What stuff do I need that I might not be able to find easily in Japan? What things will be useful as a teacher? What don’t I need to bring?

Prepare yourself for living in Japan with this comprehensive list…

Moving to Japan? What Things Should I Bring to Japan?

Lots of stickers… lots. This is a huge motivation tool to get the students involved. Usually you’ll ask a question to the class, and even though everyone knows the answer, no-one will raise their hand (without going on too much… it’s a motivational and cultural thing)… unless they have motivation to do so.

In retrospective, I would have liked to buy about $100 worth of cheap stickers. However I’ve stolen an idea from a fellow ALT: get the school to buy some quality (i.e. as thick as possible) A4 size sticker/label paper. Make your own funny stickers, print them out and cut them up. That being said, the few Australian stickers I bought are MUCH more popular.

A newspaper: just one or two, maybe picking one up at the airport before coming to Japan. It can come in handy to show students stories, headlines, pictures and ads. You can photocopies portions of it for class.

Magazines and English books are easy to find. Big books stores in the cities have English language sections. My favourite book store is a chain called Kinokuniya (I’ve been to stores in Osaka and Tokyo, but there are many more).

Painkillers: over-the-counter painkillers are too weak here and quite expensive. A 30 pack of Asprin is about 1200 yen (about $15 AUD). You can get stronger ones, which would be the equivalent of the strongest codiene painkillers we can get in Australia over-the-counter, but you have to go to the doctor for a prescription.

Aspirin in Japan: On the front of the packet it says take just 1 per day...

Lysine: I couldn’t find any and had to spend a lot to order from Australia. As a cold-sore sufferer I take one tablet per day and it decreases the number of outbreaks drasticially. Japan does have the equivalent of Famvir and it’s easy to get from the doctor.

Condoms: the “big boy” size in Japan is around 40mm. The average condom in Australia is 52mm. Enough said on that one.

Slippers and/or ugg boots: The generic size L for these is only 24cm, you may find LL which is about 26cm. If your feet size are larger than 24cm, bring shoes and slippers.

Last resort: eBay slippers from the UK

By the way, for shoes in general, if your foot is larger than about US size 9, consider stocking up on shoes before you come. The range available for anything bigger than size 9 is limited.

Individually wrapped sweets or chocolates: Great for gifts, when you first arrive, give these out to all the teachers. It’s a very Japanese thing to do and will make a great first impression. Make them something unique to your country – I brought some koala shaped chocolates.

Also I would have loved to bring a souvenir for each Kocho Sensei (Principal), Kyoto Sensei (Vice-Principal) and Eigo Tanto (Head English Teacher). In Japanese culture, small gifts are given very often for good work, helping or just meeting someone (yoroshiku onegaishimasu style – “please be kind to me from now”). It can make a great first impression that will go a very long way in Japanese schools.

Cricket bat: This one is especially for cricketing nations. It’s really tough to explain how the sport works and having a bat would have really helped. Also it would have been so much fun to get together with a group of Japanese, Americans and whoever else and play a game of cricket! Japanese love baseball and I can see them having fun with this game.

Things I Bought With Me to Japan That Were a Hit

Small stuffed toys: koala; kangaroo; crocodile; emu. These came in handy when doing the jiko-shokai (self-introduction) and during other random classes. I taught at junior high schools (12 – 15 year olds) and they loved it, safe to say the elementary school kids would love it even more!

Australian money: I bought one of each demonanation note and coin. Most kids have never seen money from another country – seeing Australia’s plastic and coloured money was amazing to them! We have demonations like $2 and $20 that they don’t have, lots of kids found it very interesting.

Beer coolers/stubbie holders: Japan just doesn’t have them. For a country where you can drink beer just about anywhere, I was surprised not to see any. Japan’s summer gets really hot so it was great to keep my drink cool while hanging out in a park on a hot summer day.

They come in handy when its too cold to hold your drink too!

Photos: a huge amount of photos are on my laptop’s hard drive. I was lucky enough to spend a few months travelling Australia before coming to Japan. There are so many occassions when, as a teacher, having photos of your personal experiences, family and places you’ve visited enhances a class. It is really easy to take a USB drive to a convenience store and print (up to A3 size) copies of the photos and use them in class.

