Blogging in Japan

The Japan Times often features bloggers. Today's item was on Brent Warner at Konbini Life blog.

Brent has been writing about some of the interesting and unusual items he's found in Japanese convenience stores (Konbini) since June 2006. Some of his recent finds have been Kiwi Flavoured Kit-Kats, the Moist Smoked Cheese Bar and Bikkle which he describes as "Maybe something like TUMS crushed into liquid form and made drinkable. A bit like drinking bones, in a good way."

According to the Japan Visitor blog there are between 40,000-50,000 konbini stores nationwide. They are renowned for selling all manner of easy to eat items, being open 24hrs, customers browsing the "adult" magazines and being able to pay utility bills . We have one at each end of the road, both are less than three minutes walk away. But we have something even better than that. Almost directly outside our house is a small grocery store run by a very elderly couple. They sell real food, they are always pleased to see us and their prices are no higher than the konbini. They are so sweet, their English is getting better thanks to our frequent purchases, in sharp contrast to our still non existent Japanese language skills.

Saturday's Japan Times item was on how Japanese is the number one language of blogs. A story they also covered before, back in April. Technorati calculated that 37% of the 70 million blogs they monitor are in Japanese and 33% are in English. The newspaper article described one lady who has been blogging every day about what she ate for lunch for three years. She blogs anonymously but she would never dream dream of giving a bad review to a restaurant she had eaten at.

Some previous interviews were with What Japan Thinks and Japan Probe.

In other blogging news : I left a comment on Annie's London Underground blog, which was about sleeping passengers on London's trains needing stickers saying "Wake me at station X". I said :

They need some here in Japan too.
I felt really guilty this week when I saw someone fast asleep on the train coming into Shibuya (the terminal station on my line). Everyone else streamed off after arrival, and then we all streamed on.

He didn't wake up, and no one else who got on, bothered to wake him up, so after 4 minutes the train set off again out of town. He was still blissfully unaware 10 mins later when I got off. I wonder how long before he woke up, poor chap.

I have resolved to always wake up any sleeping passengers at Shibuya from now on.

Someone in Washington DC noticed my comment and it was published in the local free newspaper the Washington Express. Thanks to Heather for spotting that and passing it on.

Seven Natural Wonders of the world

There was lots of publicity about the New Seven wonders of the world recently. Over 100 million people voted for their favorite landmark.

The New Seven Wonders Foundation that ran the poll have just started accepting nominations for their next project The New Seven Wonders of the Natural world.

I've nominated The Grand Tsingy of Bamara in Madagascar. We visited this most incredible rock formation of thousands of limestone pinnacles in 2004. This photo does not do justice to the awesome spectacle.



I also nominated Japan's most revered mountain: Fuji-san, which I have the pleasure of seeing from my office window when the weather is clear.

Nominations must be for a clearly defined natural site or natural monument that was NOT created or significantly altered by humans for aesthetic reasons. Physical or natural phenomena like the northern lights, the gulf stream or shooting stars are not eligible.

The nominees must be one of the following: natural site, natural monument,landscape. There are 15 different categories to select from. If you are very keen, you can organise an official supporting committee to make sure your nomination is able to enter the final round of voting by the world at large.

Since voting, which will commence in 2009, will only be available on the internet or by telephone, this is one competition the Koreans will be very keen to enter. What natural wonder of the world in South Korea or Japan would you nominate?

Seoul on the Jubilee line?

As you may remember, one of my interests is the London Underground, so this map caught my eye:



Thanks to a blog called Strangemaps.The caption reads“This playful diagram shows all the cities which have, are building or are planning to construct an urban rail system. It is the opening page of a new book about the graphic design of subway, metro, underground and U-Bahn system maps and diagrams.”

I like the way the six cities in South Korea with subway systems have been represented as stations on what is the Jubilee line on the London Underground Map and Tokyo is shown at the end of the Central line.

