3 individuals. 3 unique cities. 336 hours to experience it all. A preview.

Over the next 14 days, starting on March 10th, 3 reprobates will traverse over 16, 229 km in 336 hours, be simultaneously ripped out of their comfort zones, collide head-on into 3 unique cities at breakneck speed, become utterly immersed by countless eye-widening sights, tastes & sounds….before rapidly coming to the sharp realization they’re going to experience at least 25 W.T.F. moments each day.

Those 3 people are Jesse , Dan and yours truly.

Japan here we come.

I’m not sure if WE should get ready for Japan, or whether Japan should get ready for US.

Before I go into details about why we’ve collectively chosen to go, here’s 20 cultural references that initially sprung to mind when I was contemplating the idea of visiting the homeland of Godzilla.

20 Things I Know They Have In Japan
1. Retina bleeding game shows.
2. Random cartoons, which make no sense (Pokémon I’m looking at you) and Hello Kitty fanatics.
3. Interactive toilets like these.
4. Awesome ninjas, which we all pretended to be as kids.
5. Anime films like AKIRA and the home of Manga.
6. Sake, karaoke bars & Japanese schoolgirls – the potent cocktail for every businessman.
7. Vending machines, which dispense anything & everything.
8. Love hotels with themed rooms.
9. Real life robots that act as waiters, dogs and even dates.
10. The mighty Godzilla, who would OWN T-Rex any day.
11. All forms of delicious sushi & rice crackers.
12. The majestic and ever present Mt Fuji.
13. The Samurai Warriors of Imperial Japan.
14. Harajuku Fashion (thanks Gwen Stefani)
15. Picturesque Cherry blossoms.
16. The stylish and timeless Kimono.
17. Literally larger than life Sumo wrestlers.
18. Millions of handheld gadgets and devices.
19. The badass Yakuza with their phenomenal tattoos.
20. 40 ft neon signs, millions of LED logos and blinking skyscrapers

Here’s a visual guide to Japan in 4 minutes.

Have I missed anything? I mean honestly, why WOULDN’T you want to go?

I must admit, there is no specific monument that I’m dying to see, I literally just want to immerse myself in the culture of Japan. I freely admit, the beautiful movie Lost In Translation had a tremendous influence on me, a modern day glimpse at the REAL Tokyo – it would be hard for anyone not to feel compelled to visit such a place after watching that film.

I’d always heard great things about Japan as a country. Several of my friends have been and none of them can speak highly enough of their time there. One of my friends Erin, loved it so much she even moved over there recently.

I’d always been intrigued by Japan’s customs, traditions & psyche as a nation. It’s paradoxical at times, the level of efficiency (their bullet trains run to the second) the cleanliness of their cities, their formal greetings & idiosyncrasies, the token Japanese ‘salary man’ – all juxtaposed with their unyielding passion for fluro tinged cartoon characters, quirky TV shows, neon lit karaoke bars, a national obsession with robots even down to the OTT nature of fashion displayed in their youth culture.

One part of their society is rigid, formalized and to an extent repressed, the other side is bursting with intensity, creativity and spontaneity. Poplar opposites, colliding everyday.

So how did this trip come about? As some of you may know, I’m a die-hard Sydney FC fan (for my sins) and this year they are playing in the Asian Champions League against a Japanese team called Kashima Antlers.

I whimsically joked with my friend Dan (co-founder of Nothing Cooler Than) that it would be awesome to go over to Japan for a few days, experience Tokyo and go and see the game.

He’d been to Tokyo before for work and was already a huge fan, so we casually looked at flights.

And there it was – the deal of a lifetime with our names on it waiting to be nabbed.

Jetstar had a sale, $560 for a return trip to Japan per person leaving around 9am from Sydney and arriving back around 9pm anytime in March. You’d have been mad not to take it.

The final piece of the puzzle saw Jesse (from the band BEARHAWK) for whom the mantra “WTF Japan?” is a life-long obsession to come onboard and join the tour. He hasn’t had a holiday in 5 years so you can imagine his level of excitement right now!

What had begun as a weeks trip to Tokyo to see Sydney FC, has now collectively morphed into a 2 week trip encompassing Osaka, Kyoto, Kashima & Tokyo.

Here’s 10 Facts You Might Not Know About Japan.
1. Raw horse meat is a popular food in Japan.
2. Mt. Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan, is an active volcano.
3. There are four different writing systems in Japan, romaji, katakana, hiragana & kanji.
4. Coffee is very popular & Japan imports approximately 85% of Jamaica’s annual coffee production.
5. Japan’s literacy rate is almost 100%.
6. Sumo is Japan’s national sport, although baseball is also very popular.
7. There are around 1,500 earthquakes every year in Japan.
8. The term karaoke means “empty orchestra” in Japanese.
9. Geisha means “person of the arts” and the first geisha were actually men.
10. It was customary in ancient Japan for women to blacken their teeth with dye as white teeth were considered ugly.

Throughout the trip we’ll be documenting the entire experience, so once we get back expect to see the internet flooded with photos, blogs and videos from our tour! We’re also dubbing it the “W.T.F. Japan Tour” rather apt by all accounts.

We’ll also be tweeting as we go, so make sure you follow Jesse, Dan or Myself (gold star if you do all three!) because we’ll be giving you a first hand account of what is happening. Whatever we Tweet, we promise it will always be genuine, real and tangible – I’m sure they’ll be some amusing insights and heated debate going on!

