I'm A Seoul Man in Tokyo

Movember the first

2011-11-01T07:37:00.002+09:00

I'm growing a moustache for November.

Sponsor me at Movember.com to raise money for Men's health charities.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers - prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Improv Comedy in Tokyo: Pirates of Tokyo Bay

2011-10-15T20:49:00.003+09:00

I am always on the lookout for Comedy shows to go to and, thanks to a review in the Japan Times I discovered some Improv Comedy happening a pub called 'What the Dickens' in Ebisu.
A group calling themselves the Pirates of Tokyo did a show on Oct 16th 2011

Doors opened at :7:00pm and the show started at 7:30 Entrance was 1500 Yen which included one free drink. Food was available.

Location : "What the Dickens" , 1-13-3 EBISU-NISHI SHIBUYA-KU TOKYO. 3 minutes walk from Ebisu station, JR Yamanote line and Hibiya subway line.

If you have ever seen the TV show "Who's line is it anyway" then you'll know the kind of thing.

The show was in both English and Japanese. I was interested to see how they would handle that. In fact it was very well done with some games all in English, some all in Japanese, and some in a mixture with some translations.

The show is divided in to a number of different games.

I really enjoyed the evening and I am looking forward to their next show they hope to put some time in December. I'll be posting details here when I hear about it.

Random Photo of the day

2011-06-26T20:29:00.003+09:00

I took this photo this afternoon somewhere in Tokyo. No prizes, but can anyone guess where this is?

Yes, they have wheels on them, and no I have no idea what they are going to do with them. They appeared within the last month.

One of the joys of life in Tokyo, the random things you see around here every day.

Ishinomaki , 3 months further on

2011-06-16T22:28:00.005+09:00

Saturday 11 June 2011 marked the 3 month anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Tohoku region. I took the opportunity to go to Ishinomaki, in Miyagi Prefecture to do some volunteer work.

The organiser had hired a 26 seater coach and we departed Tokyo just after 8pm. The two coach drivers took it in turns to drive us through the night, arriving at 3am at the Ishinomaki Senku University. They turned on all the coach lights to tell us they’d arrived and to go back to sleep until 7am! Mercifully there were no loud snorers but I still only managed about an hour of sleep. At 7am we drove several miles to find a Shikyu restaurant, where we all ate a hearty breakfast before returning to the Volunteer Centre at the Senku University Campus, to get our assigned task for the day.

The organisers’ desk opens at 8am every day and they efficiently processed us and the many hundreds of volunteers that were staying in tents or had arrived in cars and coaches. For those of us who had not been before, we were given small green insurance certificates and everyone was given a sticky label to attach to their clothing with your name, and to indicate that you were a volunteer. So we got into our working gear. Wellington (rubber) boots are by far the best footware, with gloves, helmets, dust masks and protective eye goggles and drove set out to start work on a small hospital building.

The first stage of cleanup had already been done, that was to bag up most of the small items of rubbish, and one room was piled high with rubbish bags.

We formed a human chain and made short work of shifting them outside where the council will take responsibility for removing them. The next stage was to remove all the large items : beds, chairs, tables and other furniture.

We then broke for lunch, which was at the same place as breakfast, earlier, and where there are two other restaurants open for business.

This is how it looked after the tsunami.

In the afternoon we returned for the final task, which was to shovel the sludge into bags. The thick, oily, mud had covered everything to a depth of approx. 2cm. It was fairly dry and didn’t smell too strong, though I was very careful to always wear gloves. The end result, You see the tide mark a few inches from the ceiling ?

That was how high the waters reached.

The mud filled sacks were taken outside into a separate pile and again the council will eventually come to collect it. Of course, one enormous problem for the disaster recovery is what to do with the massive amount of debris. Over 24 million tons alone in just three prefectures.

At exactly 2:46pm we had a moment of silence in remembrance of those who lost their lives, including the 24 people who had died in that same hospital.

After washing all the tools and the boots, we boarded the coach again and went to the port area of Ishinomaki, which had been hardest hit by the tsunami. There was almost total devastation, only a small number of structures remained. The damage was astounding.

More photos from Boston.com and some more of my photos on flickr

Another hour’s drive away was our hotel, and we arrived just in time for dinner, and with a little time to spare for the onsen. Those of us who were not completely exhausted, then stayed up for karaoke. The trip home on Sunday was uneventful, and we were back in Tokyo around 4:30pm. Dividing the cost of the coach between 26, it came to 10,000 yen each. The trip organiser had arranged for a volunteers’ certificate from the local ward office, and that entitled us to avoid payment of the expressway tolls, which would otherwise have added 30,000 to the total bill.

