TsukuBlog

Alien Times was featured in an article in the Ibaraki edition of Asahi Shimbun.

英字情報誌２０年・つくば (in Japanese)

The article briefly discusses the history of the Alien Times from its conception in 1987 to the present day situation. The Alien Times website is also mentioned. Perhaps this article will help to raise the profile of the newsletter so that we can continue to receive funding from the Expo Foundation and increase our revenues from advertising.

The article is going to be deleted from the Asahi Shimbun site in two weeks, so here is the text.

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英字情報誌２０年・つくば

2007年09月26日

つくば市で発行している月刊の英字情報誌「エイリアン・タイムズ」（Ｔｈｅ　ＡＬＩＥＮ　ＴＩＭＥＳ）が、創刊２０年を迎えた。留学生や外国人研究者らが多く住む地域で、生活情報を得る手段として重宝されてきた。編集長で米国人宣教師ティモシー・ボイルさん（６０）は兵庫県へ移ることになり、今月を最後にバトンタッチする。

ティモシーさんが教会の仕事で同市に移り住んだのは８６年。「当時から万博の影響もあり外国人は多かったが、生活情報を得る手段は『口コミ』くらいだった」。翌年６月、生活に役立つ情報を英語で発信しようと米国人の友人ら４人で情報誌を手作りした。しばらくは作成費用は自腹と寄付。その後は財団法人「つくば科学万博記念財団」がスポンサーとなり、地元企業の広告料と合わせて印刷代などをまかなっている。スタッフは全員ボランティアだ。

同誌はＡ４判で８ページ。内容はイベント紹介や日本語の勉強など多岐にわたっている。寄稿者にはフランスやロシアの出身者がおり、英語以外の記事が載ったことも。千部がＴＸつくば駅構内や筑波大学など市内外の約３０カ所で無料配布されている。今月号のトップでは、飲酒運転への厳罰化が取り上げられている。

２０年で同誌も大きく変わった。０２年には、カナダ人のシェイニー・クロフォードさん（３６）が同誌ホームページを作成。過去の記事も閲覧できるほか、誌面に載らない情報も掲載している。

ティモシーさんは「（読者から）感謝してもらったことが何よりの思い出。優秀なスタッフがいるので何の心配もしていません」。次期編集長の小野三枝子さん（３２）は「ささいな情報でも、不安をもって来日する人たちのために続けていきたい」と話している。

同市によると、市内の外国人登録者は１３１カ国の７０８４人（８月３１日現在）。県内で最も多く、人口の３・４％を占めている。

同誌ウェブサイトはwww.alientimes.orgへ。

The Alien Times site is experiencing some difficulties. I am looking into the problem and hope to have it solved soon. Apologies for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: The site is now back online.

The Alien Times and TsukuBlog websites will be down for scheduled maintenance on Saturday, September 27 from 10am to 2pm.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Here is an interesting article by BlizzardBoy, a Tsukuba area blogger, about dolls designed by Yuki Atae.

Here is a list of blogs I have found that are written by people who are (or have been) in Tsukuba.

http://del.icio.us/alientimes/blogs

This list will update itself as I find more (and add them to the Alien Times’ del.icio.us account), so keep checking back here if you are interested in reading about life in Tsukuba from real Tsukubaites.

If you have a blog and you want it to be added here, please contact us.

As Shaney has mentioned on TAIRA a while ago, Alien Times is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month. Wow!

Did you know that the back issues of Alien Times were handed out during the Tsukuba International Exchange Fair last month? I had a chance to talk to quite a lot of people during the fair, and I was thrilled to find out that almost all non-Japanese speakers I’ve talked to were either Alien Times readers or someone who at least knew Alien Times. That was great considering that some of those people don’t even work or live in Tsukuba! I’ve also met several non-Japanese speaking people who came to the festival to get the information on Tsukuba because they were thinking of moving here, so they were delighted to see a free English-language publication!

A lot of Japanese college, high school and even junior high school kids were also excited to see “free English-language study materials,” so they took the back issues without any hesitation. Quite a lot of them told me that they hardly understand the contents of Alien Times but would still love to read the articles with dictionaries in their hands :)

Some adults, on the other hand, reacted completely different. A couple of Japanese men in their late 40s or in their 50s came to talk to me after staring at a pile of Alien Times for a while. No, they didn’t come at the same time, but they both started the “argument” the same way.

Their argument?

Well…, they both started the conversation with me by saying;
“Do you know the term ‘Alien’ isn’t a very nice way to call a foreigner(s)?”

I politely answered yes and politely told them that the word “alien” also means “foreigner,” so the name Alien Times isn’t inappropriate in a way. Again, those guys reacted to what I have said the same way. They asked me if I knew that the term ‘alien’ is no longer in use at Narita Airport….

(　｀Д´)ﾉ Arrrrrrgh!! you smarty pants!

