When you’re looking for a laptop, keep in mind that they’re different from desktop PCs. A desktop PC can basically be just a plain box full of hardware (and they often are), and be perfectly satisfactory for most people. This is because the bits that you look at, and touch, and use – monitor, keyboard, and mouse – are all interchangeable. Don’t like ‘em? You can buy better ones. The build-quality and design of the case itself is less important, because it doesn’t get moved about much, and in some cases it’ll be stuck out of sight to save on desk space.

A laptop is totally different. For some, their laptop will be the computer that travels with them everywhere, that is expected to fit easily into a bag, and get pulled out of it again at a moments notice, required to start quickly and work well immediately. Because they’re portable, their size, external design, and being light but durable and well-constructed can be all important. Because of their all-in-one design, their screen, keyboard, and pointing device (mouse/trackpad/trackball/touchscreen etc.) are usually not interchangeable and are thus really important. A laptop is probably going to be the most personal Personal Computer that you’ll ever use, so get it right, and think hard about your purchase.

1. Think hard about where/how you want to use it.
   …and ask yourself whether the one you’re looking at will do that well. In particular:
   - Is it portable and light enough?
   - Does it have the features you want/need? Do you know what features you need?
2. Is it powerful enough?
   Will it still be powerful enough once software gets more demanding in 6 months time? Do you want to use it for games? If so, you’re best off with power to burn. If you don’t know much about computer specs, look for the processor clock speed and number of cores (clock speed = “x ghz” or ” x.x ghz” etc. Number of cores usually = “dual” or “quad” at the moment. In both cases more = better), memory (aka. “RAM” – “x gb” or “xx gb” eg. 2gb, 4gb, 8gb. More = better), and storage space (something like “xxx gb” or “x tb”, generally followed by HDD or “hard disk”. More = better). If you ever want to do ANY gaming, look for the words “ATI” or “NVIDIA” in the specs, followed by a model number and another memory (“xxx mb”) amount. More is better.
3. Make sure it’s well-built.
   Look hard at what the case is made of. High-end laptops may use metal instead of plastic, but that’s not universally true or necessarily better. Does it look flimsy or easily damaged/scratched? Push it, pull it, try and rattle it (GENTLY!). Imagine what’s going to happen to it when you drop your bag on the ground, or when it falls off a desk, or when somebody’s 2 year-old gets at it. Imagine it after 2 years of the hardest wear you’d ever subject it to.
4. Try out the TRACKPAD.
   Or other pointing device. Maybe you “hate those things” (if so, you’ve probably never used a decent one), and think you’ll just carry a mouse with you. Sure, but that’s one more otherwise needless thing to carry, and what happens on the day that you don’t have it? Spare yourself, spend some time in the store playing with the trackpad, seeing how quickly you can click on small fiddly stuff, and ask yourself honestly if you could live with it. Myself? I find the trackpad on my Macbook Pro better than a mouse.
5. Try out the keyboard.
   Type a sample paragraph as fast as possible, or sign on to IM and have a conversation with that IM chatterbox friend of yours who actually paid attention in typing classes. If you find yourself cursing aloud, making mistakes, and becoming enraged, consider that these are not good signs.
6. Screen.
   Do images look nice? Can you read it comfortably? Is it bright? Is it so glossy that any light source will make it an expensive mirror? Consider the lighting in the store, consider where you will use it, and if need be tilt or rotate the laptop so it’s facing a light source and see what happens. Try adjusting the brightness – see how far up it goes, should you ever want to use it outside.
7. Speakers
   Are you ever planning to use it for movies/games/music without headphones or external speakers? Does it sound reasonable? Don’t be shy, start some music or video playing, and see how high you can crank the volume without it distorting.
8. Look at price second.
   Do yourself a favour – don’t penny-pinch. “You get what you pay for” and paying for cheap crap usually gets you cheap crap (er…surprise?). Also, don’t assume that just because a laptop is more expensive, that it’s better. Look at everything else on this list first, THEN look at the price.
9. Research the manufacturer’s warranty and customer support.
   Try this: in the store, or at home, google the manufacturers name and “support” or “warranty” and maybe “nightmare”. Evaluate the anger and profanity content that you find in the search results that come from customers.
10. For Gods sake, don’t buy a netbook.
    Friends don’t let friends buy netbooks. A controversial statement maybe, but unless you have a primary computer already, and you specifically REALLY WANT a cheap, drastically underpowered computer with a tiny hard-to-read screen, keyboard apparently designed for inhumanly slender goblin-like fingers, unusable trackpad, and useless tinny speakers, don’t buy one. Seriously. There are incredibly light, portable laptops available with fantastic screens, keyboards, and pointing devices, and power to burn. Why not buy one, and not need to replace it in a years time?
11. Consider buying a Mac.
    Dismiss me if you must, but I don’t think that other manufacturers come anywhere close to matching Apple for laptop build-quality and design – try putting a macbook or macbook pro next to another laptop in the store and check out the construction and design side by side. They’re also usually pretty powerful and well-rounded for features. It was Apple that convinced me that laptops didn’t need to suck.

