dottocomu

METI cracks on old-electronics law

Much has been written recently about the impending Japanese law prohibiting the sale of electrical goods that do not bear the so-called PSE mark. Musicians from Ryuichi Sakamoto downwards had protested, arguing quite rightly that it would mean the death of the second-hand market for old musical gear, pricing new musicians out of the market and denying the more pecunious access to classic synthesizers and audio equipment.

For all METI's "we may not have done enough to let you know, but we're still going ahead" pose, it seems that they've finally done the right thing; ITmedia and other sources are reporting that an exception clause is to be worked into the law that will allow musical instruments and other articles that meet the criteria to be sold secondhand without certification (though some paperwork will be required). Items will have to be out of production and with significant rarity value (i.e., no comparable new product exists), they must have been certified under the previous safety law, and they must be sold to someone "familiar with their handling" and resident domestically.

METI is also simplifying the procedures by which second-hand dealers are able to register themselves as "manufacturers" and become able to assign their own PSE marks to goods they sell.

Nice to see the government step back from the brink on this, particularly in the sense that they did it in response to popular objection.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)]

Rakuten launches online shop for the super-rich

It's not every day you see the figure "Y136,500,000" with a button underneath it saying "add to shopping cart".

Internet auction/shopping site Rakuten, which is rapidly approaching conglomerate status after acquiring a brokerage firm, travel agency and baseball team, announced yesterday that it's to expand its shopping site into luxury products aimed at the very rich, the stated target being those with financial assets worth over $1 mn excluding their homes. The initial offering is 24 products that include a gem-encrusted Patek Phillipe watch costing the aforementioned Y136,500,000 (US$1.2 mn), along with more reasonable offerings such as $100,000 bonsai trees or a set of 56 bottles of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, one for each year from 1945 to 2000, for a positively knockdown $250,000. Rakuten notes that while products costing over Y1 mn still account for less than 1% of its sales by volume, the second quarter of fiscal 2005 saw these sales grow 63.7% year on year (they don't offer the absolute values, but we're assuming very low volumes as yet). President Mikitani threw out the comment that friends of his in the sports and entertainment industry used Rakuten to shop because they were unable to go out to shops (Mikitani, like livedoor's Takafumi Horie and many other IT business leaders here, has a soft spot for celebrity).

All of which leaves us feeling the return of the Bubble ever closer.

[Link: Rakuten's luxury market (Japanese)]

[Via Ascii 24 (Japanese)]

Koizumi and Gere hit the floor

Prime Minister Koizumi continues his predilection for pressing the flesh with visiting celebrities by showing off a few ballroom steps with Richard Gere, in town to promote the US remake of Japanese film Shall We Dance? Some smarmy underling in the audience was moved to comment on the resemblance (perhaps it can only be seen with one's head up the premier's rear).

Speaking of which, we wonder if Koizumi has heard the hamster stories.

[Pic found via Nippon Goro Goro]

Google Suggest Beta for Japan launches

Google has launched the Japanese beta version of Google Suggest. One interesting difference from other "auto-complete" searches in Japanese is that it starts the lookup as you type, based on the letters you input; in most cases, searching doesn't start until you hit the spacebar to convert the input into whatever combination of kanji and kana you want. It also appears to work for English, though at first glance the suggestions may not be the same as you'd get in the English version.

[Google Suggest Japan (beta)]

[Via ASCII24 (Japanese)]

Japanese study: P2P doesn't hurt CD sales

In line with the results of other studies on the subject, it seems the Mobile Society Research Institute (a subsidiary of cellphone giant NTT DoCoMo) has come out with the interim results of a survey into usage of P2P filesharing software Winny, whose creator is currently in the dock for supposedly causing people to download things illegally (strong logic, there). They found that while downloads increased the larger the sales of a particular CD was, there was no effect the other way -- Winny downloads did not either increase or decrease the sales a particular album generated. They also found in a questionnaire to students that their CD purchases were not affected by their starting to use Winny.

[Via Slashdot-J (Japanese)]

Yahoo Auctions introduces RSS feeds

We hadn't noticed this before, but seems that if you do a search for an item on Yahoo! Japan Auctions, a link to an RSS feed for that search appears at the bottom of the page. We much prefer this to the email alerts that were previously the only option. There don't appear to be any feeds for categories, presumably because the number of items would max out your newsreader in very short order.

In case you're wondering at the high figures in the price column in the image to the right, we were searching for that Ferrari Testarossa we've decided is our next ride.

Living dangerously

According to the TV news a volcano called Asamayama in Gunma prefecture has just erupted.

This is, after all, the anniversary of the start of World War II, the Great Kanto Earthquake, and the birth of Gloria Estefan. Something bad had to happen.

[Reuters story via Nippon Goro Goro]

This just in--Sony does something cool

A nice touch, this: Sony's now distributing its latest news via an RSS feed. They also have a calendar that shows all their events, whether it be product announcements, film releases, or the invention of wacky new DRMed audio formats that no-one likes. So now you can pop open your feed reader and they'll be like, "we just released this great new product but it only plays ATRAC," and you'll be like, "oh no."

(Only in Japanese at the moment, by the look of it.)

[Via ITmedia (Japanese)]

[Sony event calendar (Japanese)]

Reuters on Japan's royal succession

News and rumours had suggested that a simple regulatory change would pave the way for Japan to be ruled by an empress; a Reuters article today, however, suggests it may not be that simple:

Topping the list [of objections] is the argument that while Japan has had eight reigning empresses, none of those passed the throne to her own child. Instead, traditionalists believe, the imperial lineage stretches back through 2,600 years of patriarchal succession.

"It's not simply that Japan is more male chauvinistic than other countries," Portland State's Ruoff said.

"It probably is, but that's not all there is to it. It's because a substantial bunch of hard-core supporters of the throne believe a reigning empress is the end of history," he added.

