A Car Called FREED

I was intrigued by the large number of signs and preparation this week in Ebisu for something called FREED from Honda. A little bit of research let me to the Honda Blog and that fact that it's a new minivan.

I thought there would be huge fanfare and lots of people at the launch at 1pm today, but when I arrived it seemed to already over. Maybe this wasn't the main event ?

Here's a low res photo, from my phone, of the new car :

Shame about the rain.

Update:
Well I guess I was in the right place. The Japan Times had a brief story on it this morning.

Maybe the fact that car sales in Japan declined for three years in a row means cars are getting less important these days.

East West Discussion Group : Trains of the World

I have recently starting going to the "East West Discussion Group" in Tokyo. I saw an announcement in the Japan Times about one of the discussions which was of interest to my wife. She went the first time and persuaded me to come to subsequent meetings.

It's a small group of mostly elderly but knowlegable and interesting Japanese Ladies and Gentlemen with some Americans. The weekly meetings take the form of a presentation by one the members on a subject of interest, followed by a discussion on the topic.

On my second visit, when the future meetings were being discussed, I was persuaded to do a presentation. I am a bit of a 'railway enthusiast' so I chose to do a talk about 'Trains of the World'. A rather wide subject area I know! I will be showing some photos of trains from around the world and we will be discussing transport related issues.

The talk is on this Thursday 22nd of May, 2008. If anyone in the Tokyo area would like to come along you will be made most welcome . There is no membership requirement or fees, just pay 500 yen on arrival.

The venue is the Hongo Satellite of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 7th Floor, 2-14-10 Hongo, Bunkyo Ku, Tokyo. It's less than five minutes walk from exit 1 of Hango Sanchome subway station and looks like this when you get there. The meeting starts at 6:30pm, the presentation usually starts at 6:45 and the meeting finishes at 8:30pm.

Korean Blogs Ranking

Phil at London Korea links has started an amusing little series of posts about "who's who" in the world of Korean blogs. The Marmot's Hole was described as "Undoubtedly the original and best general-purpose blog about Korea" which Brian of Jellonam Do had a few issues with. It even prompted Robert to defend himself and explain how over 5 years of blogging have left him jaded and tired of the same old issues.

Mark at Korea Pop Wars was delighted to be listed and has written up his own summary of the blogs he likes. Joe at ZenKimchi has given everyone he knows a blog-juice boost with his own list of over a hundred blogs on Korea.

It's interesting to see Elyse Sewell, an American model who moved to Seoul recently, get such a high rating. Judging by the number of comments her journal gets she attracts a very wide audience for her refreshing and honest look at the working life of a model.

I thought I would complete the project I suggested last time I visited the subject of Top 30 Ranked Korean Websites using data from the site Quantcast. Which offers :

a media measurement service that lets advertisers view audience reports on millions of websites and services. Only Quantcast combines directly measured audience data with panel-based estimates to deliver accurate third-party metrics and easy-to-read profiles on digital media properties

I took all the blogs on my blogroll and searched for their ranking, to come up with list below. Bear in mind that the site is almost totally focused on US data, so I don't want to hear any complaints.

Blog	Rank
www.weirdasianews.com	10,546
popseoul.com	119,095
www.asianoffbeat.com	140,446
www.londonkoreanlinks.net/blog	247,670
www.dramabeans.com	480,187
rokdrop.com	516,780
www.dprkstudies.org	625,425
www.rjkoehler.com	667,267
zenkimchi.com	805,518
koreabeat.com	808,853
freekorea.us	986,470
koreanunification.net	1,983,322
www.nkzone.org	2,734,719