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“The Yappari Japan podcast is a weekly, 10-20 minute show where Rich Pav and Thersa Matsuura walk and talk together while separated by hundreds of kilometres and share with you their experiences and insights as long-term expats in Japan.”

The cool thing is it’s a BINAURAL 196kbps MP3! (3x the quality that Herro Flom Japan used to be.) If you listen to it wearing headphones, you hear exactly what we hear. A bird flies overhead, a neighbor says good morning or a truck drives by and it sounds like you’re right there.

If you know how to subscribe to a podcast using the RSS feed URL, here it is:

http://www.yapparijapan.com/feed/podcast/

Some behind the scenes info: We use super-sensitive stereo cardioid lavalier mics from Giant Squid Audio Lab and the Zoom H1 recorder. We each record separately while using Skype to talk to each other. (That’s a lot of gadgets and wires we’re both wearing.) After our daily morning walk, Terrie uploads her gargantuan WAV file to our FTP server. I download it, sync it with mine in Audacity and send the mix to Terrie as an MP3. We both listen to, log it, and discuss which parts are the best. Once a week I gather them up and paste them into a 10-20min weekly podcast. The end.

The post The Yappari Japan Podcast! appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Here’s the company owner’s blog.

The company’s office is a pretty anonymous looking building with a soba shop on the first floor.

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Photo by Gideon Tsang

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Tony: Daddy, how much was your bicycle?
Me: I don’t remember, somewhere around ¥60,000-80,000. Why?
Tony: Because Andy just crashed it.

He’s at the hospital now getting stitches in his chin.

The post Gravity: 1, Andy: 0 appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Andy is 15 years old now and has feet almost the same size as mine. His are 28cm, mine are 29.

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Are there any classes you look forward to having?
Are there any classes that make you think, “I like learning this?”

He still couldn’t answer.

“Do you hate all your classes?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

「うるさいから」

“Who’s noisy, the kids or the teachers?” (A teacher who constantly bitches and yells and berates students can be うるさい)

“The kids.”

“So there are so many kids in your classes who misbehave that it makes it hard to learn anything”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever talked to the teacher about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they already know.”

“Have they given up?”

“Yes.”

Photo by colincookman

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With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.
Russian Proverb

嘘をつけば、世の中の先を行くことができる。しかし二度と元には戻れない。
ロシアのことわざ

This site rocks. Hundreds of quotes & sayings, all in correct English and Japanese. Use your favorites to make wallpapers of any size and color. Look at that beautiful shade of green. LOOK AT IT.

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My former employer, James Yellowlees, owner of Global daigaku.com, Pacifica Consultants and the Canadian Education Alliance, J-Sports hockey announcer and university lecturer, is trying his best not to pay my back salary.

I’ve discovered that I’m far from being the only one who James has bilked.

http://bit.ly/JamesYellowlees01

http://bit.ly/JamesYellowlees02

http://bit.ly/JamesYellowlees03

He’s a really nice guy. He was a very kind boss and I enjoyed working for him apart from going many months without being paid.

He always promised to pay. When he realized how frustrated I was when the money started seriously piling up, his exact words to me were, “I PROMISE to pay your salary. I PLEDGE to pay your salary.” I took him for his word.

By the end of March 2011 I was perpetually in a bad mood. I hadn’t been paid since December of the year before. James laid me off. In the same email where he explained how he was forced to let me go because he had lost so many clients in the earthquake, he promised to pay me what he owed.

He paid nothing, but continuously promised to pay next week, next month, etc. I took him to court in August 2011.

He told the judge this was all a waste of time because he had already promised the labor bureau he would pay my back salary.

After that, he still paid nothing, but repeatedly promised to pay.

In March 2013 I hired a lawyer to have the government seize his assets, but they left his office empty-handed.

My only option left was to go public. In June 2013 I posted messages to a few LinkedIn groups he’s subscribed to. At the time I hadn’t heard from him for ages but I got an email soon after. He promised to pay me provided I delete the messages and never discuss the issue in public ever again. I agreed only to taking down the messages.

James made some payments, but a few weeks later he was back to his same old excuses and asked me to be patient. There were no payments.

I offered to accept smaller monthly payments. He agreed. Yet again he made a few payments that turned into excuses, then with no contact from him at all except for an occasional email promising to pay soon.

In March 2014 I noticed the GlobalDaigaku.com website had been redesigned. I wrote to him saying if he has money to spend on the site, then he must have money to pay down my 0% interest loan to him. He sent ¥50,000, a very small sum compared to what he still owes.

I offered him some advice to improve the site because from an SEO standpoint it’s quite bad. My friends, when they heard about this, told me I was an idiot. I wrote to him again saying he needs to pay me the full amount. My final email said I wanted him to pay both me and my friend who he never paid for a web design job she did for him. I told him I’d go public again, and this time I wouldn’t delete any posts until he fully paid. No reply.

I posted a message in a LinkedIn group on May 24, 2014. I’ve told James repeatedly I would do this. After not hearing from him for over a month, I received an email from him very quickly:

Rich,

You will have your next payment next week.

You agreed not to post anything negative online while these payments are being completed.

The group you referred to is trying to extort money from us and is being dealt with through legal channels.

It will be best if you stay out of it and stay offline with negative comments.

James

“Extortion” is an interesting way to describe clients who paid James to study in Canada but found the fees weren’t paid to the schools.

He’s been promising to pay me “next week” or “next month” for over three years. He pays a little, then stops. Going public is the only way to get him to pay at all.

I don’t like having to do this. I’m not angry; I just want my money.

The post An Open Letter About James Yellowlees appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Today is Wednesday, not Thursday. I don’t have any lessons today.

The post Memory is the first thing to go appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Neither of us can remember whose idea it was to get matching tattoos.

The post Neighborhood temple got an upgrade appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Update: I’m stuck with “Herro Flom Japan” because the phrase spelled correctly is too generic. And of course, hellofromjapan.com is already taken.

The post The Reboot! appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

On the bright side, with nothing left to have fun with and no money to buy replacements, maybe our kids will start reading books.

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Last week he showed me a catalog of games to tell me about the next game he was all excited to buy: Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories. One of his 11 year old friends has it and he totally fell in love with it. An 11 year old kid. His parents let him buy a game rated “Z” for 18 and over because it’s wall-to-wall foul language and adult themes such as murder, mayhem, carjacking, brain-splattering headshots, cop killing, prostitution, BSDM, kinky sex, double-ended dildos, tittie bars, drugs…

That is, so far. For all I know, it gets worse. I’m still only on the 5th or 6th mission. Tony, on the other hand, is on well his way to unlocking the second island.

Last week, when Tony first showed me the game, our conversation when a bit like this:

Tony (in Japanese): Daddy, I want to get this awesome game!
Me (in English): What’s it rated?
Tony: Z.
Me: How old do you have to buy a game that’s rated Z?
Tony: 18.
Me: How old are you now?
Tony: 11.
Me: What’s 18-11?
Tony: 7.
Me: That’s how many years you have to wait to buy the game.

End of conversation. Flash forward to this week.

Tony: Daddy, look what I got!
Sony PSP: “You cock-sucking mother-fucking son of a goddamn whore! I’ll rip off your head and shit down your neck!” (explosions) (police sirens) (sexual innuendo-filled radio dialog)
Me: Wonderful.

So here’s the thing. And maybe I’m just rationalizing my horrible parenting skills and my guilt for not confiscating the game on sight.

Neither Tony nor Andy understand much English aside from the conversations I have with them, so all the swearing in the game goes over their heads. It was only a few weeks ago that Tony finally learned the word “shit” when I dented the running board of our family car trying to back out of a ridiculously narrow dead end. I’m not too worried about either of them acquiring a new and exceedingly foul English vocabulary from the game.

They don’t understand the adult themes in the game. Or, maybe they do, and if so, they already acquired such worldly knowledge elsewhere.

That leaves the violence. When I was a kid, we played cops and robbers and smashed Matchbox cars together all the time. And I didn’t grow up to be a sociopath.

Yesterday was a holiday so the three of us played the game together. I taught Andy how to read a map and to give and understand directions in English. I found a website of cheat codes and taught Tony some new vocabulary by explaining to him what they all did. The boys got practice sharing their toys, which involved patience and conflict resolution. Tony got to show me all the secret locations, mini games and tricks he discovered by himself. (I skipped over minor details such as what prostitutes and pimps do for a living.) We shared opinions about strategies. But most of all, the three of us spent hours of quality time together, which we don’t do often enough lately.

But still, I’m conflicted as to whether or not I’m being a horrible parent by letting them play such an adult-oriented game.

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This morning as I was passing through Shinjuku Station, I saw a woman take a dive down a short flight of slippery stairs and lie crumpled on the wet ground with a quickly expanding pool of blood under her head. (That freaked me out.) I’ve lived here long enough to know that you can’t assume someone else is going to help so I rushed down her, tore off my headphones (and my glasses–oops), grabbed a towel from someone who pulled one out, knelt down and held the towel to her head while resting her neck on my thigh.

She was talking, which was a relief. She was saying, “Don’t worry about me, if you need to get to work, please go because I don’t want to make you late.” I told her to just relax and asked her if she was hurt anywhere else. She said she hurt her leg a little, but it didn’t look broken, although I wasn’t about to let my hand off her head to check. Man, she was really gushing blood. It looked like someone had slaughtered a dog on the sidewalk.

I got blood all over my jeans. Not a good pair, but these days none of my jeans are a “good pair.” I can’t buy my size in Japan, so I only have a few old pairs left that are still wearable. In other words, I trashed about 20% of my wardrobe right there.

Someone else called an ambulance on their mobile phone. It was nice that so many people stopped to ask if someone had called one. I like to see people care about total strangers, but day to day I don’t see it often enough. Either people don’t want to get involved or they just stand there dumbfounded.

There was another women there who vaguely knew her because they work at the same company, so she stayed with her to wait for the ambulance and I left to get washed up. She kept saying that she didn’t want to make anyone late, and by that time she was sitting up and not bleeding as much so I figured it was OK to leave. But it’s never easy to know if it’s really OK to leave in a situation like that. She wanted me to, so I left.

And now I have to spend the rest of today wearing blood-stained jeans. I don’t mind, really. It doesn’t look like I’ve been through a massacre, but the stain is definitely noticeable so I’m a bit self-conscious.

Update: When I got home tonight my wife gave me a ziplock baggie full of some magical blue powder to put on the stain. The jeans just came out of the washer and much to my surprise the blood washed off completely without a trace. I told the story to both of my kids. Tony (the older one) wanted to know every last detail of the ordeal. Andy wanted to know why the heck would I volunteer to help a complete stranger.

The post My good deed for today appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

It’s Friday, I’m starting on my way home and I was hungry for a snack so I bought a bag of tempura fried squid. They look like potato chips or some other salted carbohydrate snack. Apparently, if you’re not eating them, they don’t smell so nice. I was eating them out of the bag when I got on the train and instantly all the women around me covered their faces with their handkerchiefs. One woman moved to another part of the train. I took the hint and twisted the bag shut until I got off at my stop then ate the rest in the open air.

Next time, I’ll wait to get home to eat them. Tony likes stinky food so we’ll eat them together.

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It’s a good thing too. By the last day they were all looking pretty bored. I started to see them congregated into groups talking to each other instead of standing watch over commuter/terrorists.

Seriously, I really want to know where the hell they all went.

P.S. I’m posting this using ScribeFire.

The post Tokyo is back to normal appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

For years and years, the English language website for Mainichi News had a section called WaiWai. It translated salacious and bizarre articles from the dregs of Japanese tabloids into English. As far as I know, the authors of WaiWai never made anything up–they left that to the authors of the original articles about such nonsense like a restaurant where you could have sex with a pig then have it cooked for you.

A Japanese person could read the original articles in their original context and considering the source and content easily see through the bullshit, similar to how an American could tell that an article from the National Inquirer or Weekly World News about scientists planning to blow up the moon is most likely not true. But foreigners have a propensity to believe absolutely anything they read about Japan, up to and including the thousands upon thousands of used panty vending machines on every street corner here that don’t f**king exist.

Apparently it was the “You screw it we cook it” restaurant story that caught the attention of Japanese bloggers and 2channers back in May. They got fired up about WaiWai sullying the reputation of their beloved country overseas, and from there the mass media caught wind and ran with it.

As reported in Japan Probe, the Mainichi acted all shocked and stunned, as if they had no idea WaiWai even existed, closed down the site, apologized in Japanese and English, and even went so far as to punish the employees responsible for the column. The chief editor, an Australian named Ryann Connell, has become the outraged public’s whipping boy and is currently suspended for three months from his job and sequestered in his home with police protection after receiving a number of death threats, as reported in the Australian media.

Here’s my take on the whole situation. WaiWai should have been shut down years ago. Republishing tabloid articles under the Mainichi name lent credibility to the articles that were most likely complete fabrications. I used to visit the site a few times a year simply because the articles were painful to read, which is kind of fun in an intellectually masochistic kind of way. They painted a picture of Japan very different from the Japan I know from living here. A news outlet like the Mainichi shouldn’t be in the business of publishing stories in a column where a small percentage of them are true and the rest are tabloid trash without any kind of disclaimer attached to the unsourced articles. In the end, the company got what it deserved–a whole lot of bad publicity and a mass exodus of their advertising sponsors.

The post Mainichi shuts down WaiWai appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Twitter friends were right, the extra security is due to the G8 Summit in Hokkaido. It says so on these out-of-order garbage cans. Mystery solved.

The post Tokyo Lockdown appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Want to know what scenario worries me the most? Some nutjob mixing together a batch of hydrogen sulfide on a crowded train or subway.

Update: Twitter friends say the extra security could be related to the G8 summits. That would explain the cop outside the Canadian Embassy.

Update #2: The illegally parked scooters got ticketed. He looked pretty bored wandering the neighborhood all day. I guess he needed something to do to pass the time.

