It’s an application made to check your Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds with comfort and style. It’s free and it installs in a minute, so if I got your interest why not try it now? Feel free to use this link to install persona/ on Google Chrome. Beware that you won’t be able to install it on other browsers.

Note: They recently got a persona/ iPad app, which you can use in English.

Translation was ordered to Daruma, and I was in charge of the first draft. I translated every balloon and onomatopoeia, and I think it’s thanks to Marc Bernabé’s revision and Daruma’s logistics that the result came out to be quite good.

• Record of Lodoss War: La Bruja Gris (Edición Integral)
• English title: Record of Lodoss War: The Gray Witch
• Story: Ryo Mizuno
• Art: Yoshihiko Ochi
• Format: 600 pages, 148×210 mm
• ISBN: 978-84-684-7567-7
• Price: 25 €

I think this fantasy manga can be enjoyed by anyone older than, say, 12 years old, as long as they have any interest for in the fantasy genre.

It was a very good experience, as I read a lot of manga but I had never had a chance to help with manga publishing. I’m very interested in deepening communication and understanding between Spain and Japan, and I think with this kind of work I’m getting nearer to this aim.

There were students from Chikuyo Gakuen learning English in New Zealand when the terrible earthquake took place, but they were all evacuated and sent back to Japan without any problem. Being my work for this school an emergency system, I feel most relieved when it’s not used. But I felt very happy when it was used to relieve parents the day of the earthquake.

Last Saturday I did my lecture at WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 and attended as many other lectures as I could. It’s thought that about 400 people came, and the organization did something that was new to me – there were many short lectures, so many that there were two at a time despite them being short. I think today’s ease of communication (even after the event ends) makes this way of scheduling events very effective, and we gained a lot of variety.

So here are my slides. I spoke about things one should think before starting a podcast, and I showed an easy way to podcast using WordPress and Feedburner.

I guess you’ve noticed they are all in Japanese, but if you want to read about this in English please check my notes for a previous similar lecture.

Here you can find video footage for all lectures and presentations that were held at the big classroom, and here are links to the documents all the speakers are sharing. You can also read at pepinismo something more personal about the event. Thank everyone very much, and I hope we can meet at the next WordCamp!

The design and mascot character for Japoneschan are the work of Koga Takahiro

For the service to be comfortable and fast to use I’m using AJAX, but when you access a URL where you get the conversion results from the beginning (as the ones shared on Twitter, etc.) I’m reducing the number of AJAX queries, caching on the server side, etc. Many things I had never had the chance to build from zero.

I had a blast developing Japoneschan. Have I managed to get you curious enough to look up the Japanese characters for your favorite Spanish phrase? I hope I did!

They called to speak about how to make a podcast, and how to distribute it without pain using WordPress.

Here’s a translation of an abstract to my lecture and my profile:

How to distribute a podcast with WordPress: the Escucha español way
You can distribute a podcast with WordPress using no plugins! It’s very easy thanks to WordPress and Feedburner, and I’ll teach you to do it. Once you know the way it’s your call to produce interesting content. From the idea to production and distribution, we’ll be covering the whole process.

Ale Cremades’s profile
I’m a Spaniard living in Fukuoka and spend my time making the podcast Escucha español, giving lectures about international understanding and culture, and developing web applications. I have been making websites for 15 years, and using WordPress for 5 years. I enjoy making heavy metal with Game Boy, and everything I do in life is about communication.

There will be many other interesting lectures, and if you’re interested in publishing content I think this will be an interesting event. I hope to meet many new people there!

I have talked to elementary, junior high and high school students, and the image they have about Spain and how the world or the people are outside Japan is quite limited and stereotyped (as one could expect). Also with all due respect, most teachers don’t have deep international knowledge or much experience. But this is not a problem and it’s what the Kokusai Hiroba program I work with is all about and I’m very happy to help with this.

Tenpai Middle High School

I spend a fair share of my time with the kids trying to break their preconceptions, maybe attacking directly the most common ones or giving them uncommon information to increase their field of view. For instance I usually stress the alphabet not being a character code strictly associated to the English language, but being shared by a number of languages (English and Spanish among them). So the fact that a word is written in Latin characters doesn’t always mean it is an English word. This is obvious to most English or Spanish speakers, but note that most Latin characters a Japanese person sees in her life are English words and also they have a thing for mixing the character set and language concepts (Chinese heritage, I would guess).

Sharing a stage with Mexican Manuel Medina

I also like sharing some music and dancing or playing with them some game where they can move their bodies. I’m not that confident about traditional music, but my rendition of España cañí played with a Game Boy is usually well received. Students often research or think questions for me, too. Sometimes they even have presents!

