Curious Customs: Tips for Visiting Japan, Part 2

Advantages: A great adventure
Disadvantages: Leave that handkerchief at home!

...Welcome to the second part of my top ten tips for visitors to Japan. As this follows on from Part 1 (surprisingly enough), I'll be kicking off with number 6. By the way, in case you haven't read Part 1 I'll just mention that gaijin is Japanese for foreigner. <6> ◄Eating in Japan► Japan is home to one of the one of the world's great cuisines and the Japanese are passionate about food; indeed it is a bigger topic of conversation in Japan than the weather is in Britain. Japanese food is a huge subject and as I'm only offering a few tips for travellers here I can only scratch the surface. I should perhaps mention that my Japanese friends have persuaded me to try just about every weird and wonderful culinary concoction imaginable and I've never suffered any ill effects. Often the things I could barely bring myself to put in...

Mitsudan 22.08.2007 · Read review
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Review of Customs (Japan)

Konnichiwa! Tips for Visiting Japan Part 3

Advantages: Successful communication feels like an achievement
Disadvantages: It pays to invest some time and effort

... <10> Communication Welcome to the third and final part of my top ten tips for visitors to Japan. Having looked last time at the potential pitfalls for gaijin (foreigners) in blowing their noses and taking a bath amongst other hazards, this time I'm dealing with the biggest minefield of the lot - the all-important business of communication. So here is tip number 10. The Devil's Language? The brick wall up against which most foreign visitors come in Japan when trying to communicate is of course the Japanese language itself. It's said that in the sixteenth century the missionary St Francis Xavier, on discovering the difficulty westerners had in deciphering a single word spoken or written by the Japanese people, concluded that Japanese had been devised by the devil to prevent Christian missionaries from doing their good...

Mitsudan 25.02.2008 · Read review
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Review of General: Japan

Japan delivered to your door

Advantages: All things Japanese for the discerning British shopper
Disadvantages: In store labelling/signage isn't the best

...*Japan is now apparently in the centre of London!* Japan Centre is a series of businesses based in London Piccadilly, with the stated aim of having Japan 'delivered to your door'. It's an absolutely wonderful idea for a diverse range of people: from someone looking to take their first tentative steps towards trying sushi, or for crazed Japanophiles who can't cope without a weekly supply of edamame, sake and good quality sushi rice. All under one roof you can find a retail store, a popular website for ordering Japanese goods, a restaurant, sushi classes, Japanese recipes (in English), a user forum and a bilingual recruitment agency. Much as I love Japanese cuisine I can't speak more than ten words of Japanese, so this review will focus on the retail and online stores and some of the added extras offered on their site (www...

edinburgher 14.09.2009 · Read review
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Review of Japan Centre

Wii music

Advantages: Learn about instruments
Disadvantages: Not interesting enough for me

...I love my Nintendo Wii and love playing new and different games on it. I recently played the Wii Music but unfortunately this was one game that I really did not like. Wii music was released in 2008 and allows players to simulate playing with real musical instruments. You use either the Wii remote or the nunchuk to play the instruments. THe disappointment for me was that the instruments were just not realistic enough. For example, I love Wii Sports because I think the tennis, bowling and actually all the games are really realistic and it feels like you are actually there playing the game. With the Wii Instruments it did not feel like you had a real instrument in your hands and also the Mii characters on the screen just did not react well to the movements. It was more of a chore trying to play the instruments and I gave up pretty soon...

Spottydog11 23.06.2009 · Read review
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Review of Wii Music (Wii)

BOSE: Music for the soul

Advantages: Great sound quality, perfet at loud volumes, just in general FANTASTIC
Disadvantages: none so far

...Anything made by BOSE can be trusted. Its sound quality is always at its best, no matter what soundsystem you use from bose, and it's true... you get what you pay for. Jus plug it in and press "ON" and you're set up! IT'S THAT EASY! bose is a big brang name, and everyone expects the best from, and how right they are. The sounddocks simplistic design brings out the best of your mp3 player, making it the whole music experience that much better. For (at most) £300, you are getting exactly what you pay for AND more! The bose soundock has an inate wonder within itself, which brings you to appreciate the minor details embedded into whatever track you are listening to. Its reasonably light weight, comes with an easy to use remote and from there onwards, it really is just you and your music i can easily say that the best thing about...

joshm12 30.05.2008 · Read review
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Review of Bose SoundDock Digital Music System

Kyoto, the OLD capital of Japan.

