The choreography isn’t too bad, to be honest. So even though this ad is old as bejeesis, it’s still pretty damn cool in my book. Check it out.

Michael Rutschky

• Japan Jobs Page: Thanks to Andrew Shuttleworth for his Japan Job Search tool. I’ve added it to the top of the page, and am hoping to improve this page further over the next couple of days. Things have been a little hectic for me this week, and if all goes well I should be able to explain why soon.
• Japan Blogs Page: The JapanSoc.com/.org community deserves all the credit for this one. They have a great community over there, and are doing an awesome job of promoting Japan bloggers (including 2JPN, which I’m thankful for!). I encourage everyone to click on over and check out what they’re doing.
• Japan Podcasts Page: This is mostly for my own benefit, because I really needed a page that I could go to and bring up some Japanese audio quickly. I’m mostly working at home these days, so I need to make sure that I have enough Japanese language input around me that I’ll improve my listening skill. I’ve put on a bunch of English language Japan-related podcasts on there as well, although I have to admit that I don’t really have time to check them out myself.
• Sumo Page: Since I’ve started writing my sumo blog on Gaijin Pot, I’ve needed to organize a decent page to aggregate supplementary source material. There’s not a lot of stuff being written in English, but I’ve put some of the main resources on this page. I’m just learning about sumo, so it’s good to read all what other people have to say.
• Tokyo CGM Night Page: This is more or less a proof-of-concept page, as I wanted to whip up something that would aggregate RSS feeds for all the tweets, photos, videos, and blog entries focused around Danny and Andrew’s Tokyo CGM Night. I’m hoping that others will take these feeds and distribute them in other interesting ways as well. It’s a quality event, well worth talking about.

I’ve made other small additions as well, but these are the main ones that I can think of right now. I usually take 5 or 10 minutes each day to add something, and I’m very thankful to people who are suggesting new content via the #2jpn twitter hash tag and via the suggestion page.

As usual all feedback, questions, and insults are welcome.

The Smart.fm “Personal Podcast” Feature

I’m sure that most readers of this blog know about smart.fm already. But I want to point out an invaluable feature that they have that’s quite easy to miss. If you click “podcast” on the bottom of the page smart.fm will export all the audio from your lessons to a podcast, which you can then subscribe to via iTunes. This is way awesome, since it means I can take the audio on the road with me when I go out, reviewing material that I’ve studied over the past few days.

Here’s smart.fm’s blurb about the podcast feature:

After you activate your smart.fm Personal Podcast, smart.fm will generate a podcast of your most recent lesson. The podcast contains text and audio for that lesson’s words and sample sentences.

Constant review in short bursts of time is the best way to learn a language. With the smart.fm Personal Podcast, you can review your items anywhere, anytime.

Sumo Blog

When this opportunity came up, I decided to jump on it for a couple of reasons:

• - Japanese study. I need to read more texts in Japanese, and I’m hoping that because there’s not much sumo information in English that I’ll be forced to read some in Japanese.
• - It will win me some points with my father-in-law, who is a die-hard sumo fan.
• - I need to write about something other than technology. Between my Japan Tech blog and my China Tech blog, I’m pretty much all technologied out.
• - It gives me a chance to get some unusual writing samples under my belt.
• - Gaijin Pot has a pretty big audience, and it’s a good chance to bring some people over to 2JPN.

So drop over and check out my first post, “Sumo Celebrations: Nothing to get Excited About.” Let me know what you think.

Now, if you’d like to meet the people who are writing and producing much of that content, then check out Japansoc.org. This is a google group for bloggers in Japan, and there’s a lot of productive and interesting conversation going on over there.

If you are a blogger in Japan, be sure to sign up as a member. You can also check out the 2JPN social networking page for more about Japansoc.org/com and other social sites in Japan.

I modified it a little, so it’s not quite the same as it was originally designed. I wrote about it before on my old China blog, and thanks to some comments over there I’ve tweaked it a little bit to make it work a bit better.

