JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- ALT - Mie Prefecture - Yokkaichi City - June start
- NPO法人グローバル教育推進機構（GLAD), Mie
- Salary: ¥230,000 / Month For a full working month. Some months differ.
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- Business Teaching Positions - Part-time - Kanto Region
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥3,000 ~ ¥5,000 / Hour
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Hunter Brumfield
All these naysayers ought to hold off until you get the opportunity to come.
My wife and I have gone daily since Saturday. Almost everything but the Tower itself was open on Saturday and Sunday with all-day festivities including marching bands and taiko drummers. Everything was closed Monday, and it was absolutely JAMMED this morning (Tuesday) despite the rain.
The "print" news accounts, like this one, barely hint at what you'll see there. There IS a quite nice riverside park fronting the complex, the locals were given a free tour of the Tower two weeks ago (so it's not just the rich folks), and there is huge excitement in the surrounding community, as well as on the face of every person you see.
To me the commercial complex is a big, big part of the attraction, with a mix of Japanese and Western-style goods and foods and fashion like nothing I think I've ever seen. (Think of the food courts in basements of the major depatos, then multiply by 10. Then there are the Western packaged and canned foods that put the old Kinokuniya in Omotesando to shame.)
To you jaded types who love to nitpick everything about Japan, there's something for you as well... virtually every boutique and shop has absolutely gorgeous women enough to give you a bad case of whiplash, and on the 7th floor is the World Museum of Beer -- hundreds and hundreds of different beers from every country, and draft in huge steins that are reminiscent of the Munich Oktoberfest.
You'll likely reconsider once you do visit.
Oh, there are also the Tower, the aquarium, and the planetarium.
Posted in: Tokyo Sky Tree opens
1
Hunter Brumfield
PS
The only large graffiti I have seen in my own neighborhood was sprayed on a store's sliding night door, and was a mishmash of incomprehensible, drippy black lines. We got to see it for the next 4 or 5 years, and now the store is a parking lot.
I can just imagine that the old owner, who opened up that store at 7 every morning at least for the last 30 years, no longer had the money nor the will to clean it.
How smug that young "artist" must have felt, thinking of the street cred that graffiti gave him with his other little friends! Likely he now has kids of his own.
Posted in: JR East to remove graffiti from walls, pillars next to train lines
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Hunter Brumfield
I cannot believe anyone would think graffiti is ok. My god...!
That's someone ELSE'S property, or it is an eyesore on public property. Some kid with a 200-yen can of spray paint should not be confused with true artists. Most displays you see are simply vandalism, and are hardly "refreshing."
Please go back to wherever you think this is fine, and leave us the beautiful little neighborhoods where other "fuddy-duddies" painstakingly clean the alleyways and grow gorgeous pots of flowers & greenery for anyone and everyone to enjoy. And set wonderful examples for young people.
The last thing we want is another nasty, ravaged street of New York or Los Angeles. Why do you think we live HERE?
Posted in: JR East to remove graffiti from walls, pillars next to train lines
1
Hunter Brumfield
Accoding to this, he died after playing at the Blue Note on May 12, no cause given, just "died in his sleep."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_%22Duck%22_Dunn
Posted in: Bass player Donald 'Duck' Dunn dies in Tokyo
0
Hunter Brumfield
JT, thank you for your continuing focus on Apple and the iPhone. I believe you are correctly reading your primary visitors as per which device they are using (plus have a way of seeing the visits from different platforms in your stats).
There doesn't seem to be much substance to this pan-banging from people like "Ebisen" who demand "unlocked" devices. It runs contrary to why the iPhone continues to be a runaway success. Most people want something they just "use" and not have to constantly to fiddle with.
You want your phone to be a functional device, not another puzzle or game to be figuring out. After all, if you want a game, they are just $.99 on the App Store. Let the phone be whatever the Apple design experts decide, then either buy it or don't.
But please put down your noisy pan. It's getting really monotonous, guys!
Posted in: China iPhone sales surge, but can Apple protect its apps?
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Hunter Brumfield
I love the scene in Friends where Joey, looking longly at the ladies, asks "... with breasts like those, how can you ever get any work done?"
I've noticed more than once that in a train car the only eyes obviously following some shapely lass are those of the foreign men. I figure that's largely the result of cultural politeness, but still wonder about all the carefully plucked fashion eyebrows of Japanese high school boys. Low testosterone?
Posted in: Cleavage cover to keep prying eyes away
0
Hunter Brumfield
Definitely, Kris.
One more reason gone why you'd need to be near a grid.
So all that land space out there could have isolated single-family residences or small communities with microwaved or satellite comms access, but little need for much else. Food could be locally farmed and supplemented by air. Plenty of space for a runway.
Think as well of all the islands.
Posted in: Scientists develop ultra-thin solar cells
1
Hunter Brumfield
This is basic research laying groundwork for applications. 4% efficiency means a lot if you can install or spray it over a wide area. The efficiency will of course improve.
I doubt it makes sense for clothes, but as a coating for cars, you have a way of easy, supplemental recharging. For your home, solar curtains. Or solar roofs.
On vessels, sails that provide power two ways.
How about helium-filled balloons made of the stuff that automatically inflate and rise into the sky, tethered to your home or the municipal power grid? Eventually people will "farm" energy and live off the income.
"Solar trees" that you erect in your yard.
Think how much power Tokyo Sky Tree could generate?
The possibilities are indeed endless.
Posted in: Scientists develop ultra-thin solar cells
0
Hunter Brumfield
A well expressed commentary by someone who writes from her heart about a key achievement in her life. Good for her.
Makoto you should be proud as hell. Congratulations on your fantastic accomplishment!
Posted in: Languages and a switch in my head
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Hunter Brumfield
It's barely noticeable. You'd think they were bursting into flames the way the blogs are going on. Let's wait for THAT story. (Guess folks have to find SOMETHING to criticize.)
The Mac Book Pro was definitely hot when it was first released, but that soon got fixed with an OS upgrade. Suspect it will be the same with iPad 3rd Gen, which I love.
Posted in: Consumer watchdog warns iPads hot to handle
0
Hunter Brumfield
I find this strangely addictive:
"It's Time for TED" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDHET3aCI2U
Posted in: TED launches learning initiative at YouTube
1
Hunter Brumfield
Here's another reason to wear facemasks this pollen season.
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2012/02/10/cesium-pollen-started-attacking-tokyo/
Posted in: Gov't feared nuclear crisis would engulf Tokyo, report shows
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Hunter Brumfield
I'm one of the fence-sitters on this.
I think we all need to watch developments closely, but my own reading of this special report suggests that there would have been nothing gained by panic-driven chaos in Tokyo.
All of us were worried, certainly, as was that bureaucrat with the "demonic scenario in [his] head." But the nuclear meltdown never happened to that extent, perhaps thanks to PM Kan.
What could have been far worse: an H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast-style panic.
As far as continuing radioactivity in western Japan goes, tkoind2, this looks pretty authoritative to me, posted just 13 days ago:
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2012/02/16/radiation-monitors-spike-in-western-japan-to-one-of-highest-in-months/
Posted in: Gov't feared nuclear crisis would engulf Tokyo, report shows
1
Hunter Brumfield
I did a search in Amazon Japan just now for whale meat. Lots of books and dvds on the subject of whales, but nothing about getting them to your table.
Amazon Japan has solid policies in place to keep certain objectionable products off the market, so from all appearances this is also being done for our cetacean friends.
Amazon by its very nature is an ally of conservationists. The fuel saved from being able to shop from home is major. Sure, a truck delivers it -- but each item in that truckload essentially represents one shopping trip that did not have to be taken by a consumer. More than one, if you consider all the unsuccessful trips made to find something.