Advantages: Cheap area, gorgeous attractions and temples, good for short visits!
Disadvantages: Limited activity so best for -5 day visits.

...I visited Japan at the end of this July, and have only just returned. I must say it was the holiday of a lifetime. Flights cost £900 each via British Airways. We visited Kyoto for 3 days. We got there via Shinkansen from Tokyo, and stayed at the New Miyako hotel, just over the road from Kyoto station. Kyoto was absolutely gorgeous and very easy to navigate around. You can get just about anywhere you want to from Kyoto Station. There are buses, subway trains etc. 220 yen is all you need for a bus ride to anywhere along the Kyoto bus lines. That works out at around £1. You just hop on the bus and pay when you get off. We visited Toei movie land which was a bit of a dissapointment. www.eigamura30.com. Looking at brochures we expected amazing movie scenes etc but it left a lot to be desired. A lot of it was shut off, and most...

Jellypigs 18.08.2008 · Read review
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Review of Kyoto (Japan)

Recommended places to visit in Japan

Advantages: Great places to visit, many things to do, new technologies
Disadvantages: some things are pricey especially the latest technologies, jet lag

...hotels. If a picture of a room was illuminated this meant that this particular den was free. There were all sorts of weird and wonderful rooms in which to make beautiful music - ones with water or mirrors and even the more bizarre ones. Apparently, as many Japanese apartments are overcrowded, the Love Hotels also act as a sanctuary for parents who want some special time together away from their children. I needn't draw pictures. Most amusing of all was the fact most couples used one door to enter the hotel and another to exit. When you see a couple coming out of a door in the middle of a wall into the street with wet hair busy tucking their tops in - then it didn't take Einstein to guess where they had been. These Love Hotels obviously well suit Japan's amorous populous, yet given the fact that the population growth is slowing in Japan...

rambo 01.05.2005 · Read review
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Review of General: Japan

Nokia 5800 touch screen music phone

Advantages: Quick and easy to use
Disadvantages: Can get damaged easily

...The 5800 XpressMusic is a revolution for Nokia with it being the first touch screen phone produced by the manufacturer. With its slim lined shape it is an easy phone to hold and to use. The stylus being made of plastic makes the phone as light as possible and easy to hold and to use with the screen. The back of the phone can be removed without out fuss to get at the battery and the SIM card which is slotted into the side of the phone but only removable by removing the back and the battery. The Nokia 5800 takes a micro SD memory card that can go up to 16GB in size that also slots into the side of the phone that the SIM goes in. The general use of this phone is simple and to task with many shortcuts through menus including the 4 buttons on the front of the phone one of which opens a shortcut menu for media applications including music...

Halflighter 30.05.2009 · Read review
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Review of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

A Wii bit musically challenged

Advantages: See Pros in review
Disadvantages: See Cons in review

... Wii MUSIC I think that Wii Music is a tricky game to review. When I purchased it for my son at Christmas, I visualised a Christmas with all the family joining in and enjoying the game, somehow that didn't really materialise. I can't really decide exactly what Wii Music is - is it a game, or is it a music sim? For anyone who is looking for a game like Guitar Hero they will be disappointed. I think many people thought that this game would teach them how to play an instrument but that is not what it is about, Wii Music is actually about the joy of making music. The emphasis seems to lie in having a good time, at the expense of everything else. Whatever you do, you're never told that you did something wrong or given any negative comments at all. What the game actually does is to the Nintendo Wii's motion...

oldchem 14.08.2009 (23.08.2009) · Read review
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Review of Wii Music (Wii)

nokia 5800 express music, a great phone!

Advantages: so many great features and looks great!
Disadvantages: took me a while to work out where the sim card went! but thats probably just down to me, lol

...cool, it shows you where you are and your able to find local services on the maps, like garages and car parks. Really cool! I also like the way you are able to cut together to video clips and add a soundtrack and then you can upload it to the web! The video and pictures are really clear and colour perfect. You can load these to the computer or show them through your tv. The mp3 ringtones are crystal clear in sound, and the headphones you get with the phone are good too. Your also able to plug your phone into the computer and download music to your phone. The menu display is good and its easy to find what you want. It comes with three games, bounce touch, a guitar game and a car racing game, all good but takes a while to get the hang of the touch screen with the games. You get earphones, a extra stylus, a plecktrum (to use instead...

xblondebarbiex 25.03.2009 · Read review
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Review of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic