The X-Pat Files
August 2008
(Brought to you by
H&R Consultants)
The X-Pat Files Community E-Newsletter provides a forum for
the spread of information useful for English speakers living in Aichi.
You can use the newsletter as an informational resource, and of course you can
send in information you would like to share.
This newsletter is a community
service from The Japan Real Estate and Relocation company, H&R Consultants
(www.japanhomesearch.com), and is edited by Sue Conolly
(http://web.mac.com/conolly).
Contents for This
Edition
1. Links for
your Life
2. Blogging
3. Akihabara
4. SNS Etiquette
5. Kids Online
6. Internet
Providers with English Speaking Support
7. Meet and
Greet Luncheon
8. Kakaku.com
9. Buying a new
computer
10. How to turn off the
computer
**************************************************
1. Links for Your Life
Well, you already
know that the X-Pat Files (http://xpat-files.com/) is
the foremost link for finding information in
Nagoya, but what about all the other useful websites out there? Check out the
ones below for some English friendly information.
Your Local
Government / Other General Living Information
Nagoya City
Hall http://www.city.nagoya.jp/global/en/
Toyota City
Hall http://www.city.toyota.aichi.jp/e/index.html
Nisshin City
Hall http://www.city.nisshin.aichi.jp/frames/nissin/welcome.htm
Kasugai City
Hall http://www.city.kasugai.lg.jp/languages/english/index.html
Nagoya
International Center (NIC) http://www.nic-nagoya.or.jp/en/
Nagoya
Convention & Visitors Bureau http://www.ncvb.or.jp/index_e.html
Living in Japan
http://www.nipponliving.com/
Japan
Information Network http://jin.jcic.or.jp/index.html
Transport
Nagoya City
Subway and Bus Guide http://www.kotsu.city.nagoya.jp/
Hyperdia Route
Planner (click on “English” button) http://www.hyperdia.com/
Japan Airlines
http://www.jal.co.jp/en/
ANA Airlines http://www.ana.co.jp/eng/index.html
Guide to Discount Rail Passes http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2357.html
Highway Bus Booking
Service http://www.123bus.net
Medical /
Family
Aichi Medical
Information System http://www.qq.pref.aichi.jp/qq/qq23egmp_lt.asp
Counseling in
Japan http://www.counselingjapan.com
Tokyo English
LifeLine http://www.telljp.com/
Foreign
Mothers Group http://www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~lorna/mothers/
Japan With Kids http://www.tokyowithkids.com/
Chayagasaka Cooperative Playgroup http://kweto.com/chaya/index.html
Japanese News / Media
Comprehensive list of news media in Japan http://www.abyznewslinks.com/japan.htm
Japan Today http://www.japantoday.com/
Nikkei Net http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/
Metropolis http://www.metropolis.co.jp
The Asahi Shimbun http://www.asahi.com/english/english.html
Daily Yomiuri Online http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/
Kyodo News Online (Japan Press Agency) http://home.kyodo.co.jp/
The Japan Times Online http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
NHK World http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html
Fuji News Network http://www.fnn-news.com/en/
Online Shopping
Foreign Buyers Club http://www.fbcusa.com/eng/
The Flying Pig http://www.theflyingpig.com/
Tengu Natural Foods http://www.tengunaturalfoods.com/
Warabe Mura Whole Foods http://www.warabe.co.jp/english2.html
Amazon Japan (click “in
English” button) http://www.amazon.co.jp/
International Pharmacy http://www.internationalpharmacy.com/
Lands End http://www.landsend.com/
LL Bean http://www.llbean.com/
Look it up!
English Town
Pages http://english.itp.ne.jp/
Japan Post http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/index.html
The Weather http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/indexe.html
Currency Converter http://www.xe.com
Time Zone Converter http://www.timeanddate.com/
Japan Metric Conversion Calculators http://www.teaching-english-in-japan.net/conversion/
Romanized Jap-Eng Eng-Jap Dictionary http://www.freedict.com/onldict/jap.html
Extensive Jap-Eng Eng-Jap Dictionary Converter http://www.alc.co.jp/
Kanji Converter http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/
**************************************************
2. Bloggety Blog
Blogs (short for weblogs) are a
sort of online diary that tells people who you are, what you’re doing and how
you’re thinking about the world around you. They are an absolutely fantastic way of telling family and
friends at home what you’re doing if you don’t have the time or inclination to
write separate e-mails. Some blogs are public and widespread, while others are
only available to a certain select audience. There is a lot of information out there for beginner bloggers, but start with the
following things:
1. Choose your audience – just your
family? Your friends? Anyone who wants to read? Depending on who you are writing for
you might choose to write differently.
