The first little tidbit I’d like to share with you all that I found from JANJAN is their feature Kokkai Watch. It covers all events related to the Japanese Diet.
Some Interesting links I saw:
衆議院ＴＶ (Lower House TV)
参議院審議中継 (Upper House Live)
These are like a Japanese C-Span — watch any meeting of Japan’s legislature at your leisure.
Whenever something important comes up I’ll be sure to keep an eye on these. I also like the UN’s video archive, while we’re on the topic.
I recently came across this great web site, JANJAN — Japanese Alternative News for Justice and New cultures. It’s kind of like Korea’s OhMyNews, which as some of you may know is an Internet-based “citizens’ journalism” site. All the reporters are amateur, and content is regulated through an editing staff and the following of a set of rules called the “Citizen Journalist Code“.
The site, as I learned belatedly, got some international attention when one of its reporters, Imai Noriaki (18 — the link is actually not a story by correspondent Kwan Weng Kin but a translation of a Japanese tabloid story that paints the three abductees in a negative light) was abducted in Iraq and threatened with beheading. While I certainly don’t support the fact the he and the other two abductees (Takato Nahoko and Koriyama Soichiro) needlessly put themselves in harm’s way, the idea of citizens’ journalism is refreshing, especially in a country such as Japan with a relatively controlled, passive, and reactionary media.
Continue reading JANJAN — Media by, for and about the people
I think this quote from the new FCC Chairman, Kevin J Martin is definitive proof that the agency has become so utterly worthless that it no longer has any right to exist.
“This order involves a television program that the majority admits ‘contains references of a sexual nature that were broadcast at a time of day when children were likely to be in the audience,’ ” he wrote in that opinion. “Yet the majority concludes that the program, in which a prostitute is hired to sexually arouse a horse by removing her blouse and to ‘extract’ semen from the horse, is not indecent because the prostitute is ‘never seen actually touching’ the horse. Despite my colleagues’ assurance that there appeared to be a safe distance between the prostitute and the horse, I remain uncomfortable. I respectfully dissent.”
Update: For anyone interested in a more serious take on problems with spectrum regulation, read this article.
A Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee was formed in Washington, and it had one key recommendation: “Public safety agencies will not be able to adequately discharge their obligations to protect life and property” if they don’t get more frequencies within five years. The report was released on September 11, 1996.
And we all know what happened exactly five years later, when public safety agencies still did not have sufficient spectrum for their emergency radio communications network.
Well, it finally started: the Aichi World Expo 2005. It promises to usher in the next wave of technology (Robots), showcase the best the world’s got to offer, and is being held in the economic power of Asia’s fastest-growing city. Thanks to major sponsors, Toyota, for both holding the Expo and building the Nagoya International Airport to support it. Japan’s Yokoso! tourist PR campaign led up to the event, with even Koizumi appearing in commercials welcoming visitors to experience the country of ancient culture and futuristic technology, or whatever he said. Some visitors to Japan will be able to get their hands on special PDAs that will allow them to make phone calls and get pertinent information. Not everyone agrees that Japan is the best tourist destination, though, citing not only language difficulties but more basic tourism problems — Japan’s stores don’t accept foreign credit cards, and there is no reliable hotel information for most destinations.
Despite all the fuss about walking robots, the most popular attraction at the expo is likely to be Totoro’s house, a life-size recreation of the lovable creature’s home in the classic movie, My Neighbor Totoro. For all the hype about this being a World Expo, it’s really going to be mostly Japanese tourists in attendance. Fact is, there probably won’t be throngs of people from all over the world storming the country to get a peek at what the Expo’s got to offer. Like most people who are curious about the bampaku, I am content to read about the highlights online (and I’ll be sure to blog anything good I come across).
I don’t know about you, but the Internet makes me a lot less curious about the world. Now that I can read all sorts of really general information on the Internet for free, I feel like I already have a sense of what those places must be like. The Marmot’s Hole, for one, has completely ruined me on Korea. I have gotten such an inside scoop from Marmot and his blogroll that I kind of doubt I’d be missing much. When you’re an adult and the thrill of going out and getting drunk fades, all that’s left is more going out drinking. Doesn’t matter where you are, if you work full time then you don’t have time for much else. It’s all the same — the minute differences between countries that you care about can be easily digested in a foot-long blogroll.
No wait, I take it all back. I wish I could be there. I really really do.
