Debito and Tkyo Sam

Arudou Debito, formerly David Christopher Aldwinckle, was born in 1965 in the United States, and has been a permanent resident of Japan from 1996, and a naturalized Japanese citizen from 2000. In becoming a naturalized citizen he renounced his U.S. citizenship, as required by Japanese law. He is a father of two, is employed as a tenured associate professor at a university in Hokkaido, and has authored books in both Japanese and English. He is perhaps most famous for his website in which he blogs information pertaining to foreigner's rights in Japan. The website contains a wealth of information that is useful for both short and long term residents, as well as other resources that may be considered interesting or entertaining. He is considered by some as an activist, but by others as a troublemaker, as his methods often involve exposing allegedly racist elements of Japanese society as demonstrated in his Rougues Gallery of "Japanese Only" establishments. Tkyo Sam interviewed Debito during his recent visit to Tokyo, and while the interview does ramble a bit, it is an interesting insight into the controversial figure that is Debito..

Halloween in Shibuya '08..

I figure if they can start it a week early, I can post about it a week late! These pictures are from outside Shibuya station, where the costume hounds were (prancing and) posing for the many cameras. We were on the lookout for the Halloween train crew but couldn't seem to located them, though it apparently did happen, as documented by Ronin Dave..

Japan Mirai..

Went to a dinner/get together with a heap of noteable Japan Bloggers and IT types last week on the invitation of Danny Choo. Caught up with Neil Duckett and Ken Lee on the way, but once there I kinda got lost in the crowd. The evening was pretty interesting in that I got to put some faces to names, and learn a bit more about what the blogging community here is all about. Of course I felt quite out of my league, as my little blog does nowhere near the numbers of most of the other attendees, but the beer flowed as freely as the presentations and a good night was had by all..

Danny delivering his welcome address.



Lee from the Tokyo Times talking about his blog, his photos are amazing..



One of Tokyo's most famous Vloggers, TokyoCooney talks about his many enterprises..



TokyoCooney, TkyoSam,
Danny and Some random Vlogger..



The table carnage towards the end of the night..

Nova RIP

Nova has officially filed for bankrupcy. Needless to say there are many disgruntled students that forked out thousands for lessons that will not be taught. As teachers many years ago, we used to hate how the staff were trained to sell people dreams that weren't generally attainable ie. english conversation proficiency, they would easily slip into sociopath sales mode and put some unemployed dilbert into debt to get their precious branch numbers up. Not all staff were that blatantly heartless, just most... Around 4,400 english teachers have also found themselves unemployed and unpaid. There's a great (unfortunately unembeddable) NHK news item from yesterday here, and of all the crappy anti-Nova blog art being posted on Let's Japan etc. the only mildly humourous (and barely postworthy) were these: