About

What the heck is ‘Gakuranman‘!?

A gakuran is a Japanese schoolboy jacket and the ‘man’ is me (in the weakest sense of the word, I assure you). When I put the gakuran on, I become the invincible teaching persona that is – the Gakuranman! Kinda like a superhero, only with the calibre of Captain Planet or Inspector Gadget. I’m fighting bad Japanese grammar and poor pronunciation, people!

In all seriousness though, I’m working as a CIR (Coordinator of International Relations) on the JET Programme in Japan. The job involves copious amounts of translation, a little interpretation, seminars and lots of random inter-me-cultural things.

I read Philosophy and Japanese at university in the United Kingdom, but I feel like I’m forever just a student. I started this website to write about things of interest and a penchant for playing with words. Over time the focus has narrowed to largely Japan-themed subjects, ruins explorations and the occasional flash of bioluminescence.

And? Why should I read your blog?

Oh yeah, that part. Against the millions of others, likely with daily updates and fecund content bursting with imagination, I feel I can hardy compete. But…hey! Wait! I hadn’t finished! I was going to say, in spite of that, if you happen to have an interest in Japan (particularly the Secret parts), a propensity for learning Japanese or can share in my quirky love for ruins exploration or bioluminescence, then by all means please give my journal a second thought!

There is also likely to be a smattering of posts related to web design, freaky-strange animals, philosophy and a little amateur photography thrown in here and there.

Hey! Tell me more about your website.

It’s best viewed at 1280×768 and above! That said, you can view the core content right down to 1024×768, but the design won’t look quite as good. I’m currently on the 7th version of the site. I wrote about the site design here: Gakuranman.com Website and Logo

Can I use stuff from your website?

Short answer: All content on Gakuranman.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Basically, feel free to share stuff but please provide a link back to this website!

Long answer: We’re all just dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, right? Very little these days is original, but we do owe a great deal to those people who taught and inspired us. So feel free to borrow some of my content, but please give proper credit where it is due. Please don’t copy whole articles or long chunks of text and be sensible about how many images you use. Ask yourself the question: ‘Am I creating something with mostly new content?‘ If the answer is no or you are not really sure, there’s a good chance you are just copying my work, which as flattering as it can be, isn’t cool.

How to properly give credit depends on the type of material and the purpose for which you want to use it. But for most people, it’s dead easy.

For everything non-commercial on the internet, it’s a simple matter of providing a link back to my website when you quote me for written text or borrow pictures and videos. You’ll know which photographs are my own because they will have ‘Gakuranman.com’ watermarked in the corner. Please be nice and leave the watermark alone :).

For everything commercial, material you want to use in printed media, media other than the internet or when you want to edit my photographs or videos, I ask that you please contact me first to ask permission. I like to know where my work is being used. If it’s for a good cause, I usually won’t say no.

If you have any doubt about using something found on my website, please feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to help and it’ll avoid a lot of headaches later on ^_^.

Tell me about the ads on this site.

As I write on my advertisements page, I only endorse advertisements that I think are relevant. I try to keep things transparent on this website, so you can be assured that anything I’m promoting is probably useful to you. When reviewing products or services, I will always give my honest opinion and state whether or not I have been commissioned to write the review.

I can’t understand Japanese!

You could learn! But for those of you who can’t read Japanese, I’ve made flag buttons at the top of the page that allow you to move between the Japanese and English versions of this website (note: I’m currently re-designing the Japanese site). Each website has unique content and unfortunately I will not be translating posts from either language, except perhaps on special occasions.

What the heck is that flower-circle thingy?

Glad you asked! The logo at the top of the page is actually based on a button taken from a gakuran. The colours are obviously different than a real button and the design has been tweaked to make it fit with my branding.

What happened to ‘Knowing Nothing’?

My website was originally titled ‘Knowing Nothing’ after the famous aphorism by the Greek philosopher Socrates:

“As for me, all that I know is that I know nothing”

It is intended to be a humbling expression of one’s own ignorance about the world, but is perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek in today’s society. The reason I changed the title was because I felt it conveyed an ambiguous message to readers about the content of this blog – Japan is the main focus, not Philosophy.