Ishikawajets.org is the official website of Ishikawa-based participants of the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Programme. Funds for the development and upkeep of the website are paid for by the Ishikawa-chapter of AJET (Association of Japanese Exchange and Teaching). The website serves not only as a repository of knowledge and support related materials, but also as a forum for the dissemination of information of interest not only to local JETs, but to anyone with an interest in Japan or Ishikawa in general.

Up to date local event information is always available, as are restaurant, music and book reviews. In addition, the site also has several features designed to boost community interaction - the always lively ishikawajets j-talk forum, the mobile photo blog (forthcoming), reader commenting and so on. Since it is designed as a JET webpage, the site also has a "PA Corner" where the latest messages and advisories from the Prefectural Advisor can be accessed, as well as significant resources for lesson planning, including user uploadable/downloadable lesson plans (forthcoming).

Version History: This is the third incarnation of the Ishikawajets.org website. The original static website was built by Alex Cameron back in 2003. Subsequently, in 2004 the site was taken over and updated by the current webmaster Mistar Michaelpanda. Finally, in May 2005 the site was completely rebuilt from the ground up to be a dynamic, standards-compliant site powered by a Movable Type framework, which allows for much greater community interaction and ease of updating.

It is our sincere hope that you can find this site to be a valuable and useful resource. If you have any ideas, suggestions or comments, please feel free to contact us!

Webmaster

Michaelpanda: Ishikawajets.org was lovingly built pixel by pixel, bit by bit by Mistar Michaelpanda, a 2nd year Kanazawa-based ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) with a borderline fantatical obsession with pandas. Besides building and maintaining the site, he also writes the "Announcements" section of the website, and from July of 2005, will be taking over the P.A. Corner section of the site as well.

Panda can often be found milling about any of the local coffee shops in downtown Katamachi, generally glued to his computer, or else passed out amongst a stack of student papers he was supposed to have corrected two weeks ago. He is always more than happy to help you with any problems you might encounter in your everday life, so please don't hesitate to give him a ring. He can also be reached through the webmaster e-mail address of this site, or else by following the sticky drops of Iced Caramel Macchiatos to the back corner of aforementioned coffee shops.

Of course, if you have any technical issues with the site, he's the person to get in touch with.

Education Section

Moby:forthcoming

Events Section

Dipstarrrr:forthcoming

Entertainment & Reviews Section

Keith:forthcoming

Special Thanks

Alex: Realising that there was a complete lack of electronic information for Ishikawa JETs, present and future Alex decided to build the original version of ishikawajets.org.

With the help of Pat Schofield (graphics maestro and co-founder), Andrew Cerini and other generous JETs, he set out to make the site the best in Japan. Work started on making detailed regional guides, support pages and the rest. Bringing in Gary and J-talk made the project really take off and helped create the most active community in Japan. Winning AJET's 'best website award' caused him to cry in public.....

Samurai-badass-in-training:forthcoming

Alex G:forthcoming

Ishikawajets.org owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to the various people who have contributed their time and information over the years. Specifically, many of the links in the Links section were aggregated by Alex Cameron and Andrew Cherini back in 2003, and large portions of information contained in the Support Section were kindly made available to us through the generosity of IFIE (Ishikawa Foundation for International Exchange), which every year puts out the invaluable "Isihikawa Prefecture Living Guide". In addition, the Regions Section is taken from the first hand experiences and advice provided by countless JETs living all over Ishikawa, without whom we'd never know where's the best place to buy toilet paper in the inaka, or how late the local supermarket is open till on Sundays.

Finally, a word of thanks to Gary Ross, on who's J-talk site the ever popular Ishikawajets Forum is hosted, and who provided kind design and technical advice in the early stages of the project.

Ishikawajets.org is coded to be more or less valid XHTML 1.0 transitional, which is to say it that I did my best to stay standards-compliant, but being a panda, I was too lazy to subject myself to the torture using strict XHTML 1.0 would have entailed. Standards compliance is important, and for this reason, the vast majority of the pages on the site are W3C validated (you can check for yourself by clicking on the xhtml link at the bottom of such pages). Trying to produce valid code on a complex site is an exercise in frustration and anger management, as well as an eye opening introduction to the world of browser differences, rendering bugs and what not. I highly recommend everyone try this at least once in their lives, since it's sort of like slowly and self-loathingly stabbing yourself to death with a pencil, only much more mentally taxing. I have no idea what I'm talking about here.

Ishikawajets.org uses valid cascading style sheets for all layout/design on the site, which means there's a chance it might look slightly quirky on older browsers with incomplete css support. I have tested it for compliance not only with W3C standards, but also for useability and consistency on modern IE, Gecko & KHTML rendering engine based browsers. If you're having problems viewing the site with an older browser, it might not be a bad idea to upgrade to a newer version, as style sheets are fairly ubiquitous and will only continue to be more so in the future.