[Read: Reuters article]

An affiliate program with a difference

Japan's latest entrant to the world of affiliate programs is slightly offbeat: not an online retailer or ad provider, but a house moving firm. Art Hikkoshi Centre is offering a system along AdSense lines whereby you sign up, put an ad on your site, and each time someone clicks through and requests a quote you're paid Y500. The unit price isn't bad, but to turn it into a source of revenue you surely would have to have a blog devoted entirely to tips about moving house. We almost wish someone'd start one, come to think of it, so we could pick some advice on how to avoid the tremendous expense you incur in Japan paying out deposits before you move in, and the stress of trying to get them back when you move out.

[Via Ascii24 (Japanese)]

eAccess buys AOL Japan

Hark, is that the sound of an ADSL provider looking to expand? The Nikkei is reporting that DSL wholesaler eAccess is to buy out the "Internet connection division" that makes up the large part of the ailing (or rather, stalled) Japan operations of AOL. Next? They're to move into the big bad world of retail.

[Via the Nikkei Shimbun (Japanese)]

Google adds new functions for Japan

Subsequent to the announcement of their new Tokyo research centre, Google has announced a bunch of new Japan-specific search features. You can search for train routes, Japanese-English dictionary glosses, stock prices, listed company information, and track parcels that are travelling with Yamato Transport's delivery service. The functionality at google.co.jp has inevitably tended to lag a bit behind its .com parent, but it looks like they're starting to get serious about beefing up Japan too.

[Via CNET Japan (Japanese)]

Google to set up Tokyo research centre

Google announced at the Search Engine Strategies Conference currently underway in Tokyo that it is to set up a research base in the city's Shibuya district, home to the hive of ephemeral startups that formed the so-called Bit Valley during Japan's IT bubble, and centre (at least in the popular imagination) of all things techy in Tokyo. While there are many of Google's main services--News, Blogger, and Froogle, to name but three--that are not available in Japanese yet, the principal aim of the new centre is apparently to improve the quality of Google's Japanese-language search. Or that's what they claim; with Six Apart's TypePad gaining a foothold as the back end behind several Japanese ISPs' blogging services, now might be a prudent time to get into the rapidly expanding Japanese blogging universe.

[Via CNET Japan (Japanese)]

New (fiscal) Year news

It being the first day of the fiscal year, all sorts of official stuff is going on:

The Osaka Stock Exchange has finally gone ahead with its plan to list itself on its own market for startups, Hercules; demand for the shares has been such that they have as yet failed to set a price. The shares are in buy indication at about Y300,000, versus the original price of Y170,000.

[Via the Asahi Shimbun (Japanese)]

The Tokyo metropolitan government is going ahead with its plan to start up a new bank for small and medium-sized firms hit by major banks' reluctance to lend to them (how much longer is that going to be the case, though?). The city has bought the Tokyo arm of BNP Paribas for Y2.28 bn and, as of today, has officially renamed it Shin Ginko Tokyo (New Bank Tokyo). The city has invested Y100 bn in the new entity.

[Via the Sankei Shimbun (Japanese)]

Major Tokyo subway operator Eidan Chikatetsu is a private company as of today, and is now known as Tokyo Metro. All lines are now coded with a letter, and each of the stations on the line has a number. This is supposedly to help tourists navigate the system; posters in the stations show a TM employee telling two foreign-looking types to "get off at G 09 for Ginza". Must be a relief for them to be able to mumble a few alphanumerics at tourists and get back to doing some real work.

[Via the Sankei Shimbun (Japanese)]

April 1 also sees a change in price labelling in shops; prices must now include consumption tax. So nothing will seem quite as cheap any more, but at least there isn't a 5% surprise waiting at the cash register.

[Via the Asahi Shimbun (Japanese)]

Starting salaries for women beat men for first time

A white paper on working women published by Japan's Ministry of Labour reveals that in 2003, the average starting salary for female medical/science/technology graduates beat that for males for the first time, albeit by only Y200, at Y203,600 per month (US$1,921 at a rate of Y105.98).

The result apparently reflects a high proportion of female medical faculty graduates entering large retail and wholesale companies, which have comparatively high starting salaries.

(It's been an irredeemably slow day for tech news, in case you're wondering.)

[Via the Nikkei Shimbun (Japanese)]

Six Apart sets up shop in Japan

A brief word of congratulation to Six Apart, who today announced the formation of a Japanese subsidiary with Neoteny's Joi Ito as its chairman, and an agreement to license TypePad to NTT Communications for use with its OCN service. An official Japanese version of MovableType 3.0 is apparently in the offing, too.

Good luck to all!

[Via ITmedia (Japanese)]

Robot baths: One alternative to immigration

The New York Times has an interesting piece on robots and care of the elderly in Japan. One of the key themes seems to be that xenophobia is a big factor in the incipient robot boom; people would rather have, for example, automated baths than nurses from the Phillipines or Thailand.

Leaders of the Philippines and Thailand, two countries that are negotiating free trade pacts with Japan, suggest [...] granting work visas to tens of thousands of foreign nurses. But that is unlikely in a nation that last year granted asylum to only 10 refugees and in the last decade has issued about 50,000 work visas a year -- a fraction of the 640,000 immigrants a year that demographers say are necessary to prevent Japan's population from shrinking.

So even though the human washing machine retails for almost $50,000, enough to pay a year's wages for two Filipino nurses, robotic home care may lie in the future for Japan's aging millions.

[Read: New York Times article (subscription required)]

Japan's PM appeals for investment on UK TV

How the times change: Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, is to appear in a series of one-minute TV adverts in Britain, appealing for foreign investment in Japan by British businesses:

The commercials will feature various stirring images of corporate Japan followed by an impassioned Mr Koizumi addressing the camera and encouraging companies to take the plunge. Speaking in English, the Prime Minister says: "We have all you need for success, and we welcome your business. Why don't you join us? Invest in Japan!"?

[Read: The Times]

Yahoo Japan leaks 4.7 mn customers' info?

The National Police Agency announced today that it has obtained the customer details for 4.7 million subscribers to the Yahoo!BB broadband service. The data were apparently contained on a DVD-ROM confiscated from a 61-year-old Hokkaido resident who had, under the guise of seeking an "investment" from the Softbank group that runs Yahoo!BB, attempted to use the data to blackmail the company. The police indicate that they have confirmed the data is genuine. No credit-card information was apparently contained on the disk.

Yahoo!BB's subscribers currently number 3.82 million, so the theory is logically that the DVD may contain information on both current and former subscribers.

Softbank BB, the operating company, is scheduled to hold a press conference this evening in Tokyo.

[Via ITmedia (Japanese)]

Beef-bowl crisis update: Adding insult to injury

Latest installments in the beef bowl crisis:

Yoshinoya, biggest of the beef bowl boys, is having its sense of humour tested. One of its alternatives to beef, the yakitori (grilled chicken) bowl, is to meet with an untimely demise, disappearing from the menu in early March as chicken stocks run out. Yoshinoya had sourced all of its chicken from Thailand and China, which are now subject to an import ban due to the bird flu outbreaks. The company is currently considering introducing further new products; we suggest something vegetable-based.

Elsewhere, the smallest of Japan's four chains, Kobe Lamptei, is to keep gyudon on the menu using Australian beef.

[Yoshinoya story via today's asahi.com (Japanese)]

Egg tracking system

This week, for want of anything better to do, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is running an experiment to track eggs. They'll be printed with an eat-by date and an 11-digit code that indicates the date they were collected, the producing farm, packing firm, and seller. Plugging that number into the Japan Egg Industry Association's (appallingly cute) homepage will enable consumers to reference that information. By upping the number of digits the association says it would be possible to pinpoint right down to the bird that laid the egg and have photos of them on its website (sure, of course this is theoretically possible, but we assume they're not seriously considering sending round a ton of goons with digicams to snap chicken portraits).

The system is an attempt to prevent incidents like that in December last year where some eggs that had been in refrigerated storage for six months were accidentally shipped out.

[Via the Sankei Shimbun (Japanese)]

The beefbowl riots begin

Yesterday was the day Yoshinoya's beef stocks began hitting zero, with queues of people hoping for a final taste forming at stores around the country. asahi.com reports that one unfortunate fan was arrested after flipping out in a Yoshinoya yesterday night when he was told that beef bowl was off.

The cause of the shortage, Japan's ban on US beef imports following the discovery of a BSE-infected cow in the US, shows no signs of being lifted soon.

Kyodo News article at JapanToday gives more background, and a photo

[Update] The Guardian picks up on the action too.

[Via asahi.com (Japanese)]

Matsumoto Reiji starship riverbus

The riverbuses that run between Tokyo's Asakusa and Odaiba are to get a new addition to the fleet in late March--a vessel designed by Matsumoto Reiji, the manga artist responsible for Uchuu Senkan Yamato (known in animated form as Star Blazers in the US) and Galaxy Express 999, among others.

As will be obvious from the photo, the 125-ton, 33 x 8 m Himiko is designed to look like a spaceship, with tons of silver-metallic paint and gullwing doors. It will accomodate up to 231 people.

Will be running about five times a day; Y1,360 for adults and Y830 for children.

[Via asahi.com (Japanese)]

Girls prostitute classmate to pay cellphone bills

The depths that Japanese teenagers are sinking to beggars belief on occasion. The Nikkei reports that in September 2003 a group of five girls aged 14-16 beat up and threatened a 16-year-old high-school girl into going to a hotel with three men (one of them 64 years old!) they had solicited on a dating site and performing "lewd acts". The five extracted a total of Y140,000 from the girl, which they say they needed because they couldn't pay their cellphone bills.

Immediately after the incident the victim attempted suicide by jumping off a building; fortunately she survived, but is expected to need 6 months to recover from her injuries.

[Via the Nikkei Shimbun]

Gyudon is what we do

A footnote to the news on the US beef import ban; Yoshinoya's various gyudon alternatives (pork curry, fish, chicken, etc.) are hitting its outlets now, but the company is also emphasizing that these are a stopgap and that it will take them off the menu when the beef supply resumes.

Interesting that rather than take the opportunity to explore broadening their repertoire a bit (is gyudon not a commodity product by now?), they are opting to stick to their guns. After all, if customers think that the new dishes are just temporary and have been cobbled together, they'll surely avoid them and opt for gyudon instead, meaning that a strategy aimed at prolonging existing beef stocks could backfire noisily.

[Via the Nikkei Shimbun]

Beef bowl extinction

Most of the effects of Japan's ban on US beef imports are incremental--prices of domestic and other "safe" beef are edging up, for example. However, there is one staple of everyday Japanese life that could disappear at a stroke due to the lack of US beef--the gyudon, or beef bowl. The four major gyudon chains source their beef entirely from the US, and stockpiles are set to run out in mid-February. Yoshinoya, the market leader, could find itself forced to axe its mainstay product as early as February 10. It has already stopped 24-hour operations at 174 of its 980 outlets and discontinued its jumbo size (toku-mori), and is scrambling to introduce curry bowl, yakitori bowl, and salmon-and-salmon-roe bowl products to fill the impending gap. In a sign that it realises this will not be enough, it has also frozen all planned sales promotion activities and new store openings.

[Update] As to why it wouldn't be practical to switch to Australian beef, apparently US beef has the amount of fat necessary to meet the Japanese palate, where Aussie beef is leaner (the comparison used on the news here was chuu-toro vs. standard tuna meat). Also, US beef can be bought in the cuts required, whereas common practice in Australia is to sell the whole animal, which would entail buying a lot of unnecessary bits. Sounds like there's a business opportunity in there somewhere.

[Via the Nikkei Shimbun (Japanese) and company press releases]

Govt. moves to address Juki Net security problems

Joi Ito wrote recently of the report he submitted to the governor of Nagano prefecture backing up the prefecture's findings that the government's Juki Net resident registration system was poorly protected against intrusion; it looks like this may have produced its first palpable results. The Nikkei's IT section reports that in fiscal 2004 the government has allocated Y12.2 bn to boosting the security of local government LANs, a 90% increase on the sum available in FY2003. The panel investigating Juki Net security (of which I believe Joi Ito is a member) has in the meantime also ordered local governments make regular checks on the data, to prevent the possibility of falsified data making its way into the national database in the event of an intrusion at the local level.