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Weeks went by and I slacked off from reading news articles in Japanese, because frankly, it’s a time consuming pain in the ass, and keeping up with election news from the US in English requires far less effort in comparison. But eventually I did go back to it. (It’s what I do when I can’t sleep at night.) That’s when I discovered that suicide by hydrogen sulfide had become a fad. Between the beginning of this year and the end of May, there have been 517 deaths nationwide, compared to only 29 in all of last year. In at least one incident, the elderly parent of a suicide victim was found dead just outside the bathroom where the 39 year old man took his own life. In far more cases, entire neighborhoods have had to be evacuated until the air was deemed safe to breathe.

People who are suicidally depressed often feel like they just want to disappear; to go to sleep and never wake up. On various online bulletin boards (such as 2chan), blogs and websites, death by hydrogen sulfide has been toted as a way to take one’s own life quickly, easily, and painlessly. In fact, when you search Google for the term “hydrogen sulfide” in Japanese, the second highest ranking result after the Wikipedia article is a web page giving a step-by-step instructions on what chemicals to use, how to buy them, how much to mix together given the size of the room, and even a PDF sign to print out and tape to a door warning others to stay away and call authorities. Two links at the very bottom of the page take you to the sites for two suicide prevention organizations. I don’t know what the author’s point is, given the contents of the rest of the page.

But here’s what really blows me away: Even though for the past 10 years in Japan over 30,000 people have committed suicide annually, the government is doing very little to combat the problem. That statistic is four times the number of people who die in traffic accidents every year. On year’s total is roughly equal to the number of soldiers killed and wounded since the beginning of the Gulf War.

Nearly 20% of suicides are attributed to depression, the rest mostly to physical ailments or unsurmountable debts. It’s the ones caused by depression that are the most disturbing to me. If 6,060 people had died in 2007 from any other cause–homicide, SARS, AIDS, paper cuts–the news media would be in hysterics over the epidemic and the government would throw billions of yen at the problem. As it stands, the only concrete action I’ve been able to dig up on the part of the government is their declaration to cut the suicide rate by 20% by 2016. Maybe I just haven’t hit Google paydirt yet on what’s actually being done; the relevant section of the National Institute of Public Health’s website has a pretty picture of some flowers to show their concern, but the page hasn’t been updated since 2003.

I don’t know what my point is, other than 30,000 people out of a total population of 127 million is a hell of a lot of people, and the thought blows my mind. That, and I’d like to see psychotherapy cognitive behavioral therapy covered by national health insurance. Taking antidepressants without therapy is like taking anti-cholesterol medication but still eating at McDonald’s three times a day.

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We took him to a pet shop on Saturday to look at the dogs, and he really liked a yappy little brown chihuahua that was going for only 50,000 yen. Every time I commented on how much cheaper that one was compared to all the others, my wife turned to me and told me to STFU under her breath. Personally, I’m a fan of much larger dogs, preferably one that could eat a chihuahua for breakfast.

My wife told him (and me) that she’ll think more about getting a dog when Andy’s in the fifth grade, which is a euphemism for “when hell freezes over,” but to Andy that just means he has plenty of time to save up enough money. I’ve suggested a few alternative animals for pets: a penguin, a snake, a poo-flinging monkey, a chicken or a hamster that’ll make his room stink like rodent piss. But for him it’s chihuahua or bust. Mommy’s vote is for the latter.

Tony has been spending every waking moment playing Monster Hunter on his PSP, and he’d even play it in his sleep if we let him. It bothers me to see him wasting his formative years slaying imaginary monsters, so last Monday I very lovingly confiscated his PSP’s battery and told him I’d give it back after he read a book of his choice in English. He chose The Cat in the Hat Beginner Book Dictionary, which he chased me around with every day until we finally finished it together on Saturday afternoon. Immediately he went back to putting his young life on hold to spend hours and hours slashing more monsters and collecting bigger and more deadly weapons, so last night I asked him for the battery again, and he gave it up with barely a whimper. After all, there’s still Smash Brothers on the Wii and Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS which he can use to waste his life.

This morning I sent a text message in English to his mobile phone: Your PSP battery is in the top drawer of your desk, inside the blue Oreo chocolate candy box. It he can decode the message, he can have the battery back. The messages will get progressively harder from now on, and eventually he’ll have to start answering questions. By the time he reaches junior high school, he’ll be decades ahead of his classmates in English ability, and he’ll thank me for being such a prick.

The post A Family Update appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

I came upon this article by accident. (I hope you don’t mean that literally. -ed.)
Don’t you realize that although you did your civic duty, you also stopped the practiced skills of an art form. Chikan can indeed be considered an art form. Where else can one find throughout history that an entire culture has tolerated and encouraged the groping of its female population. Video and film industries have sprung from the art of Chikan. Techniques that have been passed down from generations of men to their sons on the groping of females so that the act becomes one of pleasure for both the male and female. Although many women will not admit it, I truly believe that they love the attention of being touched and fondled, not to cause injury but to make women feel loved. For many of these women the anonymous touch of a man’s hand rubbing her buttocks with his hands or erect clothed penis is an act of appreciating her beauty. There are millions of Asian females who know that their breasts are small in size, appreciate that Asian males touch and fondle them in respect of their beauty. When a woman’s undergarments are lowered as in panties or raised as in a bra, the material is never damaged or torn. That is a rarity. Also very rare is for a female to have her clothes cut off with scissors.

With this new all female trains thing in Japan and new laws, the beauty and spiritual joy of the art of Chikan will soon disappear forever.

Frotterism is not an art form. It’s a sex crime, like rape. Nampa, otherwise known as “picking up women,” on the the other hand is not illegal and requires some finesse. It also empowers the woman by giving her the choice of shooting you down, but gropers are too cowardly to accept those terms.

Every woman who’s accosted on a crowded train is someone’s daughter, sister, girlfriend, wife or mother. It makes me happy to give them a safe zone, knowing that I’m doing it from them and for the people who care about them but aren’t there. I don’t do it because I’m all high and mighty, I do it because I’ve found that it makes me feel good. The same goes for giving up my seat to someone who needs it. I guess I’m just lucky that being kind to others what does it for me.

The post This guy keeps writing me. appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Me, I scanned more photos (Tony’s birth, B&W photos from my time at Penn State), drank beer and reminisced about my college days. Out of the hundreds of people I knew back then, I can probably name about 15 now.

I can’t believe I used to go out in public wearing those enormous Harry Potterish glasses. No wonder I never got laid much back then.

The post Four Day Weekend, Day 4 appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Sunday I was determined to get the kids out of the house to do something fun. As a parent I’m supposed to do that. My wife is a lot better at it though. It was easy to convince Tony to go to Navel Park with me, but try as we might we couldn’t convince Andy to come along. He wanted to stay home and play with his friends, who are a bit nutty but good kids. They think it’s funny to talk to me all the time in a fake American accent. It kind of makes me want to whack them over the head, but I just go with the flow instead.

Tony and I had fun together at the park. We played catch until his arm gave out, roamed around the tunnels below the roller slide, swung on the skyrope, and climbed the rope and log jungle gym. Afterwards we bought lunch at a food stall, checked out the outdoor tsuri bori lake then went home to make sure Andy was still alive. My wife would be really angry if I left him home alone and he got hit by a car or something. But Grandpa was home and so was his friend’s mother so I wasn’t too worried.