Some people use names when referring to family members, some choose to
stick with initials. It doesn’t
matter how private or public you want to be, just so long as you have a clear
idea of this ahead of time.
2. Choose your topic – is this a
guide to living in Japan for others who might do the same? Is it simply a diary? Is it for you to record and remember
your changing emotions from day to day?
At the end of your stay in Japan, what kind of blog will you enjoy going
back over and reading?
3. Let go of your inner
critic
– your blog will never be chosen for the Nobel Prize for Blogging
Literature. You don’t want this
blog to take up your whole time writing it and so set a time in your mind (a
short time!) and stick to that time for your first attempts at writing. Blog entries can be as short as you
like – you don’t have to say anything very profound.
4. Write consistently – if it’s 15
minutes a day, great. 30 minutes
every week, fine. Just make sure
you keep the blog going or there will be big holes in your dateline. This is the hardest advice to follow,
but when you do hit a “blog block” (a period of time when for some reason you
just can’t blog), find a time when you can “get back into the swing”. Often, a photo is all you need to have
something to write about.
5. Read other blogs. There are any number of Japan
blogs. Any number of blogs by
mothers. Blogs by businessmen. Blogs by people who like hamsters. There are any number of good blogs out
there written by people whose interests run parallel to your own. On many of these blogs there is a
blogroll of other blogs that the bloggers read. One blog leads to another. And thus the world of Blog is created. Here are some random blogs written by
people who are in Japan.
The Blog from Another Dimension
Various Blogs with the tag “Nagoya”
Japan for Good – One Day at a
Time
6. Check into blog networks or blogsites that allow you to
build a blog for free. Such sites
can be Googled easily, check out the ones below for a sample of the extensive
range of free blogging tools available:
And finally… why would anyone
want to blog? If my family wants
to know what I am doing in Japan then why don’t they just pick up the phone and
call me? If I want a journal then
why don’t I just buy a paper one? What would I have to say that the whole world should be
allowed to read? I found this very
amusing top ten list of reasons why you should blog and reasons why you wouldn’t,
on this blog here.
Below I’ve copied and pasted their top ten reasons for blogging and have added
my own “Living in Japan” expat perspective.
Top Ten Reasons Why You
Should Blog
10. Because you stopped
learning anything new a couple years ago and it’s about time you started again
– Blogging
about some topic (even if it is just about daily life in Japan) enriches your
experience, forces you to think about things that you would otherwise let
go. As an education tool, blog
WRITING far surpasses blog READING.
9. Because it
forces you to do your homework – If you want to add links to your
own blog that will help other people living in Japan, it will make you look up
those links. Here’s a little
secret from the editor of the X-Pat Files. People who meet me think that I am the one who “knows
everything” in Nagoya. Well, it’s
only because I write the X-Pat Files, have to look everything up, and people
send me information. Writing a
blog, you become more magnetic for the very information that you need.
8. Because this is how you
are going to learn in the future – there are more and more blogs in
the world, and more and more blog networks. Pretty soon, it’s going to be the case that internet blog “research”
may surpass buying a guide book for those who are considering moving here. Information is more fluid now than in
any other time. Learn the craft of
blogging and you will simultaneously be learning tricks and tips for googling,
podcasting and RSSing your way to a more informed future.
7. Because if you don’t we’ll
think you’re lame and don’t know how to do your job – OK, this one was a
bit harsh! But think about it
– writing a blog about your experiences in Japan, or about any other
topic, will keep you more informed on that topic. It will impress others. Even if by “others”, you only mean your Mum and Dad.
6. Because it will change
your life – This one sounds fairly dramatic too, perhaps overstated,
but a life with blog does add one more dimension to your life. It is 15-30 minutes a day you have your
own time. It is the only chance
you really get to download your photos onto your computer.
5. Because you’ll hook up all
over the place – This is true.
