A smarter way for foreigners to do banking in Japan

April 5, 2009

When you’re at a any social gathering, there are do’s and don’ts – certain topics are socially permissible, some certainly are not.  Sometimes you’ll find yourself boring the your counterpart when going into great depth about your passion for traditional Japanese Flower Arranging (生花 – ikebana), but you won’t cause any offence.  Mention Japanese banking […]

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How to display Japanese characters on your PC (Windows XP)

April 2, 2009

There are 2 main aspects to “using” Japanese on your Windows XP computer: viewing/reading, and writing. It’s actually quite straight forward to set it up to do both and I’m going to show you how.

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Japan’s National Public Holidays

March 31, 2009

There are quite a few public holidays in Japan… there are some special days though which are not national public holidays but are typically taken as holidays by the Japanese.  Below is a quick list of the dates for official national holidays. 

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Finding private Japanese teachers

March 31, 2009

If you’re looking to find another option for Japanese language teachers, then I’m writing this to suggest to you another great one.  If you go to a Japanese language institution, you will typically have group lessons for approximately 4000~6000 yen / 60mins or 90mins.  If you want to get a private, 1-on-1 lesson, you will […]

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How to read Tokyo postal addresses

March 19, 2009

Before ever venturing out anywhere in Japan, either for a day-trip, or a party/event, I will nearly always print a map for where I’m going. It’s part of my character and I don’t really know what other way to operate comfortably. If for example I’m given an address for a venue, I will nearly always […]

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Learning Japanese: Online Flashcards and Vocabulary Lists

March 19, 2009

If you’re living in Japan one thing I will say is that learning the language will definitely 0pen up the world to you here.  You will be able to read menus in restaurants, communicate with more people and while you’ll always be different you can at least live a semblance of normality. If you’re actively […]

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Kōya-san [高野山]

November 12, 2008

Any visitor to Japan, or to any other South-East Asian country, will be familiar with the sights of a Buddhist Temple or two, or four, or ten…  Possibly, you’ve gone to a few Temple sites, taken them in and been ready to jump off the next Pagoda that dares to greet you.  There is sometimes […]

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