Lost in Japan

Here’s a follow-up post to my previous post on searching for a job in Japan. I intend to share some actual links to places of interest if you’re serious about working in Japan.

A third post with some more tips and comments more in the spirit of the first part will come in a while too, right now I don’t have the inspiration to write it though!

Anyway, here are some useful links to Internet resources for your Japan job-searching needs:

Recruitment firms:
Robert Walters
ISS
East West Consulting
Oak Associates
Panache (specializing in IT)

Online job listings:
Dipjobs
Rikunabi Next
En Japan

General information:
Work in Japan
Terrie’s Job Tips
Jobs in Japan (Good for ELT jobs)

Well I want to apologize for the nearly two-weekthree-week inactivity! As you know from reading my earlier posts, I am enjoying some hard earned days off, so time has escaped me and I have simply not had the time or energy to post here.

Further, I just came back from a week’s holiday to the US, and jetlag was really bad yesterdat so I could not really do anything.

But I will try to put up some new entries during the next few days – part two of my “job searching in Japan” series plus some of my views on the US from a Japanese/Swedish perspective.

Stay tuned!

Yesterday I went to Book Off again to browse through the various second hand goods. If you’ve never been to Book Off, I highly recommend it! It’s a big chain of second hand stores that can be found through out Japan.

In its most basic form it’s a place for second hand books, CDs and DVDs. The books are mostly (99%) Japanese, though!

However, recently, the bigger Book Off stores contain much much more than books, and that is why you can find some truly amazing deals there! For example, the one I usually go to in Kawasaki is really huge, and contains cloths, sports goods (golf clubs, surfing boards, skiis etc.), music equipments, audio/video equipment, computers, etc, etc.

Being a wannabe audiophile,　Ｉ usually browse the audio section to see if they got any good cheap ampfliers and such. Yesterday was no exception, there was a ton of interesting looking stuff. Below you’ll find a sample of what I found yesterday. (Click to enlarge)

As you can see, there’s some truly esoteric stuff for sale in this seemingly normal and plain second hand shop, so I really recommend you to go there and have a look! In addition to those, they had a complete McIntosh setup (pre-amp, power-amp, speakers) for sale, but it was sealed behind plastic so I couldn’t take a photo of it.

By the way, if you’re looking for golf clubs, you can pick up a whole set of irons for anything between 5,000 and 70,000 yen. Lots of good looking sets for around 10,000!

Wow, tonight I got hammered by so-called pollution spammers for the first time since I put up this blog (I’ve had 2-3 spam comments before)! I got 4958 comments which all were spam, fortunately Wordpress caught every single one of them.

If you want to learn more about pollution spamming, there’s a good article over at The Net is Dead. Basically what this spam does is NOT link to the spammers’ sites, but rather to innocent sites like news.linux.com (very often targeted) or any other ‘regular’ site like Yahoo! The objective is to pollute anti-spam filters and blacklists.

Truly evil and morally corrupt, if you ask me!!!

Now this is friggin sweet! NINJA is a ninja-themed restaurant in Akasaka, Tokyo. The food is served by ninjas, who also entertain by doing magic tricks etc. The interior is themed as old Japan with ninja houses, fortresses, secret passageways etc.

From the presentation of the interior:

Ninjas live for war.
So it is inevitable that they live in an environment
equipped as a fortress.

…and…

Ninjas lived in mountains and fields.
They lived in nature, with nature.
The interior of “NINJA” is nature itself, with waterfalls and ponds;
a sort breeze whispers and crickets chirp in the distance.
Diners forget time in this soothing environment.

(Via Japundit)