One guy who lives down the road from my old flat in Chiba used to teach the Emperor and other japanese royal family English.

Also, apart form that, two ex-Shane employees I knew/know are famous too!

John: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fun-Guide-Games-Learning-English/dp/1903499488/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246634466&sr=8-1

Amy: http://www.uknova.com/wsgi/torrent/view/78540 (NOTE: UKnova is a members only site, so below is a bit of info about the torrent)

Info:

" [SD] Come Dine With Me: West London (1 of 5)

(C4, 5:30pm Monday 25th May, 2009. Duration 25Mins.)

Pic: http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z46/gtwibell/CD-2.jpg

(Amy is the young attractive girl with dark brown hair)

Five West London chefs try some capital cooking in a bid to win the Come Dine With Me crown."

Wowsers!

My long awaited "Disney Label Mickeymouse Prime" arrived today just as my GF was leaving to go to...Tokyo Disney Sea!

Gosh!

"At least now I don't have to get you a souvenir", she chuckled.

Let's enjoying of the to playing game funness!

http://www.adultswim.com/games/game/index.html?game=lilbastard

I just got back to Japan, flying from DFW and everyone had to fill out a "department of HEATH" questionaire.

Some points:

1/ The English paper was so full of spelling mistakes, Engrish, grammar mistakes and the wrong choice of words (medical jargon) as to make them unusable. I filled my one out and got out mt "teacher's red pen" and highlighted every mistake and wrote the corrections. When the guy came to read mine, he blinked a few times at it, looked a little embarrassed and quickly took it without fuss. My GF wanted me NOT to give him a lecture, as it might make everyone else wait longer. I was so tempted to do it though. Dumb Japanese. They can't even create a good piece of English even when they work at an INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT? The feck?

2/NOONE could leave the plane until Japanese staff, in FULL Hazmat gear (I sh1t you not) boarded the plane and collected every questionaire and at times, interviewed some of the passengers. They also stood around in groups and discussed any decision that needed to be taken.

3/ The American Airways staff were as annoyed with the process as everyone else.

4/ We were given a piece of paper, a mask and instructions to either wear the mask if we had a cough and also to report to some sort of health centre later on in japan or receive a phone call for a consultation about swine flu.

4/ there were cameramen in the actual gate (not outside the arrivals area but as we got off the bloody plane). who were no doubt NHK cronies. I got my own back by going up to them and whipping out MY camera and taking "in your face" close-ups of each of the camera guys.

Basically, it was call smoke and mirrors. Japan hasnt even got enough vaccines (according to a Doctor that I teach in Japan) for this compared to the USA and what they did to "prevent" swine flu was laughable were it not for the stress and annoyance it proved to people (I was in 1st class and that was annoying enough. I cant imagine what it was like for the economy passengers).

I then noticed there were more police out and about plus women telling people how to use the fvcking customs/immigration area (they have SIGNS, you ignorant b1tch...in ENGLISH. Noone needs your pointless help). Heck, they even had women kindly "instructing" people how to use the bloody escalators.

The more I travel out of Japan, the less I want to return to it.

was digging around the back-story of the original series and here is a link to why, in the original series, Starbuck suddenly dissapeared (between the original show and Galactica:1980) and how the original crew were "helped" by a mysterious, brilliantly glowing race of veiled humanoid figures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Lights

Sound familiar?

I hope this is alluded to in capricia. That way the ending of the new BSG isnt such a pile of knob.

Makes sense now, doesnt it? (apart from the "lets stay on earth and to hell with technology" part, that is)

Ironically, Moore, the creator of the show, said this

"Moore doesn't want to get into the original series' "ship of lights" idea since the religion backstory is so different in this series. "That was all about quasi-divine beings showing up, and you had the good ones and the bad ones, and there seemed to be some larger, godlike chess game that the people on Galactica and the Cylons were caught up in."


- http://www.gateworld.net/galactica/news/2006/03/ronmooreteasesseasonthree.shtml

I have just finished chapter 2 of Roach's Phonics book (second week of the first year...bit behind, right?).

Anyway, here is how I have been studying.

( Read more... )

The above notes were done in about1-2 hours at work when I didn't have lessons to teach.

BTW, if I'm doing anything wrong OR anyone can give better advice then I am honestly very willing to receive it!

I want to get hold of some films. One is "The Cove", a documentary about the Taiji dolphin slaughter, and also "Yasukuni", the documentary about the place of the same name.

Oh, and the two "Gaijin" films, about Japanese-Brazilians living in Japan and Brazil.

Info:

The Cove (aka: "The Rising"): - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1313104/

Yasukuni: - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1073548/

Gaijin - Os Caminhos da Liberdade: - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132989/

Gaijin - Ama-me Como Sou : - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325444/

Torrents, streaming links, file download sites or just good old fashioned DVD order links would be great! Can't track the dang things down.