This at least seems to show that the government is starting to recognise the security issues, and that PM Koizumi's policy of bringing private-sector experts into government is working. It's still unforgivable, however, that the central government didn't verify the security of local governments' systems and the awareness of their personnel before launching Juki Net.

Nikkei article (Japanese)

Fornicating politicos caught in the act

Kudos to Nihon TV, who sent an undercover crew to follow a local government politicians' "fact-finding" mission to Asia and came back with a record of them visiting massage parlours and dubious clubs, eating out at top restaurants, sightseeing at Angkor Wat, and doing about four hours of work the entire time (in the form of a single factory visit and a couple of stop-offs at a local JETRO office and a Japanese embassy). The whole thing culminates in one of the politicians taking a girl from what appears to be a sex club back to his hotel, unaware that a reporter with a concealed camera is riding in the lift with them.

Much is said about the ineffectuality of the Japanese press, so it's nice to see them break a scandal for a change. Given the fact that the politicians are from cash-strapped Saitama and these trips are costing perhaps 6-8 million yen a pop (at Nihon TV's estimate), the program has raised a considerable stink.

Metropolitan Tokyo to buy BNP Paribas Japan unit?

It seems that plans for the controversal bank to be set up by the Tokyo metropolitan government are far from a pipedream: Governor Shintaro Ishihara today announced that the city is in negotiations to buy the Japanese arm of BNP Paribas, citing the fact that this would avoid the hassle of getting regulatory approval for a new bank, and the transparency of BNP's asset quality given its foreign affiliation (the implication being that it doesn't cover things up and play dirty like Japanese banks, we assume; Ishihara's distaste for Japan's banks is well known, and is indeed what started this quest to set up a new one).

(reported on the Nikkei website earlier today in Japanese)

Japan ranks 21st for political corruption

Japan places 21st in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2003, even with Israel. The index measures businesspeople, academics, and risk analysts' perceived levels of corruption among politicians and public officials. In Asia, that puts Japan ahead of Taiwan and South Korea, but behind Singapore and Hong Kong (North Korea is one of the countries not included due to lack of data but "likely to be very corrupt," surprisingly). According to the survey, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and New Zealand are the world's least corrupt countries.

More Japanese companies looking overseas

Article in morning Nikkei on Japanese beer companies looking to boost overseas sales. Suntory aiming for 70% increase in 2006 vs. 2002, with Kirin and Asahi aiming for a more modest 10%. Greying population and diversifying consumer tastes mean the domestic market is starting to peak out; beer companies will aim at generating demand in growing markets in Asia, particularly China.

zakzak.co.jp is also reporting on convenience store chain FamilyMart's plan to open 200 stores in the US by 2007. This was reported by one of the broadsheets several weeks ago, and at the time I had chalked it up as another example of the improving economy; now, however, I'm not sure it's that simple. Both FamilyMart and the beer companies are citing the difficulty of expanding share in Japan as one of the key reasons for looking overseas. In FamilyMart's case, the company sees an opportunity in that its model of selling fresh produce as well as processed cack at urban store locations is (apparently) not found in the US, where fresh foods are mostly sold at more out-of-town supermarkets. Or so it claims.

FamilyMart also plans to purchase the Rockefeller building to use as its US headquarters. No, I'm kidding.

Cellphone spam: Extinction in sight?

Spam to cellphones in Japan may not be long for this world. You can now choose to receive mail only from the domains you specify, effectively killing PC-originated spam. Spammers who switch to using cellphones to spam other phones on the same network are rapidly finding themselves cut off. The only really viable option left is to use a cellphone to spam addresses on another carrier's network, but even that's getting harder as carriers become increasingly willing to take offenders to court. The spammers are therefore resorting to a tactic that smacks of desperation: paying random members of the public money to take out phone contracts to give the spammer a "virgin" terminal to work with.

The main spam route seems to be from KDDI to DoCoMo, partly for reasons of cost--DoCoMo treats a mail sent to two addresses as two separate mails, and charges for both, whereas KDDI charges for one mail--and partly because of a loophole created by DoCoMo's oversimplified antispam settings. One can either (1) refuse mail from specific addresses, (2) accept only mail from specific addresses, or (3) accept mail from specific domains and from DoCoMo and other carriers' cellphones. The only setting not guaranteed to give one sore thumbs is the last one, and it assumes that all cellphone mail is Good.

This is a daft idea for all sorts of reasons, the simplest being that there are myriad software packages out there that allow one to compose mail on a PC and transfer it to a phone for sending. But surely carriers could more or less eradicate spam from other cellphone networks completely, if they chose to. A couple of ideas that spring to mind:

(1) In DoCoMo's case, how about a "block all Carrier X addresses except these" setting, for starters? A pain to input, perhaps, but better than nothing, especially if you get nothing but spam from Carrier X.

(2) Or, how about finally standardising the infrared ports used in cellphones rather than allowing all the different versions that are running around loose? You could cut the thumbwork at a stroke by swapping addresses via IR, and having any address that's beamed in to your phone added by default to your "receive messages" list. Assuming that spammers do not resort to sniping from the rooftops at exposed infrared ports with high-powered IR data rifles, this sounds fairly safe to me.

[Some facts via an Oct. 7 ZDNet Japan article; opinions and flights of fancy my own]

Behind the scenes of the LTCB rebirth

Excellent FT article on Ripplewood's buyout of the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which begins with three of the Americans' attempt at a bit of informal meet-and-greet in the staff cafeteria. Excerpt:

Jordan looked for somewhere to sit down. He could tell that some form of hierarchy was at work in the room, but it ran against his instincts. He had spent his whole life fighting segregation. "I am a free man! I am a man of the people!" he liked to declare. So he chose the first seat that grabbed his egalitarian fancy - right in the middle of the youngest and most junior office ladies - and with a big grin tried to strike up a conversation with the tiny women around him, using his best American "meet and greet" skills.