I knew why both of them were telling me the identical stuff. Actually, I knew what they were going to say before even they opened their mouth because there was a quiz show on TV just a few days before the festival, and one of the quiz questions happened to be about this ‘alien’ issue at the airport. Narita Airport had been using “ALIEN” for the signs above its immigration counters, but had stopped using it after receiving numerous complaints from foreign travelers in 1980s.　Obviously, many people began associating the word “alien” with “space alien” since that popular movie came out in 1979.

I was channel-surfing, and happened to watch just that part of the quiz show, so I had expected that someone would come at me with that argument. Some other adults didn’t try to argue with me, but did ask me that question or give me other negative reaction.

One very important fact those people forgot about was that Alien Times was and is being published by the “aliens” themselves!

Excerpt from “About Us” page of Alien Times:

While some people find the name “Alien Times” to be a bit strange, especially now that we are not referred to as aliens very much anymore, we decided to keep the title of the newsletter as it was in 1987 so that we remember how it all started.

I must’ve caught those men off guard when I told them that the people who are involved in Alien Times are foreigners, but I had to show one guy the back page of Alien Times to show the names of the staff to prove it! Those guys weren’t convinced, that is, they still thought that “I” should change the name even when I told them the brief history of Alien Times, but what I should’ve done from the beginning was to just tell them that I, a Japanese, am not the one who makes Alien Times….

(　｀щ´)ﾉ Grrrrrr!!

In case you are wondering, Japan isn’t the only country that uses “alien” in its official documents. I was once an alien in the United States though I’m sure the usage of ‘alien’ varies from state to state.

I’d also like to clarify that the Japanese word we use for foreigners is 外国人(がいこくじん、gaikoku-jin). 外 means outside, 国 is country, 人 is person, so it simply means “a person from outside of the country.” The word for space alien is エイリアン(alien) or 宇宙人(うちゅうじん、uchuu-jin). 宇宙 means outer space, and since 人 is the letter for person, 宇宙人 means “a person from outer space.” So don’t get upset when you see “alien” written on your document because we don’t think you are an “alien.”

Write for TsukuBlog

TsukuBlog is a team blog and it benefits from the input of its diverse members. If you are interested in providing useful and entertaining information to the residents of Tsukuba, please contact us to join our team!

Contribute a Picture to TsukuBlog

We have a category called photoblogging that we use when we post pictures that give our readers a sense of what Tsukuba is like. If you have a photo that you would like to share with the Tsukuba community, please contact us.

If you have a large number of photos and you would like to share them all, please upload them to a photo sharing site like Flickr or Picasa Web Albums and then send us the link. We will feature your album in a blog post and add it to our Photo Albums page.

If you are really ambitious, you could provide us with a header photo for the site. The dimensions of the photo should be W=760px, H=175px, but we can crop it to the right size if you are not sure how to do that. Feel free to add a title to the photo (preferably including where in Tsukuba it was taken) and a note to say who took the photo.

Unless we get inundated with photos and can’t keep up with them, we will do our best to post the photos that we receive in a timely way. The editors reserve the right to refuse to post any submitted photos to the blog, but our basic policy is to reflect the spirit of community, so unless there is a very good reason, we will post whatever we get.

We look forward to your contributions!

The December 2006 edition of Alien Times is now online.

• Main Page
• Articles Published in December 2006

Alien Times is an English newsletter that has been published in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan since 1987. It has been online at http://www.alientimes.org since 2002. All of our writers and staff are volunteers.

More about Alien Times

It used to be that there were only a few blogs of interest to any one person, so it was easy to go and check those blogs once in a while to see if there was anything new to read. These days, however, there are so many blogs — and many of them very good — that it is almost impossible to keep up with all of them without some kind of assistance.

Most (all?) blogs offer a “feed” which will let you read a barebones version of the blog in a feed reader. Feed readers are extremely helpful because they bring all your blogs together in one place so (1) you don’t have to remember all of the addresses and (2) you don’t have to go and check all the time to see if anything new has been published.

If this sounds like something that might interest you, please have a look at the following video of The Common Craft Show for an explanation of RSS in plain English.

Click To Play

And now that you know all about RSS, maybe you will want to subscribe to TsukuBlog so you can be notified whenever we publish new content to the site.

I have learned that there are some people who don’t pick up the printed version of the Alien Times because they didn’t know that it was free. There are also many who don’t pick up the printed version because they can read articles online.

Guess what?

We include articles, photographs or images that are exclusive to the printed version every month, and there is a very good reason to pick up this month’s issue!

Find out where you can pick up a copy:
http://www.alientimes.org/Info/Distribution (English)
http://www.alientimes.org/J/Distribution (Japanese)

I don’t know how many of you got a chance to visit the Japan With Kids(formerly Tokyo With Kids) booth during the Tsukuba International Exchange Fair last weekend, but on behalf of Japan With Kids, I’d like to make an announcement of their website renewal.

Japan With Kids(JWK), as it says on their website, is “the interactive online community for English speaking parents in Tokyo and all of Japan.”

