jay

I've been in Japan for 14 years now, learned the language, and manage to get by pretty well. I call this an inside outsider's view because that's the reality here. As long as I've been here, as much as I've learned and experienced, I'm still an outsider... and that's fine. That's Japan... a country full of inside outsiders.

Google Japan is Smart

Google is not limiting itself to courting just one cell phone company in Japan… ads on AU by KDDI are urging people to make gmail or igoogle their mobile homepage… AU’s PC email service, AU one is all run through gmail, and now the SMILEYS for all three major providers are supported in gmail. This

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Overtime in Japan

Companies always find creative ways around paying overtime to employees. Apparently America based companies are no different… though to be fair, because of Japanese economic policies it’s hard for foreign companies to enter Japan without some kind of Japanese base. (Hence pepsi is put out by Suntory, Walmart bought into Seiyu…). Anyway, teachers are among

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The iPhone in Japan?

So Apple is talking to DoCoMo about selling the iPhone in Japan…(according to Forbes and lots of other news agencies.) My phone can do anything the iPhone can do, and even more (although I’m not sure if you can hook up the iPhone directly to a tv to watch your downloaded videos on a big

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Alien Pensions

UFOs ‘definitely exist,’ Machimura asserts (Japan Times) So the Japanese government must be really itching for a way to pull a nice “these aren’t the droids your looking for” on the public to take attention away from the pension problems. Here’s the deal in a nutshell. Everyone in Japan has to pay into a national

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