I’ve put together a preview of each area, basically an online itinerary which will show you what we’ll be doing and where we’ll be going. I’d love for you to give us some suggestions or feedback, especially if there is something glaringly obvious which we’re missing out on.

Previewing: Osaka
Previewing: Kyoto
Previewing: Tokyo

Look out Japan, here we come – wish them luck.

Follow @alexwain

My Facebook Profile

So in light of seeing The Social Network (which I have to say I thought was the best movie of 2010) and also because several people have asked me how they can optimize their Facebook Pages, I’m going to share with you a few tweaks and tips to help you make the most of your presence on Facebook.

Below are my 10 Facebook Tips & Tricks You Might Now Know (Please note most of these only apply for brand pages, but there are many you can use on your own individual profile).

10 FACEBOOK TIPS & TRICKS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW
1. Ask every staff member to ‘Like’ the company Facebook page. Lets say you have 250 employees with have 50 Facebook friends each. If they all ‘Liked’ your page, that’s 12,500 people seeing your business / brand in their Facebook feed. This is a great way to quickly get an increase in ‘Likes’ and interactions, without initially having to spend money on advertising.

2. Upload all your videos to your page, for increased visibility and branding. If you have videos on YouTube or Vimeo simply replicate them on Facebook, who also host clips in HD format.

3. Post events to Facebook and target by geographical location. For example, only invite your Melbourne fans to an event you’re hosting in Melbourne. Here’s how you do it

Red Bull Facebook Page

4. Increase the amount of people that ‘Like’ the page, by displaying non-fan content. Once you ‘Like’ the page you can then display another image saying thankyou or driving to your site. See an example

5. Use a Social Media Dashboard like Hootsuite to help you track how many people are clicking and commenting on your updates. You can also schedule status updates in advance, perfect for when you’re not in the office over the weekend or when you need to post content which might be time-specific or embargoed until a certain date.

6. Integrate your Twitter feed directly into Facebook so more people can see and interact with your links. Someone might use Facebook once a week, but use Twitter every 3 hours – so this is a great way to reach out to someone using their prefered medium. Here’s how you place Twitter inside Facebook (this costs $10) you can see it in action here.

Likewise you can also integrate your YouTube channel directly into Facebook. If you have 1,000s of videos that you don’t have time to upload to Facebook, this feature will save you time by automatically pulling in videos from any YouTube channel. Get started here (this costs $10) or view a live demo

Twitter integration into Facebook Page

YouTube on Facebook

7. When posting links on Facebook, there’s a few tricks you can do, to get more interaction and make them go viral. Here’s 6 Facebook tricks you need to know

8. When you post a story, say you’ve posted a link to an interview you did with Katy Perry, ask the her PR agency to share your story on her network using the ‘Share’ button under the post. If you’re posting about a brand, celebrity or team you work with, when posting a status update, always reference them by putting the ’@’ symbol in front of their name example: “@Katy Perry talks to use exclusively about her new record” this means they will be notified that you are mentioning them. It will also appear on their page.

9. Disable the sync function between Facebook and Twitter. If you type over 140 characters on Facebook, this becomes truncated on Twitter – not a good experience for people who potentially follow you on Twitter.

Here’s the example of what not to do:

Twitter Tweet via Facebook Sync

10. Find out how much your Facebook page is worth and what you can do to make it more valuable.

Hope you found them useful,  if you have any other suggestions, recommendations or feedback be great for hear – just leave a comment below ok?

Follow @alexwain

Occasionally, it’s nice to do lots of things over the weekend. For one, it makes it feel longer and secondly, allows you to really occupy your mind with something else, rather than the pressures of work Monday-Friday. Some weekends, especially after an intense week, I just want to be as lazy as possible – but this weekend was a little different. I actually got out of the house for starters

Yummy Yasmin, out of the kindness of her heart, took me to see The  Alchemist, a play by the Bell Shakespeare group, performed live at the Playhouse within the Sydney Opera House. I have to say, I really did enjoy it, some of the actors were fantastically larger-than-life, but 135 minutes, with no interval made it a bit hard going at times.

The dialogue, scenes and story were all so fast paced, that there were times when I wasn’t able to keep up or quite make sense of what was happening to who, why and when! That aside, it certainly had it’s moments and I’m really glad I got the opportunity to go, as I’d been wanting to for some while. You can read more about it and book tickets here

I also went and saw Swedish horror film, “Let The Right One In” a movie which scored 97% on Rotten Tomatoes (113 postivie reviews out of 116) David Statton of At The Movies fame even said…

“Transcending its grim theme, this is an astonishingly beautiful and visually inventive film that explores the cliches of the vampire genre with a deft, everyday approach.”

I thought it was beautifully shot and acted and it made Twilight look like the cheap, dumbed down, crass, Americanised version of a similar story.

I really recommended you take some time out to go see it. I’m not the biggest fan of horror, but it’s done in such as way in “Let The Right One In” that it isn’t overly terrifying, in fact, you almost agree with it at times. Below is a preview for you. 

And finally, what weekend would be complete, without spending some time with your friends eh?

You can see more photos from the Friday night shenaningans here.

Enjoy,
Alex

Alex