I have many blogger friends with whom I catch up online. Some of my blog communities follow in
parallel my “real world” communities (ie, my blog friends are people I’ve
actually met in real life) but by blogging I might say something about myself
that makes me more interesting to them (or vice versa) to be the basis of a
real friendship that might not otherwise have blossomed.
4. Because learning is
conversation and that blogging lets you have more and better conversations
– Allowing
comments on your blog gives you feedback, it lets you know that people are
reading, it makes your skin thicker when there are no comments, and it opens up
a dialogue for further discussion, further learning. A number of times I have written tomorrow’s blog from
yesterday’s comment.
3. Because Professionalism is
more than consumption, it is contribution – This one was written for people
who would write professional blogs on a specialized topic, but I’d like to
theorize that “Living in Japan is more than just consumption, it is
contribution”. You’d have one kind
of living in Japan experience if you only ate at McDonalds and watched FOX on
Sky PerfecTV. You’d have a whole
different experience if you were actually venturing out into the Japanese world
and writing about it.
2. Because it’s
“a swap meet for the mind.” – The experience of blogging will
lead you to other blogs. You’ll
comment, you’ll get comments. Your
family and friends will know what you’re thinking about, your opinions on
certain things. You’ll find out
more about them in return.
1. Because your job depends
on it – Again, this one was written for the professional blogger, but
perhaps you can say that your fulfilling Life in Japan experience depends on
it? Keeping a journal of any kind
enriches an overseas experience, it keeps you learning about the place you are
and the places in your mind you didn’t know you had. Keeping that journal online and interactive, open to
comments from the outside is the ultimate way of putting yourself “out there”,
open to the experiences that life will bring.
**************************************************
3. The Nerdy Nerdy World
of Akihabara
Since this X-Pat Files seemed to
be rather computer-themed, I thought that I would write about the
Techno-Tourism world of Akihabara in Tokyo. It turns out, I don’t have to write about it at all. There is SO much information about this
bustling electric wonderland that anything I could say about Akihabara would
pale in comparison.
Nagoya is only a couple of hours
by shinkansen to Tokyo and for the budget conscious you could take a little
longer to go there on the budget Puratto Kodama ticket (ask at any JR Ticket
office) or go on an overnight package tour such as this
one put together by JTB and JR Tokai.
Basically from anywhere in Nagoya you’ll be in Akihabara in about 2 and
a half hours, so whether or not you stay overnight would be a matter between
you and Hyperdia.
Now, here’s
the fun part. Here’s what you can
expect to see in Akihabara:
Radio
Center – You have to see it to believe this fantastic
rabbits warren of tiny little “shops” that sell all forms of DIY electronics
equipment to miniature gadgets. It
is tech-nerd heaven, to say the very least, and it should not be missed as the
ultimate Akihabara Cultural Shock experience.
Duty
Free Shops and Giant Electronic Chain Stores – If you are wanting to buy a camera, a video, an iPod, a computer, anything
that beeps and clicks and whirrs in any way, then you are in the right
place. Your one very big problem
will be trying to find the cheapest or best deal in amongst the buildings, the
escalators, the giant window displays, the flashing neons, and the tiny little
hole-in-the-wall shops. If you can
read Japanese or have access to a Japanese reading person, you might do very
well to research in advance the prices you will likely pay at the different
stores at a place like kakaku.com then print
out the address of the actual shop that you need. By the way kakaku.com lists prices from shops all over Japan
and not just Akihabara, but you’ll see that in the world of electronics
Akihabara is usually king.
Maid
Cafes – Where pretty girls dress up as French maids
to provide the ultimate in relaxing experiences for the Otaku (Nerd) in us all.
The original, “Cure Maid” on the 6th
floor of the Gee Store Akiba near the station, is not quite as over-the-top (or
expensive) as some of the competition (Click here for a map in Japanese).
Cat
Cafes – If pretty maid girls just aren’t your thing,
then who can resist a pretty little pussy cat? Nekojarara is just
one café that allows customers to pet extremely clean and fluffy cats while
sipping their tea. You will
probably be asked to remove your shoes and wash your hands before entering, as
cleanliness is everything in this feline world. The map in Japanese is here, and it takes about 7
minutes to walk from Akihabara Station.
DooDads, Dolls and Dildos
– The
Akihabara area is home to some of Japans strangest and most specialized
shops. Manga of course, hobby
shops, model trains and plastic figurines lining every shelf, adult shops,
shops that specialize in canned instant food in vending machines. You can find descriptions of many of
these kind of shops on websites such as the blog Akiba Channel.
Gaming Arcades – Gaming arcades from
the past, gaming arcades of the future, Akihabara is a mecca. I dare your to conduct your own Google
search on “Gaming Arcade Akihabara” and see what rabbit hole you drop into!
Cosplay – Short for “costume
play”, Japanese youth get dressed up in their favourite animation character
costume. And when I say they get
dressed up – they change their hair, they put in freakishly coloured contact
lenses… they transform into the character they are portraying. Visit Akihabara
on a Sunday for this experience, because the streets are actually closed for
traffic while cosplay fanatics pose for each others photo sessions. Again, do a Cosplay
Tokyo Animation Center - A centerpiece of the
area, offering up information, showings, demonstrations, and events centered
around animation and gaming. It can be found by exiting the station towards
'Electric town' and heading out the right side of the station. It is the furthest
of the two large modern skyscrapers in your immediate eyeline.
Capsule Hotel – If you do
end up staying overnight, then who could resist taking this opportunity to
experience this most quintessential of Japanese experiences, the capsule
hotel. It also happens to be the
most convenient place to stay to the electric land itself. Capsule Inn Akihabara is used to
foreign clientele, and have their own English
website.
OK, if you’re not convinced that
Akihabara is the techno-tourism capital of the planet, check out the new multilingual tourist office
planned to open on July 21 by the nerdy nerdy website Akibanana, which features a cosplay maid
called “Cherry” – she is the “Guidol” (Guide + Idol) to your Akihabara
experience. Akibanana also offer a tour of Akihabara in English, as
well as an “Akipedia” to
explain to you the techno-terms that are used in the language of this strange,
strange town.
**************************************************
4. SNS Etiquette –
Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, oh my!!
I was a self-proclaimed SNS-free
zone until an old friend visited me recently and complained that she had lost
touch with me for over two years just because I was not on Facebook. She signed me up. We had poke fights, Super Poke Fights,
I’ve since had Food Fights with various other friends. In other words, I have lost my Facebook virginity.
But how do you use these
newfangled networking universes to your own advantage without ending up with
six million new friends to whom you share absolutely no connection? What IS the deal with that guy who
asked to be my friend after having met me just once in the five minutes, ten
years ago when we worked for the same company. How is it that I always know about that guy now – I
hear updates about when he stood in line at the bank, I know when he travels to
New York (I don’t know other things about him, for example, whether or not he
has any kids). How come HE wants
to know my updates – when I’ve had a bad day, or like today when my
profile simply exclaims to the world “Sue is X-Patting”. Some of my Facebook friends don’t even
know that I write the X-Pat Files and so what they take from the comment “Sue
is X-Patting” I just don’t know.
All that said, as far as I can
tell Facebook is harmless, fun, and a very easy way to let people know what
you’re doing. Many of my Facebook
friends are in fact family, so every time I update I’m actually letting my
nieces and nephews know what is going on in my life. Now that I’ve settled in I feel less and less need to play
with the little toys such as “Food Fight” and “Send a growing flower”.
Still, the newness of this
process to me, and its very nature as the new way to be friends with someone, raises
many questions.
- What should be your criteria for accepting someone
who has requested to be your friend?
- If you don’t want to accept, is it ruder to decline
or to ignore?
- If you accept and then change your mind later, how
rude is it to remove someone?
- If you accepted every growing flower and food fight
you would end up with a whole profile filled with useless little Facebook Applications. How rude is it to ignore someone
sending you a “gift”. How
about ignoring someone who sends you a pink ribbon for charity?
- What happens when you are an idle friend, such as
must be the case with me and my LinkedIn
profile, since I never check it.
Do all these people who are lining up at my LinkedIn door think me rude for
pretending not to be home when they knock?
- If you do want to use Facebook to get in contact
with your long lost friend, how sad should you be if they ignore your request
for Facebook Friendship? Are
they just not checking their Facebook account? How uncool is it to “poke” someone like that, and when
does Facebook poking become Facebook stalkling?