The post Four Day Weekend, Day 2 appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Yesterday (Saturday) I finally hooked up the flatbed/negative/slide scanner (CanoScan 8400F) that I bought second hand for 8000 yen months and months ago but has been sitting in a corner of my room still in the box. I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning looking through my slides from my year as an exchange student in Ecuador and my black and white negatives from college, and found the negative of the best photo I’ve ever taken:

Here are some of the photos I took while I was in Ecuador in 1985-86. Unfortunately most of my negatives are still at my parents’ house in the US. And really, they don’t seem so special anymore now that it’s possible to search for the most interesting photos on Flickr tagged “Ecuador” and find hundreds of images better than the ones I took.

While I was upstairs in my habitat home office reminiscing and playing with my scanner, Andy was outside playing MTV Jackass with his neighborhood friends:

The post Four Day Weekend, Day 1 appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

I’m well aware that there can’t possibly be anyone besides my wife and me who gives a rat’s ass, but here’s the story anyway.

About 6 or 7 years ago we were in the market for a new washer and dryer. Back then I had a better paying job and money to burn, so I let my wife choose any model she wanted. (Plus, it was her birthday present. How romantic.) With the monthly salary I was receiving back then, it was easy to be generous. She had her heart set on a combination washer/dryer that went for 80,000 yen, so I bought it for her with nary a whimper. It was an exceedingly kind and selfless act on my part. I wanted a separate washer and dryer, and the man in me wanted to put up a fight about it, since if one of them broke we’d still be able to use the other instead of having to replace a single, very expensive dual purpose unit.

Flash forward 2-3 years and the dryer stopped working. Since then we’ve been air drying all our laundry. I never complained, and the words “I told you so” never crossed my mouth.

Last week, the washer kicked the bucket. Somehow my wife found out–maybe on the Internet?– that Sanyo was admitting a defect in our model and was offering to repair it for free. The repair guy came to our house, did something, left, but it broke again immediately. The second time he visited he told us the motor was shot and we’d be receiving a replacement completely free of charge.

Let me emphasize that last point. Without any hassle at all they offered to replace our old and broken 80,000 yen washer/dryer that had only a one year warranty with a brand spankin’ new 110,000 yen model chocked with the latest technology for holy frikkin’ completely free, AND they hauled away the old one free of charge. Keep in mind that there’s no way I could have afforded to buy a new one, let alone pay to get the old one fixed, and as luck would have it, it turns out we’re given a better model than the original on Sanyo’s dime. Right now, I could not be happier. Normally I hate doing laundry, but I’ve already gone through two loads tonight. If I didn’t have to work tomorrow I’d stay up all night tossing load after load of my entire wardrobe into the machine.

I must say, the next time I buy a home appliance, I will definitely give whatever the Sanyo version is of said appliance some very serious consideration. I owe them a big one.

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Yesterday was a beautiful day and Tony, Andy and I were home. There was no way I was going to let the kids stay inside playing video games (Tony: Monster Hunter for the PSP; Andy: Animal Crossing, Super Mario Brothers, Yoshi’s Island, and Bimoji Training on the DS), so I dragged them kicking and screaming to the local park to play catch and wade barefoot in the little man made stream.

There’s nothing like the smile on Tony’s face when we play catch. I need to put more effort into playing outside with him. It sure beats the zombie-like expression he has on his face when he’s under the hypnotic spell of his PSP, and the guilt I feel for letting him zone out like that for far too long. Andy, like me when I was his age, can’t catch a ball to save his life so he either watches from the sidelines or goes off to do his own thing. It doesn’t bother me in the least that Andy isn’t athletic. He likes to make up his own games and enjoys playing with other kids, as long as whatever they’re doing doesn’t involve ball catching.

While they played together, I foraged through the park for things to take pictures of with my new camera. There aren’t too many flowers in the park this time of year, but I did find a few bushes with bees buzzing about. Up a path through the wooded hills in the middle of the park there’s a restored 17th century house called the “Old Nakayama Family Residence,” designated as a cultural treasure by the Ibaraki Prefectural government. I won’t go into details about its history. Basically, it’s a big, old house that people come to see and there’s some old stuff inside it from that era. I waited with my camera on a tripod for about half an hour for a chance to take an HDR shot with nobody getting in the way.

Before heading home, we stopped off at the little restaurant on the park grounds for some overpriced eats. $1200 yen for two soft ice cream cones and three bottled drinks. My fault for not being able to deny my kids their right to ice cream on a spring day. What a racket they’ve got going there.

We went home and I made the boys a late lunch of their favorite spaghetti (Prego sauce out of an industrial sized jar bought at Costco). Tony, when you put food in front of him, has to be reminded a hundred times to shut up and eat. Man, that kid is skinny. Afterwards I fell asleep until 11pm, then stayed up till 3am messing around with Photoshop and uploading photos to Flickr. The end.

In other news, our washer/dryer is broken and laundry is piling up, but the good thing is Sanyo recently announced a defect in that model so we’re getting it fixed replaced for free. As a homeowner, it feels a bit like winning the lotto.

The post Holiday Photos appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Tutorials, etc:

• Fake-LOMO Adobe Photoshop Script
• Faking the “Lomo Effect”
• 4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop!
• How To Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography

The post Photoshopping lousy pics into art appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

On Sunday Tony and Andy’s elementary school held classes and invited parents to come and watch the last class of the day being conducted. I brought the camera, figuring ya’ll might like to see what a schoolroom looks like.

The post Weekend Photos appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

An excerpt from his blog:

Even though I’m a ukulele player I don’t own a Hawaiian shirt. It’s not like anybody made a rule that if you play the ukulele you have to wear one. I never wanted one so I’ve never bought one.
But this year I think I’ll buy one because I started to want one.

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Here’s the information I’ve collected so far:

• Best lenses: Sigma 8mm or Penleg 8mm if I can find it in Japan. Another low-budget choice is the Fisheye MC Zenitar-M 16mm f/2.8 Lens made in Russia.
• Panorama tripod mount: I already ordered a Panosarus. It’s the least expensive model I could find that lets you do multi-row panoramic shots, meaning you tilt the camera up to take one series of shots all the way around, then tilt it down to take another, then stitch them all together into a single full 360 degree spherical scene.
• Panorama stitching software: For free there’s Panorama Tools, then PTAssembler for $40, or what’s considered the best out there, PTGui, which is $130 for the regular version or $245 for the pro version. The latter two are GUIs built on top of Panorama Tools. Another way to go is the combination of Hugin and Emblend, both open source.
• Viewers: There are a number of ways to go: Java, Quicktime, Shockwave, proprietary browser plugin or Flash. Obviously, these days Flash is the best choice, and the most popular Flash viewer is the Flash Panorama Player, which costs $70 for a site license, but there are many interesting free or open source plugins available for it. Another group has developed an open source version recently, and I might look into that one instead.

Flickr user Simon S. has a set of equirectangular photos from Japan with a link to the interactive viewer under each photo.