In short – find laptops that are well-built and suit your needs, and buy the most powerful one at a price you can (barely?) live with.

In actual news, I’ve been on hiatus longer than planned. I took a brief run at writing a daily zombie poetry blog (“Verse of the Living Dead”) which you can find over http://zombiepoems.tumblr.com. I’ll still submit stuff there when the mood takes me, and you can too, but I’m finding these days that I have more thoughts suitable for this blog.

On the topic of this blog, I have plans! I’m planning to broaden the focus a bit (or stop pretending that it was ever narrow) and write more personal stuff, and posts that relate to other topics. I’m also going to change my post schedule a little bit – henceforth I promise you a guaranteed one post a week, probably on Saturdays. I may exceed that though. Anyway, hope you’ll stop buy and read.

Obviously, despite my assurances that I was “back” I haven’t posted here in forever. Fear not – I haven’t abandoned this blog. I have a head full of posts, just haven’t had the time or inclination to write them. The summer vacation has provided some rare opportunities to spend some time with my girlfriend, and anyone who chooses blogging over spending time with their awesome girlfriend or boyfriend, needs to get their head checked

I also have a fantastic idea for a reasonably ambitious Super-Secret creative project, which should take up most of September. Details as soon as I decide upon them, but I’m hoping it’ll be awesome.

See you in October!

If you’re here looking for the digital copy of the Japanese Study Resource Guide, here it is. Also, I’d like to say an enormous thank you if you were one of the people who came and watched the Independent Japanese Study presentation at Tokyo Orientation A or B.

Finally, I hope you enjoy the blog. It’s still young, but this blog is a place where I hope to write some interesting stuff on approaches to language learning, my own progress in Japanese, and other stuff. Now that I’ll be back to a semi-regular update schedule, I hope you’ll stick around, and find something that interests you.

I’m sorry people – the fact is that I’ve been so inconsistent of late due to a large number of changes in my work and personal life occurring pretty much simultaneously. I don’t have many readers – but I do hope that those of you who read my posts on a regular basis will stick around after after I come back in a weeks time.

So on that topic; I’ve been feeling pretty good about my Japanese, recently. My comprehension seems to be coming along pretty well – I’ve been feeling even more like I can track what’s going on and understand the majority of what is said, without needing to strain my brain to the point of cerebral haemorrhage. One thing that’s seemed to go surprisingly well for me is dating in Japanese. That’s not a boast, but for all that I was more-than-usual terrified before my first date with a Japanese girl (one who spoke little or no English), it seemed to go pretty well.…of course, who am I to know? That night may have gone well, but after the next date, she never called me again. I’ve been in an awesome mood for the past couple of weeks though, after some dates went well with the awesome girl (henceforth referred to as “ze Girl”) who’s now my girlfriend

Okay, maybe that bit is a boast, but cut me some slack, I’m a happy man. What makes me curious though, is why dates conducted almost totally in Japanese have gone better than expected  - I guess there are a few possible explanations, some of which may give heart to nervous and amorous wannabee polyglots everywhere.

