Sometimes Big Brother IS on our side?

Thank you CNN.

As much as I have little regard for the current degenerated state of American journalism, that is not to deny that they still have their moments.

In a sea of frivolous to downright useless information out there, my posts and similar posts by other organizations are surely being ignored, but the good news is the media isn't ignoring us. Or at least CNN isn't.

What have we been engaged in since the 3/11 triple-header?
Things like this...



Dazed Animals Still Found In Empty Japanese Cities

Japan's 4-legged Survivors, by CNN.


I've said it before, and I will happily say it again:

Only way to get ACTion is to let them know the world is WATCHing.

Please consider helping by donating through one of the sites listed here or directly through the group I do volunteer translation for, Kinship Circle. (KINSHIP CIRCLE is a 501c3 public charity. All contributions are tax-deductible.)


Cheers! (^_-)-☆

Thanks again for stopping into my little corner of the 'net, and Happy Browsing!!

All translations copyrighted and owned by myself. All copyrights of their respective owners. No part of this web site may be produced, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner.

NEW YEAR 2011

Possibly my favorite card of all time.
And particularly appropriate since this year is the year of the Bunny.

☆.。.:*・Happy New Year☆2011・*:.。.☆

For computer viewing: http://bit.ly/faoInN (RakutenGreeting)

For cell phone users (simpler version): http://bit.ly/fOVL6H (RakutenGreeting)

☆.。.:*・Happy New Year☆2011・*:.。.☆

Cheers and we hope to see you again! (^_-)-♪


All translations copyrighted and owned by myself. All copyrights of their respective owners. No part of this web site may be produced, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Why NOT to teach in Korea in 3 minutes.

BRILLIANT little film found by a former co-worker in Korea.

This really does the job of summing up the incredible instablity of life and work over there.
And yet they don't even go into the nightmare of classroom teaching!




If that doesn't warn you off enough or you are just feeling blessed (or lucky), at least remember to ALWAYS check blacklisted sites before accepting any job in Korea.


Cheers! (^_-)-☆
Thanks again for stopping into my little corner of the 'net, and Happy Browsing!!

All translations copyrighted and owned by myself. All copyrights of their respective owners. No part of this web site may be produced, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner.

You're a WERE-what?!?!

You thought European commercials were a hoot. They've got nothing on the Japanese. From naked women to singing business men... still I like this one the best so far:
The Online interactive Laptop computer commercial where you can hang out with BUNNY-man!

WHERE TO GO:
http://www.fmworld.net/fmv/usataku/main.html

HOW TO PLAY:
There are a set of 4 boxes, usually at the bottom of the frame. One is a set of 3 grey buttons with either an ! or ?. Next to that is a blue button with an image of a door.
The 1 grey, !-button just tells you a little more about the product. The 2 grey, ?-buttons let you play with BUNNY-man and the blue button lets you choose other rooms in the house to play in. If you click on the blue door button a diagram of his house will pop up over the current frame. You can go to any room that is shaded red - there are 4 rooms to pick from.

EVEN MORE TO SEE!:
You can see the original commericial that birthed this site, too! No matter what room you are in, at the bottom of the frame you will see 4 "tabs". The first one will have Japanese and these letters somewhere in it- CM - standing for commercial. Click on that one and a new window will pop up with your pre-set Real or WMP player . You know what to do from there!!

BTW, on the right are 2 more links with the numbers 15 and 30, respectively. Those show you other versions of the commercial.

Come.
Enter the brave, new world and LIMBO with the BUNNY-man.

---

Woman: "A werewolf!?! You're A WEREWOLF!!?"
.......
Woman: "What the hell? A were-bunny?!"
Man: "I told you I wasn't any good with the moon."

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p2p networks blocked for users in Japan!

With the recent move of the Japanese ISP's to ban P2P networks, many sites are not available for streaming in Japan!! It is not yet definite whether this IP ban will be permanent or temporary.

But as always, the internet is on the move, like a kaliediscope--twisting and writhing its way into different shapes and disguises...

