So I switched my mobile phone service to eMobile. This was really part of a much bigger jump over the weekend: I moved from a tiny furnished apartment in central Tokyo to a larger and very Japanese-style apartment on the edge of the metropolis. So far, I can’t say it’s been a bad change. There’s plenty of sunlight out the window, a proper bathroom (unit baths suck!) and enough room to accommodate my [laughable] writing, studying and musical efforts.

One problem I had to solve was staying connected to the outside world. All I wanted was an internet connection: I don’t need a home phone (Skype has me covered there) and I don’t need TV. My building isn’t wired for DSL, so the cheapness of broadband would be outweighed by the cost and hassle of installation.

After some head-scratching, I recalled that eMobile’s basic data plan offers unlimited use of mobile broadband at slow DSL speeds for about 5,000 yen a month. Then I realized that I could get one of their phones and plug it into my laptop’s USB port for unlimited internet access at slower-than-DSL speeds for about 7,500 yen a month, about the same as my average DoCoMo bill (basic plan plus “pake-hodai” and a couple of network services). So I went with eMobile’s basic “smart phone,” the S11HT “eMonster.” I bought it on Friday and have been using it constantly since then.

I am quite pleased so far. I wanted to get a phone with a keyboard for a while. I eyed Softbank’s offerings with interest last year, but was put off by advice from several people that the software sucked (I even heard this from a Softbank sales lady in Roppongi). A friend of mine then bought Softbank’s “Internet Machine,” which is packed with features (including television and GSM roaming) but costs more than my laptop did and, like most Japanese phones, has a unique operating system. Overall, the eMonster does a good job of balancing the sort of things that a fast-paced international digital individual (like yours truly) really needs in life.

The upsides:

• Internet is very fast, both on the handset and on a connected PC. I’m not sure whether I’m actually getting the full 3.7 mbps on this thing, but it sure feels responsive; faster, at least, than the heavily firewalled LAN connection at work.


• Can access any email account with a POP or IMAP server. I now get my Gmail messages straight to my phone. There is also third-party software which allows syncing with Google Calendar (which I also sync to my Outlook calendar at work) and Remember the Milk, meaning that I can have the same calendar and task list on my home computer, work computer and phone. Awesome.


• There are multiple input methods. In addition to the slide-out keyboard, there is a Palm Pilot/Pocket PC-style touchscreen with stylus (which you can use to handwrite characters or tap an on-screen keyboard), a Blackberry-style clicking scroll wheel in the corner, and a directional pad at the base of the phone. Although this encourages a lot of fiddling to find the easiest way to accomplish any given task, it also makes it easy to find a control method that “feels right.”


• Media integration is quite straightforward; just drag and drop folders of mp3s from the hard drive to the device, then Windows Media will pick up the files on a simple directory scan and catalog them appropriately.


• There is a lot of third party software available for Windows Mobile, like Pocket Dictionary and Pocket Mille Bornes (I hadn’t played that game since I was eleven, and I had forgotten how good it is). No more paying monthly fees or signing up to newsletters just to play downloaded games (as DoCoMo generally requires).


• I can run Skype on my phone to call people overseas for next to nothing, although so far I can’t get it to work through the phone’s earpiece—only through speaker or headset.

The downsides:

• eMobile’s network is not as strong as any of the big three providers. In Tokyo, the main place you notice this is on the subway and in basements, as there is never any signal underground (although you can get a good signal above ground anywhere in the 23 wards).


• No RFID chip for mobile payments. I was quite fond of the Suica chip in my DoCoMo phone, as I could charge it with my credit card and roam the city at will. Now I’m back to using a Pasmo card which I have to recharge with cash—bummer.


• The GPS seems more erratic than my Docomo phone’s. Usually it’s off by several blocks.


• Battery life isn’t great when the phone is on 3G and syncing data all day. It’s just about enough: I charged the phone overnight on Sunday and was down to my last bar of battery when I got home from work on Monday. If you plan on spending the night in an atypical location, you’ll need to bring a charger with you.


• Contact management is really complicated in comparison to most mobiles, since Windows Mobile uses a slightly simplified version of Outlook.


• No international roaming. Not a huge deal for me, since my DoCoMo phone could only roam in Europe and certain developed countries in Asia. The WiFi feature largely makes up for this anyway, especially since my family’s house in South Carolina has a good DSL connection and wireless router.

Tonight I returned to Japan from a personal/business trip to the US, and got to experience the new fingerprinting system for the first time.

My flight was United 883, one of the later inbound flights from the US (it arrives around 5:30 PM). I was in the mid-section of economy so there were quite a few people getting off the plane ahead of me. I phoned Curzon as I was walking down the concourse to immigration and told him I would give a postgame report in “maybe 30 minutes.”

But when I reached immigration, there was practically no line for anyone. The area was separated into four zones: citizens, special permanent residents, re-entrants and other foreigners. Those using the new “fast track” card (which I did not bother to get before leaving Japan) were lumped in with the random foreigner category. There were two dedicated re-entrant stations open, and only one was in use when I arrived, so I went straight to the waiting officer who took my passport.

The fingerprinting machine is surprisingly simple, consisting of two fingerprinting pads (made of some sort of metal), an LCD screen and a tiny camera not unlike the built-in webcams that come with laptops these days. The machine says INSERT FINGERS and you put your two forefingers in. Then the immigration officer points the little webcam at you and snaps your photo (which, thankfully, is not displayed on the screen: I don’t need to know what I look like after nearly 24 hours of traveling).

So I was done with immigration in about 30 seconds, which I think is close to a personal record. This didn’t keep United from losing my luggage, though…

To tie in with the world-wide media extravaganza that is the release of the final volume of the megaselling Harry Potter series, today I would like present scans from three lesser known sequels in my collection.

First is the China exclusive 2002 release, Harry Potter and the Filler of Big, a title made only slightly less mysterious when one realizes that the Chinese title translates rather more accurately into Harry Potter and the Big Funnel, although you’ll need someone with better Chinese than mine to describe the plot of this gloriously audacious illegally published novel-length fanfiction.

Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: I am forced to take back my praise of Asahi.com since it has come to light that a) The photo section isn’t new or any better than other similar services; and b) They are ending the great “Today’s Morning Edition” feature.

Last June, the Sankei Shimbun corporation launched a new site called Iza! (meaning “when it counts”), a “participatory news site” that has proven groundbreaking for the online Japanese-language media. The site unites some content that was previously on disparate websites for Sankei group publications (including the flagship Sankei Shimbun, trashy daily Yukan Fuji/ZAKZAK, and sports daily Sankei Sports), features blogs run by their own reporters (such as Washington-based Yoshihisa Komori and the reporters assigned to intellectual property issues), allows the creation of user-generated blogs, displays trackbacks for all its stories, RSS feeds for everything, and—perhaps most importantly—includes a whole bunch of content that once could only be found online.

I am pleasantly surprised at the site’s quality, but at first I was skeptical that Japan’s most conservative national daily could “get it” when it comes to online news. But they do get it, and they are leaving other sites in the dust. Sankei has a motivation to revamp its business: the main Sankei Shimbun is only the 6th-place newspaper in Japan, the last among the nationally-circulated papers and behind even the regional Nagoya-based Chunichi Shimbun. One sign of success: Sankei is using the site to launch blog-inspired books, such as this one by a political reporter.

Though most of the major newspaper sites give out their editorials and some columns for free, many (Nikkei is probably the worst offender) still feature pitiful two-line summaries of their feature news articles (or brief reprints from wire services) and offer nothing that could be termed full news coverage. An August 2006 Bivings Report study of Japan’s online media market concluded that in general “Japanese papers are not taking aggressive Web strategies (except when it comes to cell phones).” Focusing on cell phone content may be in line with many readers’ demands, but there is a growing market for online journalism that I believe will match the US’ development of online media as a main source of news, even if many of the users will in fact be reading from cell phones.

There are many factors that contribute to a general reluctance among the national newspapers to modernize (government-sanctioned protection against price competition chief among them), but they are under increasing pressure to get their act together. The share of ad spending that goes to newspapers has declined from 21% to 17% over the last 10 years. Online ad revenues have doubled in the past 2 years and are making up a growing share of the total ad market. Perhaps more importantly, Dentsu, which is the primary ad agency for an astonishing 92% of Japan’s dailies, is starting to focus more of its attention on this exploding area of the market. And unlike print newspapers, there are no government-provided barriers to entry in place, which lets companies that aren’t even in the newspaper business try and challenge newspapers’ dominance of print media and compete for ad money. Livedoor already has excellent news and citizen journalism sites, for example. Also, Yahoo and JANJAN have politics websites that blow away anything the newspapers have had to offer in the past.

One newspaper site that seems to be getting the hint is Asahi Shimbun. Ever since a string of reporting scandals left the newspaper weakened in terms of credibility and access to politicians, the Asahi launched a campaign to reform itself called “Journalist Declaration.” The paper pledged to return to the principles of its mission statement to “Persevere in freedom of expression from a position of neutrality” and “fight corruption without any illegality or violence.” Specifically, the Asahi decided to take on major organizational reforms to “create a flexible reporting organization that allows for fully developed investigative reporting and meets the needs of the times.”

Asahi decided to stop running TV ads for the campaign after it was found that an evening edition article on winter rice cakes had been plagiarized from an online Yomiuri article. One of the ads is thankfully still on YouTube, however.

