Japan « LongCountdown.com

Baked Beans to Save Japan’s Food Crisis?

May 2nd, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

submit_url = ‘http://www.longcountdown.com/2008/05/02/baked-beans-to-save-japans-food-crisis/’;With food prices soaring, and butter disappearing altogether, there is no doubt that Japan is suffering an unprecedented food crisis.
Learning from the British

At university, balancing the budget to accommodate both food and beer is a skill most Brits have mastered, but it wouldn’t be possible without that staple of the British food industry, [...]

Posted in Japan | 20 Comments »

The Same Old Questions

April 17th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

No matter how long you are in Japan, you will always be asked the same questions:

Where are you from?
Do you like Japanese food?
Can you use chopsticks?

The more adventurous Japanese will ask you questions about your home country:

Is summer as hot as in Japan?
Do you have cherry blossoms?
Do you speak English in England?

All these questions were [...]

Posted in Japan | 19 Comments »

Arnold Schwarzenegger Calls AEON English School

March 14th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

While I’ve been (and still am) waiting for my websites to move to their new web host, I’ve had some time to catch up on my favorite podcasts. One of those podcasts is from Gaijin-in-Japan.com, and recently in Mike’s 82nd podcast, we got treated to this brilliant prank call to an AEON English school in [...]

Posted in Teaching ESL | 3 Comments »

Earn Money with Japan-Hopper.com

February 11th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

What would happen if you combined Google Maps, Wikipedia, and personal experiences of English speakers in Japan?This is a question that Kiyotaka Maruyama decided to answer by creating Japan-Hopper.com, an interactive website that lets you use English to search for a place in Japan, and then either read a related Wikipedia entry or a review [...]

Posted in Japan | 8 Comments »

Top Sightseeing Spots in Second Life Japan

February 3rd, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

submit_url = ‘http://www.longcountdown.com/2008/02/03/top-sightseeing-spots-in-second-life-japan/’;I’m a regular visitor to the virtual world of Second Life, and one of my favorite ways to spend time there is by visiting some Japanese sightseeing spots. I have shown you Tokyo Tower, and the castles in Osaka, Kumamoto and Himeji before, but here they are again along with some of my [...]

Posted in Japan | 14 Comments »

A Typical Life… In Japan

January 20th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

Shane was one of the first people to register at JapanSoc, and has been active in the community ever since. Some of the many articles she’s submitted come from her own blog, A Typical Life. This is a site she started in November of last year, but Shane has been working hard to fill it [...]

Posted in Japan | 6 Comments »

Tips and Tricks for Survival in Japan

January 15th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

One of the first blogs I ever subscribed to was LifeHacker, a blog jammed with tips and tricks to increase productivity. When it comes to living in Japan, the equivalent blog would be NihonHacks, a collection of time and money-saving tips for foreign students, visitors or “lifers”.
Top Tips and Tricks from NihonHacks
NihonHacks is the work [...]

Posted in Japan | 5 Comments »

Making Mochi in the Mountains

December 23rd, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

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 [...]

Posted in Japan | 3 Comments »

50% off Fake Christmas Trees in Japan

December 16th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

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 [...]

Posted in Japan | 11 Comments »

Japan’s Aging Population Problem - Alternative Solution

December 14th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

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. [...]

Posted in Japan | 9 Comments »

Queen Himiko - Empress of Japan

November 7th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

On September 6th, 2006, Prince and Princess Akishino gave birth to their third child. It was an important event because at 39 years old, it was looking unlikely that the couple would have another child, and had it not been a boy, Japan would have had no heir to the Emperor’s throne. The birth of [...]

Posted in Japan | 2 Comments »

Weird Tales from Japan - Ubazakura

October 31st, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

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 [...]

Posted in Japan | 2 Comments »

Planning a Lifetime in Japan

September 23rd, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Our third visit from Mr. Life Planner was by far the most interesting. Mr. Life Planner works for Sony Life Insurance and part of the sales pitch includes a detailed “Life Simulation”, which is really intended to prove the need for their life insurance. Previously we had given him details of our monthly expenses, earnings [...]

Posted in Family | 2 Comments »

Tokyo - Video Montage

September 21st, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I’ve probably only been to Tokyo a dozen times in my 10+ years in Japan, but given the chance I’d love to go again. If I were a rapper, I’d put my baseball cap on backwards, wave my hands around and describe Tokyo like this:
Here we go, to To-ki-yo, where’s the gents? It’s so immense, [...]

Posted in Japan | 5 Comments »

Japan’s 30-hour day

May 24th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

In my last post, Double without you, I talked about how the Japanese may need to go back to basics and re-learn English from simple ABCs. What they lack in English skills however, you would think they’d make up for in mathematics, right? Well, I’m not so sure…
When you walk around the backstreets of Japan’s [...]

Posted in Japan | 4 Comments »

Cherry Blossoms

April 1st, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

With Japan’s hanami season underway, Mami and I thought we would take a stroll down the river to see what this year’s “cherry blossom viewing” season had to offer. While we were walking under the sakura, I told Mami a story I had heard from one of my students a couple of weeks ago.
Apparently, K-chan [...]

Posted in Japan | 1 Comment »

Visit Japan with Google Earth

March 19th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Last month I got a new computer, a Windows Vista PC with enough power to run Google Earth! I’ve been playing with Google Maps a lot lately, particularly after I discovered you can manually alter the zoom level to go in further than you thought possible, like this section of Africa in which you can [...]

Posted in Technology | 4 Comments »

It’s a KFC Christmas.

November 27th, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

When I first came to Japan, I was told that Kentucky Fried Chicken, or simply ‘Kentucky’ as it’s known in Japan, is a Christmas tradition. I was told that people flock to KFC for their annual Christmas Eve dinner. I didn’t really take it seriously until I saw people lining up for three blocks one [...]

Posted in Japan | 3 Comments »

Trying to drive in Japan

October 1st, 2006 by Nick Ramsay

I always ask my students what they plan to do at the weekend and they often say they are going to go for a drive. I agree that if you can get out into the mountains you might enjoy the scenery, just as we do driving through the countryside in England, but that’s if you can [...]