My name is David Hurley. I come from the UK and work as a free-lance English language instructor, consultant and editor for various Japanese clients here in sunny Hiroshima.
I'm also an Internet marketer in several niche markets, such as Japanese Games & Manga, English Renaissance Literature, and since April 2007, Internet marketing strategies.
What does all that have to do with a blog called "Notes From The Tiger's Cave"?
The tiger's cave is Japan... the unknown... the new... the untraversed.
The tiger's cave is the Internet.
As a name for this blog it is inspired by a Japanese proverb:
"If you don't enter the tiger's cave you won't catch the cub.
- Seth Godin: Tribes
- Robert Greene: The 48 Laws of Power
- W. F. & E. S. Friedman: The Shakespearian Ciphers Examined
- William Shakespeare: Romeo And Juliet
- John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress (Part The First)
- Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Hermann Knell: To Destroy A City
- Kay McSpadden: Notes from a Classroom
- Kishore Mahbubani: Can Asians Think?
- Shigeyoshi Matsumae: Materialism in Search of a Soul
Archive for June, 2008
Will You Drink Beer In Space When Your Internet Marketing Start-Up Takes Off?
Author: David Hurley
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After a busy day spent at home promoting my Internet marketing start-up business, I like to crack open a can or two of beer in the evening. As I live in Hiroshima, my preferred Japanese beer tends to be Kirin.
However, if my Internet marketing start-up business is to take off like a space rocket, I think I might have to switch to a different brew, namely, Sapporo.
Sapporo Holdings recently announced that it is planning to brew the first “space beer,” using barley grown from grain that was stored on the International Space Station in 2006.
The brewery has enough space grain to brew up to 100 bottles of beer. It is more of a publicity stunt than a commercial enterprise, but the company suggested that in the future, when humans spend long periods of time in space, they might like a cold beer after a space walk.
That’s great, but as there is no gravity I guess they’d have to drink it through a straw, which might not be the best of ideas when you have a space station to run.
I know that after a day spent walking my website or related articles and stuff into as much web-space as possible, I can always do with a drink, preferably poured into a tankard that has spent an hour or so in the freezer.
David Hurley
Want to drink beer while you work? Plug Yourself In To This!
read comments (0)Seikou no Bara - The Roses Of Success!
Author: David Hurley
I’m British and my wife is Japanese. Our daughter is referred to as a “haafu” in Japanese. No offense is intended in the term, and none, as of yet, has been taken.
After all, half a loaf is better than none.In our household, both Japanese and English are spoken, usually both together since it is easier to say what you think in your own language and less excruciating to hear what somebody else has to say if she says it in her language and does not screw it up in yours, er mine. So, the question is, what rules do we lay down for our daughter as she learns two languages?
Er… rules? The fewer the better. The only rule I have is that the first DVD my daughter watches in my company must be in English. That’s it! She can mix up her languages as much as she likes and be as playful with them as she wishes.We try out a new DVD every so often, and last week I found Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the shelves of our local DVD rental shop, and for the last few days that has been our chief form of English entertainment.
I never knew that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was based on a children’s novel by Ian Fleming - I never knew Ian Fleming wrote a children’s novel. As one of my English mates said to me over mahjong last Friday, it is a pretty good legacy really, James Bond and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!
Here in Japan, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is called “Chiki Chiki Ban Ban” which sounds quite cute, or kawaii don’t you think?
Anyway, the point of all this, if there is one, is that one of the songs in the film struck me as being ideal for motivating struggling Internet marketers whose websites have just blown up, or who have just wasted a lot of mula and months of effort on promoting a product that turns out to be a stinker.
So without further ado, here are the lyrics, kindly supplied by http://www.lyricsandsongs.com/song/499705.html:
Every bursted bubble has a glory!
Each abysmal failure makes a point!
Every glowing path that goes astray,
Shows you how to find a better way.
So every time you stumble never grumble.
Next time you’ll bumble even less!
For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Oh yes!
Grow the roses!
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
(spoken)Yes I know but he wants it to float. It will!
For every big mistake you make be grateful!
Here, here!
That mistake you’ll never make again!
No sir!
Every shiny dream that fades and dies,
Generates the steam for two more tries!