Nevertheless, the cleaning house has done the Asahi some good. There really have been some great stories broken by the Asahi in the past year and a half or so, some of which I’ve mentioned here. But the biggest personal benefit for me is that the Asahi’s Japanese-language website has improved quite a bit:

An idea of what’s in the day’s morning edition – Click on the Editorial link on the front page and above the editorials there is a list of the various sections of the paper (Front page/International/Society etc). One article per section is available in (I assume) full length, along with just the headlines for other articles. Even apart from this section, however, it seems like most of the big news items get a much more detailed treatment than other major news sites, even though they might not be full-length.
Better RSS – You can now preview the first line of the article along with the headline where previously all you got was the headline (they put in ads, but it’s not a bad trade-off). You can get the Asahi’s Japanese-language RSS feed here. It’s still hidden from the front page for some reason. I’d of course like to see them offer some more variety in the RSS rather than a single feed of latest headlines.
Bigger pictures – One of my biggest pet peeves about Japanese news sites is the use of tiny, often indecipherable photos to go along with their stories. I don’t know why they did that, but I am guessing it was some compromise reached over copyright concerns. Whatever the case, Asahi’s new photo gallery section now lets you get a big eyeful of newsmakers like Bank of Japan governor Toshihiko Fukui:

None of the Asahi’s new features allow for any “Web 2.0” style interconnectivity a la Iza, but in terms of pure news transmission this is a big step in the right direction. Other sites are of course not standing still (Yomiuri has a forum!), but so far I am most impressed by these two efforts.

I’ve been using Google Reader for the past few months to monitor some of my favorite blogs and news sites. I follow 10 to 15 sites at any one time. More than that, and I don’t have enough time to read it all: less than that, and I feel uninformed.

My list changes regularly, since the quality of feeds (and my interest in them) varies over time. Here’s what I’m currently watching. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the week-long birthday festivities for Mrs. Adamu, on Friday we had the chance to visit Charley Brown’s Tex-Mex Cantina, one of the few places in Thailand that can claim to serve anything close to Mexican food. I ignored Cosmic Buddha’s reservations about the place and decided to go anyway. Some thoughts:

Recommendation: unless you have no problem with sex tourism and are sure that you’ll never ever visit a part of the world with good Mexican food again, stay away from Charley Brown’s.

For some reason, foreign financial reporters on Japan seem to have the best perspective. Here are two examples:

William Pesek, a columnist for Bloomberg, earned my admiration back in June when he cut through layers of government spin to find the real reason why BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui should resign:

The scandal involving his 10 million yen ($86,950) investment in a fund led by a shareholder activist jailed on insider-trading charges has gone beyond theater and farce. It now threatens to tarnish Japan’s global reputation.

Even if it turns out Fukui didn’t break any laws, his actions were dumb. Fukui invested in Yoshiaki Murakami’s fund in 1999, when he was at the Fujitsu Research Institute. He applied in February to sell his shares, raising questions of propriety as the BOJ prepares to boost rates for the first time since August 2000 and after his investment more than doubled in value.

The bigger problem is how vehemently Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has come to Fukui’s defense. It means the BOJ governor, who is supposed to be independent, now owes the prime minister. The upshot is that a rate hike that was widely expected in July may be delayed until after Koizumi steps down in September.

Fukui, 70, yesterday said ``monetary policy isn’t affected by politics’’ and that the BOJ needs to adjust rates ``without delay.’’ Even so, the mere perception that BOJ policies are paralyzed thanks to Fukui’s missteps is reason enough for him to resign.

Preach it!

Coming in at No. 2 (only because he doesn’t cover issues I’m curious about often enough) we have David Piling, the FT’s correspondent in Tokyo. Like Pesek, he’s adept at cutting through the BS, even when it comes from his fellow Britons as in this book review:

To wish [the “unique” aspects of Japan] away would be to miss something recognisably Japanese. Yet, to treat Japan as inherently odd can quickly stray into stereotype, even prejudice. Just as bad, it can bolster the case of those Japanese exceptionalists who assert that Japan is unique, superior and unknowable by foreigners.
...
In Atomic Sushi, May seeks to break the deadlock by recounting, wittily and often brilliantly, his personal experiences, greedily amassed during a year spent teaching at the University of Tokyo.
...
The approach, as befits a professor, is to tell a story (often hilariously) and then to offer analysis. The interpretations are sometimes amusing and astute, but sometimes they are so sweeping as to be virtually meaningless. Take the account of a beautiful girl who, though standing, falls asleep virtually draped over a commuting businessman. Apparently in the depths of slumber, she nevertheless awakens the instant the train reaches her destination.

She apparently displays the Japanese people’s “pervasive and acute alertness to their environment and its subtle signals, instilled perhaps by their constant vulnerability to earthquakes”. Or maybe she just heard the station announcement.

As a reporter, Piling will undoubtedly be replaced when his time comes to be promoted or the FT feels that his closeness to Japan could pose a conflict of interest problem (one major reason why many news companies replace their foreign correspondents so often). I can only hope that they find someone with as keen judgment.

There are many who feel that Japan shouldn’t have to put up with foreign criticism, or that Japan’s image needs to be mollycoddled by official propaganda and numerous underdisclosed shills. But I can’t stress it enough that open debate and frank discussion (most especially when it’s available for free on the Internet), such as the above examples, are desirable when you’re talking about understanding another society, discussing policy choices in a society in which you’re invested, in monetary terms or otherwise. It results in a better informed public and a broader range of ideas from which to draw inspiration and guidance.

Want to know what just happened in Japan or areas that Japan cares about? Well if you can read Japanese fragment sentences, the best free place to turn is probably Sankei Breaking News. I bet you didn’t know that eel prices are up 20% on low catches of sardines and fewer imports from China, did you?

Only thing is you actually have to load the site to see it. That is so 2003!