2008 December 1 Monday thru December 7 Sunday.

Believe it or not, it was raining all week, until Saturday when it started snowing again.

The snow continues today on Sunday, and hopefully every day after that.

I wanna go snowboarding at Santa Present Park next Saturday night, if possible.

The main reason I often go to Santa Present Park at night is because it is only a 15 minute drive from my house and it is not very crowded at night.

I don't like waiting in lines for any reason, especially ski lifts.

Santa Present Park is a good place for beginning skiers or snowboarders to start learning how to ride on the snow.

There are three different ski lifts there.

The lift in the middle is short and takes you up to less than half way on the hill.

From there, it is a gentle slope down to the bottom of the hill, just perfect for beginners.

In fact, that is where I first learned how to snowboard about 15 years ago.

The photo you can see in today's blog was taken on Saturday at the Taisetsu Arena, which is right next door to my classroom.

I was invited to attend these ice hockey games by one of my architect friends, Mr. N. His youngest son, who is now almost 20 years old was supposed to perform some of his original rap songs after the children's hockey match, and before the start of the professional hockey match.

I have known Mr. N for about 16 years, and remember his youngest son when he was still in kindergarten.

Now, this kid has pink hair, hip hop fashion, and a foul mouth that spews forth all of the dirtiest words in the English Language, but not much else.

It reminds me of a Willie Nelson song that goes something like this; "Momma don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys,..." In this case I would substitute the word "cowboys" for "rappers".

Despite this small disappointment in stunted growth, I'm glad I went because I like to watch ice hockey games live, even though the Taisetsu Areana is ice cold.

Another enjoyable thing about going was that I was able to meet a young Canadian lady, who was brought along by Mr. N's wife.

Mr. N's wife is a school nurse in the Furano area, and the 21 year old Canadian lady is employed as an

Assistant Language Teacher in the same general area.

She has a good sense of humor and was a lot of fun to talk to, especially because we are both native speakers of North American English.

She told me that she had arrived in Hokkaido only about 5 months ago, but that she had been studying the Japanese Language, on her own, since she was about 15 years old!

This surprised me so I asked her if she had been to Japan before when she was in junior high school, on a home stay program or something like that.

She replied that she had just come to Japan this year for the first time, but that she liked to study languages, and that is why she first started learning Japanese about 6 years ago.

I too like learning languages so we had something in common to talk about.

Tomorrow morning, Charlie and I are off to Mebae Kindergarten めばえ幼稚園 to do a special Christmas Songs Show for the kids out there.

Last year I had to do it by myself so this year's show should be a lot more fun for everyone.

2008 November 17 Monday thru November 30 Sunday.

The reason I haven't written anything for about two weeks is not because I have nothing to write about, but rather because I have been spending all of my free time developing my new website at http://EveryThingJapan.net
The purpose of that website is entirely different from this website.

The Every Thing Japan Network website was made for the sole purpose of becoming an affiliate marketer for advertisers of various companies.

If you have never heard of INTERNET AFFILIATE MARKETING before, and already have your own blog or website, let me take a few moments of my time to explain the basics of how to earn extra money on the internet, in your spare time, at home, without spending any of your own money to get started.

First of all, you need to get a unique domain name that you can call your own. This might cost you somewhere between $5 or $10. Then you need to find a web hosting company to host your web site. You can get both at the web hosting company that I use. It is located in Canada and is called MyHosting.

There are even many websites on the internet where you can START A BLOG FOR FREE, such as Rakuten and Blogger.
I myself, prefer to have total control over my websites and not use any of the free blogger services offered, because I don't like working with the limited user interfaces that those free websites offer.

This SnowmanJapan website was built up using MicroSoft FrontPage and starting with only one blank web page, but that software is no longer being supported by MicroSoft.

The EveryThingJapan site is being made with Adobe (Macromedia Studio MX) Dreamweaver software, and it is truly a joy to work with this professional software package. The placement of everything on the web page can be made with pixel perfect accuracy, and no need for guess work.

Once you have your own blog or website up and running on the internet, you are ready to apply to various companies and start putting advertisements on your blog or website.






Perhaps the easiest place to get started is with
Google AdSense for content. Advertisers use Google AdWords to put text based advertisements on your website automatically. The text advertisements will be similar to the text based content of your blog or other essays that you have published on your website.

If somebody clicks on one of your AdSense for Content advertising links, Google charges the advertiser some money, and then pays you a percentage of that money as an AdSense publisher. Either way, Google makes money on the deal, and so do you. Of course you are not allowed to click on your own AdSense links, or Google will ban you from the program.

Another place to get started with placing colorful banners and product ads on your website is at Amazon dot COM or Amazon dot CO dot JP. Amazon calls its affiliates "associates", but they are both the same thing. All you have to do is go to the sign up page and fill out the information there, and Amazon will get back to you within a few business days and tell you whether or not you have been approved for their program.

Amazon has a wide variety of marketing tools for
Associate Publishers that are easy to use, and can add a lot of colorful content to your website.

Other places to find affiliate programs are websites such as http://LinkShare.com http://LinkShare.ne.jp both of which are RakuTen companies.
Another website you might want to check out is http://www.cj.com The website is called Commission Junction.

Another website you might want to consider is http://ClickBank.com These websites are different from Amazon in that they offer opportunities to sign up with many other companies, known as advertisers, and not just with one company, like Amazon.

After you have signed up at these websites, the website will allow you to apply for an affiliate program with all of their advertisers.
Each and every advertiser that you apply to will either accept or reject your website as an affiliate publisher for that particular company.

So far, I have been accepted by about 80% of the advertisers that I have applied to, for a total of almost 300 companies that allow me to be an affiliate publisher for them, through the above mentioned websites.



Sorry I haven't written for so long. In fact some of my students have been asking me to write more often, like I used to do, because they use this blog as a textbook for learning English at home.

As you can imagine, with almost 300 companies and all of their banners and product links to look over and choose from, I haven't had much time to write this blog, until today.
A few of my students have asked me about how to make money on the internet from home, and the above information is what I have told them.

I hope all of my students and the rest of you out there, who read this blog, will benefit from this very basic information about Internet Affiliate Marketing.
Until next time, happy surfing.

By the way, just below this blog, you can see a live example of Google AdSense for content. The common text says Ads by Google, and you have probably seen them on many other web sites.

2008 November 11 Tuesday thru November 16 Sunday.

The G20 Summit held in Washington D.C.



This news even made the front page of the Hokkaido Newspaper complete with a photograph similar the one you can see on the left.

The main purpose of this summit was to solve the looming world financial crisis.

Even though they came up with some statements for the news media about how they are making progress to fix the problems, such as; "We must lay the foundation for reform to help ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again," they didn't tell the public what they are really planning to do.

I don't know much about the Bank of Japan, but I do know a little bit about the Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) of the USA.

Therefore, I would like to share with my readers what little I do know about the FRB, and let them draw their own conclusions as to what will happen next.

Despite its governmental sounding name, the FRB is not a part of the
Government of the United States of America.

It is instead, a cartel of privately owned banking corporations, who have the power to tell the United States

Treasury Department, how much money to print, and when to print it.
How did the FRB get started, and how did they get the power that they have now?

The FRB, also called the Federal Reserve System, was created in 1913 by the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act.

This legislation was rushed through the United States Congress without proper debate on December 23, 1913 when many of the congressmen were not even in attendance, because they were at their homes for the Christmas Holidays.

Despite this incredible fact, President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill into law on the very same day!

The American public was told that the Federal Reserve System would prevent any more financial crisis, which had caused the great depressions in 1893 and 1907.

Now that a small group of private banks controlled the entire money supply of the United States, they rapidly increased the amount of money in circulation during the years 1914 thru 1919 until the money supply doubled, by making extensive loans to other smaller banks, which encouraged those smaller banks made extensive loans to the general public.

Then in 1920, the Federal Reserve began to call in its loans from the smaller banks, and the smaller banks in turn had to call in their loans from the general public.

This caused the public whom had their life savings in the smaller banks, to rush to the bank and withdraw their money.

Because the smaller banks didn't have all of that money on hand, many of them had to close their doors.

In fact about 5,400 smaller banks went out of business during this time. In other words, bankrupt.

As a result, the Federal Reserve Bank bought all of these smaller banks at a very low price, further consolidating their monopoly on the banking business.

However, the financial panic of 1920 was just a warm up for what was to come next.

During the years of 1921 thru 1929 the Federal Reserve again increased the money supply by more than 62% by giving loans the remaining smaller banks, which in turn gave out loans to the general public.

There was also a new type of loan called a "Margin Loan" in the Stock Market.

Simply put, a margin loan is a loan to stock market investors, whereby the investor can buy, say, $1000 worth of stock with a payment of only $100 down.

The stock broker would cover the other 90% of the value of the stock.

This margin loan system works very well, as long as stock prices continue to rise, and it created many new millionaires.

In fact, this era in U.S. History is remembered as The Roaring Twenties.

Unfortunately, a margin loan can be called in at any time and must be paid off within 24 hours.

This is know as a "Margin Call". The party ended on October 24, 1929 when the biggest investors in the stock market, the big bankers, quietly started selling most all of their stocks.

This forced the stock brokers to make massive margin calls, in order to get the money needed pay the big investors their money, for the stocks which they had just sold. What happened to the small investors?

They lost everything they had, and went deeply into debt at the same time.

Many people committed suicide as a result of this deliberate market manipulation. This time about 16,000 smaller banks went out of business.

What followed next was the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Only World War II and The New Deal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of them financed by the International Banking Cartel which drastically increased the money supply again, ended the great depression.
Fast forward to 2008 and the Sub Prime Housing Loan Crisis.

Banks have been lending massive amounts of money to people, so that they could buy houses with no money down and at very low starting interest rates.

So, many many people who really couldn't afford it, signed housing loan contracts, and bought new houses.

The catch, is that the mortgage interest rates became adjustable after the first one or two years.

In other words, what started out as house payments of say $400 per month, suddenly became house payments of $700, $800 and more per month.

Because most peoples' income did not increase by the same amount, they could no longer afford to pay their mortgages, and had to move out of their new homes.

Sounds a lot like a Margin Call, doesn't it.

Not only that, but the financial markets started to buy up these bad mortgages, and repackage them together into what appeared to be investment grade products, and sell them on the stock market.

Now, as stock prices continue to fall, the Federal Reserve continues to print more and more paper money, to bailout Wall Street and now the Big Automobile Makers, and maybe the Airline

Industry is next in line to get FREE MONEY. Money printed out of thin air, with nothing of value behind it. This creates INFLATION, a rise in prices of everything, and if the FRB continues print more paper money, HYPER-INFLATION.

In reality, the VALUE of commodities is not going up, instead, the value of the U.S. Dollar paper money is going down.

What do you think is going to happen next? Put on your thinking caps, and fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a rough ride.

2008 November 6 Thursday thru November 10 Monday.

During the weekend, I spent all of my time making 250 brand new laminated Question and Answer cards based on the 6W1H interrogatives 疑問詞.

Namely; What, When, When, Who, Why, Which and How.

This is the second edition of these such cards and they are based upon the 12 page textbook that I wrote about 2 years ago, that was designed for pair work in large classroom settings of between 20 and 40 students.

The first edition of these cards was made 12 years ago when we first opened our new classroom in June of 1996.

At that time, I didn't even have a personal computer, so I used Ikuko's word processor to create and print out the A4 sized sheets of paper with 10 questions each on them.

Not only did I have to cut the A4 sized paper into 10 business card sized pieces, but I also had to cut the cardboard craft sheets into the same size as well.

I even bought a big table top guillotine type paper cutter to help me get the job done.

After cutting the paper and the cardboard into their proper sizes, I used very wide transparent cellophane packing tape, to attach the printed question paper onto the cardboard, one at a time.

They weren't pretty, but they worked rather well for that moment in time.
Nowadays, things are much different.

Not only do I not need the thick cardboard to make these Q and A cards, but I can print out both the Q and A side of the card, as well as a colorful backside to each card, that shows the level of difficultly, and my classroom's logo mark. SBK

Because I spent the entire weekend making these brand new full color Q and A cards, some people might come to the conclusion that I worked overtime to get the job done.

That's only one way to look at the situation.I look at it from a different perspective.

My classroom is the LOVE OF MY LIFE along with my wife.

We are both TOTALLY COMMITTED to making this small business a big success.

All of the time I spend teaching classes and making teaching materials for those classes, is the time of my life and the objective is to make our classroom, the best in this city.

In reality, it already IS. The only competition I have, is with myself to make it even better tomorrow, than it is today.

What most people would look upon as overtime work, I look upon as PAYING IT FORWARD.

I am always prepared to do the best job I can do, on any given day.

That day was today, Monday November 10.

For my last class of this day, from 19:00 to 20:00, I had a full house of 5 students, all of them of very different ages and all of them, from very different backgrounds.

Sitting around the same table with me, and using the Q and A part two cards, as the textbook for our lesson together, we engaged in very interesting discussions, of many different types.

It was awesome. The LOVE was so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

To say it went smoothly is an understatement.

It was a most enjoyable and interesting lesson for all in attendance, because everyone became totally spontaneous in their conversations with me and all of the other students, by using the Q and A cards as a launching point.

What a blast it was. The promised 50 minutes lesson became 65 minutes, and I finally had to call a halt to the lesson time.

Phuck Yeah! 話せる　使える　楽しい　スノーマン　米会話.

What you get is more than what was promised to you.
Who could complain? 　Nobody. Least of all me.

2008 November 1 Saturday thru November 5 Wednesday.

Super Quantum Synchronicity

Ikuko and I had a bet about the USA Presidential Election Results.

She thought McCain would win, and I knew different.

So I challenged her to a bet, that if Obama was elected, she would buy us dinner and drinks at a restaurant of my choice.

When the morning edition of the Hokkaido Newspaper came to my door this morning, the front page headline said "Obama in the lead."

I didn't even bother to look at the rest of the newspaper at that point in time.

Finally at about 17:00 when the evening edition of the 道新 Newspaper arrived at my door, the headline read "Obama is the next President of the United States of America".

No big surprise there.

Our last class of the day was canceled by the student so we were able to go out to dinner an hour earlier than usual.

Ikuko needed about 15 minutes to get ready to leave, so I sat down to take another look at the morning newspaper.

I slowly looked through every page, and when I got close to the last pages of the newspaper, I GOT A BIG SURPRISE.

My good friend Mr. Akira Baba had passed away on November 3 at his home, in his bed, with a look of peacefulness on his face.

Also written in the newspaper was that November 5 was to be the funeral wake starting at 18:00 at the Ohtani Temple not far from our home.

After I got over the initial shock upon reading the news, I showed the newspaper article to Ikuko.

We immediately changed our dinner plans, got all dressed up in black, and walked on over to the temple to participate in the funeral wake that had already started about one hour ago.

We stayed there for about 2 hours and then walked back home. I even cried a little bit.

Mr. Akira Baba was born on March 12, 1936.

I first stepped out of an airplane and laid my feet on ground at the arrival lobby of the Asahikawa International Airport on March 12, 1990.

My wife Ikuko was born on March 11, 1963.
Mr. Akira Baba was 72 years old when he passed away.

That is exactly 6 times around the 12 year animal zodiac, in the year of the rat.

Mr. Akira Baba was very knowledgeable about world culture and local Hokkaido history and culture in particular.

Mr. Akira Baba passed away on November 3, 2008.
November 3 is a National Holiday every year in Japan.

It is called 文化の日, meaning CULTURE DAY.
Mr. Akira Baba was childhood friends with my wife's uncle.

In other words, her father's younger brother.

Ikuko and I opened our classroom in 1996, which was the same year of Mr. Akira Baba's 60th birthday.

A 60th birthday is a big deal in Japan known as KanReki 還暦.

Need I say it again? Everything is connected to everything else, even if you aren't aware of it.

Super heavy synchronicity showed itself to me again today, and weighed heavy upon my heart.

Mr. Akira Baba and I have taken many trips together around Hokkaido in connection with our activities as members of the Hokkaido Cultural Property Protection Association.

I have also spent many enjoyable hours at his wonderful Pub Restaurant Ohfune.

Click here to see a short photo slideshow of his place.

Click here to read my translation of a Hokkaido Newspaper article about him and his very successful business.

See you again in the big cosmos my friend! Where shall we travel to again next time?

馬場昭様のご冥福をお祈り申し上げます。

マスター、本当にありがとうございました。

2008 October 27 Monday thru October 31 Friday.

The final countdown into the month of November.

As such, the rain is getting colder, the wind is getting stronger, and the snow is beginning to fall onto the streets of this city.

November is a season between seasons.

Not enough snow at the ski grounds yet to have any fun, but just enough snow on the streets to make driving dangerous.

The key word for winter driving is GO SLOW.

It is easy to drive fast in the snow, but it is not possible to stop in time, to avoid a fender bender.

I got my tires changed from summer to winter on Thursday.

I let my friendly TOYOTA dealer in SueHiro 末広 take care of that for me.

I have neither the tools nor the time to do it myself.

I leave it up to the experts, to get the job done right.

Not only did they change the tires, and store them at their location, they did a full chassis and engine inspection including oil change, plus a car wash both inside and out.

The only thing they don't do, is windows, from the inside.

I can't complain. I'll do it myself someday, when I finally get around to doing it.

As you already may well know, October 31 of every year, is known as HALLOWEEN among urban dwellers.

The origins of Halloween are pretty much an open secret, but if you haven't thought about it for a long time, you might enjoy reading my essay while listening to a PODCAST of me, reading out loud the very same essay.

When I was a kid, I loved Halloween more than Christmas.

Why was that? Because there is FREE CANDY!!!

If you are an adult and reading this BLOG, your candy may be different from the sugar laden crap that most young kids like.

Your favorite CANDY might BEER or Japanese Rice Wine.
Or, whatever.If it tastes good, eat it. If it smells good, drink it. If it feels RIGHT, do it.

Are all slogans from the not too distant past, but it is ALWAYS TRUE, because that's just the way IT IS.

See ya again soon, on the POWDER SNOW side of the HILL.

The Crystal Hill.

2008 October 20 Monday thru October 26 Sunday.

It is steadily getting colder but the sun was out for much of the week.

During the weekend there were some very sudden and violent rainstorms, with thunder and lightning.

For those of you who were caught out in the rain without an umbrella, I hope you didn't catch a nasty cold out of the deal.

I didn't go anyway this weekend, even though I am running very low on Korean Dried Red Chili Pepper Flakes.

An essential ingredient for me at almost every meal. Especially with soups and curry.

One of my favorite snacks between classes, is to eat pre-cooked curry packets with brown rice.

There are many varieties of curry packets for sale at any super market in Japan.

They range in price from 70 yen up to 400 yen for just one 200 gram foil package.

Some of these brands taste better than others, but none of them are any where near spicy enough, for me.

That is why dried red chili pepper flakes are so important to me.

I usually add about one heaping レンゲ soup spoon full of red pepper for every packet of curry that I heat up in the microwave oven.

First, I heat up the curry sauce in a domburi bowl.

Then, I add the hot and spicy red stuff, stirring it around well so as to mix the flavors together.

Then the bowl goes back into the microwave again for a second heating.

When the chime rings, I take the bowl out of the oven, mix it around again, and then add two or three scoops of freshly cooked brown rice on top of it all.

Yum yum.

The brown rice provides a lot of bulk, fiber and minerals, and the wicked hot curry sauce provides the zesty flavor that I need to make it all worthwhile.

Considering the large amount of red chili flakes that I use almost every day, I need to go to Western Supermarket and buy huge bags of imported Korean red chili.

The tiny little bags of it that they sell at the next door Seikyo Supermarket aren't even enough for one meal, for me.

Am I hooked on this stuff??? I guess so.

I wonder if most Koreans eat as much of this stuff as I do?

I guess I'll have to ask one some time.