The women froze in shock: they would have been scarcely less startled had Godzilla arrived for lunch. Eventually the Americans gave up. But as they quietly ate their lunch, watched by a sea of silent eyes, they discreetly peeped around them and tried to guess what the Japanese were thinking. The most bizarre experiment involving Wall Street and Japan had just got under way.

Via Gen Kanai

Government's resident information system hacked

Via Slashdot-J, Kyodo News (article in Japanese) is reporting that the government's Juki Net, a system for storing citizens' information, has been successfully broken into in a test by Nagano Prefecture. The central government is attempting to enforce the use of the system by all local governments to streamline the management of various kinds of information held on residents; from the outset, however, some local govs have opted out of the scheme, citing security and privacy concerns. The prefectures are connected to Juki Net via VPN rather than dedicated lines, and if the results of the Nagano experiment are as the initial report claims, fears about security appear to have been right on the mark.

Chinese media accuses Japanese of "orgy"

Startling story on an incident in China in which a group of 400 male Japanese tourists supposedly engaged in prostitution with 500 Chinese girls in a hotel, reported by the BBC
and in Japanese by Asahi.com:

The 400 or so men, aged between 16 and 37, flew into Zhuhai city in southern Guangdong province expressly for sex at the five-star hotel, according to the media reports.

On one of the nights the men are said to have had nearly 500 girls brought to serve them.

The incident, at a time when Chinese resentment against Japan is already very high, has prompted thousands of angry messages to be posted on the internet by Chinese users.

Many see it as a deliberate attempt to humiliate Chinese pride because it took place on the anniversary of Japan's occupation of north-east China.

It does look like the BBC is quoting verbatim from fairly sensationalised Chinese media accounts without attempting to verify them, though. Notwithstanding the influence of national pride on its reporting, the Asahi gives a different slant, suggesting that this was a once-a-year trip organised by one or more companies for their employees, and that while there were Chinese girls acting as hostesses at a company function in the evening, there was none of the mass exodus upstairs with them that the Chinese reports suggests; for a start, the Japanese guests were staying at another hotel. It also notes that the Chinese reports appear to be based on the story of a witness who arrived at the hotel late in the evening slap bang in the middle of this epic debauch. Given that corporate booze-ups in Japan are apt to degenerate into all sorts of mayhem, one can imagine the scene that confronted him; and it would certainly be in character for some of the more unreconstructed elements to start mauling the help, so the story probably has some foundation in fact. However, the spin on it as a massive group of sexual tourists seems to be opportunistic, a chance to score points.

Nevertheless, even mauling the help is a habit that it would be good to get out of.

Koizumi backs off from amending constitution

Prime Minister Koizumi has employed all sorts of sleight-of-hand during his campaign for reelection as LDP leader and in the subsequent cabinet reshuffle. The result is that by and large he seems to have got his own way, despite the demands of new ally Mikio Aoki.

That all having being covered elsewhere, one footnote to the bluff and propaganda is this minor Kyodo News item (which I cannot at the moment find in Japanese) from yesterday. Having joined his other leadership candidates in saying that the war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution needed revising, Koizumi has done a swift about-face and is apparently now of the opinion that "it would be difficult to raise an amendment to the constitution as a concrete political task". One assumes that either he is recanting a position which was briefly expedient but not his true view on things, or that concern from party heavyweights such as Makoto Koga, who in a speech yesterday referred to the need for revisions based on the idea of a "pacifist constitution" has forced a retraction out of him.

[Wrote the following on September 17 and didn't have time to polish and post, but am including anyway for completeness]

There has been a little flurry over the last few days of comments by politicians on the need to revise the celebrated Article 9 of Japan's constitution, the so-called "anti-war" article. The four candidates for the LDP leadership all stated as much, each of course putting their own slant on the issue, in TV interviews over the weekend. Another minister, Yoshitada Konoike, weighed in at a press conference around the same time with his riff that the Self-Defence Forces are currently unconstitutional and that Article 9 should be amended to recognise them as the army they obviously are. Defence minister Ishiba has added obliquely to the chorus by continuing to mention at every opportunity his view that a preemptive attack on North Korea would be constitutional.

This debate seems to flare up every once in a while when the wind is blowing in a particular direction or the Nikkei average is up and all seems right with the world, and it may be that this time is no exception. For certain, all the LDP leadership candidates are doing their fair share of tubthumping on all sorts of issues as the elections draw near; however, it is perhaps worth noting that, as in the UK, the elections for party leader are voted for within the party, so whatever spin the candidates put on the issues ultimately has to find favour internally.

More broadly, one suspects the intention is to be seen to be a strong (potential) boss by rattling the sabre at North Korea, toward which the rhetoric of Japan's leaders has admittedly been unsatisfyingly meek thus far.

One does hope, though, that common sense will prevail. Article 9 could obviously do with revising, since under the letter of the article the Self-Defence Forces should not exist; but care should be taken to ensure that a revision is not used as an excuse to slip in all sorts of militaristic crap. North Korea needs keeping in line, certainly; but officially remilitarising Japan is not the way to go about it.

Watch TV on your phone within the year?

Via Keitai Watch, J-Phone is to release a cellphone with a TV tuner that, according to a Sept. 19 Nikkei report, should be out within 2003. J-Phone has declined to confirm whether this is the case, or whether the phone is the commercial version of the NEC prototype that appeared in July (reported on dottocomu). The NEC phone is apparently a W-CDMA model, so this could be J-Phone's first attempt to kick start its as-yet dormant 3G service.

Keitai Watch article in Japanese

[Update] It turns out that there is a late 2002 survey by Hakuhodo, broadcaster TBS, and Matsushita Electric on consumer interest in being able to view terrestrial digital broadcasts on cellphones. The sample was rather small at 120 people between the ages of 20 and 39 living in the Shuto area, but the results show that 86.6% were either somewhat or very interested, and 81.7% were interested in using the interactive functions of digital TV.

This does seem on the one hand like a kneejerk reaction that reflects the populace's chronic TV addiction, but there are some interesting aspects. Most respondents said they would want to watch TV on their cellphone while waiting for or riding a bus or train, while on holiday, or in fast-food restaurants. All this fits with the idea of non-voice cellphone usage as an activity to kill small gaps of time between things. Furthermore, it would mean that cellphone TV usage peaks at times when conventional TV viewing is minimal (around 2% at lunchtime, apparently).

