I remember seeing that the most twitters in the world seem to be coming out of Japan so I found a Japanese made twitter search engine. In this case I used http://twitter.1×1.jp and I searched for the word “gaijin” in Japanese. Gaijin is the less nice way to say foreigner. The not so bad way…
I have to say, Japan being listed as the top blogging country in the world is a little crazy. I can only imagine that the unnamed American company that did the survey knows nothing about Japan and worded the question poorly enough to construe the results. I’m not trying to detract too much, but you…
Today’s commentary is inspired by an article about use of Nintendo DS in eSchool News. The article talks about a Nintendo DS tie in to a textbook being used at Tokyo’s Joshi Gakuen (sic). Here is the story as presented by Reuters. Tokyo Joshi Gakuen should be commended for trying some new things, but the…
At about 5:35 pm, in Niigata a snake caused a black out in about 1,190 locations for as long as 2 hours in some places. The snake died of electrocution related injuries. A representative from the Tohoku Electric Company commented that the snake, which had worked its way into a plastic safety covering on the…
Around 2:55 pm on June 30th, trains in Ibaraki were halted for nearly two hours. Some trains were as much as an hour and forty-five minutes late affecting approximately 2,600 communters. The reason? Snakes. A 1 meter long dead snake was found in the overhead wiring. In the same station another snake caused a 2 hour…
A poll done by Nepro Japan, a huge mobile products company, shows that 88% of people in Japan use their cell phones while in transit. Here is a link to the Japanese description of the poll (pdf). The sample of 4,614 people consisted of 41% male and 59% female respondents. 42% of the total were…
Slashdot.jp reports that during its first ten days of availability, Firefox 3 has been downloaded over one million times in Japan. I downloaded it four times myself thank you very much. This is big news because for all the technology that actually is accessible here, and the very technological image Japan has, you’d be surprised…
It goes without saying that if you don’t have a mobile presence in Japan, you don’t have a presence! Right now that’s step one for the folks at FB… Step two? I think the key is… in a word… Applications!!! Tons of applications… Easy to use, easy to apply facebook applications, localized and Japanified. As…
If you watch the video, you’ll here some wacky stuff. Now maybe I don’t go to enough “hi tech” buildings to have used the “smart toilet” but this is the kind of over-generalized news about Japan that drives me crazy. Here’s the video about the crazy robo-toilets that are “commonplace” in Japan these days. If…
Three students at Kyoto Sangyo University have also been given warnings after more Japanese graffiti was discovered at Florence Cathedral. One of the students gave excuses saying that he was so excited to be at a place he so respected, and since there was other graffiti there as well, he just went ahead and wrote.
I’m staying up late tonight to blog about yet another cnn article that shows a complete lack of knowledge about anything Japanese… that’s fine however if these writer’s would do even the slightest bit of research. The assured way they write about Japan, while being completely wrong will never fail to amaze me. “American TV…
Six Japanese junior college students during a trip to Italy wrote graffiti and their names on the wall of the Florence Cathedral (the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore). It says February 18, 2008 with their names: Mana, Chii, Yui, Ayana, Rika, and Miki, then they even wrote the name of their school! Gifu City…