Previously in dealing with country restricted services we introduced how to use Anonymous Proxy.

ANON Proxy does not necessarily work in this circumstance for those in Japan as it depends on your direct ISP and/or the location of the ANON proxy. For instance, I was not able to even connect to one site - CR - itself via anon proxies located in the USA or China, but I could through a lonesome little proxy server in Ghana. So if you are up to it, keep trying different servers and direct your efforts towards those in lesser moderated countries like Turkey and Ghana. That would be my suggestion. Just also be aware the tend to be really slow.

The proxy servers on the previously published site are still good and the instructions are still valid. Note the WARNING about using ANON proxy services. THAT HAS NOT CHANGED! One change that should be noted is that with the new NETSCAPE (version 2.0.0.x), you make the internet connection alterations via the path Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Network. For older versions use Tools > Options > Advanced > Network.

Frankly, right now at the time I write this I am buffering Suicide Song at a snail's pace, but at least it's loading!!


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Modern Japanese Music - Shimatani Hitomi

What do you know? I was feeling inspired. ;)

Some samples of modern Japanese "pop" by the famous Hitomi Shimatani. Her earlier music has a lot of Latin overtones that have grown into more widespread international feel.

Enjoy!


GARNET MOON ～ザクロ石の月


FLOWER OF THE SUN ～太陽の花


FALCO ～ファルコ




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Fixing your Movie Playback Quality

If you watch a lot of movies, you have probably had this happen to you too:

- Suddenly the image freezes but the sound kept playing.
- Disoriented or coloured blocks of pixels distorting the image for a time.

Then, Divx Repair is the program that you could use to fix the errors automatically. They even offer a forum for questions and help on their main site.

Divx Repair is very simple to use. Just unzip it to your hard drive and run it from the location that you have unzipped it to. Divx Repair does not need to be installed and does not alter your system files or registry. Double-click Divx Repair to start the program. You can simply add files with the button Add Files.

The button Repair files starts the automatic repair process which tries to fix bad frames automatically. Only the bad frames will be deleted not the key frames which means that you should be able to play the movie without errors from now on.

A error report at the end of the repair displays the amount of bad intervals that have been found. If a fix was necessary a new version of the movie will be saved in the same directory as the original movie file-a nice, smart program.

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Watching ANY downloaded Video

The problem with keepvid is that it only allows you to download in .flv format. And if you download a movie from the stage6 site, you get a .divx file.

What's a person to do?

Real Player can't handle it. And even if Windows Media Player could, why would you want to use it anyway?

There is a FIX!! (of course)

The VideoLAN Free Player, direct download here.

CAPABILITIES:
-can watch online streaming vid and downloaded vids
-has video and audio equalizers, filters, and other modifications.
-unlike WIN Mediaplayer, a working video normalization!!
-individualized playlist construction function, one-time or endless reply functions, shuffle
-handles all types of video formats including ALL those playable under REAL PLAYER, WIN MEDIAPLAYER, PLUS .flv and podcasts formats! (I don’t have one, so I can not confirm the bit about the podcasts.)

Refer back to here, for downloading your favs: Download and SAVE Movies to your HD


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Movie Links - Part 2 (links!!)

If you haven't done it already, GET FIREFOX now! I can't stress that enough. :)

Now that we are armed and ready.
At long, LONG last...

LINKS!

online TV
site00: no need for a proxy server to hide outside-USA IP address
ABC news: need for a proxy server to hide outside-USA IP address. You can find out how to easily do that here or here.
CBS news
MSNBC & NBC news
site01
site02: over 2000 streaming TV and website links.
site03: streaming TV in 10+ languages!
site04: lots of US & UK TV shows, anime, & cartoons.