One is that when someone has agreed to come out on a date with you, the chances seem good that they’re at least a bit into you, and thus willing to work through the language barrier in conversation. Also, if you’re really attracted to somebody, any need for eloquence can sometimes take a back seat to, you know, gazing longingly into their eyes etc. etc.

Another is that dates are (generally…) a one-on-one affair (I know what you’re thinking right now – get that out of your filthy mind!), and as other foreign-language speakers might agree, that’s a very different situation to trying to communicate and socialise in a group. This got really driven home to me the other weekend, when my girlfriend and I went out to an event together at which a few of my ALT friends were present.

When ze Girl and I are alone together (filthy mind! *slap*) we love to talk, and we have very few problems understanding each other – I think because we’re both into the conversation enough to slow down, repeat things, and really work through the language barrier. Which is the way it should be, and a pleasant refresher in comparison to the way other Japanese people sometimes deal with a language barrier – ie. FREAK OUT!, frantically apologise, and search desperately for the nearest semi-fluently bilingual Japanese person (when all I really wanted was for you to repeat what you just said, only SLOWER… ).

Meeting my friends at this party was a totally different kettle of fish. I mean, we both had fun, but I don’t know that either of us was terribly comfortable (and not least of all because my most recent ex was also present. AWKWARD). On the face of it, this might seem kind of weird, because in some ways this was the best possible crowd we could have hoped for at a group event – a mix of ALTs (ie. professional language-barrier pole-vaulters, all of whom live in Japan, and speak SOME Japanese), and their Japanese friends or girl/boy friends (mostly speak SOME english, also hip w/ the L-barrier). Somehow though, I don’t feel it quite worked. Maybe it was the “new-couple” pressure on top of everything else.

At any rate, ze Girl didn’t feel comfortable conversing in English (expected, since her English is worse than my Japanese, and speech between native speakers is very hard to follow), and while I was comfortable tackling things in Japanese, I had difficulties following a group-conversation between native-speakers and better-at-Japanese-than-me ALTs. Unlike our private conversations, I didn’t feel like I could slow-down or stop the conversation when something wasn’t clear. I think the new-couple pressure also kicked in – if it were just a friend, I probably would have been unconcerned with looking like a fool while trying to communicate (shit – don’t I always?). As it was a new girlfriend, though… to some degree, my thoughts were: “LOOK, HERE IS MY NEW GIRLFRIEND. LOOK HOW SUCCESSFUL OUR RELATIONSHIP IS! BEHOLD HOW EASILY WE COMMUNICATE!”

Part of this insecurity probably stems from my feeling constantly on the defensive against the “charisma-man” stereotype. You know the one… but if you don’t, its the oft-repeated assertion that foreign guys dating Japanese girls has more to do with exoticism, objectification, and sexism on both sides than any genuine affection or more-than-skin-deep attraction between the couple, or any social skills whatsoever on the part of the foreign/western guy. It apparently takes its name from a geeky and undesirable webcomic character who undergoes a magical transformation into the hero “Charisma-Man” upon arriving in Japan. In some versions, the guys lack anything real in the way of Japanese language skills in addition to missing social skills. Closely related (if not the same) tropes are “some/most (geeky) western guys just come to Japan because they couldn’t get laid at home” and the “yellow-fever” accusation – that some western guys are interested in Japanese girls for their being Japanese/Asian more than anything else. Like some other stereotypes, there’s a grain of truth at the heart of it, but it’s still not flattering.

Anyway, enough said – you’ll understand why I’d rather not be seen like that. As much as I know myself that I don’t fit the mold (shit, I left a relationship of 1.5 years to come here, my Japanese and people skills are not inconsiderable, and I know exactly why I like ze Girl), the potential judgmentalism still bugs me. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure certain Queer friends of mine are laughing their arses off right now – poor beleaguered straight white boy, under-siege by judgmental eyes, eh?

