October Roundup

We've got a new feature here on AccessJ. (OK, it's not really new.) It's called the monthly blog roundup, and it allows us to travel through time and space, introducing you to the entries of the last month you may have missed.



It's handy for going back to...
Dan's health insurance guides on optional insurance, evaluating whether you need insurance, Japanese vocabulary for medical specialties, and a step-by-step of how to set up your doctor visit in Japan.

Or maybe you prefer...
Laura's awesome compilation of online vendors who will send to Japan your favorite goodies from home.

Or say you want to go to...
Dom's guides on ebooks:
Reading manga and Japanese on the new Kindle
Converting your own books into ebooks on the cheap
His continuation of the Being an ALT series:
School lunch in Japan
Proper attire at work
Tips for living a more healthy life abroad:
Suicide hotlines
Japanese prescription drugs
And info on:
Buying scuba diving equipment
Regional dialects across Japan

Or imagine being magically whisked away to...
My posts.
...
...
I zeroed in with a grand total of no posts for the entire month. :(

But no worries! Look forward to a jolly plethora of my stuff over the winter, including Japan event and travel guides and more information for job and apartment seekers. There will be healthy things from all posters whose names begin with D, and newspapers and things you could also cut out of newspaper from the D-man himself.

September Roundup

Forgot all about this this month. Sorry for the delay.

What did you miss in the last four (well, five) weeks?

Well, first of all you missed the August blog roundup - wouldn't want to fall behind there. Missing an AJ blog is like missing a train, except for the vital difference that with a train, an almost identical copy turns up shortly after. And, trains kill people; never forget that. AccessJ never killed anyone (in fact, as you will find out next month, we actively help out those with suicidal tendencies.) In short, next time you miss a train, thank your lucky stars it wasn't one of our entries.

Anyway, not content just with the roundup, we then went on to post some other stuff:



Dan finished his Credit Cards series and then started anew with his Health Insurance Mega-Guide (which finishes next week).

Laura filled you in on how to get tickets to the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo. She also told us all about clothing sizes in Japan, and how to find things that will look normal on your massive foreign body. She then showcased some beautiful works of art actually growing in rice fields across Japan.

LP dropped by to deposit a few excellent articles on Renting a Car in Japan, the crazy varieties of potatoes over here, and an example of an Elementary School Plan for new JETs and such who are drowning in the flood of unfamiliar responsibility.

In September I went nuts and wrote 20 or 30 blogs, most of which you won't see for the next 月 or two, but some which were:

• Japanese online radio stations
• Turn Your Books into eBooks for 100yen!
• How the New Kindle Affects Your Japanese eBooks and Manga
• Being an ALT #16: School Lunch
• Buying ZMA in Japan
• And a documentary my friend Rob put together about teaching English in Japan

And let's not forget it was our bloody birthday in September! AccessJ is more than one year old now. Thanks for the cards and chocolates you bastards!

Happy Birthday to AccessJ!

This plastic, gormless, empty-
headed Gumper symbolises
the kind of site AccessJ is not.

Well, it's been just over a year since AccessJ's first posts went live.

Back then, it was just Steve and I, pooling some knowledge gained through complicated daily-life experiences and sharing them with the internet.

One year on, and we have two or three new writers, have stuck rigidly to our 4(or more)-posts-a-week goal, have brought in almost 300,000 hits and made absolutely no money.

But we're not going to bug you with PayPal donation links. AccessJ is all about giving :D One day we'll be big and successful. Until then, just keep reading our entries and leaving comments.

Cheers!
TeamAJ


PS: We've had a few inquiries about guest posting in the last few months. Although none of them have been successful, if you have something you think would fit the AccessJ style and provide a good read for our viewers, contact us.

August Blog Roundup

月末です。

I went on holiday last month (yes, I had a great time, thanks for asking!) and missed the roundup, so here's the best of July and August.

We were blown away by the popularity of our Japanese Pen Spinning post this month, which scored 26,000 hits in 48 hours, while our lovely video about Taking a Poop in Japan failed to get anything near 10% of that :(

Dan finished his in-depth guide to Japanese Cellphones and quickly got stuck into an excellent series on Getting a Credit Card.

Laura continued her elementary lesson plans in our Worksheet Sunday series, and still had time to write about Buying Japanese Edibles in England, and the Japanese Straight Perm available at your local hair-dressers.

I posted a handy video explaining how the Japanese Postal Address System works, and several articles about studying Japanese: The Worst Mistake You Can Make Learning Japanese (or any language), JLPT Past Test Papers, and two articles about kanji - why Kanji is So Useful for Learning Japanese, and the Best Way to Learn Kanji.

I also made it known that I am running a series of long-distance runs for charity this year. Every month I will run one half- or full-marathon for Save the Children Japan. Any donation will help the needy. I did a run last week at the base of Mt. Fuji which was incredibly difficult thanks to the altitude and terrain. Make it worth my while!

The mysterious LP has also been posting, letting us know how a Japanese Girlfriend will Affect Your Japanese, as well as polishing a great article on getting an ETC card without a credit card.

June Blog Roundup

Well, it's definitely summer, isn't it? In a couple of weeks we'll post about how you can tame that crazy heat in your house. For now, here's what you may have missed on AccessJ this month:

Speaking of the heat, I posted a short while ago about How to Not Sweat Like a Beast. Vital reading to minimise those huge sweat patches.

A very popular post covered the best way to learn the Japanese hiragana and katakana alphabets. More posts on learning Japanese to come in the next couple of weeks.

We brought back the Being an ALT series this month, with entries covering working in multiple schools, getting molested at those schools, and an explanation of why it doesn't have to be so easy to be an ALT. More to come.