Only 15% of the ¥251.4 billion collected by the Red Cross has been distributed by local city and town civil servants who are, not surprisingly, struggling with the disaster themselves.

It's clear from my trip that one thing the locals do need is more man power. Cleaning out buildings is hard manual labour that really cannot be mechanised or automated. If you want to go up to the Tohoku region the organisation of volunteers, at least in Ishinomaki, is very good. If you don't speak Japanese Peaceboat are organising regular trips from Tokyo.

The trip from Tokyo by car or coach is long and expensive, what I'd like to see would be companies like H.I.S Travel offering cheap volunteer trips up there by shinkansen. I'm sure more people would be prepared to offer a day or two of labour if it was made easy and simple. What's your excuse for not helping?

This is my entry into this weeks:

Google thinks I'm Transport for London

2011-02-05T00:13:00.001+09:00

This blog has been a bit thin recently, I've been spending far too much of my time on my other hobby of maintaining the JapanBlogList which ends up with me visiting a lot of other blogs and generally getting nothing else much done. If I'm not reading other people's blogs I'm posting random stuff on Facebook to amuse my friends such as The Chihuahua pulling a sled from Japanprobe, "Hug your wife day" from Japanalooza, the link between Pink tentacle posting an article on LED Smiles on Jan 17th, which got picked up the NY times on the 21st Jan and the Guardian on the 25th Jan as real craze , but swiftly debunked by the Japan Times on the 30th Jan.

My favorite was the 'incident writeup' for a recent problem when shinkansen trains were halted for more than an hour. seems they forgot to update some hard coded limits in the scheduling system. ( But then I am in IT, and part of my job is incident write ups to explain to our users what happened when things went wrong.)

But for a change, for no good reason this evening, I thought I would see if anyone does still bother to visit this blog. Heading over to trusty Google analytics I was surprised to see a steady stream of visitor's averaging around 100 per day. But what is most confusing is when I looked to see the key words they come for :

"TFL Map" TFL Tube Map, London Underground Map... and other variations account for eight out of the top ten hits.

Sure enough if you do a google search for TFL Map, in the section of images, the link on the first image of the underground map is a link to a post I did in 2007 titled "Seoul on the Jubilee Line"

In the post I had a link to a diagram showing all the cities which have, are building or are planning to construct an urban rail sytstem, arranged in the style of the London Tube map. I also included a link to the real map on the TFL Website to compare. So how come my blog rates higher than the real TFL site for their own image? Go figure.

Happy Christmas, from The Japan Times and Me

2010-12-20T21:50:00.005+09:00

There was a Christmas gift lottery in the Japan Times two weeks ago. All you had to do was send them an email with your name and address and your preferred choice of gift from the list of six or seven different presents on offer. I selected what I imagined would be the least popular choices, sent off an email. Lo and behold on Saturday I got a nice hand addressed letter with a little surprise inside :

A bookmark in traditional lacquer technique, handmade and hand painted by Japanese craftsmen from Fuji-Tori.

I was delighted at such a beautiful piece of work, many thanks indeed to the Japan Times and Fuji-Torii for the gift.

So, to all my readers, enjoy your gifts and the holiday season. Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas, and all the best for the New Year.

My Life as a Yoga Guinea Pig - Jala Neti

2010-12-04T20:29:00.003+09:00

Most married men are subject to the whims of their (sometimes insane) wives, and I am no exception. You see the wife teaches yoga and there has been no peace for the last year whilst I resolutely refused to practise Jala Neti ( saline nasal irrigation ) for the simple reason that a. it was horrible and b. nothing (good) happened.

In yoga circles "good" is defined as water going in one nostril and then flowing Ganges-like through the other nostril under the pull of gravity or whatever.

I started my feeble efforts about a year ago but some beaver-like log-jam deep inside my sinuses prevented any fluid from emerging. Then, about three weeks ago ( and for no particular reason ) I decided to give it another go. This was about the third time and you know what they say ..

The Niagara effect did indeed manifest but only from left to right nostril; a two-way flow was only established on the fourth attempt.

To finish : Since my jala neti epiphany I have not gone around sniffing at everything, nor have I become a wine expert, but I AM breathing rather well.