The reason why I want to get into panoramic photography is because it’s getting harder for me to bare my soul in public through podcasts and videos. If I were independently wealthy, I could talk about whatever I want and not worry about what people think, but I’m not and I can’t. But still, I want to act as peoples’ window into the real Japan, and show you places you might not see even if you were to take a trip here. I’m also hoping I’ll be able to use the technology at work to show off schools’ facilities on the new version of the Global Daigaku website. Our current site is really showing its age.

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Here are the first pics from the new camera. (Click thumbnails to enlarge.) This is how my family spends every night at home before bedtime.

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Every store in Shinjuku & Akihabara is sold out of Bimoji Training.

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Penmanship means a lot to Japanese. From kindergarten through high school, children spend countless hours in class learning and practicing how to write properly, and even as adults people still take courses in penmanship and calligraphy. Although I’m not Japanese and never will be, I still compare myself to those around me, and everyone–including my kids–have better handwriting than I do, and it bugs me. Every time I have to put pen to paper, I’m ashamed of my chicken scratch that looks like that of a four year old stroke victim with cerebral palsy.

Here’s how it works. The program shows you a character on one of the DS’s two screens and prompts you to trace it on the other screen in the correct stroke order. When you’re done it gives you grades for balance, detail and stroke width along with praise or advice on how to improve, just like a calligraphy instructor. It covers 3,119 characters including kanji, hiragana and katakana and up to six people can keep track of their progress on one DS.

For 3,800 yen it seems well worth the price and I’m going to stop off and buy it on the way home tonight.

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The only good thing that comes to mind about living a spartan life limited to home, commuting and work is that it doesn’t take much at all to make me happy.

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I asked him, “Do you know any bad words in English?” He thought for a second and exclaimed, “Dingleberry!” He likes that word a lot, but I told him it’s not that bad. So I asked if he knew any words that would get him smacked if he said them in front of Baba (my mother.) The best he could muster was “Fat girl.”

It makes me proud of myself to realize that for the past 10 years I have been so patient and careful of a father that I’ve never cursed in front of or at my kids. I’ve never lost my temper when they leave on every goddamn light in the house, I’ve never threated to kick their asses for goofing off when they’re supposed to be getting ready for bed, and I watch my language when I’m playing video games with them. But once they hit their teens and start really screwing up, I wonder how long I’ll be able to keep their ears safe.

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It smells like a bonfire made from burning tires on a New Jersey beach at low tide on a hot summer day.
Guess which family resturant. Easy question for anyone who’s lived in Japan.

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When I was growing up, all we ever did was make crank calls and tape record them. It never made headlines, but we laughed ourselves silly listening to them over and over for months.

Link

Here’s the original heart-wrenching message:

>>私の知人の三歳の子が急性リンパ性白血病になってしまって、昭和医大に入院してるそうです！
ＲＨマイナスＢ型の血液不足にて手術受けれない状態で、誰かＲＨマイナスＢ型の方いませんか！？
是非協力おねがいします！
１人の幼い子の命がかかっていて、とても危険な状態だそうです！
最寄りの献血センターで献血できるようなので、是非是非協力おねがいします！
分からないことあればいつでも連絡ください！
よろしくおねがいします！！
私の携帯
090-××××-××××
友達にまわしまくってもらって結構です。
是非そうしてください！
なかなかない血液みたいで、私だけの人脈だと間に合わないのでおねがいします！
〇〇　〇〇子!

What I don’t get is why a message like this serves as a call to arms to hundreds of people willing to help, but if you stand a 80 year old woman on crowded train, everyone who’s sitting down ignores her.

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• 教育漢字(kyouiku kanji): The 1oo6 characters students must learn by grade 6. Essentially, knowing these characters is a good start, but you’re far from finished.
• 当用漢字(touyou kanji): A list of 1850 characters published first in 1946 approved for use in public documents and the media. Many characters that were in use until then were simplified; for example, 學 became 学.
• 常用漢字(jouyou kanji): Last updated in 1981 and the successor of touyou kanji, 1945 characters that basically you ought to know as a literate adult. Used in legal and public documents, newspapers, magazines and broadcast media.
• 新聞漢字表(shimbun kanji hyou): A standard agreed upon among newspapers based on jouyou kanji, but removing some characters and adding others. The link is to a Japanese Wikipedia article, but the explanation and outline that appears there is possibly under copyright and could be deleted from the site in the future.
• 人名用漢字(jin meiyou kanji): Characters approved for use in people’s names. As of 2004, when the government had a heck of a time trying to update the list, there are 983 extra characters than can be used in addition to what’s already in the jouyou kanji list, or that are variants of jouyou characters, and most of them are really, really hard to read. The only way I’ll ever learn them is if I get a chip implanted in my brain someday.

Incidentally, mainland China also simplified their characters sometime after WWII but for obvious reasons they didn’t give a rat’s ass about how Japan went about doing the same thing, so in many cases the two countries simplified the same characters but in different ways.

Summing up, if you’re pretty smart, my guess is that you know around 3,000 characters or more. Multiply that number by a few factors to approximate how many readings you’d need to know for all those characters.

As for me, when reading a novel in Japanese I have to look up an average of five characters per page, and I can get through around 15 pages in 2-3 hours when I’m reading to learn. It’s tedious, frustrating, labor intensive, tiring, and makes me feel learning disabled, which is why I avoided serious studying for far too many years.

The post How many kanji do you need to know? appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

On the first of this month a 23 year old vagrant used his cell phone to post a message on 2ch saying that he was going to kill an elementary schoolgirl in Chiba Prefecture on Feb 15 at 3pm. As a result, over 15,000 community volunteers and parents in Chiba were mobilized to ensure the safety of children going to and from the nearly 1,300 schools in the prefecture. When the police tracked down the person who posted the threats, he said he wrote the messages because he thought the replies were funny. The authorities disagreed.

Link

Another link, so you can see what a typical 2ch thread looks like.

If you want to see how far and wide his threats reverberated through the net, Google this:  千葉の女子小学生を２月１５日１５時に殺しちゃいます

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Link

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Link 

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So this week, and maybe from now on, I’m going to paraphrase news articles I read in Japanese and provide a link to the original for anyone who wants to read along. I’m not going to make any attempt whatsoever to use high-falootin’ words or accurately translate articles.

The post It’s random news week! appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

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Anyway, here’s the video the boys have been watching over and over lately. They found it on this site, which Tony can navigate through like you wouldn’t believe.

The post Tony & Andy’s favorite YouTube video appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

Every time I see a woman doing her makeup on the train, I wish I could pull a battery-operated shaver out of my pocket and do my face. That’s an old joke, isn’t it. But today I really did forget to shave.

It got laughs.

I wonder if anyone has ever been seriously injured while doing their makeup on a train. Seems  like there’s a strong possibility of poking out an eye with a mascara brush or choking to death on lipstick. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch. How much do you want to bet that nobody would help.

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Every time I pass this sign, I can’t help wondering what exactly a “fetish bar” is and what people do there. Can you order a Tom Collins with a stiletto-heeled kick in the nuts chaser? If you ask for a bottle of beer does the waitress ram it up your ass? Alas, I will never find out. My only fetish is for brainy geek chicks who wear wire rim glasses and can code in languages I’ve barely heard of.

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I don’t feel 40. I don’t think I look it either. People my age don’t look young anymore. They’re covered with wrinkles and cellulite and have specks of gray in their thinning hair. But at least they tend to have their stuff together. My stuff is lying in piles around the house. Am I allowed to have a middle aged crisis now? Because I think I’ve already starting having one. A very quiet one. Mostly. Until right now.

Changing the subject to the subject of this post, a bunch of bloggers who live in and around Tokyo meet at The Dubliners’ Irish Pub in Shibuya on the third Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. That’s tomorrow. I will be there, and I will drink (but not smoke) and probably moan a little about turning 40 because it stinks, although it’s not as bad as the alternative, which is dying.

And if anyone makes fun of me for getting old, I will beat them senseless with my stainless steel walker.

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So right after I post this message, I, for the first time in almost a year, will make the two-hour journey home without smoking the three ritual cigarettes I normally do. Nonsmokers won’t understand why this is such a big deal, but current and ex-smokers will. The cigarettes you associate with certain places and activities are the the most difficult ones to quit.

If I didn’t announce this publicly, I could easily picture myself buying a pack on the way home.

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I wish I had something interesting or witty to say, but all I do these days is work, go home, tag base, then go to work again.

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1. Maitri: Loving kindness; the ability to make someone happy. That “someone” can be:
   1. Yourself
   2. Someone you’re very fond of
   3. Someone you have sympathy for (I forgot to mention that one)
   4. A neutral person
   5. An enemy; someone you perceive as the cause of your suffering
2. Mudita: transformation of pain
3. Karuna: joy
4. Upeksanam: equanimity, freedom, the opposite of imprisonment or forcing yourself on another person.

What I find interesting is what’s not on the list: passion, obsession, lust, obedience, dominance, jealousy…lots of things I’ve known people from all over the world define as true love (especially jealousy) but to me never seemed right.

And if you don’t believe it, that’s OK, because there is no dogma in Buddhism. There’s nothing that Buddha taught that you must believe or else be damned for all eternity. If it’s true for you, then it’s true.

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 …several years ago we spotted a ‘Peeping Tom’ on our balcony watching my wife undress (on the 13th floor!) She said she had been followed home from the train a few times and felt like she was being watched in the past. I chased the guy down the street, but he got away. In my statement I told the police it was a Japanese man, but they said that was impossible – a Japanese man would NEVER do such a thing. They said he must have been Filippino. I told them I’d spent much time in the Philippines and the perv definately was not Filippino. The police then told me I probably couldn’t tell a Japanese man from a Korean, so they altered my official statement to say “he was an Asian man, possibly Korean.”

I don’t know why else he would claim there’s no such thing as a Japanese peeping tom. All he’d have to do is check their arrest records or go to any store that sells adult DVDs and see their collection of nozokiya videos. Maybe it was his first day on the job…

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BTW, I won’t be able to go to the video blogger event tomorrow night at the Pink Cow. My company is holding a going away party that night for a coworker who left the company at the end of last month. The nicest thing I can say about him leaving is that things won’t be the same without him.

The post Another post deleted. appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

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Every time I work on a video, I wonder how the pros do it for the evening news so quickly. Or how TV and movie editors manage to watch, edit and archive hours and hours of footage. Maybe they don’t watch over and over what they’re working on like I do.

Chumbucket access rules are to do one of the following:

• Fill out this stupid survey
• Link to me from your blog
• Donate a little money so I can buy Tony a new PSP for Christmas (I don’t know what Andy wants yet, besides some new pens.)
• If you’ve been reading, watching and listening but still haven’t introduced yourself, please do so. I often wonder who are the roughly 300-400 subscribers I’ve never heard from.

Do one of the above, then e-mail me and I’ll give you the URL.

The post Chumbucket alert appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

If anyone ever calls me “Tokyo Rich” I will kick their ass. You’ve seen me play Wii Boxing, so you know what kind of damage I’m capable of. You’ve been warned.

So, the subject of this post is TokyoCooney, a popular YouTube vlogger. I’ve only seen one of his videos so far, and it was only a few minutes ago. I might watch a few more.

On Oliver’s last night in Tokyo, he wanted to go to the Tokyo Comedy Store so we went, although I was skeptical that we’d witness anything actually funny, seeing as how Japan is as far from the English language comedy club circuit as you can get.

I was right. It was painfully, annoyingly, unbearably not funny. What was even worse was that people who were painfully, annoyingly, unbearably not funny were attempting improvisational comedy. Not surprisingly, it was a lot like watching people make complete asses of themselves on stage. When we could no longer take any more, Oliver and I paid the bill (over 10,000 yen for cover charge, a few beers and some meager finger food) then went to a convenience store and bought a bottle of whiskey to extricate ourselves from our lingering foul mood.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I don’t normally complain about or insult people. But the no-talent hacks at the Tokyo Comedy Story really, really sucked. Neither of us could figure out why the audience was laughing at everything. It. Wasn’t. Funny.

The only exception was Kevin Cooney. He was genuinely funny and had an excellent stage presence. We quoted his jokes to each other as we passed the whiskey bottle between us. (Oliver drinks whiskey like a pussy, BTW. Can’t take a swig without scrunching up his face. Friggin’ lightweight.)

In summary, Tokyo Comedy Store: bad. Keven Cooney: good. Oliver: whiskey pussy.

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I watched the YouTube video with the volume off. From the comments it sounds like the voiceover is pretty bad.

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Andrew Shuttleworth, an Irishman who knows absolutely everyone in Tokyo (and I’m not exaggerating), is hosting this event in conjunction with Sanyo. Yukako “Tajee” Tajima, a bilingual video blogging major babe and businesswoman, will be giving a presentation on ways to put videos online.

I’m hoping it won’t be well attended because they’re giving away two Xacti digital video cameras and dammit, I want one. The fewer people who show up, the better my chances of winning the lottery. So stay home that night.

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The way I’m learning to come to terms with anxiety is to ask myself, “Well, if it all goes to hell, what’s the absolute worst thing that can happen, and how will I deal with it?”

If my attempt at creating a professional-sounding audio program to the best of my ability ends up sounding like a junior high school social studies project, I won’t lose any money, friends, or respect from others. I won’t fall over dead of humiliation. The time I spend on it won’t be wasted, because I’ll learn from it. And I’ll do it again on another topic; I’ll keep at it until I improve.

I realize I’m expecting myself to hit it out of the ballpark my first time at bat. I have a life-long tendency to expect too much out of myself, and it prevents me from starting or finishing challenges unless I force myself, kicking and screaming all the way. That’s the main reason why I’m here, blogging, podcasting and videoblogging. Because it scares the bejesus out of me if I let it.

I admire people (like my boss) who can jump into something new without any experience or a detailed plan and risk failure, so all this online stuff is my attempt at becoming more like them. It has never been easy, even after two years of constant practice. Core beliefs don’t change easily, even if on an intellectual level you know they’re false.