As Rossane Bar's husband once said concerning her ascending the stairs:

"What a great big pile of arse"

I'm so shocked at the truly, uninspired ending and have hardly any emotional energy to describe all the plot holes, gaping misjudgments and amateur script conclusion that was contained in that episode.

It was like watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy only for Gollumn to push Frodo into Mt Doom, the Ring to fly out of his hand and get buried under the hot ash (safe but unreachable to anyone), Samwise Gangee jumping into the lava with him, Sauron to blink himself out of existence, the forces of good to destroy all of their castles and live in caves and the Orks and Goblins going to "go live in another country".

And all this with the same, drawn-out ending that "should have finished with the Sam/Frodo Suckfest", to quote "Clerks 2".

Utterly and completely,


NO


PS: And it is for this reason that I haven't followed shows like "Lost".  I bet that either continues into a damp fizzle with no conclusion (ie: cancelled) or it will end as badly as BSG

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081122153207AAtDeAz

Basically when a vid buffers, press pause and when its ready, watch the whole vid OFFLINE (offline mode).

OR/

Pause it, let it buffer and then use the firefox addon, "download helper" to download the vid and watch the flv vid via an flv player like veoh, etc.

use "hotspot shield" which is a way to use a proxy ip addrdess to access megavideo (and sites like hulu).

The weird thing is that ninja "hi im phara and I obviously have deep mental and personal problems" video still insists on using megavideo to back up its increasingly unavailable divx content  and then has blocked most of its users from accessing any helpful or useful info concerning how to access megavideo!

According to her, people who watch vids are "leeching scum" and anyone who tries to contribute (like, for example, saying the vids dont work or, shock horror, trying to help other users from accessing a vid to actually, gasp, watch a vid via ninja) has their posts removed or is banned etc.  You cant even pm her as she's "too busy" removing people's posts or typing rude comments to the people that try and contribute to Ninja.

Bless her. For all we know, she's mentally ill (what with all the sleep she supposedly losed "running" ninja). 

Well, get well soon Phara!  Bless!

Phara's completely useless online guide to avoiding Megavideo's time limit:

- http://forum.ninjavideo.net/viewtopic.php?pid=314437#p314437

The REAL guide can be found here (written by actual, contributing people of the web):  - http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081122153207AAtDeAz

( Read more... )

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Their old player wasn't connecting to any channels whatsoever and then the "update" failed to access any channels. The old player then would not work after re-installation (the update message to access the new, just as useless beta software prevented the old one from working) meaning TVU is now officially DEAD. A quick check of their forums confirms this: Absolutely bugger-all traffic, messages or action happening there.

I have also tried some "rival" software and here are the results.

Livestation (by Microsoft).
Result: Failed to load.
Opinion: BUG-RIDDEN FILTH.

Babelgum.
Result: Hijacked the main desktop screen, showed the "spinning circle of loading doom" for ages and would NOT allow itself to be closed (even though it had a "close" button). I had to switch off the PC via the power button in the end. Spyware
Opinion: MALWARE in TV clothing.

Zatoo.
Result: Works only in the UK.
Opinion: About as useful and ironic as promoting free, bottled tap-water to those with taps, whilst denying those in deserts any water whatsoever.

Joost.
Result: USA only.
Opinion: (Ice to Eskimos! - see above).

SopCast.
Result: Download Manager alert.  Possible Trojan virus in the OFFICIAL download from their site.  AVG Virus and a few other virus checkers either mistake a registry doo-hickey with a virus, or there really IS a virus in the installation program. 
Opinion: Some channels have also been officially reported as launching malicious scripts via the channels to open up web pages in your browser while you watch.  I have also heard that there is bugger all content at SopCast as well

Streamick
Result: Works fine, with only some of the listed channels at the site failing to load (ie: ITN).  No software (apart for MS mediaplayer and relevant codecs) are needed and you can specify what channel is your "home channel" whenever you vist the site!
Opinion:  Simply the best and only fully-functioning international  live-TV experience on the internet.  End of discussion.
Homepage: http://www.streamick.com

There are other sites where you can watch flv or Divx quality shows but these are not live streams of a channel (btw, unless you have lots of PC security, I would avoid sidereel.com like the plague.  It has suffered a lot of spm links to sites with viruses and spyware recently).

I just survived (aka: "enjoyed") a visit from my GF's family for a few days. They came to stay at my place and we all managed to co-exist peacefully. My GF also has a little 8-year old brother, so we all took turns looking after him. It was odd going to work and looking after annoying 8 year old Japanese kids, only to have to look after a not-so-annoying one at home!

Actually, apart from his non-stop gibbering, he was remarkably well behaved and my GF's family were a joy to have stay over. We took them to Kamakura, Akihabara, Ueno, Asakusa, Tokyo Disney Land (well, not me, as I was working) and Japan's largest Daiso 100-Yen shop (located in my "home" town).

I've just watched the new BBC show, "Merlin" via http://www.ninjavideo.net/video/10482 , and to be honest, it wasn't that great.

My main gripe is that Guinevere is black and there was even an oriental girl in one scene. As far as I can recall, there were no blacks or orientals in the tales of King Arthur. Of course, there WERE foreign people from the likes of Europe etc here and there but I'm sure, even with stranded slaves left in the UK from Roman times and other such incidents, the chances of seeing a black woman and an oriental one in the same room was about as rare as an Australian virgin.

And a VOODOO DOLL as pagan witchcraft?

Oh, well, another ball dropped by the BBC, sigh...

"Guinevere" - https://media.nt-online.org/files/CoulbyAngelxUSYp65.jpg

Youtube has made a silly little rule that blocks most of the word from watching something we should all by rights, see for free.

Thanks to the site below and the democratic country of South Korea's internet network, you can now enjoy the Olympics, sans annoying Japanese commentators and endless repeats of some Japanese guy winning a medal in slow-motion.

http://revver.com/video/1093090/accessing-youtubes-olympics-coverage-in-the-united-states/

Enjoy

PS: spread the word!

Tf art gallery map hope this helps

Documentaries and TV Shows About Japan:

Info:  - http://abc.go.com/summer/isurvivedajapanesegame/index



One of my students in Japan walked out when we discussed the show in Japan.  Thing is:

"Never would this air in Japan as they lead you to believe."

There ARE shows like this that openly make fun of foreigners, such as "Koko Ga Henna Nihonjin" ("Oh!  Japanese People are Strange!" - Google it to decipher why that title is racist against non-Japanese people.  Its a long story, perhaps).  However, when I told my students "if you watch this, then you can then question your OWN media", this was still mixed with outright hostility by at least one (admittedly, weird) student of mine, a middle aged housewife.

Thing is, in Japan, Japanese culture, society, etc are often regarded as taboo subjects and rarely, if any, does the mainstream press or media ever offer criticism of the Japanese government, or culture etc.  If it does exist, it is usually far removed from the outspokeness or investigative journalism styles that are in the west (and Im not saying that the west is best in that department either).

Merely offering this as a "have a look for yourselves" discussion point actually made some student/s upset, which, if I remember rightly, might also be due to the "victim mentality" of some Japanese, expecially as I think right now, the nationalists, conservatives etc are hawking on about "poor Japan" in WW2 on TV at the moment (although Im not 100% sure if they are right now.  A student mentioned it briefly).

All too often Japanese revert to "poor us" and "non Japanese dont understand us", which isnt helped by the fact that Japanese schools don't promote and/or actively discourage debate about political or social issues.  Thus, there is little or noone to discuss problems and so when something else, usually a "selfish" young Japanese with "crazy" ideas, or foreign media lambast something about Japan, it is suddenly "defense stations" by some, more conservative members when "under attack from the outside".

Im not saying the show was great.  Mama san seems to be able to speak good English (listen to her intonation.  Her Japanese voice seems forced).  The host too is good at English and is hamming it up.  The audience are obviously media students (where are the housewives and Japanese grannies saying "ehhhhhhhh?!!! that so frequent Japanese TV shows?) and the Japanese things even the losing team has to do are not really bad (in fact, HIS Travel offers similar things for foreigners to do on special tours of Japan).

Some of my students (the non-crazy kind) have commented "but we dont drink homemade green tea in the morning!",and I agreed.

However, some think its ok to depict foreigners as "silly" etc on Japanese TV and express amazement when foreigners like "natto" or can "use chopsticks" or even speak Japanese, and yet think nothing of this while saying "that TV show is bad and foreigners shouldn't be so ignorant about we Japanese".

I think the irony isn't lost here, is it?

Anyway, my boss told me not to bring this up anymore, even though she completely understood where I was coming from.

This then frustrates me as it almost says "This TV show is bad as it says negative things about Japanese people, but don't discuss this with Japanese people as they cannot understand or engage in debate about their own culture".

Sigh...

Mind you, another way of looking it is "who wants a lecture when you go to McDonalds?".

In other words:  "The Customer is always RIGHT.  Eikaiwa isn't education or social/culture exchange.  It is simply a place for people to come and practise their English."

Which isn't a bad thing.

You can comment on the show here:

http://abc.go.com/primetime/isurvivedajapanesegameshow/index?pn=mb&cat=111798

WARNING:  I couldnt post anything in the message box, using firefox, so maybe ABC/Disney is anti firefox?

When I got my new PSP, after it was crushed by the evil that is rude Japanese men on trains (by gumbo, they stink, too, don't they?  Really honk), I had a feeling that something bad would happen to my DS Lite and my limited edition TF watch...

And then on the same day my R4 Revolution died and I lost my watch.

WTH?

Brandi, my ex has split up with her latest BF and has removed my comments from her blog (mind you, I showed her how to).  Well, she only removed my comments about her split.

Here was what I wrote:



I'm not posting this to have a go at the girl, but if you know her and want to offer any support, then please go to her blog at:

- http://www.livejournal.com/users/gunma_gal

Hope everything turns out for the best, Brandi!