SP only 00 (undergoing an upgrade, but still accessible)
SP only 01: best setup and extras
SP only 02

NOSCRIPT USERS

If you are running NOSCRIPT (which you should if you want to watch movies), many of these tv streams require you to set NOSCRIPT to "allow" mode in order to view them. For security reasons, I always just choose "temporarily allow"

online MOVIES
These are great sites, especially the first one. Constantly updated, links checked for vaildity, and tons of material--TV shows, Movies, Anime, Cartoons, you name it.
site10
site12
site13
site14
site15

VIDEO HOSTING SITES:
If you feel up to searching through endless homage clips and porn for that ONE special episode/movie, you're more patient than I am so here you go! Good Luck. ;>

Definitely Good for Searching

Metacafe
Veoh
MySpace - Video Section
YouTube
Daily Motion
Google Video
Bolt
Guba

Good for Searching

Vidilife
Stage6
Live Digital
Grouper
Selfcast TV
GoFish

Plus these 2 in Chinese: (Use google webpage translation to view.)
OuOu video
Tudou video
warning: these sites are VERY slow when it is Night in that area of the world, so check your timing before hopping over. That item aside, they both tend to store full-length CSI, LOST, other TV series and many movies. Host site is in China, so there's little to NO regulation going on there. ;>

VIDEO SEARCH ENGINES:
Singing fish
All the Web

---

TROUBLESHOOTING:
If you have any trouble, come back and arm yourself with the necessary equipment found in the previously published articles here and here or here. If I find any more tricks, you know they'll be posted. ;>

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Download and SAVE Movies to your HD

I found this handy little bit of information recently:

Vdownloader will download videos from Google, Youtube and Grinvi ONLY onto your computer in avi or mpeg format not flv meaning you will be able to watch videos on your computer! ***

You are also able to change the output size and audio bitrate in the process.
Run Vdownloader.exe and copy the url of the video you want to download. Click on Download button...It's that easy.^.^

Install: Just unzip ALL the files to a folder in your hard disk. Both vdownloader.exe and ffmpeg.exe must be in the same directory. Otherwise, videos won't be properly converted. Then you can place a shortcut on your desktop to vdownloader.exe to run the entire program.

Regarding Download Time:
Converting youtube videos did not take long at all. A 2 minute video was downloaded and converted in about 2-3 minutes to mpg.

WARNING: Because the command line only allows one URL, I tried opening 2 instances of the program. Running multiple windows of the program does not seem to work well. I've tried multiple times, but the secondary window only seems to make it to the "download finished". It is unable to create a working converted file.

OR, get the Firefox Addon
-Simple one click addon then a browser restart
-Actually uses the same underlying program as the site below which is why it only saves files as .flv format.

OR, you can also try this site.
* You MUST use the direct link to the video you want to download, ie you can not use a link that has "search" in it. Direct Links are found beneath the actual video when it plays.
* It will only download movies as .flv files which means you have to download yet another program. You'll need either an .flv viewer or another program to convert it to and mpeg or avi yourself.
A hassle, but the site does download from dailymotion.



***for some reason weird tail numbers sometimes get tacked onto the the url when you click it on even though they don't exist in the actual address posted here. If it does this, just search for Vdownloader on softpedia.com or simply edit the changed url by removing the ending %4%2's etc. until you reach ".shtml".


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How to Mask Your IP: Part 2

Tired of getting the "only viewable within the US/UK/..." messages when you try to view THE OFFICE or NUKB3RS? Well, here's how we fix that. ;>

How to Mask Your IP: Part 2

This will help people who want to use different software and services online that are usually restricted to the locals. This little IP and proxy tweak also makes your surfing much more anonymous.

The below sites are all members of this network;however, all have different flavors.
site00
PROS: intro page tells you what it sees about your settings.
tells you what it will send as your "new" information.
simple interface to enter page you want to visit.
CONS: keeps the SURF bar at the tops of all frames.

site01
PROS: simple interface to enter page you want to visit.
CONS: keeps the SURF bar at the tops of all frames.

site02
PROS: allows the following advanced choices:
Remove all cookies (except certain proxy cookies)
Remove all scripts (recommended for anonymity)
Remove ads
Hide referrer information
Show URL entry form
name doesn't contain “proxy” which some filters automatically block
CONS: keeps the SURF bar at the tops of all frames.


