Traditional Japanese Crafts Workshops

The Japan Traditional Craft Center in Tokyo is hosting workshops where, for a small fee, interested people can try their hand at a selection of traditional Japanese crafts. From August 24 through September 5th a variety of "hands on" classes will be offered, including: Nara brush, Gold-leaf hourglass in the Hikone Butsudan style, Handkerchief in the Tokyo Yuzen dyeing style, and several others. For more info call (in Japanese) at (03) 5954-6066 or visit the website.

Want more info on traditional Japanese crafts? Check out the "Handbook for the Appreciation of Japanese Traditional Crafts".

Japanese Food & Culture The Video Way

Videojug is cool new site similar to Youtube and Google Video and learn on your own crowd. , looks at videos for the DIYTheir video selection on Japanese food & culture, though westernized, can still provide some insight for newcomers to the Kanagawa area. I particularly liked the video on serving and drinking sake!

Tokyo Food Page

Everything you wanted to know about eating in Japan and didn't know who to ask.......

Found a great site for anyone interested in eating, and who isn't , right? Tokyo Food Page has a lot to offer. If you want to know about Japanese food, interested in restaurant reviews and recommendations throughout the Kanto area, or even want some quick and easy recipes so you can try to do "Japanese" at home, this site is a great resource for you. Enjoy!

How to Finally Use All Those NWA Frequent Flier Miles

If you've lived in Japan for awhile you've probably accumulated quite a few frequent flier miles on your favorite airline. If you're like me and managed to acquire a boatload of miles on Northwest Airlines, here's a nice tip on how you can actually USE them..... Try for mileage awards on domestic (in Japan) travel via JAL. If you have a mailing address in Japan (even if you're in the US military you can use the base's Japanese address) this works great. Go to the English language page of Northwest Airlines' Japan website and click on Award Travels under Reservations. It should get you here. Go ahead and start your search for convenient flights, just remember when you get towards the bottom of the page and are asked to "Select and airline..." be sure and select "Japan Airlines".

Except for a few very high traffic times of the year (Obon, New Years, etc.) if you plan a month or so out you can almost always use your accumulated NWA miles to buy intra-Japan air flights on JAL. Best of all, round trips will cost you just 15,000 miles! So where can you go from Haneda? How about Kyoto? Or Nagasaki? Or one of my favorite places in the world, Naha, Okinawa.

Mt Fuji & Google Maps

Even if you can't or won't climb Mt Fuji this year, check out Google Maps for a satellite view that's just amazing!

Mt Fuji Climbing Season Ends Soon!

Climb before August 31st......

There's a famous saying along the lines of "Fool me once...." for Mt Fuji, suffice to say that the Japanese believe everyone should climb Mt Fuji ONCE..... If you're planning to climb Fuji-san this year, the official climbing season ends at the end of the month, August 31st.

Negishi Bon Odori..... Bon Dancing, Expats & American Pizza!

The US Navy base in Yokosuka hosts their annual Bon Odori Festival in Negishi, Naka-ku, Yokohama on Saturday, August 26, from 3:00 to 9:00PM. The gates will be open to the public so pretty much anyone is welcome to enter and enjoy the festivities. Always a favorite for Japanese guests and your everyday American expats is the giant America pizza for sale. Check it out!

The Alternative to Cable - SkyPerfect TV

Yes, even in hyper-modern Kanagawa Prefecture (home to Yokohama as well as Yokosuka) there are still some locations that don't have cable TV. This is especially true in the beach communities of Hayama, Zushi and Kamakura. Probably the best alternative I've found is SkyPerfect TV. They have a pretty good users guide, and most electronics retailers can provide installation at a reasonable cost. For around $70 (7,000 yen) a month you can get CNN, Fox, BBC News, several movie channels (with English), and the option of multiple music, sports, and other channels of interests. Yes, it's a bit expensive, but this is Japan after all and until IPTV really allows us to stream content to our televisions via the Internet we have to make do. I bought my SkyPerfect setup from Kojima, the one near the "Homes" store in Yokosuka, but they have stores everywhere. Delivery and installation was around $50 (5,000 yen).