If you want to subject yourself to similar (ill) treatment, contact paola@yogasan.net and see YogaSan

Sumo : Hakuho wins 60th consecutive bout

2010-09-24T19:47:00.004+09:00

We visited the Sumo today. The 12th day of the Tokyo Grand Sumo tournament at the Kokugikan at Ryogoku. It is a fascinating spectacle. We arrived fairly early around 1pm and were enthralled all afternoon until the final bout just before 6pm. Hakuho the 25 year old Yokozuna was looking to continue his undefeated run of 59 bouts. He fought Baruto and won very convincingly in less than thirty seconds :

Tickets are still on sale for the last two days Saturday and Sunday if you are quick. We had a group of three seats in a small 'box' which means you sit on a cushion on the floor. So if you prefer a seat, you are better off with the cheaper tickets, that are in the second floor and bring a pair of binoculars. We bought ours at Ticket Pia on the second floor of Shibuya 109 building in Shibuya.

FolkRocks - Japanese Band

2010-09-20T17:45:00.000+09:00

I've been to a couple of concerts by this band FolkRocks and I really like their sound. It's a cross between Folk music and Rock music! Here's one of their tunes with a video of the view out of the window of a train journey I took from Shimoda on the Izu penisula.

Sadly I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but I've been told they fit quite well with the visuals.
The front man of the band is Rui Nagai and he leads the band of five people. There is great atmosphere at the concerts with some very loyal fans.

You can a preview of the other songs on the album at iTunes

They don't play many gigs, but there is one coming up next month in Tokyo. I'll be there and if you'd like to join me I think you'll have a great night out.

Date: Wednesday October 20th 2010 · 6:30pm - 10:00pm

Location : STAR PINE'S CAFE
B1 1-20-16 Kichijoji , Tokyo.

Ticket price: 3,600yen ( includes 1 drink)

Facebook Event link : FolkRocks Live

Venue Directions : Take the north exit of Kichijoji station and come out to the big rotary. Take the big street on the right (passing UFJ Bank on your right), heading away from the station. Take the third right after UFJ, and find Star Pine's Cafe on your left .

Directions taken from Tokyo Gig Guide. They have got a huge list of venues that have live music in Tokyo.

If you like Japanese music, there's sure to me more blog posts thanks to this months Japan Blog Matsuri. Hosted by Jessica at Nippon Ichigo The theme is Japanese Music. What's your favourite Japanese band ?

JapanBlogList.com Resurrected

2010-08-28T15:24:00.006+09:00

I glanced at google analytics for the stats on this blog recently and I noticed the site at number seven in the top 10 list of referrers JapanBlogList.com. I recall sending a request to be added back in 2007 when I moved to Japan, but I had never really noticed it since then. Looking at the site two weeks ago, it was obvious that it was no longer being maintained, which I thought was a shame.

Long term readers from my time in Korea may remember, I wrote a number of posts about new blogs from the KoreanBlogList.com and I always enjoyed finding new blogs to read. So I emailed the JapanBlogList site. To my surprise I received an email back, even more surprising was that the man behind the site is none other than Gary (GDog) from TheDailyKimchi. I met him a couple of times while were both living in Korea and we exchanged numerous emails.

So, to cut a long story short, Gary is busy in Canada and he had not had time to update the list, so I volunteered and he was delighted to let me loose on the site that he built. There is quite a lot of work to do for the site, so I have decided on number of phases for the effort required.

Phase One : Delete all the dead links. That started a couple of weeks ago when I took over, and ( thanks to Jeff as well who sent in a couple of links that I had missed) I think all the dead links have gone.

Phase Two : Add all the latest suggestions in the JapanBlogList inbox. This phase is almost complete. There are still another ten or so from the June and May that still need to be added. I hope to finish that this week.

Phase Three: Revisit all the blogs and collect the RSS feeds for each blog. Once this is complete I will use the Blogger.com feature 'list of blogs' to publish the latest updates for all the blogs onto the JapanBlogList.com website. That's going to couple more weeks. Maybe I should set myself a deadline...

Phase Four : Start a regular posting schedule to list the newly added blogs with maybe a few lines on each blog. In addition I have already started a twitter feed twitter.com/JapanBlogList. All new blogs will get a tweet with the link.

Phase Five : Run a competition for a Logo for the site for use in social media sites etc and start promoting the site. www.Japansoc.com will be the first port of call. Any other suggestions?

Phase Six : I can't think that far ahead. This should be enough to keep me busy for a few month yet...

So, I have you a blog relating to anything Japanese please let me know. Just follow the instructions on the site for submission, or feel free to add a comment below.
The main requirements are :

1. That the blog has a least ten posts : I don't want people who have just started a blog, try it for a couple of weeks and then give up, so that I have to go and delete them.

2. Has posted something within the last four months.

The site is getting at least a hundred visitors per day, so addition to the list will certainly increase your chances of getting visitors.

If you know of other Japanese blogs not already listed (and I already know there are quite a few that I read that are not listed) please let the blogger know that JapanBlogList.com is Back in Business.

