Harvey on housing, travel, and skinny girls - an exclusive interview with JapanNewbie

On October 03, 2007 in Interviews

Hi All. We are back again today with long-time blogger Harvey from JapanNewbie. If you happened to miss it yesterday we had a nice chat with Harvey and found out a little about what makes him tick. Today we are going to dig deeper and look at some of the great content he has produced to educate and entertain.

Here’s Harvey!

Daily J: You mention on your blog that you have travelled a lot, is there any place in your travels in Japan (or elsewhere in asia) that you would say is your favourite?

Harvey: I keep my posts related to Japan, but a few of the places I have visited that I absolutely love are Laos and India. In Laos I went to Luang Prabang, a wonderful city. The entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I was in India for three weeks and especially enjoyed that state of Kerala in the south, and the city of Dharamsala way up north. Dharamsala is the city where the Dalai Lama has his Tibetan government in exile based.

Here is my visited countries map.
http://www.japannewbie.com/2006/09/20/visited-countries-update/

There are still many places I haven’t been, including South America and Africa.

Daily J: Is there any post in particular that is your favourite, and why? (You’ve been blogging since 2002, right? If you can’t narrow it to one I understand)

Harvey: Favorite posts… Yes, as you said, that’s very very tough. One that has brought a lot of traffic is this one comparing female BMI in various countries. Japan sticks out like a sore thumb. http://www.japannewbie.com/2006/11/26/skinny-girls/

Personally, I like my posts about the Hanshin Tigers and takoyaki! I love Osaka.

Daily J: In your “Movies” section you mention some Japanese movies as a method of learning Japanese, which I totally agree with (and I love the first three that you mention). What is your favourite Japanese film of all time and why?

Harvey: Of all time is tough, but a Japanese movie that I recently saw that blew my mind was Twilight Samurai.
http://www.japannewbie.com/2007/06/16/samurai-movie-twilight-samurai/

Not a good movie to learn Japanese from (it has a lot of Samurai grunting and slurring), but as a film, it’s incredible. I just loved the humble unlikely protagonist, and the final encounter with the “bad guy” is classic.

Daily J: You talk a bit about housing in your “older docs” section. I know first hand that housing is a major issue for foreigners living in Japan. Can you give us some advice about that

Harvey: I haven’t had to look for housing for a long time now, so I can’t really give much advice. These days though it -is- possible to find places with little to no key money or gift money or whatever it’s called in English (shikikin, reikin), so “my mamma told me, you better shop around “

Thanks Harvey for the interview!

And thank you all for reading. Be sure to visit JapanNewbie and drop harvey a line, ask him a question or just learn something new about Japan. You’ll be glad you did!

To all a good day,

From Daily J

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