Things I Shouldn’t Have Brought (or brought less of)

Clothes: clothes are cheap, and unlike shoes, it’s easy to find larger sizes.

Books and magazines: these really weighed down my suitcase when coming over. Book shops in cities will almost always have an English section. So I could pick up my regular fill of National Geographic magazine and zombie novels. Even if you’re not going to be living in a city, all the big cities are close with the shinkansen, and unless you’re the worlds biggest hermit, you’ll travel to a big city at one point during your first year.

Electric power board with safety: I thought I was being really smart about this one – bring a 6 plug power board so I’d only need to buy one Australia/Japan adaptor. The only problem – many power boards require an earth, and it is extremely difficult to find an Australian/Japanese adaptor that has an earth. So this power board wasted valuable luggage space.

Asthma preventitives: specifically I’m talking about the Seretide Accuhaler. It’s called different things in different countries, for me it is a round purple inhaler with “blistered” doses that I take everyday. I stocked up and bought over a years worth before leaving Japan. In hindsights I should have brought 1 inhaler with me, they are easily obtained through a doctor. It’s not that it was expensive to buy in Australia – it’s purely because of the luggage space benefit.

Bye-bye Ventolin...

When Should I Get My International Driver Permit?

This is one I never considered, but in hindsight it could have helped so much! I picked up my International Driver Permit about a week before leaving Australia (around March 20, 2011), but I didn’t actually leave until March 25. My permit expires on March 20, 2012.

The thing is, I’m on a driving contract and the last day of school is March 23, 2012, here in Toyota. So for the last few days of school, my commute is changed from a 45 minute drive – to a 90 minute walk, train and two buses.

While the date of the last day of school might differ from city to city, do yourself a favour and get your permit in your home country on the day you leave.

• Related post: The ALT experience and living in Japan – my first 6 months

One of the great things about WordPress is the community… the people are passionate and have a great attribute of sharing freely.

Jean from WP Mayor contacted me a while ago after I left a comment on one of his blog posts. It ended up in this interview… enjoy my WordPress super-expert-knowledge and self-promotion abilities!

Dean Wormald: Meet a Travelling WordPress Freelancer & Entprepreneur

This post has been in the works for a few weeks now, whenever I have a few minutes down time. If you are thinking about coming to Japan to live and/or teach English, you’ll get a lot from reading this article.

Before leaving Australia for Japan

A few months before my planned arrival in Japan (late March 2011), I started interviews for teaching jobs. Although I applied for many, I concentrated my efforts on getting a job as an ALT, as I knew I had the best chances of getting this kind of job with no teaching experience.

I studied a 140 hour combined TEFL course (120 hours online and a 20 hour weekend course). This is absolutely necessary if you want to teaching in Japan (unless of course you are already a qualified teacher of English to foreigners).

I’d studied Japanese in high school and did some private lessons while I was living in Melbourne. I tried doing some self study, but I found that really hard and even harder to remember because I didn’t have a chance to practice the language with anyone.

After many applications, and eventually getting through 3 rounds of interviews with both Interac and Altia Central, I was offered a position (in late December of 2010) with both companies. After doing HEAPS of research on both companies, I took the position with Altia Central because they offered much better pay, and generally I read lots more better things about Altia Central than I did Interac (and many other companies).

Arriving in Japan

In late March of 2011, I left Australia with: a 35kg suitcase; work visa for Japan; a 1 year contract as an ALT; an excited feeling of entering the unknown. I left Sydney and after a 1 hour stop-over in Singapore, arrived in Nagoya.

Altia Central put everyone up in a hotel near Kanayama station for 3 full days of training. Although they were long days, the training was great. Especially having no experience, the training really prepared me for the first days of teaching. We were given a good set of resources to help with (assisting in) teaching the junior high school curriculum. We practiced different teaching situations, especially our jiko shoukai, the self introduction lesson which is traditionally given by new teachers every year.

The Altia Central trainers told us this, and it was very true: that you will notice a significant improvement in the quality of delivery of your jiko shoukai lesson after the 3 days. Having a fun lesson, which I knew well, went a long way to giving me confidence to go into the first few days of teaching.