Apart from the group-setting issues described above though, my first (more or less – my last ex here was fluent in English) foray into dating through the language barrier is going pretty well. I guess it also helps that both ze Girl and I are into language learning enough that it’s less of a barrier, and more of a “wall of Awesome” … and having coined that delightfully lame turn of phrase, I’d say that this blog post just jumped the shark. Au revoir.

Essentially, last week was an object lesson in an aspect of the JET programme often bemoaned by unhappy JETs – that in as far as you are still on the programme, you are not in control of your own destiny, totally subject to the dictates of your contracting school or local Board of Education.A little background: it’s very nearly a year since I arrived in Japan and started work as an Assistant Language Teacher on the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. It’s a job that I love, but one that’s definitely subject to a few complications. One of the biggest of these is the way you seem to occupy a kind of uncomfortable halfway position in the Japanese education system – for the most part just as subject as your Japanese co-workers to the all-powerful will of the educational bureaucracy, but without the ability to participate as fully in the running of your school as your co-workers are able. I am of course grateful that I don’t have the same responsibilities as some of the teachers that I work with – they work very, very hard, and give up more of their lives to the job than I would want to. This “powerlessness” side of the equation is something I hadn’t fully felt the sting of – until now.

For the last year I have been working at 3 schools that I really enjoy working with. I’ve always considered myself to be one of the luckier ALTs on the program – my co-workers, particularly the English teachers I work with at Junior High, are fantastic, as are most of the kids.

I consider myself to be a bit of a slow starter in some ways – I’ve spent the past year getting acclimatised to my schools, learning how to teach, taking gradual steps outside my comfort zone, and closer to being the kind of teacher I’d like to be: creative, involved, and alert to the needs and ability levels of my students. You can understand, then, that I might be frustrated to be given 2 weeks notice that I was being summarily reassigned to a different placement of 4 new schools, 3 of them elementary schools – where I generally feel I’ve got less to contribute than at Junior High.

In one sense, this is fair game. It happens to Japanese teachers every year – some are told with a few weeks notice that they’ve been chosen to be reassigned to another school in the prefecture, which may be very far away, or on an island with a tiny population, hours from the Japanese main islands – something that actually happened to a teacher I know.

On the other hand, it is also in many ways an inconsiderate and ill-conceived move. Prior to Tuesday, which was also my last teaching day at one of my schools, nobody - not myself, not the principals of the schools that I work at, not the teachers I work with, had any idea that this would happen. At a meeting earlier this year, where this very thing was discussed, myself and the other ALTs, and our co-workers were told that existing arrangements were working well, and would remain in place. It’s my belief that everyone with day to day involvement with English-teaching at those schools would have preferred things to remain that way they are, too. One of my co-teachers, who is an utterly fantastic lady, got up and said as much, strongly, in detail, and at length, in the meeting where this was officially announced. I can’t tell you how awesome that was to see, incidentally. One thing about working over here, is that it’s hard to get any direct feedback on your job performance. I’ve never been sure whether my co-teachers and schools were really happy with me, or just being polite. Now I know that at least one of my co-teachers, also the one I have the most respect for, really valued me being at the school. On top of that is the issue of the language barrier – it’s frustrating to not be able to eloquently represent yourself and make your voice heard as a working adult. So it’s nice when somebody is willing to stand up and speak on your behalf. It’s also pretty rare to see somebody here administer a real grilling to their superior on your behalf.

So, I could go on, but suffice to say that I was pretty damned furious about this for a few days. If I’m being honest – it probably is for the greater good as far as the kids are concerned. Really though, it comes across in large part as ill-conceived, ill-timed, and poorly communicated. Nobody really had any say in the decision, except the one’s who made it – and that is a lesson you can learn in advance should you come on JET.