Credit for the map goes to Mark Ovenden, author of the book Transit Maps of the World which was published recently by Penguin USA.

Here's the real London Underground map to compare it with :



Geoff used to have a great collection of spoof London Underground maps, until TFL got the lawyers on to him. Luckily there are plenty of mirror sites of the collection. I wonder what TFL lawyers will have to say about this one?

Update: Thanks to a commenter who said:
The "Urban Rail systems" map was produced with the full support of TfL for the "Transit Maps of the World" book, which is why it was sanctioned to use the official "New Johnston" font (one of only a handful of non London Transport sources ever permitted to use it).

And if you want to hear a great story about what a good bloke Mark the author is, read this story at House of Jules about how much trouble he went to, to get a signed copy of the book to one keen fan.

Update 2: Thanks to Annie at Going Underground Mark Ovenden has a special offer for the first 50 people who buy a new copy of the book through amazon (.co.uk or .com) - a signed copy of the World Metro Map promotional poster for the book.
To qualify for the signed poster simply email a copy of your amazon sales confirmation to poster@markovenden.com and remember to give your postal address.

IT Job with Top Investment Bank in Seoul

I work for a prestigious investment bank that is recruiting IT support staff for the equities trading floor in the heart of Seoul's business district. There are two positions open, they require hands-on support of a wide range of business-critical applications and leading-edge technologies. The roles are varied and dynamic, with the opportunity to manage projects and to be directly involved in IT procurement.

Both roles require good technical skills in a Windows desktop environment. Knowledge of Market Data Systems and Linux experience would be an advantage.
The candidates are also expected to be fluent in English and Korean and to have a good education to at least university degree level.

Please submit your resume here. I guarantee a response within 48 hours.
All applications will be treated with complete confidentiality.
Update: These positions are still available.

Matsumoto and Nakanoyu Onsen

Here's a couple of photos from our recent trip to Matsumoto and Nakanoyu Onsen.
This was the view from the window of our room.



This is the castle at Matsumoto:

Roka Koshunen , Tokyo

This weekend's outing was to Roka Koshunen (Garden). This small park is named after the Japanese writer and philosopher Roka Tokutomi, the pen name of Kenjiro Tokutomi. He lived with his wife in the house in the grounds from 1907 until his death in 1927. She donated the land to the city of Tokyo to be used as a park in 1937.

There is a small museum dedicated to the writer with a display of some of his belongings. Also exhibited are examples of his many published novels and a copy of a letter he received in correspondence from Leo Tolstoy who was very interested to know more about his beliefs.

When Roka lived there it was a rural backwater, now it is now a small oasis of trees in the middle of a heavily built up area. My photos of the three thatched houses that made up his property didn't come out very well, so instead, here's a photo of a small green insect that landed on me.



To get to the park take the number 23 bus from the bus stop near the South exit of Chitose Karasuyama station on the Keio line out of Shinjuku.

Thanks to Susan Pompian, the author of the book "Tokyo for Free" in which we found the details of this delightful little garden. We shall be following a lot more of her suggestions.

Dating and Dating for Dollars in Daegu Nov 24

Another forum on which I often give travel advice about South Korea is Trip Advisor.

Whilst sifting through the hoards of "what should I do in Seoul for 8 hours" questions I noticed an event that may be of interest to anyone in Daegu on Nov 24 2007.

A Canadian lady called Mel is organising a "Dining for Dollars and Wooing for Won" evening at the Moon Hwa Wedding Hall near MBC juction in downtown Daegu. The theme of the evening is speed dating and gambling. The proceeeds go to charity projects in both Korea and Kenya.

She's already raised $600 in her previous fund raising effort for a orphanage.
More details on her website MelsProjects

Jindai Botanical Gardens

This Sunday's day trip took us to Jindai Botanical garden. On the western side of Tokyo, in Chofu-shi , it was established by the Metropolitan Government in 1961. Over 4,500 varieties of plants are artfully planted in the 425,000 square meter gardens.