(Oh) There’s magic in the wake of a fiasco!
Correct!
It gives you that chance to second guess!
Oh yes!
Then up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Grow the roses!
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
Disaster didn’t stymie Louis Pasteur!
No sir!
Edison took years to see the light!
Right!
Alexander Graham knew failure well; he took a lot of knocks to ring that
bell!
So when it gets distressing it’s a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.
Grow the ro
Grow the ro
Grow the roses!
Grow the ro
Grow the ro
Grow the roses!
Grow the roses of success!
Grow the ro
Grow the ro
Grow the roses!
Those rosy ro
Those rosy ro
Those rosy roses!
From the ashes of disaster, grow the roses of success!
Start the engines!
Success!
Batten the hatches!
Success!
Man the shrouds!
Lift the anchor!
Success!
No Pain No Plums
Author: David Hurley
We are in the middle of the rainy season here in Japan right now. The Japanese word for “rainy season” is “tsuyu“, which is made up of two Chinese characters that stand for “plum” and “rain” because the rainy season is also the plum picking season.
One of my oldest students, a cheerful chap in his mid-eighties who drives down from the countryside to attend a two-hour class on Thursday mornings, had been out plum picking in his garden the day before. His forearms were covered in little scratches. I didn’t know plum picking could be such a painful business, but as I said to him,
“Itami nakushite, rieki nashi!“
It is the same with Internet marketing. The plums won’t just fall into your lap. You have to put in some work to harvest them. You have to go through the “pain” of setting up your own website, finding a market, getting together the products, writing some good copy and then getting a targeted audience.
You could compare that process to planting, watering, nurturing and finally climbing the tree and harvesting the plums. You could skip the first three jobs by having someone set up your own website fully loaded with some of the best products available in your chosen niche.
Then all you have to do is go and “get your ladder” (prepare your sales strategy), “climb up the tree” (marketing), and “start harvesting” (sales!) … You may pick up some scratches on the way, but, as I said to my student,
“No pain, no gain!”
David Hurley,
http://grasp-the-nettle.com
Warrior Forum “Plug-In Profit Site” Haiku Class!
Author: David Hurley
Participating in an Internet marketing forum such as Warriorforum.com can be a lot of fun as well as educational!
Pat Brucoli, Support Director of the Plug-In Profit Site (PIPS), and the PIPS Warrior Forum Moderator, started a light-hearted old English-language Haiku thread the other day.The Haiku were error messages said to have been used in Japan to replace “unhelpful Microsoft error messages”. Here’s a sample:
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
The page is not here.
Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
Serious error.
All short-cuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
The question is, though, are they really haiku? I raised an objection!
I’m gonna get tough.
Haiku needs a season ref.,
like early summer.
and…
What you wrote are Senryu:
You can say what you like
and drop the season.
Did you notice that the first line of the last “Haiku” (really a Senryu) had an extra syllable? Japanese poets sometimes do it too! There is even a term for it: jiamari. There are some examples of Japanese Haiku with jiamari here.
“Sudoku” in English = “Number Place” in Japanese!
Author: David Hurley
Sudoku is a Japanese puzzle game. At least, it was first popularized in Japan. The idea is to fill in a 9×9 grid with the numbers 1-9. To complete the puzzle correctly, the numbers must be arranged so that each row, column, and mini grid contains just one of each of the nine digits 1-9.
The word sudoku is an abbreviated form of “Suji wa dokushin ni kagiru,” which is Japanese for “The numbers are limited to singles” - i.e. single digits.
Sudoku number-grid puzzles were popularized in the UK by the Times newspaper. Although they are known as “sudoku” in England, in Japan they are not called sudoku but “nanpure“! Nanpure is an abbreviated form of the Japanese-English phrase “number place”.
Obviously, giving a product a name with a foreign provenance adds a sense of exotic je ne sais pas!
Sudoku are highly rated by teachers and parents with young children. Graded Sudoku typically take a child about 30 minutes to complete. The beauty of them is that although Sudoku grids use numbers, children do not need mathematical skills to solve the puzzles. Sudoku puzzles are perfect for classroom use, as time-fillers for children whofinish early, as whole class activity, or as “homework”.
For more about Sudoku for children, Click Here!