After sakura (cherry) comes “fuji” (wisteria)
Fuji, or wisteria in English. One of my favourite flowers. This photo was taken by one of the Nara Lady English bloggers, narastoryteller. She provides some interesting history about wisteria in Japan, as well as some stunning photos in her post “Lady Purple”.
Fuji or wisteria. Photo by narastoryteller
Brooks Duncan of DocumentSnap’s latest video tip
DocumentSnapper Brooks Duncan is my guru for matters related to going paperless. And one reason I subscribe to his blog is for videos like this one. Brooks is constantly learning new technologies and playing around with them and learning their little tricks, then creating short and simple videos like this one on Dropbox (a popular online storage site) for the non-geeks like me. (If you’re not yet a signed up Dropbox member – it’s free! – , consider signing up here: http://db.tt/ZsMVfdVi; you’ll be giving me some free Dropbox storage space as well as yourself. Did I tell you it was free?)
Brooks’ explanations are free of technical jargon (tho he’s assuming a certain familiarity with the basics of a pc and the Internet), short and to the point.
If you’re thinking of going paperless, or just started, and feel in need of some experienced advice, I recommend Brooks Duncan’s 7-part free email course. Sign up on his home page.
And if you like that, and are already on the paperless road, check out his Document Organization Guides. He has three at 3 different prices. There’s sure to be one that fits your needs and your wallet. (Disclosure: I’m an affiliate, so if you buy one from this site, I get a commission.)
If you want to see which files have changed in your Dropbox account at a point in time, or if you want to undelete a file that you may have accidentally deleted, you can do both of these things through the web interface.View the video below, or click here to watch it on YouTube. If you are able to, I recommend that you watch it with HD turned on.
Cherry blossom season not quite over
I thought the season was over, but Sarah shows me it’s not. Stunning photos. The “Matabe” cherry tree is well worth a visit, if you are in Nara at that time of year.
Please read, “Spring is (still) in full swing 2″.
Matabe-Cherry tree after 後藤又兵衛（Goto Matabe). He was a samurai warrior around 17 century. Photo by Sarah
One Time One Meeting: Mysterious Field and Sakura
deer in the mist. Photo by One Time, One Meeting author Narastoryteller
Mysterious Field and Sakura
From the morning mist, the deer appear one by one.
Read more and see more photos on One Time One Meeting: Mysterious Field and Sakura.
Tribute to cherry blossom
Taken at the Yamato Bunka-kan museum, Nara, April 10th, 2012. Click any image to see a larger version. The day was overcast. My friend Cosmos went the day before and had sunshine. See her photos on Cosmos English Writing blog.
My friend Narastoryteller took some lovely photos of cherry trees in the rain. See Sakura, Sakura.
weeping cherry or "shidare zakura" 枝垂れ桜
Many Japanese will tell you, until you are sick of hearing it, that Japanese love the cherry blossom because it represents the short life of the samurai; the brief span of the blossom gives it a poignant beauty. But when I stood in front of this weeping cherry, I felt the cherry trees will be here for ever. Only I will not be.
Miharu Takizakura
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.
Blogger Green Tomato posted photos of cherry trees she saw Here and There.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.(“I Sit and Think” by J.R.R. Tolkien)
Sarah took photos of Spring in Full Swing in Nara and Osaka.
Stardust took photos of Sagi-ike Pond reflections with sakura.
Chambered Nautilus took photos of flowers in her garden before venturing out on a fine day in spring and taking photos in Kyoto and Osaka, including photos of the cherry trees along the Kamogawa river. She writes tanka (Japanese poetry) and even translates them into English for you, so there’s no excuse not to visit!
To be continued…
Springpad Smarter Notebooks Smarter Sharing A Smarter Way to Get Things Done Review | Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog
Dan Gold has produced another $5 eBook, this time on Springpad. If, like me, you’re not sure what Springpad is, then check out their homepage first.
I haven’t checked out either Springpad or Dan’s new book, but alert Brooks Duncan has, and what’s more, he’s written a very useful review.
Personally, I don’t feel tempted to try out something that sounds like Evernote but why change?
Dan’s eBooks seem popular. I just sold another today from this site, and I’m only getting barely 150 visitors/day. That’s half-a-dozen sold in just 10 days.
Be sure to check out Brooks’ own excellent Paperless Document Organization Guide while you’re there.
If you’re just thinking about going paperless, tho, don’t buy the guide just yet, but start off with Brooks’ free 7-part email course which you can sign up for on his homepage. This will give you a good idea of what’s involved, and help you decide if you want to go for it or not.
Believe me, going paperless is a major, long-term project; but it’s also do-able and with good advice like you get from Brooks’ course, it can be less stressful than you think and actually more enjoyable than you imagine.
Now, ready for Springpad? Read Brooks’ review of Dan’s eBook before you leap.
Cherry blossom viewing? There’s an app for that! Check out the “hanami” app for iPhone & Android
People in Japan love cherry blossom, especially standing or sitting under it and getting drunk just enjoying its intoxicating sight and perfume, which activity is called “hanami” 花見 (literally “flower-watching”).
Cherry blossom is rather later this year than usual. Must be global warming. Wait. Maybe global cooling? No, that idea was dumped in the ’70s. Climate change. That’s it. Must be.
Last year, the cherry blossom was in full bloom, or “mankai” 満開 for entrance ceremonies the first week of April.
Sakura - cherry blossom - blooming on a Kansai campus, April 6th, 2011
This year, full-bloom is this week in many parts of Kansai. Last week, Mike Rogers and friends had a hanami-party beside a Tokyo river, proving that you don’t need a whole lot of cherry blossom to have a great party.
