lioness in japan

For a long time, I have been wondering why my readers would email me directly rather than leave a reply in the comments box. I figured whatever they wanted to say was deemed private to them, so I didn’t ponder on this at all.

As the months crept by, my traffic numbers increased to a healthy figure but there was still dead silence in my blogs. I started to fret about the quality of my content and felt like I was shouting into a vacuum on the Internet. Admittedly, my motivation faltered sometimes.

Then one day, my close gal pal ambien told me she couldn’t leave comments on my blog. “WHAT?!” Yes, she informed me that only Wordpress account holders were able to log in and leave a response. Of all things to overlook! So over the weekend, I tweaked the settings on all my websites, Discover Supplements, Get Divorce Advice, and Class Action Finder.

But, Lioness in Japan was still a mess. After whining to the kangaroo, he assured me he would look at it, but with our housewarming on Saturday and recovery on Sunday, we got nothing done. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I went through the php script in my Supplements website and compared it to the one for my Lioness blog.

Several crucial lessons learned: Don’t whine, just hunt for a solution first, even if it takes a few days; there is nothing too complicated in building a website even for a techno-phobe like me. To those who are afraid to set up a blog of their own — don’t be afraid, if I can do it, so can you.

So feel free to send me a note or leave a comment here, I would love for my space to be somewhere people can express themselves. Apologies if my websites looked unfriendly and unapproachable before but it was all a technical oversight on my part.

Thanks for visiting and I would love to hear from you!

The kangaroo ordered two picnic table sets on Monday night from Amazon Japan (which I highly recommend for cheap English books and household solutions) and they arrived last night.

To get ready for our housewarming this Saturday, he put on his carpenter hat and hammered everything together.

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One thing that took me awhile to get into was the dangly phone accessory that always hangs from every Japanese person’s keitai (mobile phone). In Singapore, it had an adolescent image that includes our subculture of ah lians (Singapore’s version of the Shibuya gyaru or “gal”). In Japan, even men have at least one attached to their phones — usually designer brand name tags or anime characters or something comical and quirky.

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Let me just preface this entry with a small introduction. I actually posted this yesterday morning but I took it down because I had mixed feelings. Several friends and the kangaroo all had different votes for a response or not. Those who were for hurling back a reply said, “You should speak up and what’s wrong with a good fight?” Others who were against it shared the sentiment of, “Just ignore this weirdo, he just wants you to get riled up.” True, and true.

Well, I came to a decision that this is worth publishing as it was a snapshot of my reaction right after I read this comment. I’m human and have many shades to my personality. This is probably a small incident in the whole scheme of a blog — I mean, who doesn’t ever get “slimed”, in Singaporean speak, or criticised?

Also, I don’t want my blog to be a series of happy shiny moments, though I do have quite a happy shiny personality. So here goes…let me know what you think.

What a bitch you are.

Sure you clearly did not like these people but did you have to post about them all on the internet? Most people with half a grain of decency would have not been so creul. Also your reply/ explanation is shit to be frank. I am none of the above people and also a Journalist in Tokyo but what you wrote and the fact that you feel aggrieved that these people so much as tried to be friendly really incenses me. Go and get a job and stop sitting on your arse, introspecting and updating your pretentious little website, considering yourself as a superior person, perhaps you should do some work on your personality and the way you treat others?

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One of the things I find surprising about the kangaroo is that he loves gardening. It’s such a contradiction to his high tech brain that runs like a CPU, but I think once in a while, he likes to chill out at home with his plants and flowers. Being a city gal like myself, I find this highly amusing and fascinating.

In Singapore, our rented apartments always had potted plants and blooms of several hues which the kangaroo would love splurging on. Then he would spend glorious hours tending to them like pets on weekends. When we moved to Japan, most of them went to my parents’ home for safekeeping.

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Besides loving Coldplay’s new album Viva La Vida, I think I am sharing a little bit more with its frontman, Chris Martin.

He did an interview with Rollingstone and was asked how he kept his hunger for his career going, “You’ve got to be hungry. If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you’d want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?” Wow, the guy has some self-deprecating wit.

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Sorry for the long delay in this last installment of my “Teaching in Japan” series. Life has been busy with all sorts of things and I have to admit I’ve slacked a little on blogging, but I promise there will definitely be more prolific times.

Let’s dive into this topic — what are Japanese students like and how to teach them?

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Just a short pictorial of what has been brewing in my kitchen. Sometimes I go through periods where I struggle to think of what to whip up, but there are days where I feel inspired to be a cooking demon…

Here are a couple of non-Japanese dishes I have been making:

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I am PMS-ing like hell — my sugar cravings have gone through the roof and I have found three mouth-watering snacks right here in Tokyo:

Calbee nori (seaweed) potato chips

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Introducing my latest workout buddy…Billy Blanks! It’s so cheesy, I know, but a lot of women swear by this kick-boxing aerobic and ab routine. Even more embarrassing is that this was THE exercise DVD of the year in 2007 — I sure took a long time to check this out. I used to chuckle over the fact that this ex-military dude could get so many sedentary Japanese women off their butt to do killer stomach crunches in their living rooms.

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