Virtual England in Japan

British Hills is a "virtual England" that was set up 11 years ago by a Japanese family who also run a private university and language school in Tokyo. They wanted students to have the ability to "escape" Japan and be immersed into an all-English environment within Japan. Interesting read. The JET Program is also mentioned in this article.

I would definitely agree with the view of how the English curriculum is structured at the high school level: As students get closer to graduation, they generally get stuck cramming for the College Entrance Exams. Classes become not only boring, but they tend to steer away from native English.

Learning Japanese

Are you looking for a way to study/learn Japanese? Then check this site out. They even offer up a dictionary containing Kansai-ben (dialect used in the Osaka region)!

Beard Papa

Move over, Krispy Kreme, now there's something better! Well, that's how some see it. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided I had to try the latest thing to come out of Japan. My wife and I went to a Beard Papa location while in NYC last weekend and when I bit into one of the cream puff morsels, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. Okay, not quite to that extreme, but it was really, really good! You have to make sure you eat it right when you buy it, though. Otherwise, it starts to go flat as time passes. Read the article and you'll see what I mean.