The other standout result from the survey was that the interactive service most respondents wanted to use would be maps to locations introduced in TV programs. The marketing possibilities of this look tremendous in that the viewer is already out and about and doesn't have to deal with the energy-sapping processes of making a note of the address or separating bum from sofa, and is therefore much more likely to head straight for the advertised address if they're interested. Given that Japanese TV already does a decent line in motivating the impressionable to go and queue outside whatever restaurants it is advertising--er, featuring--the results of transposing such tactics to mobile TV could be frightening. I can imagine entire crowds of people being directed by the TVs in their hands.

Watch More TV.

(cue ten-minute brawl over a pair of sunglasses)

(Keitai Watch summary of the survey in Japanese)

Yahoo Japan turns matchmaker

Yahoo Japan has announced that it is to buy Bridalnet, an online matchmaking service (press release in Japanese).

Takes the concept of a portal as a one-stop shop into hitherto uncharted realms, doesn't it? News, weather, stock quotes, and future spouses (possibly).

We made it through the (threat of) darkness

The feared midsummer power cuts (previous posts: here + here) have unsurprisingly failed to materialize. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) is formally announcing on the radio that the days of uncertainty that we have suffered due to their improper this and covering up of that, etc. etc., are now over and that we can get back to the task of lubricating the great machine of modern capitalism with our sweat and blood. Office buildings are today starting to post notices to the effect that their energy-saving measures are being curtailed.

Tepco estimates that energy saving brought demand down by about 1.3 mn kW, for which it thanks the meek and cooperative populace so profusely that one is inclined to forget that what actually saved the day was mid-August temperatures five and a half degrees below average, and the scramble to get six nuclear plants back on line (11 are still dormant). Whatever, peak demand was 56.5 mn kW, only 87% of the record set a couple of years ago.

In any case, Tepco has now turned over a new leaf and is vowing to be a kind and caring power generating conglomerate that listens to its customers, so everything's all right again.

The Great Sprinkle: How it changed us

It occurred to me that I forgot to check up on how the Great Edo Water Sprinkle turned out. A visit to the website reveals that while the target of a million participants proved too ambitious, a strangely comforting 340,000 people turned up.

I say "strangely comforting" because according to the organisers, they "estimated" the number by conducting a random phone survey. Now, I know infinitely more about lying than I do about statistics, but this sounds like the former to me. Were you confronted by the need to pull a number out of thin air to save face, 340,000 sounds like a goodly amount without being too unbelievable.

Nevertheless, in the four areas where organized events were run, it seems like 570 people using 1,510 litres of water managed to bring the temperature down a degree or so (the "two degrees" target has been surreptitiously dropped, it seems). Wahey. They're planning an Uchimizu Week next year, too. In a sense I think this would be rather good if it works, in that it will make walking around outside a bit more pleasant and reduce the need for airconditioning; on the other hand, the idea of living in a city that is slightly less hot but permanently wet underfoot does not fill me with enthusiasm.

Cruise and Koizumi press flesh

John@britblog beats me to this story about Tom Cruise singing an Elvis duet with the Japanese Prime Minister while in town to promote the forthcoming Last Samurai. The song apparently was I Want You, I Need You, I Love You, according to the Osaka edition of Sports Nippon. Reports vary as to who initiated the meeting, but with elections approaching and his LDP opposition sharpening their swords, it's not hard to see why Koizumi would want to draft in a bit of glam in the hope that it rubs off.

Cruise and Koizumi press flesh

John@britblog beats me to this story about Tom Cruise singing an Elvis duet with the Japanese Prime Minister while in town to promote the forthcoming Last Samurai. The song apparently was I Want You, I Need You, I Love You, according to the Osaka edition of Sports Nippon. Reports vary as to who initiated the meeting, but with elections approaching and his LDP opposition sharpening their swords, it's not hard to see why Koizumi would want to draft in a bit of glam in the hope that it rubs off.

Cruise and Koizumi press flesh

John@britblog beats me to this story about Tom Cruise singing an Elvis duet with the Japanese Prime Minister while in town to promote the forthcoming Last Samurai. The song apparently was I Want You, I Need You, I Love You, according to the Osaka edition of Sports Nippon. Reports vary as to who initiated the meeting, but with elections approaching and his LDP opposition sharpening their swords, it's not hard to see why Koizumi would want to draft in a bit of glam in the hope that it rubs off.

Nikkei breaks 10,000 for 1st time in a year

The Nikkei average closed above 10,000 for the first time since Aug. 26 last year. Keeping fingers crossed that this is going to continue.

Nikkei breaks 10,000 for 1st time in a year

The Nikkei average closed above 10,000 for the first time since Aug. 26 last year. Keeping fingers crossed that this is going to continue.

Nikkei breaks 10,000 for 1st time in a year

The Nikkei average closed above 10,000 for the first time since Aug. 26 last year. Keeping fingers crossed that this is going to continue.

Motorway exit blocked by beer

The silly season continues globally. At just after seven this morning (J article in the Nikkei) a beer delivery truck came out of a motorway exit and ploughed straight into a traffic jam, sloughing 14,000 half-litre cans of beer onto the road. The exit is, needless to say, blocked. Unfortunately I can't find any photos yet, but it must be quite a sight.

Motorway exit blocked by beer

The silly season continues globally. At just after seven this morning (J article in the Nikkei) a beer delivery truck came out of a motorway exit and ploughed straight into a traffic jam, sloughing 14,000 half-litre cans of beer onto the road. The exit is, needless to say, blocked. Unfortunately I can't find any photos yet, but it must be quite a sight.

Motorway exit blocked by beer

The silly season continues globally. At just after seven this morning (J article in the Nikkei) a beer delivery truck came out of a motorway exit and ploughed straight into a traffic jam, sloughing 14,000 half-litre cans of beer onto the road. The exit is, needless to say, blocked. Unfortunately I can't find any photos yet, but it must be quite a sight.