This website is the place to go if you are in Japan with your children, but those who without kids and those who are not even married yet can also benefit from this site. JWK’s forums were down for nearly a year due to spam and other problems, but they are back!!

JWK has discussions like;
Foreign Kids in Japanese Schools

Cost of Living

Passport renewals for children of USA

and also has good resources such as;
International Schools in Japan

List of English speaking internet groups in Japan

Resources for parents of children with special needs

We know we have great source of information of our own in Tsukuba like The Alien Times, TAIRA and us, TsukuBlog, but we can still benefit from JWK a lot. If you are planning to move to another part of Japan or if you have friends who are planning a move to Japan, please tell them about JWK. I can’t tell you how helpful this website was when I was planning my move back to Japan!

Please take a look at their forums and join the discussions!
JWK forum main page

It’s a summer ritual here that I immediately took to. Watching the Koshien (甲子園) High School Baseball Tournament which takes place in sweltering Osaka. In my hometown New York, I had always closely followed The Boys of Summer, and by that I mean Major League Baseball. Since my first summer in Japan, however, more than watching the professionals, I have joined the millions of Japanese who, with beer or barley tea in one hand and a hand-held fan in the other, spend the dog days of August cheering on the Bozu of Summer (bozu, 坊主, is a term used to refer to a young boy), the high school baseball players who have made it into the Koshien Finals. There are 49 teams (representing each prefecture, with 2 teams from both Tokyo and Hokkaido) in all who battle it out in single elimination. If you are not a baseball fan, now is probably the time to become one, because no matter what, if you turn on the TV during the next couple of weeks that is about all you are going to see. In fact, I have a game on in front of me right now, and it’s so exciting that I can hardly type!

Koshien is a perfect way to show hometown spirit, and many of your friends who live in Tsukuba now are probably rooting for their home prefecture team. Native Ibarakians and others who have grown to love the Land of Hitachi (Hitachi no Kuni) have always had a lot to cheer about since this prefecture has often fielded very strong teams. The most famous of these is Joso High School which is located just near Tsukuba City. Once again (for the 3rd straight year) their manager Yukio Kiuchi, who is now 77 years old, has taken them to Osaka for the finals after an incredible extra-inning win in Mito on July 27th. This is a very impressive feat considering the hundreds of schools in the prefecture. Maybe attribute this success to what has been dubbed KIUCHI MAGIC.

Holy cow! This game that I’m watching! The Tokushima team has just come from behind to win! Incredible! Pandemonium! Unbridled joy! Tears (looks more like sobbing) of defeat! Slouching, bent over players. Dirty, sweaty uniforms. Wait! This is the part I love best. The winning team belting out their school song, singing with their bodies and souls making it known to the world that they are making an effort!! They go into their victory sprint. And now, the losing team is scooping up some soil from the infield, a memento of their fleeting moment on the Big Stage. Certainly the game will be replayed in their heads over and over again, probably for their whole lives, with thoughts of how it would have been if things had gone the other way.

Sorry for the digression. Let me get back to my main point. High school baseball fans in Ibaraki have been looking forward to watching Joso play and maybe even win the tournament and some people I know even went down to watch today’s game. Unfortunately, things did not go as expected and our local boys were blown away in their first game, by a Tokyo team (even more frustrating). Thus, Kiuchi’s bozu, as with all losing teams, could be seen after the game, scooping up the Sacred Soil of Koshien. So much for Kiuchi Magic. But… wait till next year!

Don’t be surprised then if you see more than the usual depressed, sulking Ibarakians this week. They were hoping to see their team do better.

And of course there are other ways of looking at this High School baseball madness. I, myself often cringe when I hear about the boys’ PURE SPIRIT. Like everyone else they are in it for the glory (and the girls?).

Another aspect to think about is the PROFESSIONALIZATION of the game in a similar way to what has happened in college sports in the US. Thus many teams, including Joso recruit players using certain incentives.  Many students DO NOT get the high school education they should be getting, and will be stuck after graduation. So the coaches, administration, etc., come out ahead, but what happens to the boys who have spent their school years playing ball and not preparing for exams?

Anyway, they sure WANT to play, and they do it well! That’s what makes it so much fun to watch.

For Koshien games just turn on your TV and flick through the channels.

Regarding SpongeBog SquarePants and his popularity in Japan, a professor at the University of Tsukuba says:

“It’s not enough for Japanese that the work is comical. Japanese manga and animation culture is deep.”

Read the full article.

I think it’s neat that we have a manga expert at our local university.

Click to download the April 2008 issue of Mind the Gap.

Mind the Gap is a newsletter for students of Tsukuba University. It is an extra source of important information about living and studying in Japan, catering especially to the students of Tsukuba! We are here to make your life easier and make sure that you enjoy this unique opportunity to study abroad. We will keep you up-to-date monthly with important notices and deadlines for visas/documents/entrance exams/dormitories, and don’t miss the monthly comic ‘Yougakusei’ and ‘Views from the Shokudou’! Please check this website every month for the latest issue, which is also posted in the lounge at the International Student Center (ISC). Also, print-outs of the latest issues are available in the ISC office to take home.

