Technology – Page 28 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

The obscene excesses of JASRAC

“We want to give lessons without worrying about royalties”
Self-made dance music CDs grow in popularity

According to the royalty guidelines of the Japan Association of Recording Artists’ Copyrights (JASRAC) , royalties for music used in a social dance classroom vary based on the number of teachers and the lesson fee, but they can be assumed to reach the amount of 3,000-20,000 yen per month. However, many people have expressed dissatisfaction, wondering “Is it really necessary to collect fees even for music used to practice dancing?” According to JASRAC, of the 2500 classrooms nationwide about 40% are not paying.

In response to this non-payment, JASRAC sued 7 dance studios in Nagoya demanding royalties for the past 10 years in Nagoya Regional Court. Last September, the Supreme Court rejected the classrooms’ appeal and commanded them to pay the 46,360,000 yen that the Regional Court awarded JASRAC.

This is the story behing the self-made CD movement.
Continue reading The obscene excesses of JASRAC

Spam in Japanese part 2 いろんな迷惑メールその２

日本語の原稿をご覧いただくにはこちらをクリックしてください。

“Nice to meet you. I’m Yukari. You were looking for a sex friend, right? Mind if I apply? Umm, I have a boyfriend, but he’s not satisfying me, so please become my fuck buddy. It looks like we live close to each other, so first of all I’d like to confirm our sexual compatibility. Here’s a simple profile:
Sagara Yukari (My real name, but the kanji are secret for now lol, 24 years old, work as a telephone operator. My 3 sizes (bust, waist, hip?) are 92-61-88 (cm), and my breast are G-cup (about a D in American sizes). I’m kind of like an albino, so if you prefer tanned gyaru then you might not like me. Umm, I’m kind of a masochist when it comes to sexual habits… That’s why I’m a little unsatisfied when I have sex with my boyfriend. I’d like soft SM, like where you’d tease me by inserting from the back, or taking me on dates in a miniskirt with no panties, how about it?
Or are you looking for a normal sex friend who isn’t a masochist woman? Um, anyway I await your reply☆”

It’s written well enough so that someone with their guard down might actually respond. Click “Read the rest” to see the original Japanese.
Continue reading Spam in Japanese part 2 いろんな迷惑メールその２

Homemade Les Miserables 2d Fighter

My friend Matt passed on a link to this amateur 2d fighting game based on Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables. The game is being distributed as freeware, so go ahead and download it. It was built using the first edition of a fighting game design program called 2D Fighting School (2D格闘スクール), published by the Japanese media company Enterbrain. The product info page for the newer 2nd edition product is avaliable here.

Since I’ve never seen or read Le Miserables, Matt supplied me with this summary-

Valjean is a former felon, trying to stay out of trouble. Marius and Enjorlas are french revolutionaries, Javert is a police inspector (and Valjean’s former warden), Thenardier is a crook, Cosette is Valjean’s daughter, and Eponine is Thenardier’s daughter.

I’m still trying to figure out how Ponpon the car-driving rabbit and the ki-fireball throwing French policeman fit into the story. I guess I’ll have to read the book.

Continue reading Homemade Les Miserables 2d Fighter

The Japanese Web 2004

It’s a little late for 2004 retrospectives, but I thought you guys might enjoy taking a look at what was hot on the web in Japan for 2004. First, the Google Zeitgeist, Google’s yearly ranking of the top search queries in each field, gives an idea of what was popular way back then. I do wish they’d give more detailed and constant statistics instead of just this little bit at the end of the year.

The #4 search query in Japan was 翻訳 (translation), nowhere to be found in any of the other top 10s that I can see. Are Japanese people more interested in learning about the rest of the world? Or is it that they just suck at English???

In a surprise upset, goth singer gackt beat out Bae Yong Joon (The silent-but-deadly Yong-sama) for most searched for man. And despite being kind of off the cultural radar this year (I think?), folk duo Yuzu popped up at #5. Kind of like how Kurt Cobain is STILL the #10 most sought-after image in America.

Next we have Yahoo!JAPAN‘s Web of the Year 2004. There was an ad in my Yahoo!JAPAN e-mail telling me to vote for it, and when I saw the nominees it was surprising how many websites I had never heard of. The list here should be a useful guide to all the most popular and trusted web sites in Japan.

Yahoo seems to have won a good portion of the awards, so who knows how impartial this thing was. But it’s possible that since it was hosted by Yahoo, the people voting already know about Yahoo and its services.

The top “Zeitgeist award” (話題賞） was 電車男　(Train Man), the romantic novel lifted directly from 2ch message boards. I really want to read this, so I have no idea why I didn’t buy it when I was in the country. Anyone coming to DC from Japan, buy it and I promise I’ll pay you back!

Anyway, I’ll leave the rest of it for you to draw your own conclusions. I’ll be using it to check out the links I wasn’t aware of, and I’ll get back to you with some highlights.

