I love Japan - JNTO, hear my plea!

I have a real crush on Japan. It's the technology. The temples and the cherry trees. The swords and karate. Mt. Fuji, the water and the green. The sharp knives and dedication to cuisine.

Ever since I saw my first anime I was hooked, before I knew what anime was. Imagine a 4 year old in Costa Rica watching Mazinger Z. Then an adolescent watching Ranma 1/2.

By the time I was in college, I had seen Dragonball religiously, but until Evangelion did I realize anime was a brilliant thing that could come to me by ways of the PC instead of through TV. Thus my long love affair with anime started (check my list in MAL, to the right).

Although lots of anime is available online, and with better quality each time, I did heed the internet groups and when something really struck me, I would buy it. There is nothing like seeing a great anime on DVD, and one of my first was the Princess Mononoke movie. "To see with eyes unclouded" is still one of the great goals in my life. I will enjoy greatly owning the best blu rays that come out.

 I sincerely thank all artists, publishers, and also, the fansub groups worldwide that continuously promote anime.

So imagine, my thrill, excitement, when I read that Japan was going to give 10,000 flights to people that would commit to exalt Japan in their blogs, to promote tourism. You can google it, but the truth is, it isn't true yet. You can read from http://www.jnto.go.jp/

"
Recently a number of media outlets have publicized reports about ”Japan offering 10,000 free flights to foreigners”. 　

However, this initiative to be carried out from April 2012 onwards is still under examination for government budgetary approval and is at this moment undecided.

If the initiative is confirmed and put into operation, Japan Tourism Agency will officially announce details on this website.
"

Japan National Tourism Organization, I can blog in english. I can blog in spanish. I can even do a bit portuguese and german. I can build a website just for the purpose of talking about Japan and showing pictures. I have an IT and electronics engineering background, and have devoured pages of your culture because I find it fascinating. Please, take me into consideration :)

Domo!

checking out ubuntu 11

I'm selling my PC, and boy has it been fun. Between selecting a pricing strategy (I went with aggressive), coordinating delivery of parts and working around what's left, I've had fun.

When I sold my windows OS HD, I immediately felt a test drive of good old ubuntu was in order, as the install should be much quicker than windows 7 (not just the install but being able to work "out of the box"). I downloaded 11.04 and was up in about an hour (that damn installer still downloads a lot of stuff even if you tell it not to).

Pretty solid. I was able to RDP to my laptop, run fansub videos, browse. Getting skype to work was a bit fun - I'll put that and fail safe decoding Hi10P in another post.

I don't particularly like the new interface - it hides the applications behind at least 3 clicks - but it's not untolerable either. It feels like a tablet lol.


About 3 days into playing, 11.10 came out. I like it a bit better, except that it messed up my codecs a bit. Still, that I have only had to use the terminal for 3 things, is really an accomplishment and a long way traveled for usability.