We showed all those out there with the Japanese IME or a Japanese computer how you can type some really cool symbols. In fact, you can type so many that it needed a second post.

Let's not forget the inclusion of a brand new writer at AccessJ: Dan has been busy putting together a guide on Japanese cellphones. You can read about The Basics, Important Paperwork and Pre-Paid Phones. Expect a new entry on that each Friday until literally everything has been covered.

And speaking of new writers, Laura has decided to help us out on our Worksheet Sunday series. We've used several of her ideas in the past, and she's now busy writing up a guide to teaching the Eigo Noto textbook series in elementary schools. Her first entry went live this month. Other WSs this month included "Will you...?", "He was, they were" and "Are You From...?" for Junior High.

As always, there's plenty more where that came from, so check the archive pages at the top of this page for other great articles from AccessJ.

May Blog Roundup

May has been and gone now, and taken with it all the pretty colours of spring, leaving us only with the creeping humidity and threatening reveal of dozens of praying mantis eggs.

Anyway, this month saw us pass 100,000 hits since late last year, and the growing AccessJ team provided you lovely readers with some great posts as a thank you.



This month you may have missed:

A post on how to get those pesky ID cards for buying cigarettes, a look at Japanese Hangover Preventatives, the start of our look at the bizarre questions Japanese people ask each other on the internet, and an entry covering the Japanese Fruit Picking Seasons for your picking pleasure.

We also published:

Earthquake
Maps showing the most dangerous places in Japan during earthquakes, and where earthquakes are most likely to occur.

Health and Fitness
How to buy and train with Kettlebells in Japan, and how to register for Distance Running Events.
not forgetting our popular post on the Cost of Giving Birth in Japan, and our big-hitter How to Take a Crap in Japan.

Cars
A detailed look at Vehicle Registration and Licence Plates, and an explanation of how licence plate security works.


Last bus not least, yesterday we talked you through Applying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

There were plenty other posts that didn't make the lowdown here, so be sure to check out our archive links at the top of the page for more.


And coming up next month will be the return of our popular Being an ALT series, as well as tips on how to not sweat like an animal during the forthcoming hot summer. We'll cover all about ETC cards, give you some Japanese learning tips and bring you fresh content from a brand new writer who will cover Japanese cell-phones in minute detail. Stay tuned.

Recent Blog Roundup

It's been a long time since we did a roundup of our recent blogs, and as our readership has taken something of a jump since new year, here's a rundown of some of what you may have missed.

Our big hitters this year were: our expose of Compensated Dating, examination of Japan's Face Mask Culture, Cherry Blossom viewing calendar and 10 Types of Cherry Blossom trees; we showed you how to most easily transfer money home, check train times and buy a bargain train pass, as well as a long-distance bus pass. We also filled you in on how to recycle in Japan.

Our Being an ALT series was a big hit: an 8-part look at what life will be like for you starting work as an English teacher in Japan. We followed that with several articles of tips on passing your driving test in Japan. Then we broke new ground with buying a foreclosed house in Japan.

We later showed you how to send flowers and gifts in Japan, exposed Matsumoto castle's Ice Festival and produced some very detailed maps on things to see and do in both Nagano prefecture, and Shiga prefecture. Nagano's awesome Dinosaur Park even got an article of it's own.

We taught you how to calculate the highway tolls in Japan, and then gave some exciting news about the drop in highway toll charges.

Earthquake
AccessJ published many articles on the earthquake. We told you how to help with the cleanup, how to offer your house for survivors to stay in, and provided a way you can give money without actually paying anything. We also offered important information on radiation levels, rolling blackouts and explained the Shindo method of measuring earthquakes.

Employment
Our Job Spotlight series has covered several openings, including High School ALT jobs still available in Nagano prefecture. We also offered guides on how to best use job-finding websites such as Gaijinpot jobs and TOP-US.

TEFL
Our weekly Worksheet Sunday series has relentlessly provided great teaching ideas, including some fun Gambling games, ideas for introducing your new students to JHS, and one of my favourite original games: Snake-eyes.

I also got very, very angry about the JHS textbook characters.

And that's not all. In fact, that barely scrapes the surface. We publish an average of five days a week, so check the links at the top of this page to browse our posts by category.

Thanks for supporting AccessJ!

Review of the Year 2010

Happy New Year!

This is our first new year together, treasured reader. Thank you for your visit, we hope you found what you were looking for. If not, why not email us what you need and we'll see what we can do.

Anyway, thanks go to the almost 20,000 hits we've had in the last few months; we've been much more successful than we expected.

But chances are you've missed some of our wonderful posts, so here's a list of some of the greats that may have slipped beneath your otherwise highly efficient radar.

• About the cold winter we're in:

Why are Japanese houses SO COLD?
How to insulate your Japanese house for the winter

• Daily life

How much will I get paid teaching English?
The cost of living/utilities in Japan
Finding an ESL job in Japan
Our "Job Spotlight" employment series

• School stuff

5 random school lunches from Japan
The 5 most annoying pages in the New Crown textbooks
"Wot dis? Dis pen!" Appaling Japanese English set to change?
 Elementary school - The Hello Song vs "Anything OK"

• Popular posts:

How to find and make a Japanese penpal
Our "Budget Accommodation" series
Using an Amazon Kindle to study Japanese
Soaplands - the Japanese brothel
Robots in my toilet
Driving schools in Japan

• Fun things:

The Japanese obsession with ear cleaning - mimikaki and mimisouji
The top 10 dirty Japanese phrases




And don't forget to check out our guides page for all the important information about living and working in Japan we've posted this year.

December also saw the unveiling of our new "Photo Tuesday" series, where we post interesting or nice pictures relevant to recent posts. If you have any images you think we should up, let us know through our Facebook page.