Comments or Questions?
mindthegaptsukuba[a]yahoo.co.jp

Click to download the August 2006 issue of Mind the Gap.

Mind the Gap is a newsletter for students of Tsukuba University. It is an extra source of important information about living and studying in Japan, catering especially to the students of Tsukuba! We are here to make your life easier and make sure that you enjoy this unique opportunity to study abroad. We will keep you up-to-date monthly with important notices and deadlines for visas/documents/entrance exams/dormitories, and don’t miss the monthly comic ‘Yougakusei’ and ‘Views from the Shokudou’! Please check this website every month for the latest issue, which is also posted in the lounge at the International Student Center (ISC). Also, print-outs of the latest issues are available in the ISC office to take home.

Comments or Questions?
mindthegaptsukuba[a]yahoo.co.jp

Merry Christmas Everyone!

The December 2006 issue of Mind The Gap is out now!!

Go to the December 2006 issue on the Mind the Gap website for all the latest info for international students of Tsukuba University.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Kate
‘Mind The Gap’

Click to download the July 2006 issue of Mind the Gap.

Mind the Gap is a newsletter for students of Tsukuba University. It is an extra source of important information about living and studying in Japan, catering especially to the students of Tsukuba! We are here to make your life easier and make sure that you enjoy this unique opportunity to study abroad. We will keep you up-to-date monthly with important notices and deadlines for visas/documents/entrance exams/dormitories, and don’t miss the monthly comic ‘Yougakusei’ and ‘Views from the Shokudou’! Please check this website every month for the latest issue, which is also posted in the lounge at the International Student Center (ISC). Also, print-outs of the latest issues are available in the ISC office to take home.

Comments or Questions?
mindthegaptsukuba[a]yahoo.co.jp

Click to download the June 2006 issue of Mind the Gap.

Mind the Gap is a newsletter for students of Tsukuba University. It is an extra source of important information about living and studying in Japan, catering especially to the students of Tsukuba! We are here to make your life easier and make sure that you enjoy this unique opportunity to study abroad. We will keep you up-to-date monthly with important notices and deadlines for visas/documents/entrance exams/dormitories, and don’t miss the monthly comic ‘Yougakusei’ and ‘Views from the Shokudou’! Please check this website every month for the latest issue, which is also posted in the lounge at the International Student Center (ISC). Also, print-outs of the latest issues are available in the ISC office to take home.

Comments or Questions?
mindthegaptsukuba[a]yahoo.co.jp

Click to download the October 2006 issue of Mind the Gap.

Mind the Gap is a newsletter for students of Tsukuba University. It is an extra source of important information about living and studying in Japan, catering especially to the students of Tsukuba! We are here to make your life easier and make sure that you enjoy this unique opportunity to study abroad. We will keep you up-to-date monthly with important notices and deadlines for visas/documents/entrance exams/dormitories, and don’t miss the monthly comic ‘Yougakusei’ and ‘Views from the Shokudou’! Please check this website every month for the latest issue, which is also posted in the lounge at the International Student Center (ISC). Also, print-outs of the latest issues are available in the ISC office to take home.

Comments or Questions?
mindthegaptsukuba[a]yahoo.co.jp

Click to download the September 2006 issue of Mind the Gap.

Mind the Gap is a newsletter for students of Tsukuba University. It is an extra source of important information about living and studying in Japan, catering especially to the students of Tsukuba! We are here to make your life easier and make sure that you enjoy this unique opportunity to study abroad. We will keep you up-to-date monthly with important notices and deadlines for visas/documents/entrance exams/dormitories, and don’t miss the monthly comic ‘Yougakusei’ and ‘Views from the Shokudou’! Please check this website every month for the latest issue, which is also posted in the lounge at the International Student Center (ISC). Also, print-outs of the latest issues are available in the ISC office to take home.

Comments or Questions?
mindthegaptsukuba[a]yahoo.co.jp

I have successfully (I hope) moved all of the blog contents over to this new WordPress-powered interface. I also simplified the address of the blog from tsukublog.alientimes.org to blog.alientimes.org. I made links from the old site to the new, so none of your bookmarks will be broken, but it might be a good idea to update them anyway, just in case. And, if you do find any broken links, please let me know.

I also updated the site feed and email notification systems, which are hosted by FeedBurner. I think that I did everything properly, but we will have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out if the email notification is working properly.

There are still a few minor kinks to work out on the new site, but I will get to them in the next little while.

I think this new website is a lot easier to use than the hobbled version of Blogger that we had to work with because we were publishing to our own domain by ftp. The biggest difference that the users will notice is that we can now have a list of the categories used on the site, and we can also offer lists of posts by author, category, month, and title. I hope that our readers find it easier to look for articles of interest now.

If you have any comments about the new site, we would love to hear them!