These fountains with surrounding rose gardens are in front of the large greenhouse.

It is the end of the Chrysanthemum season and Jindai, like Shinjuku Gyeon last week, had put on a spectacular display. This is just one plant:

There was also a display of bonsai Chrysanthemums.


This rather large hornet was busy pollinating the camellias.



There are several different routes to the gardens. From Shinjuku we took the Keio Line to Chofu station. We took the number 14 bus from bus stop number 14 at the North exit and got off after 10 minutes at the stop just after the Jindai Temple (one of the oldest in Japan) on the left.

Admission is 500 Yen for adults. Open from 9:30am to 5pm. Closed on Monday, except when it's a holiday when it's closed on the Tuesday.

Chrysanthemums in Shinjuku

We discovered the amazing Shinjuku Gyeon this afternoon. This beautifully landscaped park, just a few minutes walk from the hustle and bustle of Shinjuku, is an oasis of calm and greenery.

We were also delighted to find that the annual chrysanthemum display was taking place.

This, believe it or not, is just one plant.



The hundreds of flowers are teased and shaped using a unique technique to produce this remarkable display.



The Ichimonji and Kudmono-giku bed was a spectacular display of these two flower varieties.




The final flower bed on the route through the park is the Ogiku bed. 311 large flowered Chrysanthemums are planted in diagonal stripes. This style named Tazuna-ue is a speciality of the Shinjuku Gyoen.



The display is on until Nov 15. So hurry on down to Shinjuku Gyeon. The entry fee is only 200 Yen and the park is open from 9:00 until 16:30 (Last entry at 16:00). There are three entrance gates the Shinjuku gate is about 10 minutes walk from Shinjuku station.

For those of you unable to get to Tokyo to see it, the New York Botanical garden has a very similar display running until Nov 18th.

Odds and ends on blogging

One new feature from Blogger.com is a long overdue enhancement to allow those leaving comments to be notified by email if there has been a reply.

So, if you leave a comment expecting a reply, you can subscribe and receive any further comments by email without having to go back and check the blog each time. This pretty basic idea has been available on WordPress and MovableType blogs for a long time but blogger just launched it recently.

If you have a blog, the feature is available automatically to your readers if they use a Google account, you don't need to change anything on your blog.

I recently subscribed to blogrush.com. It has not brought me any visitors yet, but I've moved the widget up to the top of the blog on the right hand side to promote it. If you see an interesting blog post title there, click to visit another blog in the blogrush network.

I followed one link today and on the blog I visited, Violet eclipse, I saw a link in her blogrush widget to a my good friend Gdog over at The Daily Kimchi. I think that almost proves that relevant links are being generated by their system. I continued following links and it led me to Japanese Penguin which is a blog written by three English language teachers in Tokyo. One of them has the misfortune of being an employee of Nova, a rather large English language school that has very publicly gone into administration last week owing 7,000 teachers several months salary.

I try to keep my blogroll on the right hand side up to date with blogs that are still being maintained. I've said goodbye to several blogs that have stopped posting and added new blogs, particularly on Japan, as I come across them. Check out some of the new blogs added on the righthand side today.

There is no good equivalent of the Korean Blog List for finding bloggers in Japan. The top two blogs JapanProbe and Japundit have sizable blogrolls so I'll be working my way through those in the coming months. RokDrop always has some good links from Japanese blogs in his regular Rok Droplets feature on Sundays. I very briefly considered joining the Yamanote line Halloween party on Saturday evening. Reading about the event afterwards however, I am very glad I did not.

Happy Halloween to you all.

Standup Comedy in Seoul : Nov 11.

A few months ago we enjoyed the first of BH Production's 'Standup Comedy nights'. Thanks to being on their mailing list I can tell you that in November they are presenting another night of comedy at the B1 Lounge in Itaewon.

