Along with “Warm Biz” ( asking people to dress up warm to save fuel in winter) and “Cool Biz” ( which reportedly saved enough energy to power 240,000 homes for a month this Summer), the latest Japanese eco-buzz is pedal powered taxis! Priced at 300 yen they are less than half normal taxi. There are loads running up and down the river where my coffee shop is, however they all seem to be empty. But full marks for effort, and I’m sure the advertisers will be happy with the media coverage. For me though, it’s easier to just walk!

Work wise today, I put up talking versions of the Classroom English pages ( tell your teachers!), and also started work on online demo versions for each of the songs. With Genki English now being number one on Yahoo for various terms, lots of people from abroad are asking about the songs. So instead of recommend a visit to a workshop ( my usual strategy in Japan), I’ve been wanting to put up demo files on the site. But by putting up mp3s people would just use them without buying the CDs, plus mp3s are a bit faffy. Then I realised there is actually a “flash” window on each song page for the picture cards, so I flipped that over with a quick switch and you can now check out demo versions of all the songs on CD vol. 5!! They look pretty cool!