When I went to Tokyo for New Year, I saw one b-ball shop in shibuya, in front of TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday, american style restaurant). Name is “Player’s Basketball”.

Shop is quite small, but it has an amazing choice of sneakers, clothing and accessories. Price is ok, and you could find some exclusive models such as All-star game 09 shoes, KG Shoes, several pairs of Jordans. There was a wall with picture of famous people who came to this shop, and I saw Bow Wow. Actually it was the only guy I could recognize (sorry for legends of Japanese basketball…). Anyway, I bought a nice pair of And1 shorts.

The other shop I found out last time I was in Shibuya is called Gallery 2.

This shop is much bigger than the other one, looks more commercial, less eeeer personal and underground I would say. There is good stuff, and pretty impressive choice of sneakers, but nothing original, few exclusive models, shorts and jerseys are just not original, it’s like black and white only. There’s a part for ladies as well. Obviously after reading this you understand my preference goes to the first shop. This one is not that bad, it just looks like the basketball section of a sports shop, just a bit (ok much) bigger.

Anyway I’m sure there are many moreb-ball shops in Tokyo, I guess it will be for next time…

If you are French, you might have already heard about franponais, it’s when the Japanese use a French word and either it is completely mispelled or either it gets a very funny meaning. Here’s a good example:

Si on vous le dit...

I guess you can imagine what kind of stuff the shop is selling. It’s a shop close to Roppongi I think. Anyway, “C’est bien” in French means literally “It’s good”, you even have the katakanas below if you are unsure about pronunciation. I’m always amazed to see how French can be used in Japan …

This is just dynamite:

Dear IUJ students

Today, around 3pm, there was an exhibitionist on campus.  He left the area, and we don’t think he will come back.  But if you see a Black Prius car, license plate 3*-*7, on campus please report to the SPSC or the Guardman as soon as possible.

Please take care.  Thank you.

G****

for SPSC Team

I was talking about it a few weeks ago, and as you might have noticed, I’ve finally made the decision in favor of WordPress, since I found a nice free template for WordPress. Potentially WordPress might have less possibilities than Joomla, but for blogging it is more than enough. The backend is very clear and simple to use. Transition from Joomla 1.0.x was in fact much easier than expected. The import tool for WordPress worked flawlessly, it took 30s to import all my joomla posts.

If I had to compare, the actual writing part is about the same on Joomla and WordPress, but as I said earlier, backend is clearer, and as WordPress is in my opinion much more popular than Joomla for blogging, the community is much more active, it’s very easy to find extensions.

Some stuff are still not working on the website, like the “Subscribe by Email” part.

There is a new gallery, using picsengine. Best gallery I’ve used so far, maybe it is just missing a WordPress plugin =D .

Since I’ve moved to WordPress, I keep trying to post every day. Before it used to be a pain in the a** but actually now it’s not much of a big deal. As long as I still have ideas about what to blog about, I believe I can keep up.

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The Carpenters. Never heard of them before coming to Japan. I had already heard some of their “hits” though. Their music aged badly, it sounds old and it actually is. Almost 40 years-old. Don’t get me wrong, the music is nice but…

Ok. Get into the mood, click on the link:

The Carpenters

Now imagine you are in a cafeteria, poorly decorated, old chairs, yellow light, and very few people inside. You feel like you are in the 70s. But no you are in 2009. And in Japan. And in my university.

For almost 6 months every night, speakers of the shokudo played The Carpenters, and only the Carpenters. Maybe they had only the “Greatest Hits of The Carpenters” CD, I don’t know. At first, this is fun. After a month, it becomes depressing. We students guessed it was maybe the chef’s favorite band.

But things become more bizarre when you go to the dental clinic, and what are they playing?? The Carpenters of course… A global conspiration? Japanese love for the Carpenters?

Google Japan returns 8 million links for 50 cent, 582 000 for Green Day and 319 000 for The Carpenters, so popularity might not be so huge after all, at least on the Internet (I guess the hardcord fans might be a bit old for internet now :p ).

All I can say is, now, wherever I go, I get a strange feeling when I hear the Carpenters… The music sounds like these old songs in horror movies…

Last but not least, the mega-bonus for the Carpenters fans, The Carpenters singing their hit “Sing” in Japanese:

This Nike commercial is a bit old, but original, though I don’t think the Japanese school uniforms are the best outfit to play basketball…

I love the part where one girl get elbowed. Finishes with “Doko made ikeru ka”, litterally “Until where can you go?” (How far can you go). At least I could understand 100% of the commercial, for once.

Some funny videos of people living dangerously. These videos all show people trying to dunk the ball into the basket, but sometimes it is harder than what you could imagine.

My selection of the best 5:

Ouch!

Didn’t even make it to the basket…

Just hilarious.

Only Shaq could own the basket…

This one is just crazy!

See the rest of the missed dunks here.

It’s always good to have basics: grammar, vocabulary, kanjis… But many people studying Japanese actually wonder why what they hear in the drama they are watching and their japanese book is so different.

Don’t look further, I got the perfect books for you. I saw them at the last floor of Tower Records, in Shibuya.

True Japanese Books

Ok, first, the best-seller for gaijins: “Making Out in Japanese“. Available here for example. Actually this book covers the “making out” part but also daily situations. Pretty interesting, and quite different from any of the textbooks you’ve ever read.

Then you have “Outrageous Japanese“. Available here for example. Funny. Apparently some parts are outdated but I’m no expert.

Last but not least, “The Real Japanese You Were Never Taught in School“. This one might actually be the most outdated.

The point is you don’t read these kind of books because you actually want to learn something, but because it’s funny.

In these books, there were sentences of the “Take it, bitch!”-style, or “Please hurry and come in me, I have a date with my boyfriend”. “Oh Johnny, you’re so great. I’m like the Niagara Falls down there.”

Things you will never use when speaking Japanese or that you will never use before asking a Japanese friend “Is that correct?”.

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Just check out the free goodies some employees receive:

Viagra Mouse

Of course, you might now Pfizer produces Viagra, but they laso have products such as Lipitor or Zyvox. But I guess only Viagra is known worldwide.

And just in case you did not see what is actually inside the blue liquid:

Pilules Viagra

It’s like when you are taking the bus, in case of emergency, just break the glass!

This post should have been written at least a month ago, but now it’s the beginning of a new term, therefore I have more time to allocate to this kind of stuff.

Some peopl thought IUJ was lacking of parties, especially in this quite dead Winter term. Therefore we came up with a party plan: first, the time and venue (not that we would have any sort of choice anyway in IUJ), then a theme for the party. We chose Black & White cause it is obviously very simple to organize, just ask people to wear black and white. We organized everything, started a party budget.

2 types of prices:

• 500 JPY and you would get all you can drink before the bar closes (only available before the party)
• 100 JPY if you buy a drink inside the party.

We even bought a blacklight:

Blacklight

After the planning, I created posters/flyers for the party:

Black & White Party

But we also wanted to invite people from our neighboor university: the Kitasato College (a nurse school). Therefore we made a Japanese flyer:

We finished our “marketing plan” with a video:

Overall the party was half a success, half a miss because:

- there was a snow festival on the same day, and students from IUJ came back at 22.30, being too tired to come to the party

- more students from the nurse college came than expected

Black & White