All these questions and more I
have as I enter this brave new Facebook world. Still, without the food fight applications and other little
toys, Facebook as my home base when I open up my internet browser does tell me
that my friend in New York is “cooking for a crowd”, and that my friend in the
UK is “cleaning out the car because it has to be returned”. And although I don’t know what crowd
they’re cooking for or what sort of car they are cleaning or why they have to
give it back, I do feel the connection of being able to imagine my friends far
away.
Some links to get you started if
you want to find your friends online:
http://mixi.jp/ (Japanese version of Facebook)
And finally, this fun blog which goes into the traps and pitfalls of
Facebook Etiquette (hopefully the answers to those questions I posed above, and
more!):
http://properfacebooketiquette.blogspot.com/
**************************************************
5. Kids Websites or
Websites about Kids in Japan
I have been asked countless
times by nieces and nephews how they can get information about Japan that they
can use for their school projects.
A simple search online reveals that there is a lot of child-appropriate
material out there on the internet:
Kids Web Japan introduces the
country of Japan, its people, culture, history and language. Aimed at schoolchildren
between 10 and 14, it features animation, games, quizzes and photographs.
Travel For Kids
Japan
lists fun things to do with kids while you’re living in Japan. Although it’s by no means extensive, it
does have some good ideas, and some lovely recommendations for books to read
your children.
Here and There Japan is a wonderful blog
for kids written by an expat mother in Tokyo. It too has wonderful book recommendations (the author of the
blog is also a member of the Society of Childrens Book Writers and
Illustrators).
Homework
Helper
for kids doing projects on Japan (not a Japanese site)
Japan with Kids – a fairly Tokyo-centric online community for parents, contains lots
of generic information too.
Piqniq –
social network for families living in Japan with forums, blogs and directory of
kid-friendly services.
Child Research Net is a non-profit, Internet-based child research
institute. We have designed CRN's English site to bring together people
concerned about children and to offer a forum for innovative interdisciplinary discussion. Our vast network of
professionals, researchers and educators around the world will bring you
articles, reliable data and the latest
research in English, mainly on Japanese children and youth that are not otherwise available.
Japan Information Network might be useful for the homework of your older children. Filled with statistics and facts, this
is the place to go to look something up.
**************************************************
6. Internet Providers with
some English Support
Abigail Lloyd
Service area is
limited
Service/Stability
★★★★★
Price ★★★★
English Support
Yes
Service Type <
ADSL > 1.5Mbps to 47Mbps Internet
service Only
For further
enquiries, please contact:
GOL:
03-3239-6765
Mr. Shigetaka
Hayashi(Sales): 090-9208-1406
Service area is
limited
Service/Stability
★★★★★
Price ★★★
English Support
Yes
Service Type <
Hikari Premium>
"Family" Internet service Only
< Hikari
Premium > "Mansion" Internet service Only
<
"Hikari-Denwa"from NTT > IP-phone Option
For further
enquiries, please contact:
GOL:
03-3239-6765
Mr. Shigetaka
Hayashi(Sales): 090-9208-1406
Service/Stability
★★★★
Price ★★★★1/2
English Support
Partial
Service Type 1M
8M 30M
Telephone line
is not required.
Either Bank
account information or Credit card information is required to apply.
For futher
information:
StarCat:
0120-181-374
http://www.starcat.co.jp/english/
**************************************************
7. Meet and Greet Luncheon
For those of you who are new to
Nagoya, please come and join us for lunch. Meet and Greet lunch is the
ideal place to make new friends, have a chat, and find out what is going on in
Nagoya.
Date and Time: Tuesday, July
8th, starting at 11:30 a.m.
Change of Regular Venue: see
note below!!!
Temporary Venue: The Seasons
Restaurant, 2F, Hilton Nagoya (with special corner for kids)
Price: 2600 yen
RSVP: Joey Tan is the Meet and
Greet Coordinator. Please RSVP to Joey by e-mail at joeywltan@gmail.com as soon as possible,
at the latest by the 4th of July. When you are RSVPing
for another person, please give the name of the other person to avoid double
bookings. There is a minimum attendance
of 15 people for just this Meet and Greet, so please contact Joey as soon as
you can to avoid cancellation.
Important Note: The Meet and Greet
has been hosted at Shooters Bar and Grill each month, however renovations to the restaurant have
required the Meet and Greet to find a new temporary home.
Shooters would like to apologize
to Meet and Greet attendees and other customers at this time and hopes to have
your custom and support again in approximately 3 weeks when the renovations
should be complete.
