This information is now outdated. Just keeping it here for posterity.
So what the hell is yongfook.com now? Im confused and afraid. Hold me.
What kind of stupid name is “yongfook”? That’s not part of your real name is it?
How do I contact you if I want to tell you how AW3S0M3!1 this site is?
What is your favourite video game of all time?
You seem to complain a lot about Japan - do you not like it?
What are your favourite things about Japan?
How long are you going to be in Japan for?
Say, whats Japan reeeeally like?
What was the best thing that EVAR happened to you related to yongfook.com?
How did you design Yongfook.com?
Why don’t you bore us with some technical details about this site?
Say, what camera are you using?
So what the hell is Yongfook.com now? Im confused and afraid. Hold me.
Yongfook.com has gone through a kind of metamorphosis and is now entirely devoted to reviews of crap Japanese food - the kind that only children and poor people eat. It is no longer about how Aw3s0mE!!11 and crazy life in Japan is all about - for that kind of stuff, check the archived entries dated from July 2002 until September 2004.
What is your name?
Jon Anthony Yongfook Cockle
What kind of stupid name is “yongfook”? That’s not part of your real name is it?
Yongfook is my Chinese name in the Teochew dialect or something, and is part of my birth name. The more conventional pronunciation in Mandarin is “yongfu” and it is made up of two characters æ°¸ç¦? meaning “forever happy” or “forever prosperous”, or my own translation, “titillatingly mild-fingered”.
I am 24 25, born in April. An Aries in the year of the Monkey - Gods own recipe for a mischievious person with a touch of horn.
Where are you from?
I am from Her Majesties United Kingdom of Great Britain Scones Tea Cricket Beer. Ethnically, I am Eurasian - a mongrel hybrid of Chinese and British blood, gaining neithers strengths, but inheriting all weaknesses.
No, I’m not fricking gay. This is about the most unoriginal question that gets asked on yongfook.com “OH LOOK, FUNNY GUY WHO LOVES HIMSELF HAHA R U GAY LOLZ”, well quick hand me the phone because I need to inform the nobel prize committee to end their applications forever since no one will ever be able to top the world-defying miracle of science that is your ability to instantly recognise characters from your Big Book Of Obvious Stereotypes Vol. 2, Now With Wipe-Clean Pages. Twat.
So if you are straight, why do you never talk about the hundreds of chicks you must be sleeping with every day due to your dashing good looks, incisive wit, pendulous cock and loin-moistening charm?
Well you know, I don’t want to brag or anything. That and the fact that my love life is a barren wasteland of asexual tumbleweeds and vagina-less dung beetles.
How do I contact you if I want to tell you how AW3S0M3!1 this site is?
My email address is “email” followed by an “@” sign, followed on with “yongfook.com”. I can also be reached via AIM where my handle is “hamsterpanic”.
What do you do?
I work as an ALT for the village I live in, although my actual job description changes hourly from teacher, punching-bag, thumb-twiddler, tape-recorder and procrastinator, or an interesting mix of all of the above. I am a member of the JET programme - the Japan Exchange and Teaching programme.
After 3 years on JET I moved to Tokyo and am now a web engineer, working in Shibuya.
After a year and a bit doing the above, I am now the director of a small web startup in Tokyo, called jonkenpon.
What are your hobbies?
Apart from gradually fashioning my students into an indestructible winged army of terrible retribution from the skies, I like to listen to, compose and play music (violin, guitar), read cheap spy novels that all end the same way, spend hours hunched in front of my computer, play video games, and occasionally experiment with activities that don’t involve a sofa.
I plays on the intarwebs, stealingz your bytez.
What music do you listen to?
Varied. But mostly classical or classical/electronic fusion - such as Craig Armstrong or Rob Dougan.
What is your favourite video game of all time?
If I were a supercomputer and you asked me this question, I would enter an infinite loop, which would ultimately end with my internal circuit boards exploding into millions of tiny pieces, killing the innocent technicians who were sitting next to me having coffee, waiting for the results. At a glance, I would have to say that a very strong contender for this title is Zelda: A link to the past. Or Leisure Suit Larry.
