Japanese schoolchildren are adorable. I don’t know if it’s the uniforms or the pigtails or the mullets, but something about everything they do has a twinge of cute overload. At my school, one of the popular games for girls to play at recess is Hana Ichi Monme (花いちもんめ). It’s a little like Japanese Red Rover The girls break off into two teams and walk back and forth at each other while alternating singing a song:

勝ってうれしい花いちもんめ               katte ureshii hana ichi monme
負けてくやしい花いちもんめ               makete kuyashii hana ichi monme
あの子が欲しい                                        ano ko ga hoshii
あの子が分からん                                    ano ko ga wakaran
相談しましょう                                        sodan shimasho
そうしましょ！                                        so shimasho

決まった!　　　　　　　　　　　　 kimatta!
(A Team) Luckyちゃんが欲しい          Lucky-chan ga hoshii
(B Team)Coolちゃんが欲しい　　      Cool-chan ga hoshii

We’re happy we won, hana ichi monme
We’re sad we lost, hana ichi monme
We want that kid
We don’t know “that kid”
Let’s talk about it
Yes, lets!

We’ve decided
We want Lucky!
We want Cool!

It’s not much of a song, but it’s cute to watch. After they sing they huddle in their respective group and pick a member of the opposite team to challenge. The two challengers go out and either play Rock, Paper, Scissors or a game of chicken. The loser is then made to join the winning team.

In case you don’t believe me, here’s a video of the game in action: (more…)

Some of these people remind me of the students I met in Pullman (no not you guys!)

“Emma debuted in the top 10 in 2002, the same year that Jennifer Aniston’s character on “Friends” gave the name to her TV show baby.”

Read the full story here.

It’s been a couple weeks since Amazon unveiled its game trade-in option on the Web site and I just don’t get it. Amazon wants you to sell your used game to them so they can sell it for you on their Web site, but you already had the power to sell the game on Amazon’s Web site yourself and AND you get more money if you sell it yourself. But I guess that’s always been the conundrum with reselling games. You sell it to another competitor who then sells it back to the public for a higher price than he paid you. But if you were only going to get $10 from Amazon or Gamestop and they turn around and sell it for $20, couldn’t you have made more of a profit by using Amazon’s own Web site or Craigslist to tap your local market and sell the item for $15 that goes straight to you. That’s 50% more profit than you would have made selling it back to the big guys.

A great example of this that I found on Amazon’s Web site is the game “Animal Crossing: City Folk.” Amazon wants you to sell your used game to them so they can sell it for you on their Web site. The price they are offering you for this (I’m told) popular game is $17 – one of the highest prices they pay for used games. Yet if you go to the Amazon Web site, the lowest price for a used game  of Animal Crossing is $29.99. If you take into account the total selling fee of $2.34 and the 15 % comission Amazon takes that leaves you with 23.16. Not terribly impressive, but at least Amazon is only getting $6 from my product instead of $23, which is how much profit they make off of selling their used games through Amazon Warehouse.

Guess I like not being ripped off.

Anyone with more experience gaming have any thoughts?

The Consumerist blog did a brief post on the possible (incredibly likely) closure of the Seattle P-I. While the P-I closing is sad enough it was the results of the accompanying poll asking “Do you even care that your local newspaper may die?” that depressed me.

For the record. I said that I cared.

I find it so interesting that almost everyone’s blog on my blogroll has had discussions about life at work and new policies that their jobs are implementing. Of course that’s because most of the people on my blogroll are journalists and many newspapers are trying to implement (to borrow from The Spokesman Review) “transparent newsrooms.” They’re encouraged to blog.

I’ve mostly kept work-related issues to myself because, well, I don’t know how my job would react to me talking about policies we run in the office. Earlier this week I did learn the policy when they gave me back my contract to review for employee evaluations. What I learned is that I’m not supposed to publicly disclose anything about clients or our “trade secrets.”

In other words: don’t talk shop on the blog, it’s simple enough. But I get so surprised when I wander around the internet how many non-journalists talk about their jobs and how much they hate their bosses and how work sucks, and they wonder why they’re not getting a raise/more respect/a pony. Maybe it’s because your manager’s reading your blog, genius.

So here are some things to think about before you blog about work-related stuff:

1. Don’t name names. Try to keep your coworkers names out of your blog as much as possible. People ego search all the time. I overheard my supervisor the other day say “I’ve looked you all up on Google at one point.” Crap. Well maybe your supervisor is looking at you, too.
2. Don’t talk about clients. If you have a job where your livelihood depends on a happy client, don’t talk about about clients in your blog. I’m sure your job (like mine) probably has some sort of confidentiality agreement with certain clients, and since you may not know who does not want their name broadcast on the intertubes, just don’t talk about them at all. If you do, it goes back to not naming names again. Give them a clever alias that no one will be able to figure out, like Sicromoft.
3. Watch your spelling and grammar. I have to work at this a lot as well so there’s no judgment if you have something misspelled on your blog from my end. But if you’re currently seeking a new job and have a public blog, it may be a good idea to give some of your recent posts a once-over and check for grammar, spelling and how you use the English language. If a potential employer were to find your blog, wouldn’t you want to sound as articulate as you could. Even if you’re blog isn’t supposed to be for professional use, if you can find your blog using your real name (i.e. johnsmith.wordpress.com) then maybe you should keep it professional.
4. If you want to have a just-for-fun blog, give yourself an alias like “kumquat” and stick with it. But even the best aliases can be broken if you’re hitting too close to home (remember the Washingtonienne?)

I’d also like to hear what you think about how we present ourselves on blogs. What’s the impression you get reading someone’s blog? I’m curious to hear people’s answers.

your phone conversation leads to your favorite NPR shows and your affection for Terry Gross. And on that note I wish you all a good night as Pica is trying to smother me.

Are you buying fake diplomas? I think you are.

The Spokesman Review published the list of purchasers of fake high school and college degrees yesterday as part of their ongoing report of the Spokane diploma mill. Among those names is a (kind of) pop star by the name of Stacie Orrico. Orrico, a native of Woodinville, Wash., purchased a high school diploma saying she graduated from Mission High School.

Oh well. At least she can sing, right?

See who else has a fake degree and may have a better job than you because of it!

I bought a new rice cooker when I moved into my apartment and so far I haven’t really used it as much as I should. I got it at Costco and it’s a really great cooker. It comes with a timer I can set so I could set it up in the morning and it would start cooking the rice or whatever I put in there in time for dinner. So I did a little sleuthing around the internet and I found this Web site:

Recipe Zaar

It has a bunch of recipes all just for the rice cooker. It sure beats having to buy the book off of Amazon.

Simon’s cat is back with new antics. This is for all the cat lovers out there.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S13EfSncVh0]