Settling into an apartment

I live in Toyota city, the headquarters of the Toyota Motor Corporation is here and it seems like every second person works for the company. The city itself isn’t too big, but since I was expecting to be placed in some remote rural mountain town, I was really happy on getting to stay here for a year. Plus it is only 35km from Nagoya and just about halfway between Tokyo and Osaka.

And I was even happier with my apartment (check out a video walkthrough of my 1LDK apartment in Japan). It is quite new and really different from any place I’ve lived in. It’s only a few minutes walking distance from the train station, and an 8 minute train ride to the city. Nagoya is about 50 minutes away by train.

My 1LDK apartment in Japan!

My company helped me get the gas connected. I moved to Japan with my Japanese girlfriend, if I did it solo, I would have got everything else done OK, it just would have taken a lot longer to figure out. Internet took a few weeks to get connected (but is SUPER fast, really happy with that).

My first experiences and impressions of being an ALT

Since I’m working at two schools, which are of roughly equal size (each about 400 students), I spend 2 weeks every month at each school. My first month of teaching comprised almost solely doing my jiko shoukai lesson.

My two schools are very different. One is brand new, the other is old and established.

One school is brand new, as in it was built this year (construction was completed in January, and when I arrived in April they were only just finishing things off). The school was made because the other larger junior high school in the area was getting too big. It is really impressive to work at this place, solar panels along two roofs at least 100m long. An archery range, shiny polished wooden floors and fancy toilets.

The problem is the people. They just seem to care less than my other school. I can give many examples, but basically I never know what is going on (e.g. school presentations, activities etc) even though I express interest in helping out and attending such things. Every time I get to this school, I have no schedule for which classes I must go to (the school is supposed to provide it 10 days in advanced, but the English teacher responsible for this is new, unorganised, and sleeps a lot at school), so I have no idea what I’m doing. Also, as a schedule hasn’t been prepared, the other English teachers don’t even know I’m coming and so have no chance to plan ways to use me in class. In some classes I basically do the formal greeting (aisatsu) “Good morning everyone… how are you.” and that’s it.

My other school is great and I really love coming here, even though it is an old school and former ALTs here have told me that the students are the worst behaved in the city. The other teachers (not only English teachers) are really friendly, they tell me what is going on, and best of all the principal (kocho sensei) is really happy and friendly, we chat every morning about the weather and culture.

At both schools, the students are awesome. We usually talk a combination of broken English and Japanese. It’s always fun to attend their undokai’s (sport festival days), have lunch with them and go to bukatsu (after school club, I go to soccer often).

Students are playing a game, they have to get as many balls as possible into the net in 1 minute.

If you’re a new ALT, the best advice I can give you is to PRACTICE your lessons before you give them. Always have some forms of lesson plan ready and make sure you know what materials you need to bring to class and check you have everything before class. Teaching isn’t hard, but if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing, it will lead to down time in class which ends up with the students talking more and becoming unfocused.

If you’re an ALT… bookmark this link… I use it often. The best online resource I have seen for activities, games and lesson plans as an ALT in Japan. http://jhsenglipediaproject.com/. It’s really well done and maintained, categorised by school (e.g. Elementary, Junior High School) and then by book (as schools use different books, but there seems to be about 3 or 4 brands used across the country).

School lunch: 5 days a week I eat kyuushoku, the Japanese school lunch. It is designed to have a good balance of good things, and is usually really tasty. It you’re a fussy eater, you might find it difficult, especially with the way that fish is sometimes presented on your plate. Expect either rice or bread at every meal. Milk will always be served. There is usually also some form of salad and a soup. On sporadic occasions we’ll get a nice dessert or some chocolate syrup to add to our milk. We have to pay for it, but it is really cheap, under 300 yen.

How does Altia Central compare to other companies?

This is the first time I’ve worked in Japan, so I’ve only ever worked for Altia Central. So all I can say here is what other more experienced teachers have told me. Most of these people have been ALTs, but some were also English teachers doing eikaiwa (English conversation class) for at least 4 years.

Most of the people working as ALTs for other companies were working for Interac. Interac are a huge company, I was offered a job with them, however the pay and what I researched about training and support were much better with Altia Central.

For example, Altia Central pays the same salary every month of the year, including the 6 weeks in the middle of the year where you don’t work (summer holidays). Interac decreases your pay during this time, to something like 50% of your normal monthly pay.

