A Journey to the Levant
As one can probably guess Humus cannot be found easily in Japan.
So, I had no choice but to prepare my own. Found receipts in Israeli websites, decided on two which looked good and combined them into one.
Ingredients:
Humus – Bought from Basement of Takashimaya Futako Tamagawa – 500gr
Tehina – A Japanese version of tehina which is sweeter. Note to self, bring more Tehina from Israel.
In water for more than 12 hours:
After cooking:
Ready:
Wanted to write about my experience getting a Japanese driving License, but found this Get a Driver’s License guide to be quite complete.
I actually wish I read it before the process. It took me one written tests and two driving tests to get my license.
Two observations:
That’s it. HMV Shibuya closed. Report from Yomiuri
What?
Exactly that!
Posters around my neighborhood (Kawasaki, Japan) announce a “Whale Festival”, goals are :
知ろう - Know
食べよう – Eat
考えよう – Consider
Not sure what to do about this, but at least I have put it on the web.
This is not a first, but I experienced it myself last night.
As I was attending last night’s Geeks on a Plane event, the adjoining space was being used to shoot a Promotional Video (PV) for an unknown (didn’t ask their name) band.
3 DSLR cameras were being used with different lenses (from wide angle to Zoom).
Here are the Photos:
And a Video:
HMV Shibuya posted a sign notifying customers that the shop will close in August.
In the past few months HMV already gave up the top floor for a guitar shop, but the end came faster than expected.
Open Network Lab is a new incubation lab for Internet based Startups.
I joined last week’s meeting with Ryan Holmes, HootSuite CEO and Japanese Shinnichi Fujikawa, founder of Movatwi.
Open Network Lab goal is to encourage innovation and Internet based Start-Ups, which may explain the 40 minutes long panel on “How Engineers can start Companies”.
HootSuite recently launched a Japanese version of their service,with the aid of Digital Garage which is heavily invested in the Twitter phenomena and related tools/services.
To me it seems Open Network Lab is the right tool for the current economic and social situation in Japan. In the past few months I have met many Engineers, Innovators excited to start their own companies, but fail in two things:
While waiting for my train to arrive, I noticed a Tattoo in Hebrew behind her ear. Tattoos are not common in Japan, let alone visible ones.
I Just had to take a Photo, which she agreed to without hesitation.
Meaning of Tattoo – מופלא (Moofla) is: Wonderful, Exceptional, Mysterious.
As previously reported, Israeli Startup Altair Semiconductors was supposed to Supply chips to Willcom’s XGP network .
XGP was never a world-wide standard, but Willcom’s attempt to keep PHS alive. It now looks like XGP (or Advanced PHS) will not be deployed.
Willcom announced today their plan to file for bankruptcy (See Japan Times and NYT for more details) after a steady decline of their customer base.
I don’t know what kind of commitments Altair Semi received from Willcom, but I certainly hope their WiMAX and LTE business will be more successful.
I failed JLPT Level 2 test.
Now, it may seem something that one would not want to share on a blog or brag about. But, the thing is, I DID NOT STUDY AT ALL for the test. In the 9 months since I arrived to Japan I attended maybe 20 hours of formal Japanese lessons.
Considering the above, the results I got are quite impressive.
Kanji/Vocabulary – 38/100
Reading/Grammar – 80/200- Very surprising, considering I couldn’t really read the text
I am mostly proud of Listening test results: 64/100
