Japan Does Good for Bahrain

Apparently Panasonic got a facebook post from a girl who in Bahrain who wanted her brother to see snow. So they wrapped a 70-quart snowman in a new insulation called U-Vacua, and shipped it! It traveled 5,314 miles and 40 hours and arrived in mint condition. Check the video! And check the link for a more descriptive article on the kids and the process.

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A Return to Japan, 2015

Several years ago we had the opportunity to take some good friends of ours, Bo and Liz, to Japan. I'm going to focus on the new things we did and then link to previous blog posts for reference to the things we repeated from our time living in Japan. The trip started out awesome and then kind of fell into a bad place for me and Matt, unfortunately. I chalk it up to our inability to tell Bo and Liz when we wanted to do something different from what they wanted to do, and Matt's desire to be a good guide in the country as he was the only fluent Japanese speaker. He felt a lot of responsibility and then got really tired and very stressed out, which in turn made me very stressed out. I say this not as a rebuke of our friends, who had no way to know how we were feeling since we didn't communicate, but as a gentle suggestion to anyone who travels with friends. Say how you feel and don't be passive aggressive about it. Own up to your limitations and ask for what you need. Your ...

Some Funnies

As our first year (6 months, really) draws to a close, I think it's important to display the winners of this year's worst (as in best) English sentences. Coming in third place is a very silly dialoge written by some third-years at my school. Another ALT discovered this and thankfully showed me. It's obvious what they're trying for but they really miss the mark: A: Hello. B: Hello. This is H. May I speak to T please? A: This is T. B: Great! I'm going to prikura (sic). Can you come to porice (sic) office at midnight? A: Yes! Of course! That sounds fun! Do you want me to bring anything? B: Sure. Could you bring some monneys (sic)? A: Yes. Thank you for inviting me. I'm so bad! See you! B: You're welcome. Fuck you! Second place is two sentences that can be taken as a pair or as stand-alone awesomeness. These were written by one of my third year students when we had a unit on debates: A: ...

Today's Picture: Things You Find In The Store

Take a good, long look at the name of the cookies/breakfast bars (not sure what they are). If you can't quite make out the French there, it says "Couque D'asses." English speakers have an immediate, and understandably juvenile, reaction to this product. However, if you go into the language, there's a perfectly good explanation. "Couque" (pronounced more like coouke) means "cake" in Belgian French. And "D'asses" is most likely referring to Asse, a city in Belgium. So, while wrong in a few ways, this product is trying to say "Cake of/from Asse." For those of you not convinced, " âne" and "cul" actually mean "ass/butt" in French. The first word is used in sentences like "He's such a stupid ass," and the latter is used more literally as "butt" or "posterior" and in a lot of sexual instances. Or at least that's what the online dictionaries tell m...

Voyage Junkie

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