Tsukublog has been inundated with spam comments in the last couple of days, so I have set it up so all comments will be moderated before they are posted to the blog. This means that if you add a comment to an article, it may take a while for it to show up on the blog. It’s unfortunate that this has to happen, but I guess that is the nature of the internet these days.

Google updated Blogger a while ago, but many of the new features are not available to blogs that are published by ftp (like TsukuBlog). So, if we want to use all of the new Blogger features on this site, we either have to move the blog to BlogSpot or set up a “custom domain” that is still kind of controlled by Google.

I would rather be able to keep some control over the blog (i.e. I want to be able to decide how much space I am able to use for photos, etc.), so I have decided to try to move TsukuBlog to a WordPress-based system.

A Blogger-WordPress import tool was recently developed for the updated version of Blogger, so I think it is time to start working on the changeover. I am not sure how long it will take to move everything over, but I am going to start the process this weekend. If you notice the blog doing weird things, that is why.

I will post again when it looks like the job has been completed.

TsukuBlog is run by Blogger and the Blogger software is currently undergoing some major upgrades. I have switched TsukuBlog to Blogger Beta (we were given the choice, but it was only a matter of time before we would be forced to switch) and that has caused some changes to the blog.

1. All members (contributors) of the blog must sign in with a Google account to post to the blog. (People who read the blog will not be affected.)

2. All of the posts can now be given labels. (See the bottom of this post for the label “tsukublog”. If you click on it, you will be taken to all of the articles labelled with “tsukublog” on this site.)

3. The “feed” and “email service” was a bit strange yesterday because of the upgrade. If you subscribe to the feed or the email updates, you probably received a large number of posts yesterday. I assume that this was due to the upgrade and it shouldn’t happen again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I am still sorting out some of the details of the migration to Blogger Beta, but so far, everything seems to be in working order. If you notice anything strange, please let me know.

I wrote about the Nagano’s first English-language free magazine earlier this month:
“NAGAKNOW, the Nagano’s first English magazine”

Now you can read the inaugural issue of this magazine online!
“What’s New BLOG on NAGAKNOW”

Those who love to go hiking and climbing in the mountains (yes, you, TWMC!) will surely enjoy reading it, so please take a look!

Those who live in or near Tokyo, you’ve either read or have heard of free English-language magazines like Metropolis , Weekender and Tokyo Notice Board. Those are great source of information for non-Japanese speakers or those who are learning English. Though Metropolis has awesome forums for people from various parts of Japan to exchange information, those magazines are Tokyo(Kanto region) -based and they look like the tourist books if people who live outside of the Kanto Region get a chance to pick up some copies (They are great magazines and I love them!).

Well, I have a very exciting news to share with you; a new English magazine just came out in Nagano Prefecture! The name of the magazine is NAGAKNOW, and this is the first-ever free English-language magazine in Nagano!!

(The cover of April 27 - May 25 issue. This image was kindly provided by the representative of NAGAKNOW.)

I was afraid that there wouldn’t be any copies left for me to pick up since their very first issue came out on April 27th and the launch of this new magazine was in several newspapers in Nagano. Despite my concerns, I was able to pick up copies from the tourist information office in JR Matsumoto Station and also from the Matsumoto Tourist Information Center near the Matsumoto Castle during the “Golden Week” holidays.

NAGAKNOW is a full-color magazine about half the size of The Alien Times and is somewhat like The Alien Times (obviously, with more funding). There are articles submitted by local residents, list of events, information on local tourist’s spot and restaurant info.

OK, sounds a lot like The Alien Times, but NAGAKNOW is also a bilingual magazine! They place the English and Japanese articles side by side for those who are learning Japanese and vice versa.

NAGAKNOW also goes out to the streets and interview local residents, Japanese and non-Japanese. In their first issue, they went to Matsumoto Castle for their “Street Talk” section of the magazine. In “Local Flavor,” they interviewed the local ramen shop owner. The ads placed by local restaurants, accommodations and other businesses are also interesting to look at. We definitely don’t see an ad for a lodge located near the peak of 3080 meter mountain around here!

As you can see, their website is still in the making and they are still working on their contents, but if you have friends and families living in Nagano Prefecture, please tell them about this exciting new magazine.

Nagano is already a very popular destination for those who enjoy winter sports and mountaineering, but there are more reasons to visit Nagano this year! Did you know the City of Matsumoto in Nagano is celebrating its 100th year this year? If you are planning a visit to Matsumoto City, please also plan to pick up a copy of NAGAKNOW. You’ll love it!

Related website:
Matsumoto Welcomes You! - Official Tourist Information of Matsumoto City in Nagano, Japan

A new forum has been created for people in Tsukuba. Jason offers the following description

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Welcome to the New Tsukuba Forum! Started by Zsolt Gercsi, from Hungary, it’s a great, basic way to communicate with people from the Tsukuba community, but what else is it good for? For a start, you can create discussions and topic threads about any subject under the sun (within reason of course); you might want to open a discussion about your favourite movie … or the state of the world economy. It’s up to you! It’s also good way to connect with and meet people inside and outside the Tsukuba community and make new friends, join in open invitation group events or parties, make suggestions for events and gather support, learn about local events and options for entertainment in and around Tsukuba, or in other parts of Japan. It can be used in conjunction with the useful Taira network as another place to leave information, sell or request items without the fear of them being deleted into oblivion immediately by those Taira users who are less than happy with ’spamverts’. Your posts will have another breathing space, and discussions will be viewable in one, convenient area. (You can also choose whether to receive email notifications for your topics or not, so your inbox or spam box doesn’t have to get clogged with everyone elses replies and comments).

The Tsukuba Forum … or ‘Tsukuband‘ as it’s known at the moment … is a public forum, essentially run by the public so its success depends on everyone and their individual input. If you hear of an event, discover a new bar or place to eat, have some information about English speaking medical establishments, find something interesting about Tsukuba, or Japan, and want to share it please take a couple of minutes to add it, even if you don’t want to join in a discussion. The forum is also meant as a reference point for people in Tsukuba, people visiting Tsukuba, people who have lived in Tsukuba in the past, or those who are just curious about life here and what goes on.

One thing to remember about a forum like this is it’s viewable to anybody, anywhere, who will have different ideas and beliefs, … it really is international … so it needs some care and attention when posting. One request from the administration is that an awareness of other people’s sensibilities is maintained as best as possible at all times. As long as people are thoughtful, there’s no reason why the Tsukuba forum shouldn’t be a fun place to gather for some lively discussion and debate, and go from strength to strength. We’re looking for category suggestions, new topics and discussions and info all the time. Please contribute to Tsukuband today!

Hi Tsukubloggers,

I would like to ask the bloggers here a favour. I have not yet figured out what the relationship will (eventually) be between Alien Times, Tsukuba Wiki, and this blog. In a perfect world, they would each have a large team of volunteers and a unique purpose or goal in the community. As it stands, they all kind of overlap one another and generally seem to serve similar purposes. I’m all for redundancy, however, since that helps to ensure that people get the information they need, from one source or another.

So, until (or unless) we come up with some sort of master plan for all of these sites, I would like to propose the idea that Tsukublog act as a sort of feeder for Alien Times articles. I want to make sure that the blog posts you write get maximum exposure to the Tsukuba community, and I also want to make sure that the information you provide gets archived in at least two places, so it has a better chance of surviving. To that end, I would like to ask your permission to create Alien Times articles out of some of your posts. I won’t necessarily post all of them on the AT site, but when there are ones that have the potential to help people in the future (like the ones about Sakura and monthly passes, etc.), I would like to be able to post them on the AT website and occasionally have them printed in the paper version.

Any objections? Please let me know what you think in the comments section or by emailing me. (If I don’t hear anything from you within a week or so, I will take your silence as consent — but I would really much rather have your explicit permission.) Of course, if you ever write a post that you would rather *not* see in Alien Times, just let me know and I will honour your wishes. Sound fair?

Salamin, a blog by a woman from the Phillipines who lives in Tsukuba, has started a podcast. Salamin is the same blog that gave us the insightful post on Ten Japanese Habits Worth Emulating, so I’m sure the podcast will be interesting.

The Alien Times has launched a new website that can be accessed from your mobile phone. The site is called “The Portable Alien” and it is designed to let you find out information about Tsukuba while you are on-the-go. The address is http://k.alientimes.org. (The “k” stands for “keitai”, which means “portable” in Japanese and is often used to refer to mobile phones.)

The site is divided into a number of directories. The top level directories are:

• Accommodations Directory
• City Hall Directory
• Education Directory
• Emergency Directory
• Food Directory
• Health Directory
• Media Directory
• Miscellaneous Directory
• Recreation Directory
• Research Directory
• Transportation Directory
• Travel Directory

Inside these directories, you will find links to information about various organizations and companies that may be difficult to find when you are not at your computer. For example, in the recreation directory, you can find information about sports facilities and tourist attractions in Tsukuba. In the health directory, you can find lists of clinics divided into their specializations (skin, pediatrics, eyes, etc.). The transportation section currently includes schedules for the Tsukuba-Narita and Tsukuba-Tokyo buses. We eventually hope to include other schedules such as Tsukuba Express, Joban Line, and TsukuBus.

The site is not yet complete, but we decided to make it public so people in the Tsukuba community can test it out and let us know what they think. If there is any information that you would like to see on the site, please let us know. Also, if there is any information that is outdated or needs to be improved, please contact us so we can keep the site up-to-date.

There are two ways to access the site with your cellphone.

1. Open your web browsing software in your mobile phone and enter the address “k.alientimes.org” directly.
2. Use your barcode reader in your cellphone (usually in with the camera settings) to read the following code.

After you have accessed the site once, put it in your list of favourites so you can get to it quickly when you need it in the future.

You can also access the site with your computer. The mobile site is directly accessible by computer, or you can use the interface that has been integrated into the Alien Times website. (The interface was integrated so that searches that are performed on the Alien Times site will now include results from the Portable Alien directories.)

