories based on the number 13,000. Here’s a summary with links to their sources. World’s tallest building: The 13,000 ft, X-Seed 4000 This huge structure was proposed for Tokyo, Japan, and all construction plans were completed. At just over 13,000 feet (4,000m) tall, […]
I remember looking through a Japanese ballroom dancing magazine during one of my lessons and seeing an interesting comparison of foreign and Japanese feet. Whether the article discussed how the different foot shapes affected shoe size or posture I can’t remember, but I found the examples used for this foot comparison quite fascinating. Here’s my attempt to recreate that long-lost comparison. First you’ve got the characters. Representing “Team Europe” is Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. Though […]
It wasn’t long ago that elevators in Japan were hit by all manner of scandals, whether it was substandard steel, entrapment or even crushing, it was the “cool” thing in the news at the time. Everything has its turn on Japanese news. They even play scary music during the news reports to heighten the danger. The topic usually changes each month when it loses its entertainment value, but we’ve had foreign crime, food […]
One book I enjoyed reading before I came to Japan was Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. It was published in 1904 and is a collection of weird and ghostly tales from Japan. Since it’s Halloween, I’ve picked a story called Ubazakura, which couldn’t be more appropriate for a blog about Japan and babies. Ubazakura Three hundred years ago, in the village called Asamimura, in the district called Onsengori, in the province of Iyo, there lived […]
I studied my backside off when I first came to Japan. I passed level 4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in my first year, level 3 the next, and then level 2 the year after that. Unfortunately, the jump from level 2 to level 1 is so great that I didn’t even try going for it. Instead, I let seven more years pass without once picking up a kanji […]
A few days ago, Rikuto met all the women on his mum’s side of the family, including his great grandmother who he saw for the first time. Here are the happy relatives: I’m starting to agree that Riku looks incredibly like his dad, so I wonder what his relatives think when they see this handsome, European-looking baby? 😀 If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I’d […]
That’s right, NickRamsay.com is unavailable because I bought it! I have no idea why I didn’t register the domain name earlier, but this time I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by. If you remember from my post Nick Ramsay vs Nick Ramsay, I’m trying to rank higher for my own name in Google’s search results than the other Nick Ramsay does. This is one step towards that goal. Right now, I’ve got the domain pointing […]
My wife took our new baby, Rikuto, to visit his grandmother and other relatives today. For most of them, it was the first time to see him so he got lots of new clothes and presents. Now, this is where it gets interesting, my wife’s uncle married a Chinese girl half his age, and she already had two children from her previous marriage in China. Now, both children have joined her […]