The Meet and Greet would also
like to thank Shooters Bar and Grill for their continued support each
month. Because they open just for
the Meet and Greet and provide a smorgasbord lunch at a reasonable price, it is
a very easy event for parents with young children. We look forward to returning to Shooters when we can.
**************************************************
8. Kakaku.com and tricks
of the internet searching trade
After years in Japan I have a
few internet searching tricks up my sleeve that will help me to locate a
website (even if it is in Japanese) even if I don’t know the name, or the
correct kanji of what I am searching for.
- PRODUCT CODES – Look on your
washing machine and you will see a model number, either something simple
like BD-V2 or something longer like NA-VR2200L. Let’s say that your washing machine only came with a
Japanese manual, or worse yet you had an English manual but have spent the
last five days searching for it with no luck. Feed the model number into a Google search engine and
you just MIGHT come up with an English manual PDF online (many manufacturers
offer this service but don’t produce the printed manuals sold with the
actual machines in English).
- PHONE NUMBERS – If you have a
shopping receipt from a supermarket you would like to recommend to your
friend, it should have the phone number of the supermarket printed
somewhere up near the top.
Not only can the friend feed the phone number into their car
navigation and go there directly, if they don’t HAVE car navigation then
they might be able to find a map online (even if it is in Japanese, it’s
useful to print out and take on the journey to show people along the way)
simply by typing the phone number into Google. This works best if you use hyphens, and not brackets
for the area code. To
research the above article about Akihabara I had the phone number of the
Cat Café I was trying to describe – 03-3258-2525. By copying and pasting this from
somewhere I got about a dozen maps for this popular café (I chose the one
that looked like it was from the official website).
Now that you know these two
handy-dandy ways to get around Japanese illiteracy when searching something out
on the world wide web, let me tell you about Kakaku.com
which I have already recommended you consult before your exciting trip to
Akihabara. When you first open up
this page you will be faced with thousands of little icons, and they are kind
of easy to work out (cameras, cars, games, computers, home electronics and the
list goes on). However some of
these icons are misleading (the TV icon leads to home electronics, not just
TVs, so you would have to click this if, for example you were looking to buy a
cheap washing machine). Also, once
you’ve clicked one of these items the NEXT menu is in Japanese, so unless it’s
something where the product brands are often in English (like digital cameras
for example) then you still might be in trouble.
Here’s the trick however –
the mammoth database is completely searchable by product code, so if you had
consulted one of many English consumer review websites to know what model of
camera you were looking for, just feeding the model number into the search
engine will take you straight to all the options with that same model number. Just click on the one that looks right,
and you can tell how much the cheapest deal on that model number will cost you,
from a database that extends across Japan! Most of the shops have the facility to ship the item to you
if you want to buy it, so your next big electronics deal could be just a phone
call away!
Let’s put it to the test. Let’s say I want to buy my
sister-in-law a new camera for her birthday. My brother wants to spend up to about $500 on it and he
thinks it might be cheaper in Japan.
First of all he goes to his local camera shop and finds that he likes
the look of the Canon Powershot G9 which he then looks up on Shopping.com in
Australia (a consumer review website).
The very cheapest he can get it for is $489 but the average price is
higher and he doesn’t know if he trusts the online source of the cheaper one.
I take just the model number,
DCS-W80 and feed it into kakaku.com, which
gives me this
page. Remember, G9 is not a
very complicated product code and it’s likely to hit on anything, which of
course it does. However, each
listing has a little photo, and you can easily find and click on the one you
want, the Canon Powershot G9. If you scroll down this page you’ll see
the ten cheapest prices around Japan.
In my case, on the day that I did it there was a shop in Aichi
Prefecture selling the second cheapest one at 41498 yen which means that it is
worth my time to buy my brother a camera for his wife and him to pay me
back. No running around, no
fuss. Of course, to know that this
shop was in Aichi I had to be able to read that kanji, but on close inspection
of that listing the shop also clearly displayed its phone number, and 052 is
the area code for Nagoya. Even if
I hadn’t known the kanji for Aichi I would have picked it up from the phone number.
Of course, this does not work
with every single camera model if the numbers are different between your
country and Japan. However, the
time you take online to find the information you need is still less than going
up and down, up and down, up and down each and every escalator in Akihabara to
try and find the best deal in town.
