Five Ways to get or stay Stuck in an Expat Bubble
Posted by harvey in Culture, Gadgets on 07. Apr, 2012 | 5 Comments
Expat Bubble FAIL How to Increase your Chances of Getting Stuck in an Expat Bubble. Living in a foreign country and tired of constantly being bombarded by foreign sounds, smells, and events? Don’t you just wish you could curl up inside an expat bubble and never come out? Well you’re in luck. This article is [...]
Japanese Language Audio Books on iPad with Rye Studio
Posted by harvey in Books, Gadgets, Media on 03. Oct, 2011 | 3 Comments
In an effort to boost my pitiful Chinese abilities… I got an App! A company called Rye Studio makes a series of picture book apps for iPhone and iPad that read you a story while showing you the text in Chinese. Listening to target language text being read at native speed while reading along is [...]
Getting your GO on
Posted by harvey in Culture, Gadgets on 10. Aug, 2011 | Comments Off
Making the おやじ game look good! So I recently started watching the ひかるの碁 (hikaru no go) anime, and as what I assume is normal for most people who do the same, I now find myself wanting to learn how to play Go. If you haven’t watched Hikaru no Go I would recommend checking it out. [...]
Japanese Calendar Converter for iPhone
Posted by harvey in Gadgets, Language on 09. Jul, 2011 | Comments Off
I’ve had this app for a while now. It’s simple, but useful, and free! The title is, “Gengou Free” By Masayuki Akamatsu. It converts the year counting system you’re used to, like 2011, into the Japanese system which is like 平成 (Heisei) 23. You know how when you’re filling out some form at a service [...]
Air-conditioned Clothing
Posted by harvey in Crazy Consumers, Culture, Gadgets on 03. Jul, 2011 | Comments Off
This 空調服 company has created a line of products that use a low amount of energy to keep us cool in the humid summer months. How do they do it? To put it simply, the clothes and other products incorporate a battery-powered fan. What? What’s that you say? You ask why their website URL is [...]
Wear Brain-controlled Cat Ears
Posted by harvey in Crazy Consumers, Gadgets on 07. May, 2011 | 2 Comments
Wearing cat ears is awesome. Click to watch video on YouTube Controlling stuff with your brain is freakin’ awesome too. Wearing brain-controllec cat ears? Take my money now! This Wired Magazine article explains quite nicely: “The cat ear product, called “necomimi” is a novelty hair band that is worn in the normal way but features [...]
Play Hanafuda on your iPhone!
Posted by harvey in Culture, Gadgets, Media on 21. Feb, 2011 | 6 Comments
The popular amine Summer Wars has brought the traditional Japanese card game Hanafuda to the attention of more Japan-heads than ever before. Seriously. I’m not gonna lie. I wanted to learn how to play hanafuda simply because I saw it played on Summer Wars and thought it was a cool aspect of Japanese culture that [...]
How to use Aozora Bunko to get free Japanese books
Posted by harvey in Books, Culture, Gadgets, Language on 13. Feb, 2011 | 4 Comments
Aozora Bunko is an excellent resource for free and legal Japanese reading material. Once you have downloaded Aozora texts you can read them on your computer, print them out, or even load them onto your Kindle. If you like studying Japanese and have an interest in Japanese literature, then I’m sure you will find Aozora [...]