We hope you find this new site useful and we are looking forward to getting your feedback on our efforts!

Hi Fellow Tsukubloggers!

I have finally been able to make some time to archive some of our posts on the Alien Times site. Please have a look at the articles listed in the October issue. I hope to be able to keep AT updated with the archives from this blog on a regular basis.

I would like to know what name to add to the articles by RfFish and Daddy B. I think it is fine to use nicknames on Tsukublog, but if possible, I would like to list proper names (even if they are pseudonyms) on the AT site. I think it makes the information on the AT site more trustworthy to have it signed by “real people”.

Can you guys send me an email to let me know what to do? If you disagree with my reasoning about the AT, feel free to tell me what you think I should do.

Thanks!

I have to apologize for my extended absence from Tsukublogging. Autumn always seems to be a busy time for me, both at work and at play.

We have had some wonderful weather lately. On Saturday, I was able to take a bike ride down Tsukuba RinRin Road thanks to the new (trial) rent-a-cycle service they are providing at the 20km mark. And I took a walk around Expo Memorial Park this afternoon. It was great to see so many people out with their families and friends just enjoying the nice weather.

On Friday I went in to Tokyo for a dinner, but I had some free time before meeting up with my friends, so I decided to go to Meiji Shrine. It is a bit embarrassing to admit this, but I had never been to Meiji Shrine before now even though I have been in Tsukuba for almost 5 years now (and in Japan for longer). I didn’t realize it when I came up with the plan to visit the shrine, but November 3 is the day of the official Meiji Shrine festival. There were all kinds of people there, so it wasn’t very peaceful, but it was really neat to see the 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children dressed up for shichi-go-san. The kids were extremely cute, and I would have loved to take some pictures of them, but it would have been weird for me to take pictures of other people’s kids! So, here’s a picture of one of the big gates instead…

How did you spend your long weekend?

Metropolis is a weekly English magazine about events and activities in Tokyo. It also includes restaurant and bar reviews and a lead story that gives a good sense of what Tokyo and Japan are all about. You can get copies of Metropolis for free at Tsukuba Information Center, but if you aren’t likely to stop by the Information Center on a regular basis, you might want to consider subscribing instead.

There is a subscription form available on the Metropolis website. You can also subscribe by fax if you print out the form on the same page. You can choose three different subscription terms.

• 12 Issues - ¥4,000
• 24 Issues - ¥7,500
• 48 Issues - ¥14,000

Your subscription will be complete when you send your money (by furikomi) to the Crosscross bank account. (Crisscross is the company that owns Metropolis.) Their account is with the Kojimachi Branch of Mizuho Bank. To help you with the furikomi, here are the kanji you need.

Bank: みずほ銀行
Branch 麹町支店

If you like to keep up with what is happening in Tokyo and Japan, I highly recommend getting a subscription to this magazine.

If you would like to have regular updates on what is happening in Tsukuba, please subscribe to TsukuBlog by filling out the following form.

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I read a top ten list by a Tsukuba blogger that I thought was really interesting, so I thought I would share it with you.

Ten Japanese Habits Worth Emulating by Filipinos - Part One
Ten Japanese Habits Worth Emulating by Filipinos - Part Two

I found it interesting because I learned some things about life in the Philippines and I was also able to see Japan through the writer’s eyes.

Armen from iFFECT.NET posted a message about making the switch from Blogger to WordPress. I moved TsukuBlog from Blogger to WordPress in February 2007, and I am very pleased with the results. I feel like I have a lot more control over the blog now.

I jumped ship shortly after the new Blogger came out because it looked like they were not going to support publishing to your own server (by ftp) to the extent that I wanted them to. The new customizable template system that they introduced was just not compatible with ftp publishing it seems.

In particular, I wanted to make better use of labelling, but it seemed that Blogger was not going to upgrade the labelling system for ftp blogs. I was able to add labels to posts, but I could not put an automated list of them on the side bar. I also couldn’t make the monthly list of past entries expand and contract. The customizations that were made available to blogs that were hosted on BlogSpot or through their “custom domain” setup were not made available to blogs that were published by ftp. Since a lot of content in TsukuBlog stays relevant to the community even after it leaves the front page, I felt that our readers needed a better indexing system than the new Blogger provided to ftp blogs.

I felt strongly that I wanted to continue to host the blog on its own server (as a subdomain of the Alien Times domain), so when it became clear that Google was not going to focus any more energy on developing options for blogs that are published by ftp, I decided it was time for a move to a platform that would give me more options.

Which One Should I Use?

For people who are just setting up a blog and trying to decide whether to use Blogger or WordPress, I would say that they are both good systems, but that there are a few key differences. Blogger is probably easier to use if you do not have a lot of experience making websites. If you don’t care about where the blog is hosted (on your own server or Google’s) and you don’t want to fiddle very much with the basic blog template, then Blogger will probably be fine for your needs.