Ishikawajets.org is not a big corporate website (actually it was created completely for free) and as such, I don't have the resources, time or knowledge to ensure that every page on the site is 100% accessible to people using alternative browsing technologies. For one, I don't have access to a screen reader (pretty expensive bit of software), a braille browser (even more expensive) and I'm not color blind. Nonetheless, I have made an effort to ensure that the majority of the pages on the site comply with US section 508 accessibility guidelines (you can check this on any page that displays the "508 compliant" icon at the bottom), whose word I'm going to have to take on the subject, unless someone with a screen reader/etc. tells me otherwise.

I've devoted some effort to making sure the site degrades nicely in the absence of style sheets, and it is perfectly browseable in text based browsers, such as lynx. One thing to be careful of, however, is that since I have used Mike Rundle's "Accessible Image Replacement" technique on the main navigation menu at the top, on the extremely rare chance that you have disabled images while leaving css enabled on your browser, the top navigation menu will be unuseable. Nothing can be done about that, other than me shaking you violently about and asking "why on earth would you do such a thing!?". So in such a case, please either turn back on your image support, turn off your css support or else use a straight up text-only browser. Thank you.

The main stylesheet gives a mixture of verdana and arial (rougly in that order) for most of the main text areas on the site, and throws in a generic sans-serif as the backup choice. Should be easy viewing on just about any browser out there, or so I hope!

The blog is set up using sixaparts excellent "Movable Type" software, and modified using scripts, modules and plugins from Cate and Michael, Jennifer at Scriptygoddess, and Jay Allen, among others. All of the templates, as well as the rest of the code on the site are hand coded by your truely using the greatest html editor known to man, good ol' windows notepad and the excellent (and free!) J-Edit.

All images and backgrounds on the site were hand crafted by yours truly pixel by pixel using Adobe Photoshop, with the notable exception of a few of the little navigation arrows, which were designed by Dan Cederholm.

Ishikawajets.org is hosted by hostmatters.com, an excellent company with top notch service and very friendly and accomodating technical staff. I can't recommend them enough!

Ishikawajets.org is (c) 2003-2005, all rights reserved. So please don't steal anything on the site, including text, images or code. If there's something on the site you'd really like to use, why not drop me an e-mail? Chances are I would have no problem with you using it and can often provide you with a bigger resolution copy (in the case of images) or a more in-depth original (in the case of text). If there's a bit of code or programming you want to use on your site, if you ask I'd be happy to explain to you how I did something - after all, this site wouldn't be running today without all the other people out there kind enough to put out tutorials in the first place.

Feel free to link to any page/entry on the site - you aren't required "come in through the front door" as it were. However, please don't "hotlink" to a file or leech my bandwidth - it's simply not cool to link directly to an file hosted on someone else's website. Be a good person, ask for permission to use an image, and after you get a response, find your own host and upload it there. While I'm not an evil panda, I have been known to switch out images on bandwidth thieves and replace them with something a lot less pleasant.

The views expressed on Ishikawajets.org are our own and are in no way representative of those of our employers, either past, present or future. On the other hand, what you write in the comments form/message board are your own opinions, and except for cleaning up messy urls, and changing naughty words into less offensive alternatives, we won't edit your comments. By the same token, this also means that we bear no responsibility for whatever people write in the comments/message board area. Their views are not our own and just because something's on the site doesn't mean we agree with it - supporting free speech means not censoring views that may be contrary to your own.

Along with the comments, Ishikawajets.org is not responsible for the contents of any externally linked sites. We do my best to ensure we only link to responsible sources, but this in the internet, and things - and sites - can and do change from one instance to the next.

Your IP address is logged everytime you visit the site, and it along with any information you provide to me, either when e-mailing me or in your comments submission form - remains private and will never be displayed on the site. Of course, if you voluntarily enter a URL in the comments form, this will be linked to your name, so use common sense.

I hate spammers with a passion and I promise I won't sell your name to mass marketers, send you e-mails about natural herbal viagra or even give up your information to the government, unless of course, they lock me up in Guantanamo Bay, in which case I hope you all understand, given that I don't do so well in that Cuban heat. If someone steals my computer, all bets are off, but I wouldn't worry as I have my army of killer robo pandas guarding it 24-7, ready to take immediate action against any potential perpetrators.

Finally, Ishikawajets.org doesn't accept advertising, though if you use the google function to search the site, it is possible that you may see small text ads in the results. This is google's doing and we have no control over it. If you see any pop-up/pop-under/etc. ads when you visit this site, please be assured that this is not my fault - more than likely your computer is infected with some manner of spyware. I recommend downloading the latest copy of ad-aware and giving your computer a good scrubbing.

I'm running Jay Allen's excellent MT-Blacklist to try and weed out the tons of comment spam that would otherwise infect the comment sections of sites. Nonetheless, occasionally a bit of advertising might slip through, though these will be deleted in short order. If you post anything that looks like it might be advertising, please be advised that your comment will be deleted immediately - do it again, and your IP will be banned, no ifs/and/buts or ors. Be nice and enjoy your stay here in Ishikawa!