Don't miss Bryan Erwin and Nathan Timmel for an outstanding night of comedy. Bryan Erwin and Nathan Timmel, two professional comedians in the United States, are being brought over to Korea for a one night only show in Itaewon.

Bryan Erwin's comedic appeal is universally apparent: audiences everywhere can identify with his take on life, or as he puts it, "an ongoing series of awkward, uncomfortable moments." His satirical style has been featured at legendary comedy clubs such as the Comedy Store, the Improv, and the Laugh Factory.

Nathan Timmel is known for his edgy, observational humour unmercifully directed at contemporary culture and politics. Nathan has entertained audiences at numerous comedy clubs around the world, and looks forward to unleashing his act on a Seoul audience for the first time.

Venue: the B1 Lounge, Itaewon, line 6, exit 1. Go out exit 1, turn right at KFC, walk up about 20 meters. The B1 Lounge is on your left.

Time: Doors open at 5pm. Show starts at 6pm. General seating.

Tickets: 35,000 won, includes one free drink.


Here's a clip of Bryan on child birth, he sounds pretty funny.

Bryan Erwin "Me, marriage and birth"

Bryan Erwin | Cild birth

I must find some Comedy clubs in Tokyo!

Seoul City Hall construction site hoarding

These are some photos I took, before I left Seoul, of the hoardings around the construction site beside City Hall. As I have mentioned before, the Koreans build very high quality hoardings around the building sites and put a lot of effort into making them look attractive. The hoardings beside City Hall are particulary impressive.

From a distance it looks just like a normal picture.



As you approach you realise it might be some sort of mosaic



As you get closer you see it is made up of small photos.



Once you stand beside it you realise how cleverly it has been put together.



The artist has used thousands and thousands of different photos, some of them going back to the 1980's of all sorts of places, events and subjects. The photos do not appear to have been altered in any way, and yet they create the picture you see from a distance.





It's well worth taking a close up look if you've seen it from a distance. I haven't been able to find out anything about the artist or how they did it so if any knows or can find out I would be most interested.

Update: Thanks to Mark for the explanation. It's a Photographic Mosaic. Obvious really! There are at least ten programs available to download to create your own mosaic, and there are also online applications, here's one, so it's not as difficult as I first thought.

Update 2: Thanks to Mr Kim at the Delta Eagle's OC for letting me know it's from www.byplot.com. It's made up of 6 million images.

Update 3: Thanks to anonymous, the artist's name is Sylver Kang. He used Mazaika software. You may see some more information on his website http://www.mazaika.com/seoul2007.html

Volunteer Tour Guides offered in Seoul

I often visit the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum website and offer advice to travellers asking about Korea.

Today I saw a posting that I thought deserves a wider audience.

A group of Koreans have created a small organistion to offer Free guided tours of Seoul.

This is from Youngdae Kwon, the organiser's website :

Free Tour Guide in Seoul, non professional volunteer organization, was launched for helping overseas visitors experience Korean culture and customs.

Free Tour Guide in Seoul offers overseas visitors a free guided tour in and around Seoul, which has a myriad of exciting and appealing attractions.

Since we are volunteer guides, our members may not speak your native language perfectly. We can only offer visitors the services at weekends. However, we are full of energy, heart-warming hospitality, and cultural insights. Our latest information ensures that you will have a memorable experience in Seoul.

Even if you already live in Seoul, all overseas people are welcome. We may know about Seoul more than you do!

All you need to do is visit his website, complete the short request form and email it to him at the address on the site.

If anyone does take a tour with Mr Kwon, please let me know how you get on.

Korean news stories

A few news items of interest.
CNN has been running an Eye on South Korea section on their website which has some interesting articles including stories on High Definition cinema , Robots being used to build ships and the head of the Korean Toilet Association, Sim Jae Duck's toilet shaped house that he is building in Suwon.

From the Japan times an item on Korean day trippers going to Tokyo for Disney Land or to catch a baseball match.