Blogger
- easier to use than WordPress if you are not familiar with basic techniques for managing websites on your own server
- easily customizable if you host your blog on the Blogspot server or use custom domains
- backed by a large company (Google), so features are robust but sometimes slower to come into existence because they have an obligation to do a lot of testing before launching new features

WordPress
- you will need to be a bit web-savvy to get started (in order to set up the database, for example)
- easily customizable
- backed by a large group of independent developers, so there are lots of interesting customizations available, but they are not always compatible with each other (that said, I haven’t had any compatibility problems with the 11 plugins that I have installed so far)

(Please keep in mind that I am only comparing the versions of Blogger and Wordpress that are hosted on your own server. I am not referring blogs that are hosted on the Blogspot or Wordpress servers.)

One complaint I have with WordPress is that it is a bit of a pain to upgrade to new versions. It is not difficult, but it is fiddly, so I tend to put off upgrading longer than I would like. Other than that, I would say that I am very happy that I made the move from the new Blogger system to WordPress.

The basic difference is that you need to be a wee bit more tech-minded to use WordPress. If you do know a little bit about hosting websites on your own domain, and you think that your blog is going to expand in the future, I would recommend WordPress. If you just want to start typing and you are not really concerned about messing with the guts of your blog, then Blogger is a fine choice.

Like a little goateed munchkin, or a Japanese version of one of the seven dwarves, the mascot of the 23rd Annual National Culture Festival (kokumin bunka-sai, or kokubun-sai for short), which this year is being held in our very own Ibaraki Prefecture, can be seen practically everywhere these days, adorning posters, leaflets, packages, and most noticeably the banners fluttering outside convenience stores and public buildings.

For most Japanese, from any part of the country, this cute little character is instantly recognizable as a cartoon rendering of Mito Komon, the hero of one of Japan’s longest running weekly historical TV dramas (jidai geki). And by long running, I DO mean LONG RUNNING, as new episodes have been aired every week for nearly 40 years ! As you can imagine, there have been a few cast changes (think of James Bond) over the decades.

What makes this shrunken down caricature of the great Komon so easily recognizable are his little beard and mustache, as well as purple (or golden) cap and vest (symbols of having reached a venerable old age).

The show, which has been broadcast during prime time since 1969, follows the same basic pattern each episode. Mito Komon (an affectionate appellation for the 2nd Lord of Mito, Tokugawa Mitsukuni), travels the country incognito, accompanied by his trusty bodyguards Suke and Kaku and assorted others (also undercover). You can be sure that trouble is encountered in every new locale, with the villains’ plans being properly foiled before the great Lord finally reveals his true identity by displaying an INRO (small case) with the Tokugawa Family seal of three-leaved AOI. All the locals then proceed to quiver with awe.

Amazingly, this simple formula has been keeping viewers satisfied for decades, and this show is probably what Mito (the capital of Ibaraki) is most famous for, even though the stories take place all over Japan.

Though it might be useful to check out the show on TV (Monday nights from 8-9 PM on channel 6) or rent a DVD or video for becoming more familiar with Japanese pop culture, I think that it is MORE ESSENTIAL to know a little about the historical figure on whom this fictionalized series is based.

I’m talking about Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628-1700), a grandson of Ieyasu (the unifier of Japan), who became the second Lord of the Mito Domain, and went on to have a great impact not only on his own domain (now part of Ibaraki) but on the future course of Japan’s history and its dealings with the outside world.

This impact was due to Mitsukuni’s sponsorship of a huge and highly ambitious project which employed the services of more than 100 Japanese and Chinese scholars. Their task was to compile a definitive history of Japan, which would be called the Dai-Nihon Shi and would fill 397 volumes by the time of its completion in 1906.

This work was first carried out at Mitsukuni’s Edo (Tokyo) residences, but later continued in Mito. Thus, the way of looking at Japanese history which evolved from this undertaking (highly influenced by Chinese historiography) would be called Mito Studies (Mitogaku). Pointing to the centrality of the role of the Emperor in Japanese history, the Mito Scholars, especially during the times of Mitsukuni`s descendant Tokugawa Nariaki, would lead to the rise of the extreme xenophobia of the Revere The Emperor, Expel The Barbarians (Sonno Joi) Faction, which ironically helped lead to the overthrow of the Tokugawa Family and bring back (?) direct Imperial Rule. I don’t think I have to tell you what road this special brand of nationalism eventually lead to.

Besides sponsoring this greatly influential academic project, Mitsukuni became legendary for his wise  and benevolent rule of his domain. His tax relief and distribution of rice during times of famine was deeply appreciated by the people, and because of this his legend grew after his death. Fictional accounts of his travels around Japan were popular at the end of the 19th century. These tales eventually turned into the famous TV series from which derives the mascot of this year’s culture festival.

If you would like to do some Mitsukuni (Mito Komon) related travel, I would highly recommend a trip to SEIZAN-SO in Hitachi Ota in central Ibaraki. This is the great lord’s simple and rustic retirement villa. Beautiful in any season.