Be careful what you wish for: F*cked Gaijin Down for Exceeded Bandwidth

The forum for “FGs” or those non-Japanese in Japan who feel like they don’t quite fit in, has been down for the past 24 hours or so, giving the following error message:

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.fuckedgaijin.com Port 80

Now, in theory, this is the problem I wish we had. But, as Simonworld so sagely points out, the more popular a site gets, the more costly it is to maintain (especially a forum site like theirs). Maintaining a large and growing audience may in fact only be possible if you are taking in a good chunk of revenue from the site. Otherwise it’s a drain on both your time and your wallet.

As for the FG site itself, I have some mixed feelings. I was actually gearing up to write a scathing review of the site that blamed it for a) reinforcing negative stereotypes about Japan and b) showcasing the main posters’ insecurities and bad attitudes. Nevertheless, it was a good source of insider info about Japan from a different perspective, and it had some good features (Random Gaijin Pic of the Day being chief among them). I think we’ll all be watching to see what develops.

Tech Workers of Japan, Unite and Come to America!

This is a story I came across during my recent trip to Japan:

Nichia Corp, the Japanese manufacturer of the blue light emitting diode (LED), this month agreed to pay 840 million yen ($8 million) to a former employee in compensation for his invention of the technology to make the blue LED, which has turned a once minor chemical company in rural Japan into a virtual world monopoly in the production of the blue LED.

The court-mediated settlement of the dispute over the inventor’s demand for a huge amount of compensation drew wide public attention not just as industrial news but as an event of major social impact prompting a rethinking of individuals’ position in organizations in Japan in general, and engineers’ in business corporations in particular.

It also has prompted businesses to consider a system to adequately compensate for employee inventions, something that has been left in the dark in the past but has assumed crucial importance in this age of growing importance attached to intellectual property rights.

At the time of his invention, Nakamura was given a mere 10,000 yen bonus. What I saw on TV was a livid man holding a press conference and saying, “It’s as if the court is telling me to go to America. America is a society which actually rewards creativity.” There were also interviews on the street where people said he didn’t receive enough. Any thoughts?

Earthquake Resistant Desk

The Yomiuri reports that Kokuyo is about to release a new earthquake resistant desk designed to withstand twice the weight of a ordinary school furniture. I imagine with it’s ‘protection panels’ and ‘catching bars’ it can protect from all sorts of calamities.

Available in sizes from 105 to 180 centimeters and avaliable in maple or cherry, the price ranges from ¥25,200 to ¥31,500.

I checked the Kokuyo web site for more information and on a cursory inspection didn’t find a listing for this item, but they did have this wonderful diagram of all the things in an ordinary office environment that can fall on you in the event of an earthquake.

Mechanical Pencils

I have a fantastic mechanical pencil that I got in Japan, which I guard carefully because I don’t know where and when I might be able to get more. Since the label had completely rubbed off I had no idea who the maker or what the model number is so I was just looking around on the web to find out. It turned out to be a discontinued Staedtler 925.

Although a German manufacturer, I haven’t been able to find a single English language store online that seems to sell this model. Although discontinued, it has been replaced by a slightly different model of the same number.

Hopefully I can find an art/drafting specialty store that carries these, because I haven’t been able to find any other mechanical pencil with the same kind of comfortable, solid feel and reliable mechanical performance of this one. Most mechanical pencils, even those from a reputable manufacturer like Pentel, tend to be made of plastic, which wears down to slipperiness and lacks the proper heft to really write comfortable.

Now, pencils may seem like an awfully mundane topic in a world of wireless internet, robot dogs, and digital cameras, but it is also worth appreciating the hundreds of years of evolution it takes to perfect such a commonplace device. My borderline obsessive quest for a particular pencil illustrates well how important little variations of material or ergonomics can be in such a daily use device. Realizing how rare it is to find even a mechanical pencil that truly lives up to one’s expectations of quality makes even more remarkable the intricate high tech devices all around us.

Anyone with even the slightest interest in engineering, ergonomics or the history of technology is strongly encourage to read Henry Petroski’s book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, a book which is far more interesting than you would expect.

Sega’s ugly robot dog

I have faith that open, free-market competition will naturally produce the highest-quality robot dog possible, but this second major entry into the market suffers from an unfortunately miscalculated appearance:

If I wanted to be disgusted by my virtual pets I’d get a Jar Jar Binks plushie.

〚オススメ〛日経動画ニュース

たまたま日経新聞のホームページを開いてみると、なんと動画ニュース（ＭＳＩＥ専用らしい）が流れてた！と昨日驚いた。しかも、無料で日本のテレビで見れるような普通のニュース番組です（少し短めだけど）。

さらに驚いたのは、他の動画ニュースと違ってスムーズに流れること。ｇｏｏニュースなど、マイクロソフトメディアプレイヤーやＲｅａｌを使ったニュースサイトでは途中でとまったり、遅くなったりするが、ここは違う！

ヘッドライン・東京マーケット・解説・特集の４つのセクションに分けて、映像の横に字幕も出るので、日本語の勉強のためにもオススメ。