Ideasabound

I didn't drink coffee till I moves to Japan. I think it was 1) the trauma of spilling scalding McDonalds coffee on myself as child and 2) lack of flavor. Upon arriving in Japan, I was given coffee which was fragrant without extra exotic flavors like vanilla or mocha. It was simple yet wondrous. I couldn't reject it as I was a guest so I drank it and was pleasantly surprised. Since then I became a two cup a day coffee drinker. No sugar but I do add milk and I'm not a fan of flavors nor creamer. Of course in Japan you can get "American coffee". This is coffee with just a little more water than coffee. It's not heavy nor strong but just slightly weakened. While living abroad I had forgotten what real "American coffee" was like. That was until I got back home for the holidays. I was given a cup of coffee but all I tasted was hot watered down milk with an extremely distant flavor of something resembling coffee. Again not wanting to be rude I slowl...

For the first time in 6 years I traveled back to my central Wisconsin home of Marshfield for Christmas. I've been back to the US several times in between but it has been in summer. Last time, we came home to announce we were having our first child. Now we have three kids. Our youngest is 8 months old and will not remember a thing. Visiting my childhood home has been strange to say the least. It has not changed much except the trees are all grown in, the house has geothermal water heat, and there have been a few redecorations. The biggest change was the ride up from Milwaukee where we were staying with my sister. In my youth, the best way to get to Marshfield was to take a winding road north out of Mauston. Now we take a highway to Stevens Point and highway 10 across. Hwy 10 was a 2 lane road connecting eastern and western Wisconsin. Now it's a behemoth 4 lane super road with limited traffic. It cut the time drastically but didn't feel right. What felt weirder was when...

Last year I examined the length that Japanese Prime Ministers have remained in office. On Sunday December 17th, Japan replaced Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and the lower house of the government with members of the Liberal Democratic Party which is not really Liberal but ultra nationalistic and conservative. What does this mean? At the end of my last post on Japanese prime Ministers, I wished Noda good luck at lasting longer than one year. Well he did make it past 1 year in the number sense. The Noda government lasted 475 days. So now Japan will have a new Prime Minister...but wait we have had this guy before. Welcome back Shinzo Abe. Abe has, before even moving back into the Prime Minister's residence, pissed off China and Korea by claiming he wants to change the constitution so that Japan can have a standing army instead of a purely defensive one. Members of his party want to deny the atrocities Japan committed in WWII. But Japan is facing an economic crisis. The ...

Four horsemen of the apocalypse The Mayans said that the world would come to an end on December 21st, 2012. But I really wonder about this because of a few specific points 1) What about that Mayan Calendar " The Mayans employed three calendars, all organized as hierarchies of cycles of days of various lengths. " ( 1 ) The longest date is actually later than what would be December 21st 2012. If the world were to come to an end at this date, why create a calendar with longer dates? " The Mayans believed at at the conclusion of each  pictun cycle of about 7,885 years the universe is destroyed and re-created. Those with apocalyptic inclinations will be relieved to observe that the present cycle will not end until Columbus Day, October 12, 4772 in the Gregorian calendar."  ( 1 ) 2) It might not be 2012 Not everyone uses the same calendar. This means that in some cases we are way past the 21st day of the 12th month of the 2012th year. We have already m...

Working in social media marketing can be a challenge if you are new to it. Well it's a challenge, regardless, because sites are always changing, technology is always developing. Inbound Marketing requires an understanding of many different facets beyond posting quality content at the right time. It is an intense study of SEO, analytics, and content that will exert your authority in a field. I decided that I needed to study up a little more in a course system but didn't want to spend much or any money. As a fan of HubSpot , I decided to check out their Inbound Marketing University . There are 18 courses including videos, homework and tests. When it's all done, there is a test resulting in a certificate from the leader in Inbound Marketing; Hubspot.

Download the Handout  (PDF) Last night I had a fantastic time meeting up with a wonderfully energetic group of people working in Social Media Marketing, looking to get into it or just curious about it. Yesterday I posted the presentation that I was going to use. But during the day, as I thought about what the goal of the forum was, I decided to redo the entire presentation and focus on some core ideas. How to create a good content. What are the critical elements of an effective tweet. How to manage it all. How to analyze your social media's effectiveness for generating traffic. I found that on SlideShare, some images didn't quite work out so I created a silent movie version of the presentation in video format. When I have time, I will add my voice to it but nothing can compare to the Q&A that came during the actual presentation. If you have any questions, pose them to me here or on Twitter @ideasabound . Here is the SlideShare just for those who wo...

Tonight at 7:30pm (JST) at the ACCJ Office in Chubu, I will be part of a discussion on Social Media. I will talk about Twitter for business and strategies for getting seen and growing your following to generate and nurture B2C as well as B2B leads. You can join in using the hashtag #NGOibc. Below is the presentation I will be giving. No Audio but I bet you can guess what it is all about. Twitter for business basics from ideasabound

Social Media has brought a whole new way of engaging with your customers that has both benefits and pitfalls. Now firmly entrenched in the mainstream, social media is an essential element of a business's marketing toolkit.  Whether a professional marketer, social media enthusiast, or business person, this informal networking and information sharing session will bring together people to discuss the topic in as great a depth as the interest of the crowd will bear. Bring questions, answers, and a desire to participate. To start us off Mr. Justin Dart, Social Media Marketing Manager at JapanTourist.jp , will introduce some strategies for utilizing twitter effectively. This promises to be an interesting and informative event, and a great opportunity to network. As this event is designed to be an open forum of discussion, attendees are encouraged to bring any information that they wish to share, as well as any questions that they have. Although active participation is not...

