Posts categorized under ‘Working in Japan’

Today marked a number of firsts for me this year but, above all, it was the first day for Lemonade 2.0. An application that will help school teachers and students be better organized both in and outside of the classroom.

Yesterday I received an email from someone who wanted to know why I would not call myself an English teacher, and instead use the title “language facilitator”. Here’s why.

Believe it or not, I had a terrible habit back in Canada.  It wasn’t one with drugs, alcohol, women, or even excessive weight gain.  Instead it was something much more insidious. Something that, once you’ve been bitten, it’s very hard
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There are several things that I like about the public transportation system in Japan.  It’s almost always on time, relatively quick, and clean enough that we don’t have to examine the seats for various unpleasantries before sitting down.  Very rarely
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An odd thing happened on Friday: my “Get out of English Free” card didn’t work. Friday evening, while I was making the trek from 本山駅 to 名古屋駅, I was stuck on the subway with a bunch of over-active high school
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Why do companies employ IT departments?  Is it to help support the business process, or dictate it? Over the last few months I’ve had some pretty disturbing conversations with various people about the role of the IT department within a
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Despite what it says on my business card, customers seem to confuse me with their personal shrink.  Typically this isn’t an issue, as it gives me quite a bit of insight into the thoughts and ideals of (some) Japanese people.
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There are many things that I like about living in Japan, but very few can beat this country’s infatuation with stuff in a can.  In addition to being able to buy beverages such as soda, beer, water, juice, jelly, vodka,
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It’s amazing what 40 minutes with a seven year old can do for a person’s stress levels. Yesterday I received some career inspiring news stating that yet another web project I had been working on (with permission this time) for
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There’s a rather sad story on Page 2 of the Daily Yomiuri newspaper today that states “Suicides climb in 1st half of ’09“.  While Japan has long had more suicides per year than the rest of the planet combined, it’s
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Since before the release of Asus’ first EeePC, people have complained about the speed, or lack thereof, experienced on the netbook form factor. Issues such as boot time, lag between clicks, slow application load times, and limited screen resolutions have
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With July in full swing and the mercury hitting temperatures over 35 degrees, this seems to be the single most common question asked when meeting someone. Before moving to Japan, I honestly had no idea what real humidity was like.
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Many people are feeling anxious during this economic slump but, for some, this could be the moment of opportunity that we’ve been looking for to seize the job that we want.  During times of economic prosperity, companies may be less
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