Update: another picture of the Toilet shaped house.

More Korean news stories

I wasn't planning on doing more Korean news stories today, but the fact that Korea was mentioned on six pages in the Japan Times seemed worthy of note.

On the front page was the news that the South Korean government has set aside 1.5 billion won to help about 200 ethnic Koreans in Japan who are about to be evicted from a community they developed after being evicted from their homes at the end of WW2. In one Japan's longest running legal cases the Koreans have been fighting for their property rights in Utoro in the city of Uji, Kyoto prefecture. The SK government money has been earmarked to help the farmers retain the land they have lived on for sixty years.

On page 2 was news that North Korea had risen from last place in the annual press freedom survey from Reporters without Borders to second last place. That honour now goes to Eritrea. The Japanese were, meanwhile, congratulating themselves on rising to 37th place. South Korea is placed just behind them at 39th. Iceland and Norway top the league table.

Page 3 was headed by an interview with Shuichi Maeda, a veteran from WW2 who has some pretty grim recollections of his time in the army including his memory of the Korean women at the base.

On the letters to the editor page Vipan Chandra from Massachusetts defends the two Korean leaders. Why?

The Op-ed piece reports signs of progress of Pyongyang problem. I wish I had a dollar for every time we've heard that. As always 'The next few months is a delicate period...'. Does anyone remember a time when it hasn't been so?

In the business and finance section is the news that Microsoft has submitted a request to withdraw a court appeal against an antitrust ruling by the Korea Fair trade Commission. I think they've given up fighting the Korean legal system. There was a photo of of two models showing off new Microsoft products in Seoul that they have not chosen to put on their website.

Like the Koreans, the Japanese are also planning to ban the import of American meat, but only from one supplier who accidentally sent them some from cattle that were more than 20 months old.

And finally on the back page was the news that Seol Ki Hyeon the South Korean footballer who left Reading FC in August, thinks moving to Fulham was the best move of his career. And not just because he can get fresh kimchi just down the road in New Malden. (more from Sky Sports)

Blog Action Day : Recycling in Japan

Today over 15,000 blogs are participating in Blog Action Day. Bloggers around the world are writing about an important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment.

One topic that I am particularly interested in is the recycling of household waste. Here in Tokyo there are not as many categories of recyclable material as there were in Korea. Life was easier in the apartment block in Seoul, we could take everything into the basement and sort into the various receptacles. In Setagaya-ku we have to store up the materials and put out them out for roadside collection on different days of the week. This leaflet came round last month informing us of a new schedule which our friendly local shop owner helped us translate:



Bottles, cans, newspapers and cardboard are collected Wednesdays. Plastic PET bottles, which have just this month started to be collected, go out every other Saturday but only after they have been washed and had their lids removed. Metals and other items also go out on alternate Saturdays.

Before this new regime started refuse was sorted into two types : burnable and non burnable which corresponded to the two methods of disposal: incineration and landfill. The definitions of the two types of waste were, to my mind, counter-intuitive. Paper and food waste were classed as burnable and went to the incinerator, whereas plastics were classed as non-burnable and went to landfill. Why would you want to bury something uncompostable and burn something that would easily decompose? The answer was in an article in the Japan times last week entitled Clueless policy persists as Japan burns the unburnables.

Not surprisingly finance and politics were the main drivers. In 1973 the capacity of Tokyo's incinerators was insufficient to handle the amount of refuse being produced. The priority for burning was raw garbage, since it was considered too unsanitary to bury. Plastic was deemed OK to bury, so in order to ease the burden on incinerators all plastic waste was separated and dumped in landfills. By 1997 incinerator capacity had caught up with demand and improved technology allowed refuse to be incinerated at a higher temperature.

Now, Setagaya-ku is one of several pilot neighbourhoods that are switching to incineration of plastic waste. This will reduce the volume of material going to landfill and also provide energy from the heat of combustion. The landfill site currently used for Tokyo will be full in 35 years, and this change will only extend the life of the dump by 15 years.

