Image courtesy our good friend HippyKiller1.

We received a pretty epic email from HippyKiller1 over on YouTube the other day and talked a bit about it in Episode 56 of Bad Communication.  It’s definitely worth a read and he was kind enough to include a bunch of amazing photos to go along with his message.  Everything that follows is from HippyKiller1.  Be sure to check him out on YouTube as well.  Lots of other great content from him on his channel.  Here it is, take a look and happy drinking!

Hey there BCPodcast,

This is hippykiller1!  I head you mention my comment about the ice and beer.  I had a good laugh.  I’m just emailing you to let you know that there are some great Japanese microbrews available in Japan.  First is American Pale Ale by Ginga Kougen.  Generally they make a lager but their Pale Ale was pretty good.  Sadly, I can’t find it anymore.  Usually I found it at a Sun Kus near my house but maybe it’s not brewed anymore.

Next is a nice place near Utsunomiya called Preston brewing.  I’m not sure if they bottle and distribute but they have some nice brews.  Their IPA and brown ale are alright but their Irish Ale is so damn good.  It has a nice chocolate taste.

Baird’s Brewing is out of Tokyo and they have a great line of beers.   I was only able to afford to sample three of their beers.  I think they have a line of about ten different brews.  Their double IPA was my favorite but at 1000¥ a pint, it’s a bit expensive.

http://bairdbeer.com/en/bairdbeer

There is a pub near Akihabara called Popeye.

http://www.lares.dti.ne.jp/~ppy/

It has somewhere around seventy beers from around the world on tap.  I haven’t been their yet but seventy beers on tap is a lot.

Lastly, there is a nice liquor store off the Yamanote line at Mejiro Station.  It’s about a minute walk from the front gate.  Hang a left, walk past a McDonalds and it’s down some steps in a basement.  There is a plenty of spirits and wines but they have the best selection of beer from around the world that I have seen in Japan.  They also carry some Japanese microbrews.  Some of the beer is reasonably priced and some of it is crazy expensive.  I saw a bottle selling for 20,000¥!

I haven’t tried Hitachino brewing yet (they have an owl on their products) but I am told it’s the best beer in Japan.

Well thanks for reading.  I wrote this in a bit of a rush.  Hopefully you can put up with it.  I just wanted to let you guys know about some nice beers in Japan.  I’ll give that ice beer a try later tonight and let you know how it went.

-hippykiller1

We recently received an email from a fellow content creator living in Japan asking us about our favorite places in Japan. Kaley, a self-described “Girl. 22. Travelling to Japan to teach English. Learn the culture. Learn the language. Make new friends. Starting anew.”, runs a site called Kaley in Japan and is collecting entries from the Japanese blogging community in an ongoing series about their thoughts on Japan.

Being video people, Andrew and I decided to chat a bit about her question on the past week’s show. For better or worse, this is what we came up with!

This is the more popular of the two vine-bridge locations in Tokushima. It’s located in the Western part of the Tokushima Prefecture near a town called Ikeda (池田) in the Iya Valley (祖谷).

This second bridge is located a bit east of the first much deeper in the mountains and in the center of the prefecture. What makes this particular location quite interesting are the two separate bridges that span the valley quite close to each other.

With BC coming back to Ustream live broadcasts, we’ve heard from a number of viewers who are having trouble logging into the Ustream chat room during the show. The layout of Ustream’s website is rather convoluted, so I thought I’d take some time to explain exactly how to get into the chat room.

First, to make things easier, sign up for a Ustream account here.

After you’ve entered some basic info, created a user name and password, and agreed to the Ustream TOS, go to Bad Communication’s Ustream page.

Once there, direct your attention to the box on the right with the big green button labeled “Check-in & Chat”

By default, the mode selected is called “Social Stream.” This is a sort of shout box that people can use to post messages to our show page with their Facebook or Twitter accounts. We’re not interested in that for now, what we want is the chat room. Click the tab immediately to the right of “Social Stream” labeled “Chat”

You’ll be prompted to enter a user name and password. Enter the user name and password of the Ustream account you created earlier. I’ve noticed that it’s a bit glitchy and might take more than one try.

Now should you be savvy with Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and find yourself unsatisfied with Ustream’s web chat interface, you can also access the show’s chat room via your favorite IRC client (Ubuntu users such as myself have one included in Empathy ^_^). There are far too many clients out there, so I can’t give instructions for all of them. But basically, you’ll need to create a new network in your client containing one or more of the following servers:

chat1.ustream.tv
chat2.ustream.tv
chat3.ustream.tv
chat4.ustream.tv

The port for all of them is 6667, and they don’t use SSL. You’ll have to login using a Ustream user name and password. Once you’re in, our chat room is #bad-communication.

IT’S THAT EASY!

Hey everyone!

While browsing some directories of Creative Commons-license music last week (such as Jamendo and the Free Music Archive), I found that there is a lot of independent music from Japan out there on the Internet. In the vein of our “Pic Pick of the Week” segment, it occurred to me to add a new segment to Bad Communication called “Track Pick of the Week” to showcase a different band or artist every week.

However, being a video podcast, we need some video footage to go along with the music. And that is where you, our dear viewers, come in. If you live in Japan and have a semi-decent video camera, I want your outdoor footage to remix and reuse. I don’t care what is it is: buildings, nature, farmland, crowds, traffic, trains, as long as it’s of Japan and is safe for work, we can use it. You can send it to us by posting it to YouTube or a file hosting service like RapidShare and posting the link in the comments or sending it to bc@wanwan.fm. We’ll do our very best to credit people for what we use.

So take a walk with your camera and record something! I’m looking forward to seeing what people have to send.