Jack Halpern, yours truly

I was born in Germany and have lived in six countries before coming to Japan over 30 years ago, incuding, France, Brazil and the United States.

I am a lexicographer by profession, and for sixteen years have engaged in the compilation of the New Japanese-English Character Dictionary. I am also head of the The CJK Dictionary Institute, which maintains comprehensive CJK lexical databases, and the author of The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary.

I love the sport of unicycling, which I have been promoting worldwide for over 25 years. My current passion is playing the quena and studying Chinese. I love languages, especially Yiddish, Chinese and Portuguese, and such sports as cycling, travel and formerly flying.

Here is a fuller resume in English and a brief resume in Japanese.

Michal Halpern, wife

Born and raised in a kibbutz, Michal has been my loving companion through the many hardships of compiling my kanji dictionary over a period of sixteen years. She speaks Hebrew, English, Japanese and some German and loves ikebana and playing the flute.

She is also intensely interested in health products, nutrition, and healthy food, and often surfs the Web for new information. Thanks to this she has been keeping our family in good health and looking much younger than our years. She has brought the magic and wonders of Transfer Factor, SomaLife and Life Plus into our lives, which is keeping us happy and healthy.

Her major aim in life is to make friends and help people -- no wonder she has no known enemies :-) Her major problem is that in Japan's closed society making friends is no easy matter.

　We are now collecting some of Michal's favorite quotes and anecdotes that show her philosophy of life. Here is the first one. Watch out for more:

• Village of 100 People
• The Dalai Lama on 2001

Barak Halpern , son

Baraki was born in in 1971 and has been living in Japan since his family moved there in 1973. Baraki grew up in a Japanese environment and attended Japanese schools until he transfered to an international school at the age of 14. He went on to college and majored in Japanese linguistics. He has been teaching Japanese and English, both privately and at schools, in the Tokyo area.

Cheerful and passionate by nature, he has been playing and singing in bands since his low teens. His previous band, Jugame, has won first place in various contests and has performed at places like the Yoyogi second gymnasium and Shibuya Kokaido. Currently, he is the leader of Satnam, an ambient rock band in which he sings and plays guitar. He works as a narrator and professional voice actor by providing voice overs for TV and radio commercials.

He is one of those guys who says..."This program is brought to you by". He aspires to be a musician who constanly expresses and embodies love, growth and truth.

See Barak's website at www.satnam.tv for more information.

Karen Halpern, daughter

My interests

1. Music, especially jazz and rock
2. Visiting interior design shops and studios
3. Playing billiard
4. Reading books and magazines on interior design and fashion