Altia has a great orientation training program of 3 days which made everyone really confident and skilled before the first days at school. There are regular meetings and what looks to be quarterly follow up training, and we all have regular contact with Senior ALTs and our area managers who help us out with just about everything. We are provided with good materials for lesson plans, and have access to more good lesson materials at an online repository and forum.

I was told that working with Interac felt like being thrown in the deep-end, with little training or followup training. Also a few people who worked in the JET program said the same thing, although their pay is much better, so I reckon that is a good compromise.

Learning Japanese

One of my objectives for living here is to become very good at conversational Japanese. Progress has been slow. First of all, I’m not a very motivated self-studier. Second, it’s hard to find good Japanese classes in my area and finally, it seems like most Japanese people I meet want to practice their English conversation skills with me!

After chatting with many long-term ALTs, many mentioned Genki’s Integrated Elementary/Intermediate Course in Japanese. So I started this, and got through the first few pages, haven’t touched it for a few months. I also purchased membership to iKnow.jp. That is much easier to do, but it is only a vocabulary builder, it’s handy but not great for learning conversation.

Last month I paid for my application to sit the JLPT N5 in December. My Japanese teachers said I could do N4, however I would need to learn around 300 kanji, which I don’t think I can do. So recently I bought a good book on learning kanji that has illustrated mnemonics, haven’t yet read it. So as you can see, I’m not great at self-study.

I started a weekly Japanese class at the local international centre here in Toyota, Aichi. It was OK at first, but there were 3 things I struggled with. First, that the class was all in Japanese (and I was the only English speaking person), so I was basically reciting words and phrases but had little idea what they meant. I don’t like this method of learning, I need to have the grammar structure explained in English first.

Second, the class was on a Saturday morning. This restricted my opportunity to travel. If I did travel, I fell behind in a class I already found difficult. Also, after a week of working around 40 hours, I wanted this to be my rest time!

Third, the class was 2.5 hours long. After the first 90 minutes, it became really difficult to focus and I constantly made silly mistakes.

That being said, I completed the 6 months course and did pick up a few important phrases. Not as much as I’d like though.

Travelling in Japan

In the first 6 months here in Japan I’ve been to: Nagoya and experienced the big city; Okazaki for cherry blossom viewing and a festival; hiking at Mt Sanage; a sumo tournament; Nagoya prefecture, hiking Mt Ontake and the historic Nakasendo; Okayama prefecture including Okayama city and the historic town of Kurashiki; Shikoku for the spectacular Awa Odori dancing festival; Kyoto for a few days of World Heritage sight seeing; Osaka, but just a day trip; Seto to make pottery; and around my city of Toyota.

It’s hard to travel a lot on a teacher’s salary. About half of the travel I’ve done was within one 10 day period in the summer holidays, and most of it was done cheap by bus. If the distance is short, about 150 – 300km then bus is a great option, any longer and the bus trips seem to be overnight, which I just can’t do, I can’t get a decent sleep on the bus. It is far cheaper (less than half price) of the bullet train. But it was such great time. Travelling is a great way to practice and use Japanese.

I spend a lot of time discovering the local area and the events that happen around here. There are so many castles and shrines, and there seems to be a festival every few weeks.

A small temple just a few minutes bike ride from my place, in South Toyota city.

Still on the list of must-visit places before I leave Japan (and that could be 2 years away) is: Mt Fuji, just for a look, not to hike; Tokyo, I’ve been before but there are so many places I didn’t get to; Hokkaido; Okinawa; and travel somewhere on the new E5 series shinkansen on the Hayabusa service; Himeji castle.

I write about all the really interesting Japan travels I get up to on my Japan travel guide website. Lots of photos and articles there if you want to check it out.

Social life

There are two sides to your social life as an ALT: that with the teachers and that with other ALTs. Eventually you’d like to add Japanese friends to that!

Every school has regular events, usually dinners and drinking parties throughout the year. So far I’ve been invited to about 5 from one school, they seem to have a party after everything (sports days, end of term, just because…). They are lots of fun and even if they are expensive you should really go. It gives you time to get to know the other teachers and you’ll be surprised at how many speak English to you.