Hot? Give Tokyo a cool bath

Brows are furrowing all over the place about Tokyo's "heat island"--temperatures in the metropolis can get up to 10C hotter than the suburbs due the concentration of buildings, airconditioners, and traffic--and one of the solutions being suggested recently, in various forms, is water cooling. The idea is that you dribble enough water over a surface to form a thin, even film, and evaporation will go to work and cool things down.

This is all fine and good and, if rainwater is used, ecologically sound. Reporting the sensible and hard-headed is not, however, what dottocomu is about. No, what has caught my eye is the "O-Edo Uchimizu Daisakusen"--the "Great Edo Water Sprinkle," we might call it. On August 25, the plan goes, a million people who saved the bathwater from the night before will sprinkle at least six litres of it on the ground outside their houses, and collect the before-and-after temperature data. The theory is that six litres x a million people will cool the capital down roughly 2C.

If the number of participants registered at the website (Japanese) is anything to go by, however, the scheme is heading for an epic failure. 344 were signed up yesterday afternoon, and the number is up to 433 now. Unfortunately the impression from a quick scan of the listings is that a good third of these are either double or triple registrations or eager idiots from the far-flung suburbs--in the extreme cases, from as far afield as Fukuoka and Osaka.

However, all is not yet lost. This weekend sees the all-important publicity stunts at Odaiba and the O-Edo Onsen theme park, both of which are a dead cert to be featured on the TV news. This, rather than the Internet, is probably the more realistic way to advertise, given that uchimizu is a practice with overtones of pre-airconditioner times, and as such is likely to appeal more to the older and most definitely offline sections of the populace. Whether these folk will be dedicated enough to send in their temperature data and whatnot is another matter, though. Another potentially positive factor to consider is that August 25 is a weekday and the school summer holidays are just about ending as I write, so idea-strapped science teachers throughout the capital will undoubtedly be planning to drag their charges into the playground for a bit of "science is fun" propaganda.

If the results of this experiment are dramatic enough, it won't be long before someone comes up with a gadget that enables effort-free dumping of one's old bathwater onto the street outside. Let's hope the neighbours like the smell of herbal bath gunk.

The biggest enemy of this project, though, may turn out to be timing; summer came extremely late and looks to have lasted about three days this year, so by August 25 it may be cool enough that no-one can be bothered to schlepp buckets of water outside.

Hot? Give Tokyo a cool bath

Brows are furrowing all over the place about Tokyo's "heat island"--temperatures in the metropolis can get up to 10C hotter than the suburbs due the concentration of buildings, airconditioners, and traffic--and one of the solutions being suggested recently, in various forms, is water cooling. The idea is that you dribble enough water over a surface to form a thin, even film, and evaporation will go to work and cool things down.

This is all fine and good and, if rainwater is used, ecologically sound. Reporting the sensible and hard-headed is not, however, what dottocomu is about. No, what has caught my eye is the "O-Edo Uchimizu Daisakusen"--the "Great Edo Water Sprinkle," we might call it. On August 25, the plan goes, a million people who saved the bathwater from the night before will sprinkle at least six litres of it on the ground outside their houses, and collect the before-and-after temperature data. The theory is that six litres x a million people will cool the capital down roughly 2C.

If the number of participants registered at the website (Japanese) is anything to go by, however, the scheme is heading for an epic failure. 344 were signed up yesterday afternoon, and the number is up to 433 now. Unfortunately the impression from a quick scan of the listings is that a good third of these are either double or triple registrations or eager idiots from the far-flung suburbs--in the extreme cases, from as far afield as Fukuoka and Osaka.

However, all is not yet lost. This weekend sees the all-important publicity stunts at Odaiba and the O-Edo Onsen theme park, both of which are a dead cert to be featured on the TV news. This, rather than the Internet, is probably the more realistic way to advertise, given that uchimizu is a practice with overtones of pre-airconditioner times, and as such is likely to appeal more to the older and most definitely offline sections of the populace. Whether these folk will be dedicated enough to send in their temperature data and whatnot is another matter, though. Another potentially positive factor to consider is that August 25 is a weekday and the school summer holidays are just about ending as I write, so idea-strapped science teachers throughout the capital will undoubtedly be planning to drag their charges into the playground for a bit of "science is fun" propaganda.

If the results of this experiment are dramatic enough, it won't be long before someone comes up with a gadget that enables effort-free dumping of one's old bathwater onto the street outside. Let's hope the neighbours like the smell of herbal bath gunk.

The biggest enemy of this project, though, may turn out to be timing; summer came extremely late and looks to have lasted about three days this year, so by August 25 it may be cool enough that no-one can be bothered to schlepp buckets of water outside.

Hot? Give Tokyo a cool bath

Brows are furrowing all over the place about Tokyo's "heat island"--temperatures in the metropolis can get up to 10C hotter than the suburbs due the concentration of buildings, airconditioners, and traffic--and one of the solutions being suggested recently, in various forms, is water cooling. The idea is that you dribble enough water over a surface to form a thin, even film, and evaporation will go to work and cool things down.

This is all fine and good and, if rainwater is used, ecologically sound. Reporting the sensible and hard-headed is not, however, what dottocomu is about. No, what has caught my eye is the "O-Edo Uchimizu Daisakusen"--the "Great Edo Water Sprinkle," we might call it. On August 25, the plan goes, a million people who saved the bathwater from the night before will sprinkle at least six litres of it on the ground outside their houses, and collect the before-and-after temperature data. The theory is that six litres x a million people will cool the capital down roughly 2C.

If the number of participants registered at the website (Japanese) is anything to go by, however, the scheme is heading for an epic failure. 344 were signed up yesterday afternoon, and the number is up to 433 now. Unfortunately the impression from a quick scan of the listings is that a good third of these are either double or triple registrations or eager idiots from the far-flung suburbs--in the extreme cases, from as far afield as Fukuoka and Osaka.