I currently live in Kumamoto, Japan, in a rural village with a population of about 2500. Kumamoto is a prefecture on Kyushu island, and is about 3 hours by car from Fukuoka and bloody aeons away from Tokyo.
I currently live in Setagaya-ku, about 10 minutes from Shibuya in Tokyo.
I currently live somewhere near Ginza, in Tokyo.
Are you educated?
I attended the University of Kent, and have a degree in Accounting & Finance, but the worlds best scientists are still hard at work to discover whether or not I learnt anything. UPDATE!: The scientists’ supercomputer exploded into millions of tiny pieces, killing them all.
Hey you, yongfook, I’m thinking about joining the JET programme. You were a JET, right? Bukkake all over me with your semen of wisdom.
Another question that people frequently email me over. I’m all for answering questions but if you are going to email me about JET, try to be specific about it. Questions like “so, should I do it?” or “will I enjoy it?” depend entirely on your personal circumstances, none of which I will be able to magically glean from a 2-line email which I stop reading the instant I see an instance of “lol”. JET is different for everyone, since everyone is from different backgrounds, everyone has different levels of patience, attitudes towards public nudity and alcohol tolerance and every JET’s individual situations in their little village or town / city in Japan will also be in themselves, entirely different. This means that, beyond making very general comments, it is pointless to press any kind of opinion about things onto prospective JETs. So, in general I will say this: The JET Programme is a great opportunity and a great experience. You will learn a lot about yourself and gain a wider understanding of what it means to be a world citizen in your time here. Out of all the ex-JETs I know, an overwhelming majority have only positive things to say about it. Try not to see JET as something that will either benefit or hinder your career path, but go on JET looking forward to the experiences that it will offer. Very wishy washy I know, but like I said, if any of you have more specific questions, I would be happy to answer them via email (address somewhere above).
How much is your salary?
I am paid in beans, but I am assured that they are MAGIC beans. “How much” I get is inconsequential when you consider what proportion of that I squander on booze, wining/dining women who ultimately turn out to be completely one-dimensional, and Karate Kid memorabilia.
What do you aspire to be?
One day, I wish to be like one of the people on Flying Doctors, except not having to deal with the professional complexities and financial non-gain of being a doctor in the expanse of the Australian outback, or really, having to be a doctor at all. So basically I want an aeroplane. Actually no I just want a doughnut for now.
You seem to complain a lot about Japan - do you not like it?
As someone from England, I pride myself in having the idiosyncrasy of expressing fondness for a person/thing/place by constantly criticising it - please don’t mistake my cynicism as hatred.
What are your some of your favourite things about Japan?
The blackness of sleep. Oh and soba.
Least favourite?
My pile of shit car, the massively varying weather from day to day, ATM’s closing at 7pm, inadequately insulated houses, insane TV, the stupidly difficult language.
How long are you going to be in Japan for?
awaiting update…
Say, whats Japan reeeeally like?
Everyone dresses up like Dragonball Z and does Karate whilst eating sushi and fighting giant robots ITS JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES!!!!!11
What was the best thing that EVAR happened to you related to yongfook.com?
Once I got recognised in the street in Singapore by some chick and also the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times featured my website (with picture and positive write-up) in one of their pull-out supplements. And funnily enough, I am actually half Singaporean.
How did you design Yongfook.com?
This comes up all the time whether in the comments section or in personal emails to me. I do things the old-school way - I make a flat graphic design in Photoshop which I then slice up and code into a template using a text editor like BBedit. This is the most effective way to ensure you are in complete control of the creation process from design to implementation.
Why don’t you bore us with some technical details about this site?
(circa 2003) K. This site uses a custom-built PHP back-end to handle the display and creation of diary entries. It was created by myself back in April 2002, after a switch from using ASP and Access databases. The site is built so that it expands to accommodate the amount of diary content for any given page. As time has gone on, I have added more php-based features to this site, such as the gallery, the search functionality, multilanguage support and a widget to show whether I am online or not. All coding is done by hand and as such, the site should display properly in all browsers.