If Amazon Japan did carry whale products before, kudos to them for eventually wising up.
Posted in: Amazon Japan profiting from slaughter of whales, dolphins: investigation agency
1
Hunter Brumfield
We have an 18-year-old Toyota Marino (basically a nice Corolla) that is virtually like new. In all that time it's had no repairs, other than to replace a sun visor once, the batteries twice, and the tires once. I have never been happier with any of the six cars I have owned.
That compares with two successive American cars, when I was younger, that were recalled a number of times; one had to be jump-started in its first winter by my then 13-year-old VW Bug. The other had an engine that leaked oil so badly I poured the dripped oil back into it every morning before heading for work.
So it is fantastic if Detroit has finally abandoned the "planned obsolescence" that used to be its obvious strategy that had Americans swapping cars every two or three years.
I personally listened to the head of GM tell a conference of newspaper editors in Detroit that "the American people simply do not want a smaller car." That was in 1975.
Toyota and Honda took away his business the next 10 years with those smaller cars.
BTW, there is not even one greasy stain in our garage parking spot.
Posted in: For car buyers, it's harder to end up with a loser
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Hunter Brumfield
That is, the wife pronounces "Not over my dead body!" And means it.
Posted in: Smoke-free laws lead to less smoking at home
0
Hunter Brumfield
Sorry.
the upside is you NEVER run out of a book to read.
Posted in: My favorite English bookstores in Tokyo
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Hunter Brumfield
Sorry, but you paper & dust folks better enjoy those creaky bookstores while you can. If there is a place more ready for English ebooks than Japan, I can't imagine where it is. Unless it's your sticks of Japan, Sillygirl.
First, getting to and from a bookstore on the subway is almost what you'd pay for the book itself online.
Second, when you get there the choice is 1) what you already have or 2) little else that interests you. (Or that book you already bought 2 years ago has a new cover and you stupidly buy it again, to your everlasting chagrin.)
Third, the converted price for a softback is set at about what a hardback would cost you in the States or Europe.
Fourth, after you finish, you either give it away or stick it on a back shelf and revisit it 5 years later, if ever. Getting to one of the few used bookstores here in hopes they'll trade for it is pretty much an act of futility, the one time I tried to do that with a big boxful. Not even one did they want.
You pulp hangers-on may seem like you are being noble (or whatever), but as virtually everyone finds, in the first minutes of reading your first ebook, you forget there even was paper. The downside is running out of juice; the upset is you NEVER run out of a book to read.
Roughly one minute is all it takes to immerse yourself in the next one.
Posted in: My favorite English bookstores in Tokyo
0
Hunter Brumfield
I think most of the comments here by people who prefer clean air are not aimed at pubs, so let's try to make a distinction. Most of us recognize that if you want to go to a pub, you better be ready to pollute yourself that way, too.
The argument is whether someone at a table next to you in a restaurant or lunch place, has some sort of self-absorbed right to gas everyone around him or her. Of course, it reaches all patrons (and staff) regardless of where you are seated.
Today's lunch was a good example.
We ate at a fairly nice place where as soon as you went inside you were greeted by the foul stench of cigaret smoke.
We asked for non-smoking and were kept waiting for an empty table (but there were plenty of open seats in smoking). Fifteen smoky minutes later we had to go through the thick of the tobacco addicts' section to to be seated in non-smoking. Then of course when we finished, it was back through the smoking section again.
So regardless of how good the food or friendly the staff, I most definitely would not go back there again.
It's quite a shame because the food was reasonably priced as well.
Posted in: Japan’s 'polite' tobacco war rages on
2
Hunter Brumfield
@ John Putnam
I suspect you are just trying to be obnoxious... we have lived in this apartment 22 years. We are supposed to somehow find another and move because someone else blows his smoke into our living room, rather than his own?
Right. Thanks for your 2 cents, now worth 1.54 yen.
Posted in: Japan’s 'polite' tobacco war rages on