But where to go to see the blossom at its best? Dates vary with geography and type of cherry tree.
Here’s the answer:the “hanami” app for iPhone and Android!
the "Hanami" app for iPhone and Android
日本全国1000か所以上のお花見スポットを収録。開花状況ひとめでわかる。
via 無料のiPhone＆Androidアプリ「お花見ナビ2012」- お花見特集2012 – Yahoo! JAPAN.
“1,000 + hanami spots in the palm of your hand. See the stage of blooming at a glance.”
(In Japanese only, maybe.)
One of my earliest memories in Japan is visiting a friend in April. Walking around the small town with his wife and his two young daughters, we came to a field with a big old cherry tree in it. We wandered over, sat down, popped the sake bottles, and just enjoyed watching the petals flutter down and the children playing in the warm sunshine. No blue sheets, no karaoke, no drunken shouting. Just the magic of the blossom and the sunlight playing on open hearts.
For some great photos and a little culture, and all in English, please visit
- Through the Sapphire Sky and read Cherry Blossoms around the Imperial Palace,
- Cosmos English Writing Blog and read Miracle Maker
- Chambered Nautilus’ blog and read beneath some cherry trees
Evernote + iPad? You need offline notebooks
iPad/iPhone Evernote offline settings
If you’re using Evernote, unless your iPad is 3G and connected to the Innernet-thingy 24/7, you’ll need offline notebooks.
What are offline notebooks? I’m glad you asked! They’re notebooks that you can read even while off-line, that is, even when not connected to the Innernet-thingy. Which in my case is most of the time. My iPad is useful, but it let me down badly when I discovered that my zillion Evernotes were invisible on my iPad: “This note could not be shown because iPad is not connected to the Innernet-thingy”. Swot it said, right there on the screen, when I was in my meeting and I fired up my iPad2. And I was awake and everything, all dressed up but nowhere to go.
So as I’m in a charitable mood, I thought I’d write a post on offline notebooks and how to create them and everything. But then I changed my mind and decided to send you to Hickey’s brilliant post Did You Know: How to Access Notes Without an Internet Connection
U.S. Tax Burden: 40 Million Government Workers. Is Japan better off?
How many people work for governments in the United States? Let’s look at the numbers.
via Tax Burden: 40 Million Government Workers. Answer: 40 million, according to a study by Prof. Paul Light of New York University.
A little top-heavy maybe?
Top-heavy?
How many people work for governments in Japan? Last month, Saving Japan author Peter Dyloco compared the two countries Japan and the U.S. in terms of their populations and the percentage that is employed by the government. His estimate for the US was 1.7 million.
Perhaps the figure for Japan is also much higher than the 1 million Saving Japan quotes.
Some states are discovering they cannot afford to pay all the workers that they hire. According to Mish, “In a much needed development U.S. Local Governments Cut Payrolls to Lowest Level Since 2006″
Will local governments in Japan have to fire their workers? Few people seem to be considering this possibility. It seems to be another of those “impossible” scenarios that actually happened last year. The Japanese phrase is “soutei-gai” 想定外 unimaginable, completely unpredictable.
But it’s happening in the U.S., in a country that, according to pundits, has an economy that is recovering.
Recovering?
And so is Japan’s:
Recovering?
More Executives Say Japanese Economy Is Improving.
According to a quarterly survey compiled by The Nikkei on Saturday, 58.6% of respondents said the domestic economy is growing, a significant increase from the 38.6% seen in the previous survey from December.
Dan Gold’s popular eBook “Evernote®: The unofficial eBook” is selling like hot cakes
Mouth-watering mini white chocolate cheesecakes! Yum
Dan Gold’s e-book Evernote®: The unofficial eBook to capturing everything and getting things done! is selling like hot cakes.
"Evernote: How to capture everything and Get Things Done" by Dan Gold
It’s just $5, and it gives you a brief but useful guide to setting up Evernote to work as a Getting Things Done (GTD) tool, for both capturing ideas and “next-action” items, and for keeping track of projects and complete items, how to use tags and avoid over-tagging, tips on notebooks, etc., all with a GTD focus. Click the link or the image on the left to read more about it.
I use Evernote, rather than OneNote. I tried OneNote for a while when my Evernote account froze up, due to the dastardly reason that I was too cheap to cough up the 450 yen/month (4,000 yen/year) for the Premium account. I tried OneNote and I liked the pretty colours and tabs, but I missed the cloud functionality of Evernote. I use Evernote on both work and home desktops and on my iPad (and more recently on my iPhone, too), and all my notes are automatically updated in the cloud. I found OneNote less satisfactory in that regard, as I wrote in an earlier blog-post: “OneNote vs Evernote
Dan Gold’s eBook is not an introduction to how to Evernote. For that, you need THE Evernote guide, Bret Kelly’s Evernote Essentials, 2nd edition.
Brett Kelly's Evernote Essentials. Click image to read more
And if you know little or nothing about GTD, Dan’s guide is probably not the best place to start. The best place would be THE SOURCE: David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Brett Kelly’s guide can be used like a manual: read it through before you open the “box” and start using Evernote, or dipped into when you want to know something esoteric, like how to encrypt the text in a note.
If you have read Dave Allen’s book or are familiar with GTD and would like to know how 1 person (Dan Gold) has set up Evernote to work with GTD, then Dan’s eBook is for you. Dan is a very enthusiastic guy, and his positive feeling pervades his book. He writes simply and with humour.
And his eBook is selling very well. I want to promote books or products I use myself and made by people I respect. Click the image below to find out more about Brooks Duncan’s Paperless Document Organization Guide (for Mac- and Windows-users).
