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JapanNewbie.com

very good site! i love it.. *added to favourites* i'm a bit dissapointed in you tho mate ;)

don't just look at all the cookyness! try it!.. you shouldve forced down one of those giant snails (and had a picture of you doing it) and you shouldve tried out the slacking room for 50 yen XD

you might aswell force yourself to do weird stuff, they only come by once in a blue moon ^^
 
thesee are the first pictures i saw of japan :)
i saw pictures of tokyo and so, but this are street sights...

when do you update your blog? daily?
 
Really interesting. I'm gonna check it out more when I get home (or when I'm really bored at work. :D). But it looks great!
 
Check the right side links to get a sense of how often I update. I would say about twice a month. Sometimes 3 or 4 times when I'm not slacking.

Hey join the Discussion Board too :) We have a small community of guys who have been in Japan for a long long time. It's pretty fun.
 
tha_rippa1be said:
thesee are the first pictures i saw of japan :)
i saw pictures of tokyo and so, but this are street sights...

Japan from the Driver's Seat

to see the truly mundane

Harvey said:
Check the right side links to get a sense of how often I update. I would say about twice a month. Sometimes 3 or 4 times when I'm not slacking.

Hey join the Discussion Board too :) We have a small community of guys who have been in Japan for a long long time. It's pretty fun.

You mean there are people on these fora who not only are actually in Japan, but have been here a long long time?
 
mikecash said:
You mean there are people on these fora who not only are actually in Japan, but have been here a long long time?
Does this mean goodbye? :?
Post may contain up to 100% of RDA of stealth smilies.
 
PaulTB said:
Does this mean goodbye? :?
Post may contain up to 100% of RDA of stealth smilies.

No, the heart attack brought on by the shock of that information wasn't quite sufficient enough to warrant hospitalization.
 
Hrm... I smell sarcasm. 別に来なくていいもん~うちら5人ぐらいで十分楽しめるから。

寂しくなったらこっちにすぐ来れるし。 japannewbie 最高。
 
Harvey said:
Hrm... I smell sarcasm. 別に来なくていいもん~うちら5人ぐらいで十分楽しめるから。

寂しくなったらこっちにすぐ来れるし。 japannewbie 最高。

Your sense of smell is superb.

The object of the sarcasm wasn't you or your group, though. It was meant more to lament that it seems very few of the great many people on jref fora have ever even been to Japan at all, let alone live there.
 
Oh, nevermind then. You jref people are high class. There are so man members here it's ridiculous... This, and f*uckedgaijin.com, are the places to go to get in touch with friendly long term in Japan foreigners, if you ask me.

not denying that!
 
yeah, it is true though that many MANY people on these forums (me included) just wish we were there... and have never been there...

most of us are bent to change that though...
 
Harvey said:
Oh, nevermind then. You jref people are high class. There are so man members here it's ridiculous... This, and f*uckedgaijin.com, are the places to go to get in touch with friendly long term in Japan foreigners, if you ask me.

not denying that!

Now it's my turn to smell sarcasm.

By the way......Just how do you define "long term"?
 
hey guys I recommend this site 100%. Get behind harvey, he is a really cool guy and runs a top site!!!

good on you harvey
 
Our definitions differ remarkably.

Two years ain't worth packing a bag for.

It's understandable that we both have a different definition of what "long" means.

What observations affected your definition?

I base mine on the fact that most people I meet are either here for a year on JET, or for a year teaching English or something, and then they leave. I find that most people I meet here who have crossed that "2 year line" end up staying for a long, long, long time. Usually like 5 years plus.

That's why I consider 2years plus as long term.

What do you consider long?
 
Harvey said:
It's understandable that we both have a different definition of what "long" means.

What observations affected your definition?

I base mine on the fact that most people I meet are either here for a year on JET, or for a year teaching English or something, and then they leave. I find that most people I meet here who have crossed that "2 year line" end up staying for a long, long, long time. Usually like 5 years plus.

That's why I consider 2years plus as long term.

What do you consider long?

First off, I agree 100% with your assessment. I was mentioning to someone in another thread just the other day that most people stay a year, a few stay two, a very few stay three. The percent who stay over three years is probably statistically insignificant.

That being said, I don't even consider 5 years a long, long, long time. It's worth packing a bag for, though.

I have never really considered the length of time a person stays in Japan to be particularly important or indicative of anything. I always say that the only thing length of stay reliably indicates is length of stay. Trying to deduce anything from it is an exercise in futility. And to paraphrase someone, whom I wish I could remember, being in Japan longer than someone else isn't really any sort of accomplishment. It's sort of like being the tallest kid in the second grade; stay there long enough and it's bound to happen.

Since that doesn't really answer your question, I'll put a figure on it and say that I would consider a decade a good start.
 
I would have to say that anything over 3 years is a start. One or two years is nothing. And most jobs that I know of offer contracts for 3 years. But I really don't see why it really matters
 
CC1 said:
I would have to say that anything over 3 years is a start. One or two years is nothing. And most jobs that I know of offer contracts for 3 years. But I really don't see why it really matters

I never have understood it either. Which is why I normally don't tell how long I've been here, and very seldom ask anyone how long they've been here either.

It's strange, though. Put any two random foreigners in Japan together and it seems as though within the first five minutes they have to find out how long the other has been here so they can establish pecking order. The linguistic adjunct of this, of course, is the "How many kanji do you know?" thing.
 
It's strange, though. Put any two random foreigners in Japan together and it seems as though within the first five minutes they have to find out how long the other has been here so they can establish pecking order. The linguistic adjunct of this, of course, is the "How many kanji do you know?" thing.

I had the "how long in Japan thing?" this weekend. I rarreeeeeely get the Kanji question though. I mean, most people who have studied Japanese long enough realize that after studying for a bit people don't know how many kanji they know anyway. It's just not something you count.

BTW, HP updated. Heh.
 
BTW, HP updated again. Heh.

Hey this is somewhat related... But when you first meet Japanese people, how do you feel when they assume that you're an English teacher, or in the Military? I get that quite a lot.

Just about a week ago, this guy asked me if I was selling hiphop clothes in America mura or something, and he was completely serious.

Not that selling clothes, teaching English, or military work is bad or wrong or anyway, but sometimes I get annoyed that Japanese people tend to automatically lump us into one of those three categories.

Another thing that gets to me is when you've been speaking in Japanese with some new people for like an hour, and when you go eat they start commenting on how good you are at using chop sticks... I like to think that without exception people learn how to use chopsticks (EAT) before they learn to speak the language.

Um... not sure how this is related to the "long term" definition... but just a thought...
 
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