He looks kind of like Lenny Kravitch.

I certainly hope you're already getting to work on your next book.

I believe the rule against taking students' personal information outside the school varies from school to school and or from BoE to BoE or is simply in place as a formality and ignored. Frankly, I can't imagine a teacher being able to do his or her job under those constraints.

Last year, for New Year's, I went to Naritasan and waited for the bells to chime at midnight. Then, I got an omikuji, and it was daikichi, but later, a friend of mine said that all of the omikuji at Naritasan were daikichi or kichi. So then, I went to several other shrines within the three day period because I wanted…

The fact that this thing costs 15,000 yen and there are actually people who ordered it just goes to show that Japanese people have too much discretionary income because of affordable health care.

How is the combat in GTA IV balanced? If anything, it's a huge step backwards from San Andreas. And what impressive writing? If that story had been made into a movie it would have been a straight to DVD B-movie, sometimes aired on Cinemax.

Used Wiis have been going for 18,000 to 19,980 yen for a long time here. Then again, if you convert that into dollars it's abotu 1111030303 dollars each.

For all of you people claiming sexism and misogyny, just remember:

Read "Snow Crash." You won't even feel like you're reading a book.

If he's got enough time on his hands to be thinking about crap like that, then he's got time to be making Shenmue 3.

This might be a bit expensive, but there are always coin lockers!

They didn't even bother to tell you when it would air?

@-=}{oT~dEv1L 666=-: How, exactly, is the story of GTAIV good? Seriously, what was the deal with the girlfriend who is actually working for the government and then the unexplained government organization that has you kill some people for some reason (with Jacob involved for some reason) and then just disappears?

I did not even realize that yesterday was Thanksgiving.

Grand Theft Auto 4 doesn't really leave you much to do after you've finished the story. With San Andreas, I could still get dozens of hours of play just doing random stuff after I finished the game, but GTAIV just leaves you to hunt down a bunch of pigeons. Let's be honest: GTAIV was a disappointment. It didn't have…

@fuchikoma: Thanks for the article links. So the shimbun transliteration is based on the old-style Hepburn designation. What I'm really getting at, though, is: "Why is that system still being used to this day?"

@Brian Ashcraft: Yes, a lot of newspapers write their names that way and I realize that Matt Alt was merely following custom, but what I'm wondering, specifically, is where that custom comes from and why it hasn't been revised. I believe that the system of romanization for Japanese words, particularly proper nouns…

@fuchikoma: Also, they learn in elementary school to write tsu as tu and, though I can see how it might be a little difficult for foreigners to pronounce tsu, writing Shinotsuka as Shinotuka guarantees that a foreigner will mispronounce that name. There are countless similar cases. What I'm wondering is where this…

I really shouldn't make an issue of this, but I've never understood why transliterations of Japanese words into the Roman alphabet always turn nm or nb into mm or mb. I realize that to an untrained ear it's hard to tell the difference between shinbun and shimbun, but it sounds jarring to Japanese people and can lead…