I was bemoaning the fact I didn’t have an MP3 player to take with me for my trip yesterday when I remembered I had a test Canon V300 yet to be tested. In the past I took my handy Dell Axim PDA (not short for public display of affection) to catch up on the [...]

Perhaps the oddest NHK show of all time is called エリンが挑戦！にほんごできます. (Erin challenges - I can speak Japanese)
It is very well made and interesting to watch but the subject matter seems… oddly mismatched.
The show is about a high school girl whose father is English and mother is Japanese. Each episode concentrates on [...]

Digital Juice is a company based in Florida that makes super high quality royalty free music, stock footage, clip art, animations and on and on. I highly recommend them if you are interested in video editing.
They just put up two music videos by Perry (last name?).
Perry makes even rap ‘music’ sound cool:

Dave Barry the humor columnist, who by the way is running for President, has a week-to-week blog on the latest 24 news:
http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/24/index.html
Glad to know he has good taste on television.
In case you haven’t read his material, you may want to read Dave Barry Does Japan. I especially like his description of kanji…
Just so you [...]

I’m working on updating my Electronic Dictionary Recommendations page at TJS. I’ll post the recommendations here hoping for some comments and opinions from others.
Here is the Introduction and the Best Quality Dictionaries Award:

Recommendations from Clay
Updated 7-6-07
There are a few features that you, as an English speaker learning Japanese, may want to look for:
[...]

Yesterday I wrote:
And on Youtube, this new video has an honor! It may not last long enough for me to press ‘Submit’, but we are #94 on page five (last page) for “Top Favorites: (Today): Travel & Places”! Woohoo!
Well, we’ve had a few other people ‘favorite’ the video. This has moved us up to [...]

I almost forgot to wish everyone a happy Fourth! Even if you are not American, take a moment to celebrate America’s independence and subsequent experiment in freedom and liberty for and by the people (to paraphrase Lincoln).
First, do what most Americans have never done - spend five minutes actually reading the Declaration of Independence. [...]

Click To Play

And on Youtube, this new video has an honor! It may not last long enough for me to press ‘Submit’, but we are #94 on page five (last page) for “Top Favorites: (Today): Travel & Places”! Woohoo!
And here is the Youtube link.

Yumi just found this gem in a Japanese newspaper.
A man asked a child what a word she had written in katakana meant. She said “It’s English.” The child wrote 「アナポ」
さて、質問です。
What could 「アナポ」 mean when returned to its home language?
a-na-po
I’ll tell you, but before I do, I’d like to mention Yumi didn’t let me [...]

One of my favorite shows is 笑点 (You have to write わらう then てん in Microsoft IME).
It is famous for its 座布団 (zabuton - cushions) and it is always a great source for オヤジギャグ which is, as the Kenkyusha 和英 puts it, “an older man’s attempt at humor”.
The five or six comedians sit on cushions [...]