You can download the plugin here:

1. - Upload the Emoticons folder to your plugins directory.
2. - Find this code (most likely on your comments.php page):
3. {textarea id="comment" cols="70" rows="10" name="comment"}{/textarea} Note: Of course “{” and “}” will be “<” and “>” in your code.

4. - And just above that, insert this:
   if (class_exists('emotions')) {
emotions::bar();
}
?>
5. - Go to plugin management page in Wordpress, and click Activate Plugin

Update: HelloBMW has a made a GTalk version over on his (Chinese) blog, and I encourage you to check that out as well.

I learned Japanese in 18 months by having fun. In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo (yay!).

That’s just ridiculous. But Khatzumoto has a no-bullshit attitude about language learning, and his reading his stuff always gets me motivated to study for some reason. Without fail. There are some amazing study tips on his site. I’m not going to list any of them here, but instead, I encourage f**king implore you to visit his site and check it out for yourself.

This is probably the best time to lay out some ground rules for myself, as I only arrived in Tokyo about 6 weeks ago. I’m writing this as a part of the January Japan Blog Matsuri, which as far as I can tell is a monthly thing that Japan bloggers all over the place are taking part in. But to be honest, I do like the idea of laying down some goals; of getting my Japlan “on paper” (so to speak) so I can make the most of my time here.

So without further ado, here goes nothin’…

1. Learn, Speak, Read, Write Japanese.

No surprise here. Japanese has been a priority all along. But I need to shift it into high gear, kick it up a notch, and give it 110% — (insert other applicable cliches here). Aside from some writing gigs that I’m busy with, I am looking for some work here in Tokyo. And I’m definitely finding that improving my Japanese skills will open more proverbial doors for me. Or conversely, slam them shut in my face if I don’t study well.

Tools I’m using: See my Japanese and JLPT resource pages, because I can’t list them all here.

2. Run, Rick, Run!

A key part of my Haruki-Murakami-ish Japlan is to start running. I did stop smoking back in October after my wife bet me that I couldn’t. So far I’m winning, and it looks like I’m in a good position to win the iMac that she promised to give me if she loses. (Note: I don’t think I’ll hold her to that, but it’s always fun to do something that someone thinks you cannot.) Whatever the case, running is allowing me to discover more of my local neighborhood here in Machida as well, and that’s defintely a good thing considering how disoriented I was when I first got off the effin’ plane…

Tools I’m using: I’ve picked up a Nike iPod+, which uses my iPod to track my distance and time via a small sensor in my shoe. It’s all very NASA, and I’m loving it so far. Tying in with goal #1, I’ve enabled iKnow.co.jp’s somewhat less-publicized podcast feature, which exports the audio from my latest lesson to iTunes, so I can take it with me.

3. Build Slowly But Surely

This will apply to a number of projects. For starters, 2JPN.com is slowly evolving into a nice collection of Japan-related resources. I need to continue to build on this. Maybe add a resource or two every few days. I just started Sumo and Sushi pages yesterday. Hopefully I can get some input from others who have been in Japan longer than I have. This project is one of discovery for me, and I hope it continues to be that in 2009.

As for my CNet Blog, I’ll continue to work away on that front as well. I have some fun video editing projects that I’m working on, and that’s been fun so far. Hopefully I can keep finding new and interesting Japan-related tech stories in the future as well. Drop me a line if you gots some.

Tools I’m using: Google Reader, Evernote, and Delicious bookmarks to organize my shee-at.

So those are my 2009 goals. If you have any shortcuts that will allow me to reach ‘em faster, feel free to gimme a shout via your preferred channel.

Best of luck to you in 09!
Rick.

P.S. Cheers to Chris of NihongoNotes for the tip off on this Matsuri thingy!

But it does provide a good source of Japan information to your blog readers, and it helps promote what I’m trying to do — and I certainly appreciate that. I’m just starting out building this library of Japanese resources, so what you see now if just the tip of what will surely be a damn big ol’ iceberg. As usual, if you have suggestions for resources that you’d like to see added, drop me a line and let me know.

2JPN Google Gadget for your blog’s sidebar

get the code here