Then there are the other ALTs. I’m lucky to live in a decent sized city where there are about 25 other ALTs and their friends from other English language schools in the area. We regularly meet up for local events, festivals, birthdays, a weekly soccer game or just for something to do. It’s great to meet so many people from all over the world and there is always something happening.

It’s a bit tricky so far to make Japanese friends. So far I’ve met a few Japanese guys through other ALTs who have been in this city for about 3 years. We play soccer regularly or baseball, lots of fun, they are always keen to speak English and it’s a great time to practice Japanese conversation.

One of the most interesting things is getting to learn the subtle differences in culture when socialising. From pouring beers to doing a bonzai cheer, it’s lots of fun to pick this stuff up.

Daily living in a Japanese city

Shopping: shopping is so very different from Australia. Just like in Australia we have a small “asian foods” section, in Japan there is a very limited selection of western foods. Here are some examples:

It’s hard to find a good selection of cereals. The majority of what I find is in the Frosties or Coco-Pops style, all very heavily coated with sugar. They do sell Corn Flakes, but they are really expensive for small boxes. I’ve found a few muesli style cereals which are decent and fairly priced, again they are sweeter than I’m used to.

Fruit is usually very expensive. Bananas are the exception. Apples are HUGE, about the size of a softball, they must be genetically modified. They are usually about 170 yen ($2 AUD) and aren’t very sweet.

Vegetables are good and reasonably priced. Pork, chicken and fish is usually cheap. Beef is more expensive as it is usually either imported or in the premium marbled style.

Bread has also become a bit of a novelty. What we consider to be a toast slice in Australia is about the same size as the smallest slices of bread here in Japan. Standard size here is 6 slices, each about double the size of a normal toast slice back in Australia. Bread isn’t expensive though, but it is hard to find wholegrain or brown bread, and there aren’t a lot of bakeries around.

Cooking/eating: I’ve heard this so many times by both foreigners and Japanese people living in Japan… that it is so cheap to eat out that sometimes they find it hard to justify preparing dinner at home. Indeed I know plenty of people who own no cooking equipment at home, they always eat out.

When I cook for myself, it is usually a stir-fry. Noodles are cheap, so are sauces, vegies and many types of meats. If I want to splash out a bit I’ll make pasta (sauce and the pasta itself is expensive) with a salad.

The biggest adjustment has been breakfast, as I’m used to healthy cereals for breakfast. But I just break it up and have a few different things for breakfast.

The Japanese usually cook many different small dishes for a meal. It’s time consuming, something I won’t be assimilating to very quickly.

Eating out: I don’t eat out a lot, it’s just never been my thing. But when I do head out, it’s usually for good food that is really cheap. Izakaya is my favourite, going for the all you can eat (tabehodai) and all you can drink (nomihodai) options. You usually have a set time of 60/90/120 minutes to eat and drink all you can.

Tabehodai... gluttonous moments.

Bento meals, from convenience and grocery stores are quite cheap and often present you with somewhat balanced meal options. I eat these on occasion, usually when I’m out and about looking for a fast meal.

There are a lot of fast food places, you’ll find McDonals and KFC (with their own Japanese variations on certain things). Some of my favourite fast food here, is the Japanese burger places, especially MOS Burger (which actually is starting to open stores in Australia). The thing is, the burgers are 20% smaller, and the meals aren’t any cheaper in comparison.

Driving: My position as an ALT here is on a driving contract. The new school I am teaching at has little public transport options, so I have been provided with a company car. It’s a funny little thing to drive, only 3 cylinders. I used to have it on a plan so I could drive it anywhere, but it was too expensive as I had to pay for insurance and fuel. So now on a work only plan I drive from school and home and work pays for fuel.

Just like anywhere else in the world, there are bad drivers in Japan. The thing is, they are bad in different ways. I’ve never seen the hazard lights used so often. People will just stop on the road wherever they like, throw their hazards lights on and consider it OK to stop. Also, the running of red lights is amazing.

That being said, they’ll also use their hazards lights to thank you, if you let someone in off a side road they’ll likely blink their hazards a few times to say hello. People coming in the other direction will sometimes bow to you if you do some kind act of driving, I stick to the one handed wave…

The roads are very different, most of the roads that aren’t main roads, are about 1.5 lanes wide. So if someone is coming in the opposite direction you need to pull over.

Check out this video I took driving around Toyota city spotting vending machines.