50 years is all we have in Tokyo until we are swamped in our own refuse. It may sound like a long time, but the problem of waste disposal does not go away. Think of the three R's : Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Individually it may seem like we cannot do much, but every bit helps. For example, if all 12 million blog readers involved in Blog Action Day recycled one aluminium can it would save the equivalent of 3 million barrels of crude oil and reduce landfill usage by over five thousand cubic meters.

What are you doing to save us from drowning in our own rubbish?

Some other links on Recycling in Tokyo:
Pink Tentacle on Cell Phone re-use
Other Items you can recycle from Dumb Little Man
The Azerbaijan view of Japanese recycling
The Kiwi's view of Japanese recycling

Korea Top News

Here's a new website I've just come across Korean Top News. It's a bit like Digg but dedicated to Korean news. You don't have to register to vote for your favourite story, but if you do register you can discuss the stories posted.

They have subscribed to lots of Korean blogs and some news feeds so there are automatically plenty of stories to view. PopSeoul and K-Popped seem to feature a lot, so I'm sure Rain fans will soon find the site and vote stories on him up to the top of the list soon.

It's part of the I choson Networks group which is based in the US and dedicated to Lifestyle, Entertainment and Culture for Korean Americans.

Internet Domain names in Hanguel and Kana

News in today's Japan Times that next week ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, will begin the long awaited start of Internationalised Domain Names (IDN). The AP news story is available here.

The plans are still under review, but once they are approved 11 new domains will be created that read example.test in Arabic, Persian, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil.

Discussion on using non latin alphabets for internet domain names started in 1996. The Japan times discusses the topic in 2001. In 2003 registration began for partially Japanese domain names in the .jp namespace. Request For Comment 3743 was created in 2004 and work has progressed since then.
The Korean IDN 휴대폰.com which translates as CellPhone.com was sold for $36,194 in May 2007.

The technology used in the 13 key domain name directories will not change, instead the IETF have developed PunyCode to convert the new domain names into standard ASCII characters.

The testing document from the ICANN website suggests that the first totally Korean and Japanese IDNs will be :

실례.테스트
in Hangul and

例え.テスト
which is a combination of Kanji Hirigana, and Katakana.

The whole world will be able to test with these new domains, but just in case they cause any problems to the rest of the internet a 24hr hotline will established to suspend the test if required.

I forsee this development will require new versions of almost all software that validates website and email addresses, which is good news for us software engineers and the rest of the IT industry!

Pro Blogger Birthday Bash Prize Give Away

I've mentioned Darren Rowse a couple of times before on this blog. I wrote the Top 5 Korean Festivals and included it in his group writing project. He has been blogging professionally for some time now and runs several well regarded blogs including Problogger.net about blogging.

To celebrate 5 years of blogging he is running a week of competitions open to bloggers, with prizes valued at over $54,000. In today's competition, one lucky blogger is going to win a pair of LG 20" LG USB monitors.

Well done to LG the South Korean company formerly known as Goldstar for producing such great monitors and for those clever adverts of well known paintings with LG products slipped into them. [Which I can't find any to show you right now!]

If you write a blog you have until Friday 8am EST to write a post and link to his site.

Yamanote line station chimes

We've been slowly exploring Tokyo by subway and JR Line railways since we arrived. I noticed that each station seemed to play a different "chime" over the loud speaker after a train arrives. I had thought it would interesting to try and collect recordings of each tune but, not surprisingly, some one has got there before me.These are the chimes for all the Yamanote line stations. The station names are all in Kanji, but if you translate them though google it gets about three quarters of them correctly, (but then the links to the chimes don't work so use the first link). The correct station names are here.

My favourite is Ebisu (Translated as "The god of wealth" on the list). What's your favourite?

Thanks to Gaijin Girl, who wrote an interesting blog on her life in Japan but has just left the country, for the link.