I love the weapons that each person has chosen. The naked man has a brick. The ranking officer has his trusty riot shield. One of the on-call officers has an actual person catcher: a tool designed specifically for handling people who you don’t want to touch. The other has a flimsy plastic traffic control device; [...]
I’ve written a piece over at Japundit: Hikikomori - Japan’s Invisible Population
Today you get a picture from a shrine which will bless and purify computers and related things.
Kind of the Shinto version of St. Expedite.
I’m really not sure why I’m so interested in Japan, or the Japanese language. It’s easy enough to find the point of entry of my interest; it was when I started to match sounds to subtitles in the anime I watched in college. However, that was little more than a passing fancy; it doesn’t explain [...]
A year and a half ago I went to the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo. I got some good pictures, and was linked to from boingboing, but online video hadn’t really taken off yet, so only I got to see the videos I took.
I’ve finally gotten around to uploading some of those videos:
Crab Walker with [...]
My contract in Japan specified that I would stay one year at that company, and that nine months into the process both the head office and I would determine whether the contract was worth renewal. If we both decided that I should stay, I would get a raise of about $1000 annually and an automatic [...]
One of the more common reactions I get from people newly learning that I’ve lived in Japan is “I wish I could do something like that.” It’s actually not all that hard; all you need is a bachelor’s degree, some patience during the application process, a few thousand dollars to get you over there and [...]
My entire stay in Japan originated because of my interest in Japanese. It wasn’t a particularly serious interest at first, but I discovered somewhat to my surprise that I really liked studying that language. It was only natural that once I actually got to Japan, I continued my studies, even though it meant paying almost [...]