However, all is not yet lost. This weekend sees the all-important publicity stunts at Odaiba and the O-Edo Onsen theme park, both of which are a dead cert to be featured on the TV news. This, rather than the Internet, is probably the more realistic way to advertise, given that uchimizu is a practice with overtones of pre-airconditioner times, and as such is likely to appeal more to the older and most definitely offline sections of the populace. Whether these folk will be dedicated enough to send in their temperature data and whatnot is another matter, though. Another potentially positive factor to consider is that August 25 is a weekday and the school summer holidays are just about ending as I write, so idea-strapped science teachers throughout the capital will undoubtedly be planning to drag their charges into the playground for a bit of "science is fun" propaganda.

If the results of this experiment are dramatic enough, it won't be long before someone comes up with a gadget that enables effort-free dumping of one's old bathwater onto the street outside. Let's hope the neighbours like the smell of herbal bath gunk.

The biggest enemy of this project, though, may turn out to be timing; summer came extremely late and looks to have lasted about three days this year, so by August 25 it may be cool enough that no-one can be bothered to schlepp buckets of water outside.

Metro Tokyo, bring in your dead

In another sign that the Japanese economy might finally be off life support, the number of graves in central Tokyo is on the rise. Last week Aoyama Cemetary, the Park Lane of Tokyo necropoli, took its first new applications for plots in 43 years, offering 50 at the rate of ten million yen a tsubo (3.65 square metres). Reckoned in US dollars, that's about $24,000 per square metre.

The power of Aoyama as a brand and the cachet of taking eternal rest alongside the architects of the Meiji Restoration, former prime ministers, celebrated authors, and other historical personages means that space will always come at a premium--the prices are more than ten times those of other cemetaries, and the 50 plots are expected to be "several tens of times" oversubscribed. Elsewhere, though, it's a less snobbish and localised factor that's drawing more and more to purchase their square of earth in the metropolis: the final signs that land prices have hit bottom after the interminable post-bubble freefall into blackness.

Cemetaries have quietly been acquiring land and growing, and they are offering plots at prices half those of the bubble years. The cost is now low enough to justify a family shelling out the extra versus the suburbs for the ease of having their loved ones interred within commuting distance. There's still a considerable gap between metro and bedtown--the average price per square metre rises from JPY320,000 in Hachioji (depressingly far), to JPY620,000 in Machida (somewhat less so), to JPY1.72 mn within the 23 wards of Tokyo--but the absolute sums involved are no longer prohibitive, especially given that most city centre purchasers opt to make do, as is the case with their dwellings, with less space. Plots in metropolitan Tokyo average under one square metre, whereas one and a half to three is the norm in the suburbs.

The available options range widely. One could choose on the one hand to pay perhaps JPY1 mn for a 0.36 sqare metre plot at Daizouji Hijiri-en, in the embassy-dotted landscape of Mita, Minato-ku; or go for the budget option of Hongo Ryouen, run by Bunkyo-ku's Kouanji, next to the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium, which has turned its 550-plot graveyard into a five-storey building with 6200 spaces. A "space" involves a 30-cm-square name plaque and a box for the ashes, which are delivered to the building's chapel for mourners to pay their respects. The delivery system is an eye-opener: One inserts a card into a slot in the chapel and the remains are automatically whisked there from the depths of the building. A space is JPY700,000, and they're going at the rate of a hundred a month. Some are even moving their relatives in from the suburbs.

There is of course some opposition to the boom--"near but not next door" is what residents want--but it looks set to continue for the moment. As with property in general, there's a growing recognition that if you want to get a foothold in the centre of town, better hurry.

Some of the material for the above comes from an Asahi Shimbun website article which I read on my cellphone and do not immediately have a link for, TV news reports, website digging, and a piece from TBS news.

Daft technology = sign of hope

Not sure what category I should file this under, but: as reported on both Slashdot and Slashdot J already, Suntory has invented a method of advertising that has to rank among the daftest the human imagination has yet conceived: Monitor Man. It consists of a man in a sleeveless red jumpsuit and ridiculous accoutrements wandering around at public events with a 13" LCD monitor strapped to his head playing commercials for Suntory's products. Debuted this weekend at a J-League soccer match, the kids in the crowd were apparently very taken with Monitor Man (though one suspects their curiosity was of the "who's the basket case with the monitor on his head?" variety).

It seems to me that Japanese companies give vent to the sillier side of their natures when times are good, so I take this as another sign that an economic recovery is around the corner.

Flush your cares away

A bit of novelty news (rendered into English it becomes so, anyway); a peculiarly Japanese solution to a peculiarly Japanese problem.

Matsuyama, in Kyushu (map), suffers from chronic water shortages, and the city has chosen to make some inroads into the problem from an oblique angle: it is fitting every girls' toilet in its junior high schools with an attachment that simulates the sound of running water. Women (and men, to a lesser extent) in Japan tend to be self-conscious about any embarrassing noises they may make on the privy, and the solution until recently was to flush repeatedly while evacuating to cover them up. However, Japan's ever-inventive technotoilet makers have now come up with devices that provide the sound without the flush; Matsuyama is hoping that fitting these will persuade the 7700 children and 300 teachers who use its 1100 junior-high-school toilets to pull the chain once instead of the average 2.5 times. With luck, the results will be worth the JPY30 mn (around US$250,000) the city is spending.

Japanese article: ZAKZAK

Silly season news

A sudden spate of idiotic news that seems to underline in an anecdotal way the pressure we are all under recently:

On Thursday night in Sapporo, a man is found asleep in his upside-down SUV in the playground of a junior high school, having strayed in there the previous night while drunk and somehow managed to flip it over. On the same evening in Ibaraki, a woman steals a crate of beer from a supermarket and runs over the employee who attempts to stop her. Early on Thursday morning, a high school teacher is arrested for feeling up a man in an Okinawa sauna a little after five in the morning. On Monday a ship runs aground while its captain is on the loo.

On a more serious note, I hope I'm imagining the recent surge in the murder rate, about which more later. A group of lawyers have been pushing for a public holiday in June (it is unusual in having none) on the theory that the current monotonous haul through to late July is contributing to deaths from overwork, but one wonders if there isn't a broader case to be made for breaking things up a bit.