The kids at Tenpai Junior High School gave me this Maneki Neko.

And at Onga High School I got to taste some varieties of jam made by the students, with fruits they made themselves. I love this job!

Last Saturday I joined an event called WordPress 3.0 Kaigi. I met a bunch of people (there were more than 60) and it was very interesting. About the end, I explained in Japanese how to distribute a podcast easily using WordPress and no plugins. Below is my presentation.

And this is a summary of my talk:

• An RSS feed with links to media files is already a podcast.
• You can upload your podcast from inside WordPress itself, through FTP or even using an external service such as blip.tv.
• When linking different versions of your multimedia file you’ll want to put this attribute to the one you’d like to download automatically: rel=”enclosure”.
• Now you have a good enough podcast, but iTunes will want more than that.
• Using Google’s Feedburner service you can optimize your podcast so that you can have it show up at the iTunes Store.
• Just configure the SmartCast option inside Optimize.
• Now you’re ready to submit your podcast to the iTunes Store and wait for them to review it.

I’m looking forward to your comments and questions!

The event at Apple Store last Sunday was a success thanks to all the audience and to organizer Motty! Below is a summary of my talk with some useful links.

Characteristics of the podcast format

• A podcast is an RSS feed which includes links to audio or video files attached to every post.
• Unlike radio or TV, podcasts aren’t broadcast live.
• Once downloaded, a podcast episode can be watched as many times as wanted.
• Many audio podcasts take the radio format as a reference.
• Video podcasts are shorter because of more costly editing and watchers needing to concentrate in watching.
• If you subscribe using iTunes or other podcast-friendly software, new episodes will be automatically downloaded.

Making your podcast

• Escucha español is edited using iMovie.
• I recommend a short opening sequence, or people will get bored.
• Also try to cut boring or slow parts so you get a good tempo.
• Pay attention when using music and sound effects so you don’t have copyright problems.
• Use resources with permissive licenses such as Creative Commons.
• Compress the video. For Escucha español we use MPEG Streamclip.

Distributing your podcast

• Just by uploading the file to your server and linking it from your blog you would have a podcast.
• You can also use one of the services that will host your podcast. For Escucha español we use blip.tv
• YouTube doesn’t work for podcasts as it won’t allow people to download videos, but it’s still worth it to upload your episode and embed it in the podcast’s blog.

Promotion

• Treat well anyone spreading the word about your podcast on their blog, Twitter or Facebook.
• Join events, or organize one every now and then.

My favorite podcasts

• GFF Creators Blog: Interviews and speeches directly from Fukuoka’s biggest video game developers. Very recommended if you’re interested in this area!
• Kafelog: Three guys talking in Spanish about three sections: internet and phones, video games, and movies. Much fun and explicit language!

How to make a podcast, with “Escucha español” as an example
Where: Apple Store, Fukuoka Tenjin
When: Sunday September 19th, 2010, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm (free entrance)
Who: Alejandro Cremades

The teacher suggested I used the song Matsuken Samba. It’s a strange Japanese samba song and, while the samba genre has little to do with Spain, the original lyrics already included some Spanish words. The song itself is a product of international culture! So I got ready my Game Boy to play Matsuken Samba karaoke, and thought the following words:

¡Olé! ¡Olé! Quiero ir a España
¡Olé! ¡Olé! Quiero ir a España
Hola, amigo
Hola, señorita
Olvidemos todo y
Vamos a viajar
España, viva España
Quiero ir a España… ¡Olé!

I also thought some simple dance, and I talked a little about Spain and the world while the girls were practicing the lyrics. Although the girls were from all middle school years, the general mood was great and everyone was following. Also, when the class ended, some girls came to ask many questions. Thank you everyone!

When one’s been working mostly in Japanese for almost five years, one’s Japanese level is more than OK. And when I say I have JLPT level 1 most Japanese think my Japanese must be awesome, but JLPT’s top level isn’t actually that high. In contrast with other Japanese language qualifications, JLPT is only for people who don’t have Japanese as their mother tongue. This means most Japanese people haven’t ever heard of it, and also its aim is set to certifying one’s ability for communication in Japanese up to a regular employment level.

Some books I use as Japanese textbooks

But knowledge areas appearing in any job are limited and without motivation and interest in many different things your Japanese learning could stall. That’s where I was saved by this studying method.

First, once we’re in this level we have to stop thinking as a foreign student and think about someone who understands Japanese. We probably need to use books made for Japanese people. The ones in the picture above explain useful bits and pieces of Japanese which you won’t find at exams.