最近はGREEを友達に紹介してもらってハマってる。GREEとは、自分の母校や友達や趣味を登録することで、その友達の友達や同じ趣味の人のプロフィールを見て連絡することもでき、人脈をどんどん広げていくためのサイトである。例えば、「ワシントンに住んだことがある」と検索したらなんと「この人知ってる！」って人の画像がいっぱい出てきた。日本で出会った懐かしい仲間たちを見つけるのが楽しい（まだ一人しか見つかってないが）。やってみたい方は招待が必要なので、ぜひ俺に頼んでください。
A friend recently turned me on to GREE, a kind of Japanese Friendster. Like Friendster, you can use the site to register friends, hobbies, alma maters (almas mater?) or whatever. Another great feature is that it lets you run your blog’s RSS feed through the site, which I have done. You need an invitation to join, so anyone who’s lived in Japan, reads Japanese reasonably well, and wants an invite can feel free to ask me for one. Enjoy!
The Asia Pages pointed me to this WP article about how tough it is for Indian customer service workers to deal with racist Americans who want to deal with Americans.
I agree that the Indians aren’t to blame for wanting to use their English skills to feed their families. But I have to tell the lame-asses who hired them: Indians accents are hard to understand! Even as someone who has lived abroad (though not in India) and who deals with shitty accents for a living, I have to ask the customer service people to repeat themselves almost every sentence. I’ve had a few customer service experiences where the person was in India but easy enough to understand and sometimes even friendly, but 7 times out of 10 (I’ve had to call customer service a lot lately) I feel like I’m lost in a foreign country.
We’ve been screwed so hard by companies in the customer service department that I’m not even going to bother asking for courtesy anymore. They can be complete assholes as long as the problem gets solved. But I don’t think it’s racist or too much to ask to speak with a customer service representative that actually speaks my language. I’m not the typical moron who needs everything explained step by step, but if there is no manual included with the product I buy (and there’s usually not) and it’s not working I need someone to tell me what’s wrong with it. And if possible I’d like to understand it the first time it’s said. That is all.
My friend Jon found the perfect laptop to power with my SolarRoll when I take off for no man’s land. It may only be a 1ghz Centrino and a paltry 800×600 screen resolution, but at 4 pounds (that’s about 2 kilos for you foreigners) and optional (as if I would turn it down!) integrated GSM/GPRS/CDMA/GPS/802.llb and a touch screen interface I can’t think of a machine I’d rather have with me on my desert expedition.
Curzon, you’re gonna be making the big lawyer bucks soon enough, what do you say? We can publish a nice travel book afterwards-it’ll be just like one of the old time Brits you named yourself after. I’m ready to leave on almost immediate notice if anyone out there wants to fund my expedition. All details can be worked out when the time comes.
The latest issue of Bruce Sterlings always fascinating Viridian mailing list pointed out this new product from Brunton
The specs look excellent.
SolarRoll 14
MSRP: $399
* 12″x57″ open
* 17 oz
* Max output: 14 watts (15.4 Volts / 900 mA)
* Perfect for running satellite phones and charging laptops
Now all I need is an Iridium satellite phone, a rugged sub-notebook computer and one of these and I can finally start doing some SERIOUS traveling. I just hope the radiation doesn’t interfere with my equipment.
A friend send me this text, allegedly of an ad taken out by iRiver in South Korean newspapers, encouraging people to buy Korean instead of those trendy American mp3 players. For the record, I have an iRiver H140 hard drive based mp3 player, and in my opinion it kicks the ipods ass anyway.
Does shouting ‘mansei’ buck-naked make Korea independent? U.S. firms are sweeping up most of the world’s HDD-type MP3 player market… As a sovereign MP3 state, we could not simply sit back and watch. After spending countless nights in the research room, we’ve finally produced a precious son for the world market… There will be many difficulties, but we are not afraid. We are the descendents of martyrs who braved bullets and swords to bring about independence to the cry of ‘mansei.’
Ok, some of you may have noticed that this blog was not loading in Internet Explorer for at least the past week or two. I spent a decent amount of time trying to diagnose the problem, and after a protracted period of completely and utterly failing to do so, I decided the only course of action was to completly wipe out my installation of wordpress and reinstall it.
Having done so, the problem seems to have cleared up, and everything is very nearly back to Normal. There are quite a few glitches and missing features remaining, since although I did back up the graphical theme correctly, I also wiped out most if not all of my customized html and php, which I will have to redo over the weekend when I have time to mess around with that again. Still, things work now, and I should be doing some more posts in the near future. Other plans also include installing a separate photo gallery program more suitable to manageing large numbers of photos, so I can finally post the hundreds that I’ve been meaning to without having to rely on the clunky blog/photogallery format that I’ve experimented with in the past.