Internet speeds in Japan: A short word on this one… ridiculously fast. Absolutely love it, unlimited bandwidth for about 5000 yen a month.

What I miss most about Australia

Everyday there are little differences that remind me of home. There are plenty of things I miss about Australia: family; friends; Coopers Sparkling Ale; salt and vinegar chips; tacos; cheap pizza; the beach; dry heat; free highways; pubs; watching and playing cricket; steak; chicken parmigana at the pub with mates; camping; Australian Cabernet Sauvignon; mild winters.

After a degree in Mutlimedia (marketing major) and 5 years working in some of Australia’s leading interactive agencies and businesses, I wanted to share my knowledge of making successful websites. So I created the PDF eGuide and a companion website and support system: You Make The Website.

Yes... I really am an industry professional.

Head over to http://youmakethewebsite.com.au/ now and see what it’s all about.

So… what is You Make The Website?

It is a PDF eGuide (I won’t go as far as saying eBook, it’s only around 120 pages) and a set of two companion websites: one holds resources and articles; the other is a member on support forum.

I began working on the eGuide about a year ago. The guide is aimed at Australian people who want to make personal websites, and small businesses who want to make business websites. The outcome either way, is a professional website and a strategy to get real, interested, quality traffic to your site.

The eGuide itself is step-by-step and is suitable for anyone. If you’ve never made a blog or a website before, just follow the steps to get the job done. If you’ve made sites before, follow the steps to make a website the right way, and check out the advanced tips along the way. The guide is split into two parts: making the website; getting traffic to come.

The companion website, http://youmakethewebsite.com.au/, has lots of resources for those following the eGuide. Some of the pages are password protected available only to those who purchase the guide.

There is also a support forum site, which gives free access to support for people who have purchased the guide. You can ask me questions about anything in the guide, to help to get your site built.

Why Australia only?

There are some small but important differences when creating a website in Australia compared to other countries. Also my experience in the industry over the years has been in making successful Australian websites. I’m currently working on the international version of You Make The Website. I have a few personal websites based in other countries, from which I will draw knowledge to create this guide.

So if you want to make a website and get it done right the first time learn more about this guide to creating websites.

With this site, having an EDM (Electronic Direct Marketing) system in place was crucial. After using MailChimp, I wanted to use something more independent, and found PHPlist a good option, as it was offered as an auto install on my web hosting using Installatron.

PHPlist was easy enough to work with, however integrating a PHPlist subscribe page into WordPress took a lot of trial and error to get right.

The two plugins which are talked about most (WP PHPList; yPHPlista) and a few others (WebJunk PHPList; etc), for integrating PHPlist subscribe functionality into WordPress just didn’t work for me. They were all buggy and had poor documentation or just no-one responding to issues that are being posted in forums.

So I thought about a better integration, and this is very friendly in terms of the user interface. It’s a pretty quick method of integration too… use a shadowbox plugin to display your PHPlist subscribe page, and then if you wish, customise your PHPlist subscribe page to match the design of your site.

Step 1 – setup PHPlist and create a working subscribe page

My server uses Installatron, so installation was really easy. PHPlist has good documentation on their site, so I just followed this to setup a simple subscribe form (i.e. add fields, and they go into the config.php file and turn off test mode).

So go ahead and create a PHPlist subscribe page first.

Step 2 – install Shadowbox JS WordPress plugin and customise settings

You can search for ‘Shadowbox JS’ in the WordPress plugin repository, accessible from the WordPress admin. Install and then activate the plugin.

If you want to use Shadowbox JS just for displaying a PHPlist subscribe page (i.e. an external website), then you can use the same settings that I have.

If you want to use Shadowbox JS to also display media (e.g. images, videos), then take a look at Shadowbox JS’s website for info.

Step 3 – add a link to your WordPress site that will launch in Shadowbox JS

I must thank the author of the article at http://sivel.net/wordpress/shadowbox-js/ for helping out with this one, it was a bit hard to find this spelled out clearly in the documentation on Shadowbox JS’s website. To launch a link in Shadowbox JS, simply add code into the re=”" of the <a> tag. This is the code I’m using (you’ll see in rel that you can set the height and width of the shadowbox pop-up).