**************************************************
9. Buying a Computer
– do your homework!
For its August meeting the Nagoya International PC Club will be
conducting a walking tour of the computer stores near Nagoya Station. We’ll be
exploring the latest technology on offer at three of Nagoya’s largest computer
shops, and answering questions about technology purchases – if you’ve
ever wished that you had a computer expert along when you went electronics
shopping, now’s your chance! We will meet at noon on August 16, 2008, at
noon, in front of the Bic Camera store, on the west side (the shinkansen side)
of the station.
If a Mac is what you’re
hankering for, then the Apple Store
in Sakae has English speaking shop assistants that will
gladly take you on a “personal shopping” spree for the exact type of computer
and software that you need. To
make an appointment for personal shopping look at the Japanese website with a
Japanese speaking friend. When
you’re buying, if you can recycle an old iPod (even a broken one) or prove that
you belong to an educational facility like a university, you may also get a
discount!
**************************************************
10. How to Turn Off
the Computer
Sue Conolly
A good friend of mine, an old
Japanese lady, just left my house.
I’d given her an old pre-paid mobile phone I wasn’t using any more last
week, and as she was leaving she told me “By the way, the mobile phone is
broken! I’m really sorry.. I will
have to take it to the shop!!”.
The despair of having broken the precious present was in her voice but I
knew better. I knew that she
simply did not know that to turn a mobile phone on, you have to press the “hang
up” button down for several seconds.
She simply just did not know how to turn a phone on, or turn it off.
I am like this, at least in a
metaphorical sense, with my computer.
With Facebook and my blog, work, work and more work (and an online
Masters I am starting next Monday) I simply don’t know how to turn off the
computer. It’s a real problem, as
real to me as my friend thinking that the mobile phone was broken. So here I am, I’ve been sitting in a
dark airconditioned room all day – eyes slitty and staring at the
computer screen to bring you the August X-Pat Files. I’ve told you all about computers. You can all turn your computers ON after reading this
edition, but what are you going to do to turn them off? Hmmm?
Here goes….
How to turn off the computer:
1. Buy a dog so you have to take
it for a walk (this does not always work… my own two dogs had to wait until
11:30 am, or after article number 3 of the X-Pat Files, to get their
desperately needed morning walk)
2. Turn off the airconditioner
and open the window so that you hear noises from outside reminding you that
there are children in the world.
Your children, even.
3. Get hungry enough so that you
dream of something really delicious.
It is important not to dream of McDonalds here or you will just chow
down on a Big Mac you’ve grabbed through the drive through on your way back to
the computer screen. It is
important to dream of a delicious sashimi salad, either at the restaurant
you’re treating yourself to for your hard days work or hand made from the
supermarket. Either way you’ll
need to turn the computer off to get it.
4. Smile at someone. If it is appropriate then it is better
to kiss them too. Smiling at
someone and kissing them breaks the iSpell that has been cast on you and you
will start to come out of your trance (and turn off the computer).
5. Dance to some really, really
funky music. I recommend The Cat Empire for this task, but They Might Be Giants
would do as well. Aretha
Franklin. Eminem. I don’t care. Just the action of dancing (which is very, very hard to do
in front of the keyboard and impossible to do while actually typing) will be
the antidote to your e-poison.
6. Have a bath, and preferably
go to the public bath house and scrub yourself from head to toe. Wash every icon off, scrub away each
pixel of each blog. Nothing should
be left of the world wide web in your sleepy eyes by the time you’ve finished.
7. When you can’t think of more
ways to turn off the computer, Google “how to get away from
the computer”. The best tips
for computer weaning can come directly from the computer addicted horses mouth.
8. Try to write, or try to THINK
a whole sentence that does not contain the words or partial words; wiki, blog,
pixel, RSS, .com, networking.
Certainly do not use worlds like “Blogosphere”. Especially do not use these words in
front of your children. Are you
trying to create a whole generation of computer addicted zombies?
9. Wait until your eyes and ears are bleeding from extensive
periods of time sitting motionless in cyberspace, fast food wrappers piling up
around your feet and your brain filling slowly with a sort of buzzing pixel
fractal pattern, or….
10. Stop. Just stop.
And turn the stupid thing off, OK?
**************************************************
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