For example, Yasuo Kitahara‘s Mondai na Nihongo show us many expressions and usages that aren’t perfectly correct but more or less widely used in nowadays Japan. I think it’s not good to ignore them, but it’s not good either to adopt them without even noticing. I prefer learning to understand and detect them, and not using them myself.

Shigesato Itoi‘s Otonago no Nazo is a compilation of corporate and business jargon, explained with some criticism and even sarcasm. If the previous book was a bit serious, this one is quite fun to read.

There are many books like these, but I think it’s also important to read fiction and manga. Lately I’m hooked on Bakuman, a comic which gives us the perspective of the people making manga.

And before finishing, I’d like to ask you to disregard possible imperfections in my redaction in Japanese and English. When I work with translations I always have a native specialist to check the texts, so quality is guaranteed. But I like writing this blog on my own as a way to practice and learn.

It’s common for borrowed words to keep only the meaning that’s more relevant to the destination environment, and cases like this let us see clearly some differences between the Japanese society and the so-called Western one. This time around I’d like to stress the one-way communication nuance in the Japanese use of the word relations as in PR.

Public relations include communications of the one-way kind but also of the two-way kind. But the Japanese usage of jiko-PR (meaning self promotion) only has a one-way meaning. Words like these are worthy of being included in Shigesato Itoi‘s, corporate lingo dictionary, Otona-go no nazo (something like “the mysterious language of adults”).

This way of using the English word public relations proofs how established and strict are hierarchies in Japan’s business and corporate environments. For instance, it’s hard to find a magazine that reviews products in a honest way, as the companies selling these products are usually funding the magazine itself by investing in advertisement. So the magazine owes them –and their products– respect.

But now that Japan is on the social media train, I think it’s about time for having communications in all ways.

What I did here is explaining the multicultural world using three axis: the space axis, the language axis and the culture axis. For instance, if you take a look at the space axis you’ll figure that Spain and Latin America are far, but share a language and some common spots in their culture too.

A not very serious graph for you to picture the axis

To understand the world as a whole, I think one has to understand there are spaces which hold several languages or cultures. Japan, the Japanese language and the Japanese culture, however, are in a very unique position and don’t overlap in a significant way with any other regions on any axis. I think it’s important for Japanese children to understand this, as they have no examples in their own environment.

But this time it had to be explained for fourth graders (10 years old) so I couldn’t use the axis expression. I spoke about this without using the “a word”, and mixing in pictures and stories about Spain so that the kids had tangible references.

And when one explains things about far places, it’s better to do that through comparisons with things they all know. For example, if we tell the children Spain’s area in square kilometers they will ignore the information. But if we tell them Japan’s area is 3/4 of that of Spain they will get an idea. Actually, I like explaining things this way for adults too.

And between corporate and private are we, the freelancers. We often don’t need or want a separate address and phone number for business as it would be an expense. But we might not want our potential clients or potential never-really-see-you-agains know where we live or our private cell number. I’m not even the only one living there –there’s my wife too.

The card I got some time ago. I'd like a new one.

My decision seemed obvious to me but still puzzles some Japanese people I meet: I only put information on my card to contact me over the internet. No postal address or phone number.

Another reason not to give my phone number on first sight is that I lose concentration when I’m working and someone I’m not used to talk to calls out of the blue. It’s not a language problem –I’m great at Japanese. It’s something like if a client came to your home without prior notice. You have to interrupt everything you’re doing to deal with them. And it’s a productivity matter, as when I lose concentration it can take a lot of time to get back to the zone. One can feel this especially when working alone at home.

I’d prefer people contacting me through e-mail –or Twitter, or a blog comment. This way I can finish what I’m doing (or at least dump the contents in my head) and get to replying in a few minutes id it’s urgent. A phone call would only wait for some seconds.

I like taking care about performance in working and communications, and I’m lucky that most people working in international or internet related things are used to communication through e-mail.

Of course there’s times when a phone call is the best, but that rarely is the case the first time a client contacts me. I am sometimes told that I should be more flexible, but truth is I don’t have a secretary or people to work for me while I’m ambushed by phone. As a freelancer, I need to manage my time properly for bot business and communication.

The telephone was once the only technology to get to someone in a reasonable frame of time, but nowadays we get our e-mail and other information instantly delivered to our computers and other wireless devices. I’d like to use this technology to get a better performance in both communication and work.

I will write about my business itself, and about things I think or just find interesting as a foreign freelancer in Japan. I think my themese here will be mostly business, technology, culture and society.

Of course my personal blog pepinismo is still being updated.

Thank you for coming to Alecrem!