Ganbatte Means Go For It

A step by step guide to researching the market, getting a job, moving to Japan and succeeding as an English teacher abroad. Includes the popular ODo You Have What It TakesO questionnaire.

Fifty vignettes of everyday life in Japan, seen through the eyes of an American woman teaching English there. From the Art of Tea to Zen Buddhism, these short essays, illustrated by beautiful color photographs, take the armchair traveler on an exploration of this often mysterious culture.

From the author of the critically-acclaimed debut People Who Knew Me comes the story of one man’s determination to abandon his will to live. Jonathan Krause is a man with a plan. He is going to quit his advertising job and, when his money runs out, he is going to die. He just has one final mission: A trip to Japan. It’s a trip he was supposed to take with his girlfriend, Sara. It’s a trip inspired by his regrets. And it’s a trip to pay homage to the Japanese, the inventors of his chosen suicide technique. In preparation for his final voyage, Jonathan enrolls in a Japanese language class where he meets Riko, who has her own plans to visit her homeland, for very different reasons. Their unexpected and unusual friendship takes them to Japan together, where they each struggle to make peace with their past and accept that happiness, loneliness, and grief come and go—just like the cherry blossoms. Haunted by lost love, Jonathan must decide if he can embrace the transient nature of life, or if he must choose the certainty of death.

Explore the Far East from the comfort of home through the cuisines of ten Asian countries, paired with movies by some of Asia’s most visionary filmmakers. With Asian food and film blogger Celeste Heiter as your guide, and Chopstick Cinema as your culinary and cinematic passport, savor the delicacy of Vietnamese Crab-Filled Summer Rolls as you inhale the intoxicating Scent of Green Papaya; relive the bone-chilling saga of a haunted village over a steaming dish of Pad Thai; spend a contemplative evening on a serene lake in a floating Buddhist temple as you nibble on Korean Kim Bap and Mandu Dumplings; feast on Samosas and Chicken Vindaloo while cheering a rag-tag team of Indian locals in a cricket match against the British raj; or spend a summer in rural Cambodia to learn the true meaning of a simple bowl of rice. Based on her belief that anyone with basic cooking skills can prepare an authentic Asian meal using ingredients that are readily available at almost any well-stocked food market, Celeste has selected her favorite Asian dishes from among the hundreds of recipes featured on her Chopstick Cinema blog. The menu for each country is a collection of ten dishes: nibbles, cold and hot appetizers, soup, salad, noodles, main course, two side dishes, and dessert, along with a shopping guide and online sources for hard-to-find ingredients; followed by a review of Celeste’s favorite film from each country, and recommendations for several alternate films. With a pair of chopsticks in one hand, and your remote control in the other, satisfy your appetite for Asian food and adventure that’s sure to be as memorable as the real thing.

In this beautifully illustrated book, you will find everything you need to know about sushi, from how to choose and order it, to how to eat it. You will even learn how to make it at home. And if your efforts in the kitchen inspire you, how to become a sushi chef. Along with the history, evolution, and art of sushi, sections include nutritional value, health benefits, and safety concerns. The pronunciation guide, together with a thirty-nine-page sushi glossary and a reverse dictionary, are especially helpful in identifying and ordering sushi. Taken in leading sushi restaurants, full color photographs enhance your journey into the world of sushi. You will also discover the answer to such fascinating questions as whether or not sushi originated in Japan, the ideal temperature for serving sake, and how sushi knives are made. Whether you're a sushi virgin or a sushi veteran, by the time you finish reading The Sushi Book, you will be a sushi connoisseur!

"From crawling through Buddha's nose at Todai-ji Temple to finding peace in Hiroshima, discover the secrets of savvy expatriates, seasoned travelers, and inspired locals. With its unique stroytelling style, and insights into dining, shopping, sightseeing, and culture, To Japan With Love is a one-of-a-kind guide for the passionate traveler"--Cover [p.4]

Ganbatte (gan-ba-tay) is a Japanese philosophy focused on doing the best you can with what you have. Though there is no direct translation, "keep going," and "give it your all," embody the sentiments behind the word. Just as wabi sabi shows the beauty of imperfection in life, ganbatte teaches you how to get past obstacles and be motivated to keep moving forward. In Ganbatte! author Albert Liebermann provides an inspirational, yet practical guide to becoming more resilient the Japanese way. In 50 short chapters, some deeper and some more playful, Liebermann guides you through ways you can adopt the ganbatte approach to achieve a happier, more fulfilling life--and a happier, more fulfilled self. These include: Separating "difficult" from "impossible" Making use of failure Cultivating patience Working mindfully with a sense of awareness Continually improving Practicing meditation Pushing through a crisis Taking the slow route Sprinkled throughout the book are "Ganbatte Rules"--short, actionable steps you can take to move forward in a part of your life where you may be stuck (whether it's fitness, love or starting a business). A foreword by Hector Garcia, author of the bestselling Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, introduces the concept of ganbatte and how he learned of its existence from one of Japan's centenarians. While many aspects of life are beyond our control, how we deal with setbacks and difficulties is as much of a choice as how we approach everyday tasks. This book helps you tap into your own ability to persevere and encourages you to stay motivated and hopeful in difficult times. If you apply the tenacity and resilience of the Japanese in your daily life, difficult becomes easy, and impossible becomes possible.

Are language and consciousness co-evolving? Can psychedelic experience cast light on this topic? In the Western world, we stand at the dawn of the psychedelic age with advances in neuroscience; a proliferation of new psychoactive substances, both legal and illegal; the anthropology of ayahuasca use; and new discoveries in ethnobotany. From scientific papers to the individual trip reports on the Vaults of Erowid and the life work of Terence McKenna, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and Stanislav Grof, we are converging on new knowledge of the mind and how to shift its functioning for therapeutic, spiritual, problem-solving, artistic and/or recreational purposes. In our culture, pychonautics, the practices of individuals and small groups using techniques such as meditation, shamanic ritual, ecstatic dance and substances such as LSD and psilocybin for personal exploration, is a field of action and thought in its infancy. The use of psychonautic practice as a site of research and a method of knowledge production is central to this work, the first in-depth book focusing on psychedelics, consciousness, and language. Xenolinguistics documents the author's eleven-year adventure of psychonautic exploration and scholarly research; her original intent was to understand a symbolic language system, Glide, she acquired in an altered state of consciousness. What began as a deeply personal search, led to the discovery of others, dubbed xenolinguists, with their own unique linguistic objects and ideas about language from the psychedelic sphere. The search expanded, sifting through fields of knowledge such as anthropology and neurophenomenology to build maps and models to contextualize these experiences. The book presents a collection of these linguistic artifacts, from glossolalia to alien scripts, washed ashore like messages in bottles, signals from Psyche and the alien Others who populate her hyperdimensional landscapes. With an entire chapter dedicated to Terence and Dennis McKenna and sections dedicated to numerous other xenolinguists, this book will appeal to those interested in language/linguistics and the benefits of psychedelic self-exploration, and to readers of science fiction.