http://www.blissfuljapan.com A fresh perspective on various aspects of life in Tokyo, Japan... Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:39:22 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Recently I was forwarded this article from TechCrunch: Why Yahoo Japan is Worth Nearly as Much as Yahoo. It is worth a read, but I'd like to add a few thoughts. Here is my experience with Yahoo Japan, since having moved to Tokyo in 2001. 1) YahooBB YahooBB took off because ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/09/thoughts-on-success-of-yahoo-and-google-in-japan [caption id="attachment_48" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Outdoor Music Festival"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_34" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Napping at 3AM Karaoke"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_50" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="After Fireworks Show"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_36" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Napping in Shibuya"][/caption] Apparently there is a Facebook group to post photos of people sleeping in crazy or uncomfortable looking positions in Japan... This is actually a really ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/08/nobody-sleeps-like-the-japanese-do A friend of mine just forwarded this post on JapanProbe about women's fundoshi. My quickest description of a fundoshi would be traditional Japanese g-string loincloth underwear for men. According to Wikipedia: Before World War II the fundoshi was the main form of underwear for Japanese adult males; however it went out ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/07/pendre-shorts-fundoshi-loincloth-for-women-the-next-trend-in-japan I went to Akihabara last month to help my friend buy a terabyte drive (only 17,500 yen now!) and external case (4500 yen for a nice one), where I was of course deluged with cute girls in costumes handing out flyers to come to their stores. Here's the first flyer ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/07/akihabara-girls-dorm-lets-play-in-our-pajamas Sometimes you've got to love Japanese commercials. http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/06/how-japanese-search-engines-work-actual-commercial-for-goo-search-engine Speedtest.net has put aggregated statistics for all people using its Internet speed test service - pretty cool. You can view the speed test results from anyone, anywhere in the world. Check out the speed data for ISPs from Tokyo. I'm on USEN which currently tops the upload speeds at 17571kb/s, ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/06/tokyo-internet-speed-ranking-from-speedtestnet My coworker sent this page with 4 videos showing people making popcorn with radiation from their cell phones. Think it's impossible? Check it out. Apparently if you put 3-4 phones in a circle around some kernels of corn and call them all at once, the corn will pop. I'd try ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/06/making-popcorn-from-cellphone-waves Recently I found this article from the New York Times entitled High-Tech Japan Running Out of Engineers. (Warning: free registration and login required to read). It discusses the decreasing numbers of students choosing engineering majors in Japan. I found it particularly interesting because as an American engineer in Japan, I ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/06/shortage-of-underpaid-japanese-engineers-go-figure From Wikipedia's COBOL entry: Critics have argued that COBOL's syntax serves mainly to increase the size of programs, at the expense of developing the thinking process needed for software development. In his letter to an editor in 1975 titled "How do we tell truths that might hurt?", computer ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/05/what-its-like-to-graduate-and-start-work-in-japan This is a crazy new law being proposed which will give border guards and security personnel the right to inspect the contents of your laptop, iPod, cell phone for content that infringes on copyright laws (music and movies): Crazy ACTA Trade Agreement (Wikileaks) Apparently they already have in some cases the ... http://www.blissfuljapan.com/lang/en/2008/05/government-vs-the-privacy-of-your-data