For the second time since I arrived, the Food and Health students invited me to a meal. The first time, the second-year students invited me, and it was free. This time it was the third-year students, and they charged ¥300.
There was plate of cold, sliced pork with tomatoes, wakame, and cucumber; a small, but plentiful portion of rice; miso soup; a soy bean dish; and a jelly desert made of oranges. The menu said it was 667 calories. Nice job!
The folks at lifehack.org have put together a list of ways to get (and keep) you reading. For those of you who seem to have less time for reading than when you were younger, some (or all) of these tips might just get you back in the habit. Check them out!
Johnny Depp was in Japan recently to promote the third rendition of Pirates of the Caribbean. For some reason, when he visits, he goes to the show Gakko he Ikou hosted by the Japanese Regis Philbin—Mino Monta—and Johnny’s V6. I like a couple of Johnny’s groups: SMAP because there are some talented and clever people in the group, and TOKIO because they do some very interesting things to promote traditional Japanese culture and raising awareness of the environment. The V6 group has none of the qualities above.
Anyway, Johnny is wheeled into the studio, and the above video is the result. You be the judge: interesting, weird, over-the-top, or ???
The New York Times’ David Pogue wrote up a great review of noise canceling headphones. I’ve got a pair of the Bose 2 QuietComfort 2 headphones, and I don’t fly long distances without them. The difference in sound between whatever device you might listen with and the Bose (either with something playing or just the noise canceling feature) is amazing! I enjoyed reading about David’s three-leg trial where he actually put all ten models on and compared them. Read the article, and make your own choice; I’m very happy to see that there are alternatives to the very pricey Bose models.
The content of El Viajero has been split into two blogs. El Viajero will focus on topics related to every day life. The academic material is moving to http://scholar.jklmelton.net.
This post has been moved here:
web-those-photos
I wrote some time ago that taking a nap might be the best way to get refreshed during the day. Now the folks at lifehack.org write about how to do it right.
It seems that you want to aim for the end of your REM stage to wake up, before the deep sleep kicks in. Apparently, if you get the timing right, you can get it down to as little 15 minutes to get the most benefit. Check out the post and try it for yourself.
There are a lot of places to escape to from just about anywhere in Kumamoto. One that is up the hill past the airport is called something like Milk Farmland. It costs ¥300 to get in, and there are various animals to watch and pet as your heart desires. There are a couple of small petting zoos and friendly people to answer your questions. There are at least three pigs, formerly known as mini-pigs and pot-bellied pigs (someone forgot to tell them that because they’re huge!), roaming around.
There is also a fully working dairy, and you can often see the machines in action, sucking the white stuff out of the cows patiently waiting their turn. Part of this dairy, obviously, is for raising the little ones. The video above shows one of them frolicking around a bit too much. She was in shock after her fall and didn’t move much at all after that.
The dairy goods are on sale in the form of tasty soft-serve and a whole bunch of products such as cream, milk, butter and cheese. Part of that complex also has a good all-you-can-eat restaurant serving locally grown food (when we were there, it was ¥1,500 for adults and ¥840 for kids). There were all kinds of food to choose from, including drinks and desserts.
The content of El Viajero has been split into two blogs. El Viajero will focus on topics related to every day life. The academic material is moving to http://scholar.jklmelton.net.
This post has been moved here:
jaltcall-2007-second-life-in-the-language-classroom
Hey, we’re sitting here the computer labs in Building 8 at Waseda University. We just had a big ride on the Kanto earthquake. I just checked the yahoo news, and they’re reporting a 4.6 rating.
Film at eleven…
Kevin Ryan, of LanguageJapan fame, just mentioned a new manga on the way: Joe is Japanese. There is a trailer at that link to get you started. The first part of the trailer is a major crackup, with the protagonist trying to get his family name understood while calling several places. The latter part is not for the younger kids since Joe is telling a story from the other side of the tracks. Japanese skills are not a requirement, as there are subtitles for all the Japanese parts. It could add a motivating factor to those of you working on your bilingual skills. The site includes links to the characters’ MySpace pages; here’s Joe’s. It all looks very promising!
