Archive for April, 2006
Golden Week Begins
Golden Week, a.k.a. the only time the Japanese go on vacation, begins with Green Day on 29 April, a holiday sadly wasted on a Saturday this year. Luckily Green Day is followed by Constitution Memorial Day (3 May), National Holiday (4 May) and Children’s Day (5 May), making for a nice five day weekend.
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Computer Security: Never-Ending Nightmare?
(Note: This week’s “Hi, Tech” is brought to you by Arita JET Sergio Pena, whose well-timed article on computer security saved me from having to dream up something to write about this week. Also, there will be no “Hi, Tech” next week because of the Golden Week holidays. If a “Hi, Tech” is written and no one is around to read it, is it really written? — Nicholas)
Computer security. These two words echo throughout the internet, but do you really know what they mean? Sure, you might have heard about viruses, spam, identity theft and the like, but do you know how to protect yourself and your beloved computer from the cesspool that is the internet? In this article, I hope to establish a baseline definition of certain terms and to enlighten you on this very important — but often overlooked — aspect of technology.
Let’s start off with the basics, shall we?
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Point, Shoot, Buy
I’m freshly back from a four-day trip to Kyoto with my wife and our aforementioned visitor. Being in Kyoto, the epitome of beautiful Japanese cities, we did what any good tourists should do: take loads of pictures. Pictures of temples. Pictures of deer. Pictures of deer at temples.
We took so many pictures, in fact, that our guest’s digital camera gave out on the last day of our trip. One minute it was chugging away, and the next minute it was refusing to retract its lens or focus (important things for a digital camera to do). Luckily for our guest, her camera (like the three of us) just needed a break; it started working again the next day.
For that one day her camera was broken, though, our guest was seriously considering buying a replacement. She was in the right place–digital cameras in Japan are probably the smallest, coolest and pinkest in the world. I was of course only too happy to help her do a little research on what kind of camera was best for her. Since she ended up not needing a new camera, and since I can’t let good research go wasted, allow me to pass my thoughts on buying a digital camera on to you.
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Information for Leavers
PowerPoint slides and a handout from the leavers workshop at the 2006 Saga JET conference are available for those getting ready to end their tenure as a JET this summer. Download away if you liked them at the conference and want your very own copy!
- Leaving JET slides (2 MB, Microsoft PowerPoint format)
- Leaving JET handout (115 KB, Microsoft Word format)
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Passport Party
Saga JETs heading to Bangladesh to work with Habitat for Humanity are throwing a charity “passport party.” Two thousand yen for adults (1000 for kids) will get you into five party rooms modeled after a different country. The party starts at 6 p.m. Saturday, April 15 at the Saga City ken apartments and everyone is welcome (kids can stay until 9 p.m.). There’s a lot more info on the message board.
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Japanese Language Classes
The Saga City language classes at Avance are starting again on 12 April and will run until the 19 July. Classes are Wednesdays at either 6:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. Tuition is 4000 yen. The classes are “for those who are interested in entering at the introductory and beginner levels, covering basic Japanese daily conversation, reading and writing skills.”
If you want to sign up, send your name, address, nationality, work/school name, and telephone number to fax 0952 24-7337 or email nihong_saga@yahoo.ne.jp.
The placement test is on April 12th, so please arrive by 6 p.m.
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Guest What?
Astute readers might have noticed that there was no “Hi, Tech” last week. Apologizes for not writing, but I had a really good reason, I swear. My wife and I are playing hosts to a friend from college, and we’ve been busy doing out host duties, like showing our guest the local sites (i.e. big trees and tiny cars) and helping her avoid accidentally eating raw horse.
All the hosting has (a) put me in a very travel agent-y frame of mind and (b) not left me with much time to plan a proper article. I didn’t want to let my writing muscles atrophy any more than they already have by skipping another week, though (some days I can barely string two words together as it is), so this week I’ve gone with my newfound fondness for planning other people’s trips and pulled together a collection of sites that may be useful the next time you have a visitor.
None of these sites are particularly obscure and you could probably find most of them after 30 seconds on Blingo (which may or may not be how I found some of them). Still, it might be nice to have them collected in one place for easy access the next time you’re looking to distract your visitors with something other than your tales of bravely facing six classes of elementary school students in one day.
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Kyushu Cup
The annual Kyushu Cup football tournament (that’s soccer for the yanks) will be held in Saga this year. Kickoff is 1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 8, at Saga Nishi High School. There’s more info on the message board, including a nice preview by Dustin Hovda.
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Takeo Spring Festival
Takeo’s Spring Festival runs from 1-2 April. Come for the drunk men parading through the streets, stay for the crowning of Miss Sakura.
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