November 30 commemorates the day in 1987 that the City of Tsukuba was born from the Village of Sakura and the Towns of Yatabe, Toyosato, and Oho. (The Town of Tsukuba merged with the rest on January 31 of the following year). Since Alien Times was also born in 1987, the Alien Times staff have chosen November 30 and the week that follows it to be ALIEN TIMES FUNDRAISING WEEK.

If you would like to donate to support the publication of Tsukuba's Original English Newsletter which has been published for and by the foreign community of Tsukuba since 1987, please choose one of the following options. You can choose the amount that you would like to donate. (As a guideline, if 20 people donate 2500 yen, we will be able to meet our target. But any amount is welcome!)

PayPal or Credit Card

Click to Donate via PayPal or Credit Card.

Furikomi

Bank: Joyo Bank (常陽銀行)
Branch: Kenkyu Gakuen Toshi Shiten (研究学園都市支店)
Account Name: THE ALIEN TIMES
Account No: 7259017 (regular account, 普通)

Cash Envelope by Mail (Genkin Kakitome)

Address: 305-0051 Ibaraki-ken, Tsukuba-shi, Ninomiya 1-6-2
Ninomiya House
Alien Times Post Box

Cash to AT Staff

If you meet up with one of the AT Editors (Mieko Ono, Shaney Crawford, Anna Hamakoji), you can hand your donation to us and we will be sure to put it directly into the bank account. (If you are not comfortable with this option, please choose one of the other options above.)

About Alien Times and the Fundraising Week

Alien Times is a free publication that has been providing information in English to Tsukuba's residents since 1987. The magazine is published once per month (except for the July/August issue) and there is a companion blog site where the articles are archived (TsukuBlog: http://blog.alientimes.org).

The printing of Alien Times is generously subsidized by the Tsukuba Expo '85 Memorial Foundation and supported by a number of local sponsors including Blomster Anna (flower shop), Fleur de Lis (jewelry shop), IACE (travel agent), Isebu (printer), Isshinryu Karate, and J-Cool (hair salon). We also get some income from our website (basically enough to cover the cost of the website).

All of the people who work on Alien Times are volunteers and none of the money that comes into the Alien Times accounts gets paid to any editor, contributor, or volunteer. All of the income goes towards the printing costs, the website costs (only the hosting and domain fees -- all of the design work and maintenance is done by volunteers), and the costs incurred while managing the publication (e.g. binders for the archives, stamps to send copies of magazines to contributors).

The editors of Alien Times are dedicated to keeping the magazine free so that it can be distributed to various locations around the city and be spotted and picked up easily by the people who need the information (foreign residents and tourists). However, in order to keep the magazine free, we need to do some fundraising!

We are hoping to raise approximately 50,000 yen this week, which is the approximate cost of printing a single monthly issue. We have never asked for the Tsukuba community to contribute financially to the making of the magazine, but we thought that maybe it was time to bow our heads and ask humbly for your support.

If you have benefitted from Alien Times or TsukuBlog in the past, please consider making a small donation to show your appreciation and to help ensure the continuation of our community's English magazine and website.

We sincerely appreciate your support,
The Alien Times Staff

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.

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。

UPDATE: The site is now back online.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

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.

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."

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!

• 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

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.