TsukuBlog

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

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!

The following information is from Kristou Mehrez, the founder of Tsukuba International Forum.

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Tsukuba International Forum, “TIF” is a newly established forum that offers web-based services for the residents of Tsukuba. It is voluntary forum so it is made by Tsukubians for Tsukubians with idea in mind to help the international community to keep in touch.

The forum started with the following services, and will be expanding soon according to members requests and the level of interaction:

Full Archiving and Categorization for the Messages Sent Over TAIRA Mailing List.

• If receiving dozens of emails a day (sometimes even more!) bothers you, you can visit this page to take a look on the last updates sent over TAIRA (No registration requirements).
• All messages are categorized according to their title tag ([info], [sale], etc.). So if you are interested in only certain types of posts, you can filter them by one mouse click.
• TAIRA emails which reply other emails will be viewed as: on original post, and replies to that post. Thus, reducing the number of entries in the forum and facilitating browsing its content.
• Tsukuba International Forum is not in any way a replacement of TAIRA mailing list. TIF will just make an organized and transparent view on the messages sent over TAIRA.
• Members of TAIRA will continue to communicate by emails as before, as if TIF was never created. However, an archive of all messages is created in the forum and can be checked by members who want to.
• Members can still post their replies immediately on the forum, without the need to send emails to TAIRA. This might be useful in some scenarios of sales announcements.
• Any post in the forum will NOT be forwarded to TAIRA.

Photo Album

• The forum provides its registered members with the ability to create albums and upload their photos there. This service can be very helpful for people who want to announce a sale and post pictures along with their announcement.

A Forum for Discussion

• Those members who are interested in discussing topics related to science, research, politics, religion, etc. can do so on the forum.
• Members can create a new topic (under some categorization scheme), and all other members can post their opinionsinforeplies to that topic.
• In such forum, members who are not interested in some discussions will be saved from the piles of emails filling their inbox as happens on mailing lists.

Can be Accessed Through Cellular Phones, PDAs.

• Members who want to keep updated with certain topics and posts can register their email addresses, and an update will be sent to them by email.

Being A Broad (BAB) is “a support and information network for foreign women living in Japan. Established by Caroline Pover in 1997, Being A Broad has supported thousands of women during their lives overseas, through a magazine, a best-selling book, events, seminars, speeches, and the BAB website.”

The BAB discussion forum has recently been updated and Caroline has offered to give free subscriptions to “Being a Broad Magazine” to people who post more than 50 times in the new forum. I’m not sure when the contest will end, but if you are a foreign woman in Japan, you will likely find the forum useful even if you don’t win anything!

Right now it seems that there aren’t many members from Tsukuba. If you do decide to join the forum, please introduce yourself in the “In Tsukuba” thread so we can find each other. (You can also send me a private message or an email through the forum to let me know that you have joined.)