STANDARD WARNING: Whoever runs that proxy can see all your internet communications - including MSN conversations and any passwords that are not encrypted! Use this at your own risk and do not transmit any sensitive data through the proxy.

OTHER PLACES TO VIEW STREAMING VIDEO--MOVIES AND TV--refer back to here! (in an upcoming post)

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How to Mask Your IP and Use Country Restricted Services

Tired of getting the "only viewable within the US/UK/..." messages when you try to view THE OFFICE or NUMB3RS? Well, here's how we fix that. ;>

How to Mask Your IP and Use Country Restricted Services

If you want to watch ABC streaming TV episodes even if you don’t live in the US or see the Football Worldcup in the BBC Sport site, even if you don’t live in the UK - the next few steps will help you mask your IP. This will help people who want to use different software and services online that are usually restricted to the locals. This little IP and proxy tweak also makes your surfing much more anonymous.

FIRST:
Get yourself an anon IP and port number from one of these sites:
free site 1
free site 2

SECOND:
Get firefox HERE by clicking one of the buttons on the right.
With firefox you will be able to ALSO view those "blocked" videos on dailymotion.com and youtube.com. See how, here. You won't be able to do this with Internet Explorer! Need more convincing as to why Firefox is better? See here.

THIRD:
Follow this path at the top of your browser tool bar and make your edits.
Tools > Options > Advanced > Network
Then, select "settings" in the Connection subheading.
A new window will pop up. Here choose "Manual Proxy Configuration", and enter in an IP and Port from our list into the text boxes.
Click OK and your set to view and exchange info, FREELY, the way it's supposed to be.

Random Notes:
You can easily switch back to the original setting--"direct connection to the internet" by going through the above steps and selecting that instead of the Manual Proxy. I've learned that you'll have to if you want to use Blogger. ;>

If you’re having any problems, please read the original, very detailed post here.


WARNING: Whoever runs that proxy can see all your internet communications - including MSN conversations and any passwords that are not encrypted! Use this at your own risk and do not transmit any sensitive data through the proxy.

OTHER PLACES TO VIEW STREAMING VIDEO--MOVIES AND TV--refer back to here! (in an upcoming post)

Thanks again for stopping into my little corner of the 'net, and Happy Browsing!!


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Viewing BLOCKED VIDEOS -- yes you can !!

Once again proving that Firefox is far more superior than IE...

Watch all the deleted videos on DailyMotion Hassle free!

OK, here's how you do it.....

First of all this is only an option for Firefox users. If you haven't got Firefox then click on one of the download boxes to the right. It's easy to install and it incorporates all your favourites from IE into Firefox.

Plus, you can easily change your mind after since you don't have to uninstall IE ; you're not "converting" to anything. You can just revert back to IE whenever you want. I run both FIrefox and IE on my computer with no problems (not that I use IE much anymore. ~.^ )

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
Download the Firefox addon "Noscript" which stops the script that stops you from watching episodes that have been deleted from Daily motion.

You can Download it here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/

Once downloaded (a few minutes at the most), Follow this path:
Go to the top of the firefox toolbar and go into TOOLS ->EXTENSIONS.
A small window will pop up and the recently downloaded NOSCRIPT will be there.
Highlight it (single click), then choose the "options" button.
In the GENERAL tab, make sure youtube.com is not in the ALLOW list.
If it is, single click it on and choose REMOVE SELECTED SITES.
Treat other sites like dailymotion.com, etc. individually, hitting REMOVE SELECTED SITES everytime.
Click OK at the bottom.
Restart Firefox (to make sure it took effect.)


OTHER:
To make the video go fullscreen simply, right-click on on the video itself. Depending on the viewer, it will say either "GO FULL SCREEN" or just give you a "SETTINGS" option. Going through settings will allow you to go full screen.

WARNINGS:
1. These settings are permanent and if you want to turn them on/off, must be changed manually through the above steps.
2. This works perfectly but not on the customised URLs that have been resized.
3. You'll find there are some good scripts it blocks, like those from google, blogger, and meebo. HOWEVER, NOSCRIPT will tell you when it's doing this and you can again easily set those scripts to be "allowed". ^.^

Once everything is setup, and the intial sites are choosen to be allowed/disallowed, it's smooth sailing!!