Photo by Ceclia Chan   Every year the coordinators of the Namekuji (slug) festival ask me to start it off with an Odaiko solo called  "Hitoyosei". It is to call people to the main stage and get things going. I don't know if they ask me because I like playing solos and not afraid to perform or because I am the most visible foreigner in our community. Either way, for the past 5 or so years I have been starting the festival. Ever since I started Taiko, I have been playing with solos and mixing the feel of east and west. But when it comes to these solos, I try to stick to the foundation of Toko Ryu style taiko. This is the style of my group and many groups in the Mino basin (Gifu), a few in Hida (gifu), parts of Hokuriku (Fukui, Toyama, Ishikawa) and the Nagoya area. The big problem is that there are no formal "solos" or "hitoyose" for our group. So, I create them myself. I think of a feeling, look at how things have been in the weather and for th...

I woke up on my birthday and went to read the news. Those that know me well, know that I love space and science fiction. When I learned that Neil Armstrong had died, my first thought was not sadness but that he was old. After all people die; even the great ones and the heros. My second thought was that of the men who walked on the moon, only 8 remain. Buzz Aldrin (11), Al Bean (12), Edgar Mitchell (14), David Scott (15), John Young (16), Charles Duke (16), Gene Cernan (17), & Jack Schmitt (17). Of all the crews that flew on Apollo only the crews of 8, 9, 10, and 16 are all still with us. My birthday wish: Before all these men and the people who supported them leave us, we should be back in deep space. I would hope that before Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt die (last men to walk on the moon) that we land humans back on the Moon or on Mars. Neil Armstrong will always be remembered for Apollo 11 but we must remember he was also the commander of the first in-space emergency; G...

What is a life proof? A life proof is made by taking an everyday, ordinary event and connecting it to history, culture, religion, languages, food, countries and even the universe in 60 to 70 sentences but using 90% of your own knowledge.  Writing a life proof is easy.  Write a simple sentence about something you did. i.e. “I made Pesto .”  Now take the last 1, 2 or 3 words from that sentence to start the next sentence. Basically the direct object becomes the subject for the next sentence. “ Pesto is made with Basil.”  Now using your own trivial knowledge, connect it onward to other things.  By the 60th or so sentence you should be getting close to returning to the original subject.  Of course just saying, “I made pesto” proves you did it; especially if a picture is provided. But connecting your menial task to the events of time and the universe certainly makes your 10 minutes of pesto making far more exciting.  You can connect anythi...

Jinternet (n) =blend of the Japanese word for people “jin” (人/hito) and “internet”. 人ターネット An ever growing network of friends of different backgrounds and walks of life from which one can share life lessons and knowledge. To jinternet (v) the process of meeting new people, sitting, talking, asking questions, listening and learning. Jinternetting is done in person. Neat and Simple, isn't it? Well I wish I could take full credit for it but I cannot. The idea of Jinternet came from a local friend by the name of Kusakabe Katsuhiko, a carpenter and father of three. While on a taiko and shishimai trip to Ise Shrine, we became acquainted and shared many perspectives on the world. He has not seen much of the world but grasps ideas through meeting people. He said, “I can’t use the internet worth a damn but I can use the Jinternet pretty darn well.” He explained that people use the internet to look things up and learn. He prefers to ask questions and listen. He knows that if the perso...

Do you eat? It's a simple question, right? Of course you eat. If you don't, you're not reading this and more likely dead. To many people, eating is the process of just putting food in your mouth, chewing and swallowing. It's a basic process of getting energy to survive. While dining, on the other hand, is a slower process and usually fancier too. What I am addressing is that action in daily life; the consumption of breakfast, lunch and dinner. In many cultures meals are still times to sit with family, friends and co-workers to build those relationships. It's a slow enjoyable process. In Japan before you eat you say "Itadakimasu" which is like saying "thank you for preparing this meal" and at the end you say "Gochisosamadeshita" which is like saying "It was a pleasure to have this meal". In reality what you're saying at the beginning and end is "thank you earth, thank you animals, thank you sun, thank you plants,...

Cultural Immersion comes in 10 types.  We tend to think of cultural immersion as one big leap into another cultural. But in reality there are possibly 10 different levels of cultural immersion. Each one is regulated by our own desires to step outside of our comfort zones and try new things. 1) Superficial Going out to a Chinese restaurant 2) Partially Simulated Foreign language class or local cultural festival, Foreign language radio and television, via Internet download / streaming, shortwave radio, or FTA satellite. 3) Simulated Example:  Concordia Language Villages 4) Limited Taking a trip abroad 5) Semi-Limited Backpacking abroad 6) Semi-Intensive University Study Abroad 7) Limited Intensive Living abroad in an urban location 8) Intensive High School Exchange Program 9) Semi-Extreme Living abroad in a rural location and have limited outside contact 10) Extreme Living or studying abroad in a rural location completely off the technology grid The lines b...

If the goal now is to land humans to Asteroids and Mars, we had better give ourselves the ability to develop and test technology and procedures as well as train astronauts for the challenge of flying in space. Currently Russia in cooperation with the European Space Agency and China are looking at the psychological aspects of a flight to Mars. But it does not include flying but just being locked in a big Earth-bound simulator. We know the effects of long-term micro-gravity exposure in space through the ISS and Russia’s multiple space stations like MIR. President Obama has called for pushing technology so we can get places faster. In the near future, a plasma engine is going to be brought to the ISS for testing. But the ISS doesn’t fly the way a spacecraft would. It doesn’t need to change orbit, plane nor change orientation and speed. We need a spacecraft that actually tests out the plasma engine in orbit doing more advanced maneuvers. Of course this can be done unmanned but event...