JamieJakov Blog

FIFA 2018 Logo

October 31st, 2014

In 2012 it was decided that the next big world football event – FIFA 2018, will be held in Russia! And last week the official logo was unveiled from a place far far away. If you think of Russia, what comes to mind? Snow, bears, vodka and AK-47? Maybe for some of you, but for educated people, Russia is a symbol of feudal culture, old and deep history, and of course the conquering of space in the modern age. So the announcement of the FIFA 2018 logo, was made from the International Space Station on the 29th of October.

With this logo, the creators want to show the heart and soul of Russia, and I believe they did a great job with that.

Its 4 years away, but I am already excited to see how this whole tournament will play out.

Статья на русском и видео ролик с передачи Вечерний Ургант: rus.delfi.lv

Poster Session

October 23rd, 2014

(hover over the image to reveal the controls for viewing the album)

I appologise for the huge delay of this post, but here it is. On the 1st of July Kagoshima University had their annual international students poster session. During this event, a chosen number of students make A0 sized posters and small speeches about their countries. The topics can include anything from just general overview to more in depth explanation of things like: events, festivals, government, education system, etc. Of course I was asked to take part in this as well, and so I prepared a beautiful poster about my hometown Riga. I talked about the geography, population, transport, food, sports and our gorgeous art nouveau buildings.

I had a lot of students and older people come up to me and ask me questions about Riga and Latvia, especially about the food (Japanese people love food). The old guy in glasses listening to my explanations of Riga you see in the photo album is the head of Kagoshima University. He said he went to Estonia about 30 years ago, but has yet to travel to Latvia.

I hope I can participate in more events like this one as not only is it good practice for my Japanese skills, I also really enjoy designing posters or signs, thats why I spent around 4 hours making my poster look that pretty.

Shimabara 島原 & Nagasaki 長崎

October 20th, 2014

samurai road

This weekend I spent together with my good friend Tac, who is currently working as a English teacher in the city of Shimabara as part of the JET program. We went around the city, a nearby hot spring and Nagasaki city.

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Typhoons in Japan

October 13th, 2014

vongfong

Another day another typhoon warning. And believe it or not, this is normal in Japan. Typhoon VongFong has made landfall onto Kyuushu at 9am this morning and is slowly making its way towards the rest of Japan. This is the 19th typhoon to affect Japan this year. Trust me, thats a lot.

When it first made the news, they were saying that its the strongest this year, that its a super typhoon. The university even cancelled all the classes! Well it reached Kagoshima this morning and went right through us, but aside from a bit of wind and rain, it was a pretty normal day. When the eye of storm was right above the city, it was beautiful. The sun was shining brightly, there were no clouds, no wind, no rain. Then 30 minutes later it went back to being all cloudy and moist.

And as previously, we ask ourselves, why did they make such a big deal if it was barely any different from a rainy day? I guess after years of being ravaged by typhoons, the people of Japan take them much more serious now. Whats important is that we are ok, and are going back to uni tomorrow.

Cosplaying

September 21st, 2014

cosplay

Cosplay, its an art of dressing up as a character from a TV series, movie, game or any other form of media. You get to pretend to be your favourite character, maybe act out a scene or two from the show/game.

My friends from anime@uts and JASS are doing this thing on Facebook where they talk about their cosplay experiences and tag other people to do it too. So I have been tagged, and instead of posting it on Facebook (ugh Facebook), I’m gonna talk about it here, on my blog.

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Hiroshima – 広島

September 20th, 2014

Hiroshima

After a relaxing and rejuvenating stay at Kurokawa, Amy and I continued our travels. Now we are heading to the city of Hiroshima, best known for its century old shrine and gate on the water (Miyajima Jinja) and of course the atomic bombing of 1945.

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Kurokawa Onsen – 黒川温泉

September 20th, 2014

Summer holidays are not over, and neither are my travels. This time Amy and I set on an adventure to venture into the mountains of Kumamoto prefecture, into a small town called Kurokawa onsen. It took us 3 hours to get there by bus from Kumamoto station; it was a long ride, but totally worth it.

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iPhone 6 and the Watch

September 10th, 2014

iPhone6

Yesterday Apple announced the new generation iPhone and they had one more thing to say. The new iPhone comes in 2 models the iPhone6 and the 6+ with 4.7′ and 5.5′ screens respectively. They got a spec bump over the previous generation and a new slimmer design. Thats pretty much it. For features Apple introduced Pay, a service which will replace all your credit cards and allow you to pay with your iPhone using NFC. That’s awesome, but only available in the US for now.

Then came the big news, Apple announced their first wearable – the Watch. The smart watch field is something new to Apple and they decided that now would be the perfect time to try to make one. And they did, and its pretty. Read all about it on their website, they can describe it much better then I can.

Watch

Though I would like to say, I would like to buy both the phone and the watch, the iPhone 6 is not worth it without Pay and Australia doesn’t have it yet. And the watch is still in its first generation, coming out in Jan or Feb next year. Maybe its worth waiting for the iWatch 2, which will be thinner and better.

The hype for September 9th

September 5th, 2014

AppleCountdown

We all knew it was coming, but we probably have no idea how little know, and what to expect. I am of course talking about the September 9th Apple Keynote. Every year Apple has held a Keynote around this time in September to introduce their new hardware, more specifically new iPhones. We (by we I mean all the denizens of the internet and beyond) were all guessing that this year won’t be different. Oh boy, were we wrong. Well I can’t say for a fact yet, but come September 10th 2-4am Japan time, and I will be able to say that we were.

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