Long live freespeech and creativity on the Internet!!!

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Movie Links - part 1 (legality)

Before I put up all the best links, ie all the free movies and videos you can watch online, the issue of legality should be addressed since FOX has recently starting making a fuss.

As copied directly from one of the forums:
Linking is not illegal, and I work in the legal profession, albeit it, as a legal exec and copyright is not my field.

Sure, depending on the content of what is uploaded, both the uploader and video hosts may be guilty of copy write infringement.

Even with the above in mind, we can see that the laws are a bit unclear and taking action is very hard.

This of course can be seen in the fact that the host sites such as google vid and youtube etc carry on with NO problems.

The internet is an 'open access resource' and linking to these sites is not illegal. How does the linker know the material is copywrite?

They don't! We can't be aware of these things. We don't know if any of these hosts have arrangements or rights to the material.

The buck stops with the hosts.

This is just scaremongering. Fox of course can't do anything about these hosts and have now turned their attention to people linking to them. How pitiful.

This should be a clear indication of what powers they have, surely people linking to these sites are by the by and the issue lies with the hosts, yet they complain here. This in itself should be a clear indication of things.

I PM'd videocentral about this and their comments are in agreement, with the added comment that Fox can kiss their ass.

Moviefan (username)

---

So rest easy, and browse happy. :) You can cruise the Internet freely...
For now at least.

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"Brief" Introduction

I have lived in Japan going on 3 years now and have taught in both the private school (juku) and the public school systems.
Fortunately for me, I speak both Japanese and English, but even so, I had to find out everything myself when I got here. There is no ONE, encompassing resource for people either trying to live in Japan now or trying to prepare before they go. So, I figured, all my hard work, blood-sweat-and-tears (and many, many, MANY hours) searching should not go to waste.

Depending on popularity/public-demand, I may offer a full website with more resources, but for right now, I want to get a feel for public reception with a BLOG only.

UPDATES: At this point in time, I expect to update on a weekly basis.

FIREFOX: I strongly, highly recommend you download Firefox from any of the links on this page. Windows has limited features, is not standards-compliant, and regularly crashes. Case in Point: Although I rarely use the Windows XP portion of my laptop, lately I have been. Previously, I kept up-to-date on American news by watching cbs and msnbc online. I upgraded to IE 7 and now, instead of the news, I get a giant GREEN screen. Comparatively, with FIREFOX, there have been no online video issues/problems. Runs smooth as a whistle. ;>

If you are interested in watching any of the free movies or TV shows on the many sites I will be listing, you will want a stable web browser because many of the sites are hosted "overseas" where the bandwidth isn't so good and having to reload a show FROM SCRATCH you just spent 20 minutes waiting for is .....*deleted for content* ;)

Besides, with Firefox you can do all this and more:

• Block ads with adblock and filterset G.


• Download the videos to watch later with VideoDownloader extension.


• Use the most sophisticated tabbed browsing system available. Once you learn to use tabs, you’ll never go back to having tons of open windows.

I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian who did SysAdmin work for over 6 years and currently runs three OS systems on her laptop. I know a thing or 2 about computers. ;> Do yourself a favor and download Firefox.

UPCOMING POSTINGS:

Where and How to watch LOTS of free online movies and TV

Public vs. Private Schools-the reality of the system

Public vs. Private Schools-handling Japanese students

Where to find food - regular and vegen

What do those characters on my home appliances mean?

Battling the 3 Extremes - heat, humidity, cold

Straight Facts @ NOVA & AEON - compiled reports

various ESL resources

SUGGESTIONS:
As this site is run by popular demand, please leave any requests for answers/advice on certain topics on any post with the "comments" link. (simply leave the comment anonymously.) Or leave a note on the "messages" board to the right. Comments there are not publicly displayed, but go straight to the private account.