Right after I write a post, create a video or release a podcast, that voice tells me, “You’re not good enough.” But lately, something different is happening. I’ve been sampling bits of my old blog posts and podcasts that I have no recollection of creating and they seem like they’re from someone else. And you know what? They’re interesting, and often funny. When enough time passes that I can separate the critical, perfectionist “me” from the creative me, I can actually enjoy my own work. Maybe if I keep reading and listening to my past, I’ll finally catch up to the present and finally be at peace with myself.

The post The “This Japanese Life” episode update appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

P.S. Rockstar Mommy is a funny, funny blog written by a woman who, if there are more like her out there, I just might grind my family into hamburger and try starting life over. She cheered me up.

The post A brief work situation update appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

I’m still fighting back tears after reading her post about the birth of Motoki.

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I like the formula This American Life has for putting shows together. The mix of voiceovers, mood music and honest, spontaneous-sounding interviews is top notch. Everything except the cadence of Ira Glass’s way of speaking. I can’t put my finger on it, but that’s the only aspect of the best public radio show in existence today that I don’t want to emulate. It’s not as if I have to resist the urge to claw at my ears when I hear him talk, but he has such an idiosyncratic, kind of uppity (but not snarky) tone of voice that I know I have to avoid sounding like I’m imitating him. At the same time, I can’t sound like the barbiturate-addled hosts of NPR programs either.

The topic I want to cover is “Living and Working in Japan as a foreigner.” I want to conduct interviews with people on why they decided to come to Japan, how they found work, their work history, whether or not they feel as if they’re succeeding, and what the experts think are the best ways for people to find the job that’s right for them. And I want to keep my own story out if it, because if I don’t it’ll probably end up sounding like I’m using the microphone as my psychoanalyst.

For those of you who have thought about taking a stab at living in Japan for a while or moving here permanently, what do you want to know from those who are already here? What would you like to hear headhunters and recruiters talk about? I’ve got my list of questions, but I’d like to know if ya’ll can think of a few that might not have crossed my mind.

This is going to be my attempt at getting better at audio production. There’s an entire team of producers, assistant producers, writers, sound engineers, editors and researchers who work together to put out every episode of This American Life, and for a long time I’ve been wondering what I can accomplish on my own, even if it ends up being nowhere near as high quality. As long as the final product is interesting and listenable, I’ll try to be happy with it.

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We throw away or avoid the things we don’t have faith in. So I started thinking, what if someone doesn’t have faith in himself or herself? And I realized, wow, that’s my problem. That’s a big problem. It makes me think of all the things I would have done by now if I had more faith in myself.

Here’s the reality. The company I work for isn’t doing well. I need to take some of the blame for that. And my only choice is to have faith in myself, my coworkers and my boss that we can turn things around. At the least, I need to have faith in myself. And having gotten so used to not having faith in myself, it’s going to be difficult to change my way of thinking. But for my family’s sake, I have to do it. I want to do it for my boss, too. I like the guy.

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Page 267:

Rich Pav is your average, ordinary blogger, making his way through the not-so-average or ordinary Land of the Rising Sun. In Herro Flom Japan (www.herroflomjapan.com), Rich frames his various travels and encounters with the history, culture, and people of Japan in his own unique point of view

Page 97:

Rich Pav, the evil mastermind behind Herro Flom Japan, takes the tech and chit-chat formula to another level by combining it with his observations on living in Japan. Rich doesn’t have any claims to being the first, the best, the most authoritative — in fact he doesn’t claim anything — his podcasts instead being more of a stream of consciousness, usually preceded by the term ‘I feel a podcast coming on’. Or as he puts it, “My bunions are tingling. Every time that happens, a podcast spews forth from deep inside me. Kinda like that movie Alien.’ The latest development is the addition of a video feed called The Herro Flom Japan Video Clip Chumbucket, which he admits isn’t really good enough to send out, ‘but at the same time it’s a shame to just throw it away’. Offbeat, oft understated, and often funny

…and then the prick author goes and posts the RSS URL to the invite-only HFJ Chumbucket. Hey, he posted my stuff without permission, I’m paying him back, right here, right now. (Actually, I don’t mind. There are many far more important things in life to get upset about. And from now on, that feed will point to Funnelgirl.)

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I just challenged myself to the new reigning champion of the absolute worst the Internet has to offer so you don’t have to. DO NOT search for and watch this video. You have been warned. It will make you puke. It is the Antichrist, multiplied by infinity. JUST. SAY. NO.

I watched this a few minutes ago. I couldn’t make it to the end. I barely made it to the bathroom, and when I did, I didn’t want to be anywhere near a toilet, so I just puked in the sink. Grossest thing ever. —a random Funnelgirl viewer.

Update: Remember when I said Google loves me? It’s been less than eight hours since I wrote this post and I’m already ranked #3 for funnelgirl. And I want to make this perfectly clear: I’m scarred for life. My 39 year old innocence, permanently shattered. (Link)

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It’s a very professional-looking website, built with the Joomla content management system.

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A glasses retail chain in Japan made a splash on various blogs and news sites lately with a new mobile site that lets you try on specs using your camphone. In reality, all you do is download an overlay and put it over a photo. Hardly very innovative or convenient. Here I’m using a random mugshot from The Smoking Gun. Framesdirect.com is a much more quick and convenient way to see how you look wearing different glasses.

The post kinda dumb. appeared first on Herro Flom Japan.

It’s too dark to take a picture of anything else.
This is the dumbest product in the $300-400 range I’ve ever seen. Basically, it blinks, rolls around and plays music via Bluetooth. That’s all.

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I can just picture all the people in the control booth and behind the cameras, completely speechless. Maybe you can tell, but I have the utmost respect for people who can willfully and proudly expose themselves as complete basket cases in front of a large audience. They have a sense of freedom I can’t even begin to imagine possessing myself. If I were to somehow unload like that on TV, I’d have to live under a pseudonym and move to another country…oh, wait.

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This guy has a good, long, detailed write-up about what a Japanese funeral is like. His description is similar to my own experiences with funerals here.

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• If you need to pass gas, wait until you get off the train. Like me, unless I’m in a mischievous mood. Better yet, stop farting altogether. Greenhouse gasses and stuff. Probably causes cancer too. Everything else does.
• Conserve water: sleep at work every other day and don’t shower. Like me. Cologne is your friend. Your only friend. You stink.
• Ride a bicycle and use public transportation. Like me. (Doing it while holding a camera in your mouth is optional.)
• Every half hour, walk around the house turning off all the goddamn lights your kids left on. Like me. And shut the refrigerator door all the way while you’re at it. I can’t wait till they grow up. Paybacks are hell.

But seriously, I think anything you do to save the environment will be canceled by pollution China puts out.

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The teen spray-painted the arm white and planted it in a flower pot, and then took his mother’s head to a police station, where he turned himself in, police said.

I hope my wife and I raise our children to deal with stress through more healthy methods. If you suddenly stop hearing from me…we failed.

Link

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Here’s the concept and the reasoning behind it. Learning phrases is an important part of learning to speak a language. I find that in my mind I have a library of set phrases that I permutate into whatever I want to say. So that’s why we’re going to do phrases.

