Akita and Fukui had the best results, Okinawa had the lowest. The test was reintroduced into the curriculum after not having been used for 43 years. All of the students in the country took the test on the same day in April.
Japan considers its inconsistent political correctness when two young girls do one of those Akihabara type idol dances in a park in Hiroshima were forced to apologize.
The media in Japan was right to hype the Japanese Women’s Badminton team. There were two pairs… one pair, the Satoko Suetsuna-Miyuki Maeda pair was ranked 8th in the world going into the Olympics. The other pair, Kumiko Ogura-Reiko Shiota, were ranked 7th and had won the bronze medal at world championships in Kuala Lumpur. At…
Article recommendation about the suicide of Japanese announcer Ako Kawada.
A blogger in Japan has written an open letter criticizing Streetview in Japan. Newzjapan thinks he’s off base. People in Japan have no problem with Streetview.
Sometimes things happen in movies and everyone in the audience just thinks, “No one would ever do anything like that in real life.” I think this is one of those things that’s hard to believe anyone would ever really do… So here’s the scene… It’s about 7:20am on August 6th in Saga Prefecture. Husband walks…
I’ll be brief with this because there’s no comparison. iTunes wins based on price, however there’s an article that takes an interesting if not twisted perspective on this. Lismo charges about 420 yen per download. iTunes Japan charges about 150 yen for the same download. AU makes it very hard for people to put music…
According to an article in the Japan Times, one out of every thirty babies born in Japan had a non-Japanese parent. 19,000 babies had non-Japanese fathers, the majority being North and South Korean, followed by Chinese and Brazilian. 26,000 had non-Japanese mothers who were from China, the Philippines, and the Koreas respectively. 9,000 children were…
First of all, I think there’s no chance of this taking off. A lot of places do the whole “Cool Biz” thing and wear short sleeve button down shirts without ties, or the slightly silly short sleeve button down shirt under a blazer, but now some Japanese fashion Einstein has decided that short pants is…
I’m just going to post some of my thoughts on IKEA Japan as seen through the eyes of someone who’s been to IKEA in both the U.S. and Japan. Things they are doing right: Paid to have a station named after them on the Port-Liner train (which takes people from downtown Kobe to Kobe Airport)….
In a previous post I talked about how facebook might challenge mixi in japan. In a nutshell, I thought the apps that allow people in Facebook to interact and “play” together would be a big factor in the success of Facebook in Japan. I’ve also given some thought to the privacy issues involved with both…
In a nutshell, Japan was pressured by the Japanese record industry to put a tax on all portable digital music players. Let’s break it down with my own commentary dropped in there… THE MAIN PLAYERS: Basically the battle was between the music industry and electronics makers, including but not limited to Apple, and other major…