Martin's Sabbatical in Japan
How it all started...
sabbatical application
Looked up Japanese universities on the Web...
I found several lists of Japanese colleges and universities, of which the most comprehensive appeared to be the dmoz (open directory project) listings [screenshot 15/07/01].I discovered that with Internet Explorer (version 5.5) on a PC I could install Japanese fonts, enabling me to view Japanese web pages - something I couldn't figure out how to do on my Mac. Wonderful!
Most of the Japanese university websites I looked up were disappointing. The information seemed generally superficial, and was mostly in Japanese.
Coincidentally, I came across an article by Michael Chan in the Times Higher Education Supplement (25 May 2001) that stated "If you look at an average Japanese university website, you would think that the country had an acute shortage of web designers. ... Most sites have the president's welcome, faculty information and application details. But, compared with university websites worldwide, there is little of substance." The article cited Hitotsubashi University's website [screenshot of Japanese home page 07/07/01 / screenshot of English home page 07/07/01] as an average example.
Did some preparatory research before leaving the UK...
Looked up other THES articles (mostly downloaded from the THES website)Started an articles archive to contain all the useful articles (with hyperlinks where relevant) I would find during the course of my sabbatical.
Made other preparations...
Bought provisions,
and converted my digital existence from a large Mac to a small PC ... a non-trivial exercise!
Then came August 6th...
or rather...