Why do silly, useless phrases? Because they’re fun, and language learning is too often the exact opposite of fun. But even if you’re learning to say something like “Please whack me in the head with a baseball bat,” you’re still learning grammar and vocabulary you’ll be able to use for real. Just not in the way we teach it.

To get started, we need your help in the form of suggestions for phrases we can teach. You can either write them here or go to the contact page at www.japlishpodcast.com and upload an MP3 we’ll play on the show.

I don’t know if this will succeed or not because it all depends on out willingness to stick with it, and unfortunately Tony inherited from me the tendency to not finish what he starts. But if it does, the idea is to offer the first two month’s worth of lessons for free, then maybe start charging (to support our video game habit).

Other phrases I’ve thought of:

• Stop picking my nose.
• I’d like to drink your bath water. (sure-fire pickup line)
• My favorite food is monkey brains.
• Oops, I pooped my pants again.
• Excuse me, I found this eyeball. Is it yours?
• I learned many magic tricks while I was in prison.
• When I grow up, I want to be a serial killer/garbage man/gas station attendant
• I made you a bracelet from my leg hairs. I hope you like it.
• I ate a rat for lunch.
• I haven’t showered in three months. Don’t I smell nice?
• Please stop licking my armpit. It tickles.

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• Used Panty Machine: #3 and 4 out of 1,850,000. I have to say I’m very proud of this. (P.S. There are NO used panty vending machines in Japan.)
• Used panty: #21 in Yahoo (Welcome, all you sick wankers!)
• Chikan: #3 in Google Images, the photo of the guy I caught (SERVES YOU RIGHT, FU*KER!!), #8 in Google
• Mouthcam: #4, 5, and 6! Take THAT, porno industry!
• Groping Women: #2, the podcast about the guy who groped my wife who I nearly beat to death (OK, well, actually I only bitchslapped him) then had thrown in jail
• Herro: #2 Why the hell are people searching for herro, and why are there over a quarter of a million pages with the word?
• Japan podcast: #5
• Bleach blonde: #6
• How to become a Japanese Citizen: #6 (I’m still American, but I’m kinda sorta thinking about it…)
• Conveyor belt sushi: #5
• Burma Myanmar: #1 at blogsearch.google.com …Huh?

By far, most people who land here from Google are looking for used panties or videos or stories about groping women. In other words, one-handed typists wearing only one sock, and it’s not on their foot. (Here, let me help you out: “Lunch Lady.” “Ann Coulter.” “Condoleezza Rice.” “Janet Reno in a thong.” “Your grandmother is watching you from heaven right now.” Finished yet?)

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I can’t think of this actor’s name, but he must have gotten paid a fortune to lend his curmudgeonly rugged looks to hawking canned coffee. I think this photo needs a thought balloon added to it.

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Here’s the short version first: Whenever there’s a technical problem, check the wiring before you do anything else. Even if your intuition tells you otherwise, ignore it. They actually teach you this in networking courses. Really.

OK, here’s the story. On Saturday, our home Internet connection went out. (or “went off” or however you say it. Couldn’t connect to the Internet.) This happens every so often, so I waited for it to fix itself and kept checking the router syslogs for any good news. (About 100 times in eight hours.) In the meantime, I configured my laptop to leech off the neighbor’s wireless. (Don’t worry, it’s OK, I scanned their network first and found out they didn’t have any PCs using it at the time.)

Day two: still no joy. I can see in the syslogs that the router is dialing out over and over but the other end of the line isn’t picking up.

Day three: Tony’s going through some serious Counter Strike withdrawal and Andy’s whining because he can’t play Gary’s Mod. Not to even mention what it’s doing to my sex life. (Ha ha, just kidding. Well, OK. Not just kidding. But yeah, anyway.) So I decided to check the wiring. First, I checked the phone line that we use for ADSL. Well whaddaya know, no frikkin’ dial tone! Just for kicks I unplugged the splitter (the little box that splits the incoming phone line into two: one that goes to the phone and the other that plugs into the ADSL modem) then plugged the phone directly into the wall. Voila, we have dial tone!

At this point I’m guessing the splitter is broken, although I can’t imagine how some stupid little box with no moving parts or power supply could break. It just sits behind the desk collecting dust bunnies and splits the incoming frequencies (or is it bandwidth?) into to separate streams. But whatever, so I hop in the car, buy a new splitter at the local home electronics store, bring it home and plug it in. So now the phone works when it’s plugged into the new splitter.

But still no Internet, dammit. However, since my laptop still works thanks to the involuntary generosity of my neighbor, I give up for the night.

Fast forward to this morning. I want to update my podcasts, but I have to do it on my desktop PC, not the laptop, so I check the wiring again and discover that last night when I plugged the phone into the new splitter, I forgot to plug in the $%$# modem!

Moral of the story: Check the wiring first. And then, check it again.

P.S. The only reason I’m telling this story is because I haven’t written in a while, but nothing interesting has happened lately. Truth is, I spent most the three-day weekend just studying Java, pulling weeds, doing laundry and horsing around with the kids. For excitement, I installed Ubuntu on my laptop via Wubi. Hey, what can I say, I’m a real fun guy.

[tags]anecdote, geek stuff[/tags]

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Lord only knows why the site is free and doesn’t have any advertising. Maybe from lesson 102 they’re going to teach you how to shop for Coca-Cola at Wal-Mart.

Update #1: Ha! I was right! A little Googling turned up this press release:

The site plans to offer free service through revenue generated by paid advertising as site traffic grows. That is planned to include both banner advertising and “product placement” within the actual language lessons. For example, instead of teaching someone to say “I would like to order a soda” in another language, someone would be taught “I would like to order a Coca-Cola.”

Update #2: Check out my Japlish Podcast with my son Tony.

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There are so many things I scare myself out of doing. He accomplished something in that performance that struck a chord with me. (Har har.) I want to be more like him, minus the makeup and the head thrashing.

Next subject. I added gravatars to my blog’s comment pages. If you register your own gravatar, it’ll show up on any other blog plugged into the same system. I like being able to see who I’m interacting with. Thanks to everyone who showed their faces a week or two back. Now every post can be like that!

Next subject. Tony, our 10 year old, is reluctantly learning to read in English. While he sits in my lap and plays Counter Strike on the PC, I make him earn the privilege by having him sound out new words and correcting him when his swears are grammatically incorrect. (BTW, thanks Oliver for teaching him “Aaah shit!” He never said that until he pwned you at Red Steel on the WII.) Yesterday Tony read “Downloading Map” off the screen and really surprised me. Before bedtime we read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish together. It practically killed him to engage his brain that for that long, but he stayed with me through whole book. Barely.

This week I’m going to start learning Java (finally) with the O’Reilly Java Bookin their excellent Head First series. Previously I read the book on HTML and CSSand liked it a lot. I’m also trying to learn JavaScriptthese days. Life is too short, and I feel like I’ve wasted too much of it already.

Last item on the agenda. I posted some photos of Tony and Andy’s undokai, which was last Saturday. It’s the first in a series of “interesting but boring” photos I plan to take of just daily stuff that won’t be good enough to throw up on Flickr. At least take a look at the panorama of the school grounds.

[tags]geek stuff, Tony, fear, Java, JavaScript[/tags]

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