<a href=”http://youmakethewebsite.com.au/EDM/?p=subscribe&amp;id=3″ rel=”shadowbox;height=416;width=584″ style=”color: #a1a1a1;”>INTERNATIONAL VERSION</a>

Pretty easy, and it works great. No need to add an extra dedicated subscribe page to your site.

Step 4 (optional) – style your PHPlist page to match your site

You can then go into your PHPlist admin and play with the code for the subscribe page. You can entirely rework the page and use CSS to change the display of the form elements.

Wish I thought about this earlier! I spent a whole night playing with WP PHPList and yPHPlista plugins, they didn’t work and couldn’t find anything to help me. After setting up the PHPlist subscribe page (which I was new to so it took about 30 minutes), it only took about 5 minutes to get Shadowbox JS installed and displaying the subscribe page on my site.

Styling the subscribe page took a bit longer, but I’m quite pedantic (i.e. pixel level perfect) about my designs. The one thing left that is bugging me is that there is an Unsubscribe link on the subscribe page. All I can manage to do is tone down the colour of the link and hide it below the fold.

For a more custom subscribe page, you could build your own PHP page.

WordBeach homepage: http://wordbeach.org/ (Japanese).

Yokoso News page, including details on the live video cast I was a guest on: http://yokosonews.com/matsuri/wordbeach2011/ (English).

Struggling with understanding the language, but it’s interesting to see the WordPress community in Japan.

It was a pleasure to meet a few key people involved with translation of WordPress releases and documentation. One of them was Odyssey, a.k.a Hisayoshi Hattori who managed the latest release of the Japanese version of WordPress.

odysseygate.com

I’ve used them many times, to help with many things for my websites, including:

• On-page SEO: perfecting the optimisation on a page for a target keyword/phrase.
• Site wide SEO: this covers many areas, such as target keywords, internal links and more.
• Keywords research: They use Google’s API to look for keyword ideas, but they go a BIG step further. See ratings of keyword difficulty, and what you need to do to rank high for that difficulty
• Link building: Where to find opportunities for link building and monitoring what your competitors are doing.
• Support from professionals: As a member you get credits to ask questions of the SEO pros. You also get access to all past answered questions, there is so much info here!

Anyway the real purpose of this post is to tell you about an offer they have at the moment…

Here’s how it works:

• Take a look at the details of the 30 day free trial and what SEOmoz have to offer.
• Register for the offer. You have to provide your credit card details. It is a FREE 30 day offer, so when the trial period is about to end you just end your trial. It’s super easy, I’ve done it before, you don’t need to worry about your credit card being charged at all.
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So take a look at the SEOmoz free trial offer. Seriously you won’t be disappointed, if you run any type of blog or website this offer will give you a goldmine of tools and data to rank higher and get more traffic.

Enjoy!

This time at the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards the campaign won:

• Platinum Award – Best of Show
• Best integrated marketing campaign – Gold
• Most effective use of advertising – Silver
• Most effective use of interactive marketing – Silver
• Most innovative use of media – Gold
• Best marketing campaign for national brand development – Silver
• Best insights / strategic thinking – Silver
• Best ideas – Gold

Source: http://www.campaignbrief.com/2011/05/clemenger-bbdo-proximity-wins.html

Take a look at Narai-juku which is on the Nakasendo, an old highway from Edo (old Tokyo) and Kyoto. 11 post towns, some preserved as they were 200 years ago.

See traditional Japan at Narai-juku.

SandPlay Therapy, counseling and coaching in Canberra.

AsWeGrow.com.au is a new website with details on services offered in and around Canberra, which include counseling, coaching, SandPlay Therapy, conflict resolution support, mediation and more.

Counseling in Canberra with As We Grow

As We Grow is owned and operated by Janine Brissett. So if you are looking for counseling in Canberra, mediation in Canberra, or just want to see how As We Grow can work with your family to discover and express what’s important, then head to the As We Grow website and request a free consultation.

Some features of this site:

• Rotating A feature on the homepage to direct users to the most important content and core services.
• A blog maintained by Janine.
• Easy mini-contact form on most pages, for fast contact messages to As We Grow.
• The site is hosted by HostGeek, my favourite WordPress and website host in Australia.
• The site is using a theme from ThemeForest, offering great Premium WordPress themes, which I modified to suit the client’s needs.