More Chopsticks..... A How-to Guide

One of my favorite sites, wikiHow, has a very useful tutorial on how to use chopsticks. Just think how impressed your friends back home will be when you show them how to "properly" use chopsticks! Enjoy.

Chopsticks for Kids!

If you have kids of your own, or ever watched a friend's kids struggle with chopsticks, Jake Ludington's Mediablab has a great video on how to make "kid friendly" chopsticks. Enjoy.

Getting away? Park and fly!

One of the great things about living in the Yokosuka area is the proximity to an international airport. Yes, Narita is 90 - 120 minutes away by car, bus or train - but at least we don't have to FLY there to catch an international flight. One of the best ways I've found to help ease the strain of getting away via Narita is to use the "park and fly" long-term parking services near the airport. The one I recommend is DAD Narita Parking System. Make a reservation in advance and then on the day of your flight just drive your own car (the option to do this is AWESOME for families with small children). When you get near the airport give DAD a call on your cell phone and they will meet you at the terminal. Right there at curbside. All you then need to do is empty your car of bags, kids, spouse and turn the keys over to the DAD staff. They'll drive your car back to their lot and secure it safely until you return. When you return just call them from baggage claim and in just a few minutes they'll drive your car right back to the terminal where you simply hop in and drive home. They have an English-language website, which is very helpful. Prices seem reasonable enough - leave your car there for a week or more and it's around 11,000 yen ($100). This is definitely a 5 star recommendation.

Swap Meet, Japanese Style.....

Looking to buy some inexpensive, second hand goods? There will be a Flea Market in Honcho, Yokosuka City, (right in front of the gates of the US Navy base) on Saturday and Sunday, July 22nd and 23rd, from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM each day. You can expect over 100 vendors, plus live music and street performances. Enjoy the day and the bargain shopping!

Skype Hack..... Keeping in touch is easy & cheap.

Skype is nothing new, well, to tech geeks anyway. But with a little work and a little money even average Joes like me can use it to make communications with the "folks back home" a little easier. First, sign up for a Skype account (it's free) and download / install the software. Then buy a year's Skypein access for around $40. Skypein allows you to reserve a real honest-to-goodness telephone number "back home", pretty much wherever back home is in the world. So if your family mostly lives in, say, Chicago, pick a phone number with a local area code for Chicago so when family and friends call it's a local charge. Skypein works like this - if your connected to the Internet in Japan and logged into Skype, when your Mom calls your local Skypein number in Chicago your computer "rings" here in Japan. Skypein also comes with Skype Voicemail, so when your family and friends call your Skypein number and you're not connected they can leave a voice mail that you can easily retrieve and play they next time you log in to Skype. Lastly, buy $15 or so of Skypeout credits. Skypeout allows you use your computer to call any regular or mobile phone almost anywhere in the world dirt cheap (calls from Japan to a landline in the US are around $.03 per minute). So here's the hack..... Set your Skype account for Call Forwarding to your phone number here in Japan. So now when Mom calls your "local" number in Chicago the call is automatically forwarded to your phone here in Japan. For landlines it will cost around $.03 per minute, to mobiles it'll run around $.15 per minute. For the average user $15 of Skypeout credits will last a long time for this quick, easy and relatively cheap way for your family and friends back home to reach out and keep in touch with you.

Train Schedules Made Easy

The absolutely best way to get around in Japan is by train. Notice I didn't say "cheapest" (that's another post all together). Here's a very easy to use website to help you find the correct route and times to get from where you are to where you want to be. The website japan-guide.com has a nice "how-to"article on riding trains.

First post.....

As an avid reader of books, magazines, websites and blogs, I hope to share some of the interesting and helpful things I learn about living in Japan, and in particular, the area around the City of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.