JANUARY 2005 UPDATE!!1: The NEW! Yongfook.com features a new design rewritten from the ground up using CSS. Most pages are completely table-free apart from some still-remaining legacy code that I cant be arsed to change.
MAY 2005 UPDATE to the above update!!1: Yongfook.com is now running off the Wordpress CMS, using a custom-built design. It’s about time I switched to a proper MySQL database and Wordpress seemed like a good, free and open source way of doing it. For a tiny, tiny bit more information, head to the Super Retard FAQ.
Say, what camera are you using?
I use a Panasonic FZ1 for all the digital pictures in the articles and gallery section, since May 2003. It is a 2mp camera with a Leica lens and 12x optical zoom. As of 22nd January 2005 I am using a Canon 300D Digital SLR. w00t.
[…] this mix-breed of a hunk, and BOY OH BOY HE IS UBER FUCKALICIOUS. Great media gallery, great name (that reminds me of Yong Tau Foo but Yong Fook, Yong Fook, easy to remember, kan?), great foo […]
Just followed the link from BD and I must say I am impressed with your site mate.
With any luck I’ll be quitting Okinawa in March and making the big move up to Tokyo. Fingers crossed…
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[…] Plug ‘n’ Play Google Map - Easy implementation, couple bugs (missing markers, theme compatibility), included button from post to map. Plus, I’m guessing YongFook is a little twisted, and that’s worth supporting anytime. […]
you say some of the most dirtiest/funniest things :) i speak teo chew (is that even spelt right?) by the way and i have never come across any word that sounds remotely like yong fook but maybe that’s because i’m not very good at speaking it. my little sister says that your name sounds like young fuck :D
I just thought that I’m only the one that found Japanese language is difficult. I also came to Tokyo 3 months ago and still can’t understand :D. Very nice site.
@pepto: maybe we should meet some day, three of us.
I’ve been a big fan of your site a few years now and noticed your move to using Wordpress. Any reason why you choose this over something like Mambo or Typo3? My personal site is switching to Typo3 now, but I’m still wondering if all the Typo3 pain in the ass-ness is worth it and maybe I should just go with Wordpress.. have you tried other CMSes?
A CMS is just a tool - all of the popular ones offer roughly the same features and are extensible enough so that if it doesn’t offer some particular functionality out-of-the-box, you can usually find a plug in or code your own.
For that reason, I think it’s more important to choose the one you are most comfortable using - the ease of you posting and managing your posts should IMO take precedent over other more specific features.
I use Wordpress because it has an intuitive back-end and it takes about 5 seconds to install.
Hey Yongfook!
I grew up in California and now live in Sydney, Australia.
Husband is a travel agent so we travel a lot, and have started making a habit of spending Christmas / New Year in Japan… Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo. Have found a lovely apartment in Roppongi to stay in while in Tokyo.
I was watching Iron Chef tonight… way downunder here, we’re getting first-run episodes for us that probably first aired elsewhere in like 1996. It was Rokusaburo Michiba’s comeback show after his illness and the ingredient was umeboshi…
So I looked it up, and found your review. Hehehehe. Haven’t laughed that much in a long time, and was reflecting on all the weird flavoured chips and things that were there last time we were there, two Decembers ago… not to mention Green Tea Kit Kats… bizarre.
I LOVE most Japanese food, so am enjoying reading some of your cynical reviews on various things!
Thanks for the laugh.. you seem like a very intelligent, sarcastic person. I love that. And the fact that you grew up in the UK and are somehow now living in Japan puts an interesting slant on things.
Oh yeah, and I’m a big geek too, so amused that you used to use MS Access for this, from the look of things. No matter what else I’m doing (these days SQL2005 / .Net 2005) I can’t seem to totally escape Access. Yikes!
Anyway, thanks for the laugh. I’ll have to bookmark you!
(And enjoyed your reference to Leisure Suit Larry. I still have every version of it that ever came out sitting around here on CD somewhere. Pull them out every once in awhile for a laugh.. when I can get them working on my current computers, that is).