Tibetan Sand Mandala

2010-07-04T21:33:00.005+09:00

I was lucky enough to get to see this Sand Mandala created by four Tibetan monks from the Tashi Lhunpo Monsastery this week. They started creating the masterpiece to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Dalai Lama's birth on Tuesday 29th June at the Mitsuo Aida Museum in Tokyo. By Sunday 4th July morning they had almost finished.

Just the finishing touches before it was complete.

After the mandala was complete prayers were said and a mask dance was performed and a final ceremony before the sand was brushed into a small urn.

Finally the sand was taken the nearby Sumida river and scattered into the water to symbolise the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.

Cyprus, A Beautiful Village Experience

2010-06-21T22:27:00.004+09:00

Just for a change on Seoul Man in Tokyo, we have a guest blogger. George Christodoulou from Cheap Tickets dropped me a line and offered to write a post on the delights of Cyprus, so, over to you George.

Cyprus, A Beautiful Village Experience
This post is brought to you by George – Cheap Tickets.

 Visiting Cyprus is an unforgettable experience because there is so much to see, the weather is beautiful almost every day, and the beach is always 2 hours away. That's the beauty of an island in the Mediterranean, there are beaches over the entire island open to the public and the climate is warm. Being from Cyprus, I have the advantage of staying with my family so the visit was enhanced by local village culture and scenes impossible to see in any hotel.

My trip began with a drive from the airport to a wonderful little town called Tris Elies where my grandparents were located. From day one, we visited a local coffee shop and stayed for the entire day. Being from New York, I was not used to this, but as the day went on, I met with more of the locals and spent a day relaxing, drinking coffee, talking, and playing backgammon. Even though this is how many days were spent, there was never a moment of bordom. The atmosphere in the village is slow and laid back so even staring off into the grape vine canopy and falling into a nap was fun.

What I loved most about my trip was the scenery. Walking from the house to the local coffee shop was a treat. The flowers of the neighborhood bloomed and climbed on the side of walls. The streets are not neatly organized, rather they are winding and fun to maneuver. Cyprus was very mountainous I would participate in a daily workout whether I wanted to or not. All of these different aspects added to the charm of the village.

The people in the Cyprian villages were very trusting and extremely nice. People freely entered and exited other people's homes without having to ask for permission. There is an unspoken relationship among villagers that is like a communal bond. Most of the village people were elderly because it seemed like most of the younger generation moved to the city. These people have many stories from their life experiences including fighting in world war II. What I found most interesting was that most of the women wore black because it was the custom to only wear black when you become a widow.

Finally, who could forget the food. The Village does not have many supplies so most of the food I ate came from special deliveries from my Uncle who brought food from the city. There is a store int he village but the merchandise is expensive. Every meal contained olives, beans, and haloumi, the special Greek cheese made of goat milk. Meat was not a large part of the diet for the people in the village, but since we had special deliveries coming in from the city, we were often delighted with souvlaki, pork chops, and other wonderful dishes. Along with dinner also came a generous helping of salad with Greek cheeses and plenty of olive oil and vinegar.

This was a trip of a lifetime and one that I will gladly take again in the years to come. There is no better experience then visiting a location with so much history and beauty. Most of Cyprus is untouched by the hand of modern industrialization creating a wonderful experience for anyone interested in a relaxing village experience.

Thanks George. If anyone else is interested in writing a guest post for this blog, please let me know. George is also looking for travel bloggers who might like to write a guest blog for the OneTravel Travel Blog. Let me know and I can put you in contact.

Yoga, Beach and Fireflies : 12-13 June 2010

2010-06-02T11:39:00.013+09:00

A firefly (Japanese, hotaru or botaru) is a small insect that produces light to attract a mate; in the Tokyo area of Japan this occurs in June. Here there are two species of Luciola (scientific name); genji-botaru and heike-botaru. Fireflies occur in many parts of the world, though they are strongly associated with the literature and art of Japan. This woodblock print (1864) is from the famous Genji Monogatari (thus genji-botaru), and illustrates a fascination for and appreciation of insect forms which finds expression in exquisite and minutely crafted works originating in China and Japan.

My wife is running a yoga weekend near Kurihama, at the Nobi Beach Club (One hour from Tokyo).

The program includes a night excursion for Firefly Viewing. Cost is 27,000 yen. Places are still available.

Please contact for details : paola@yogasan.net

Yoga weekend at Nobi Beach Club

2010-04-16T22:30:00.005+09:00

My wife Paola has been teaching yoga in Tokyo for almost a year in our beautiful yoga studio. Recently we went on a first trial-run of a yoga weekend retreat. We got to know of the delightful hostess, Jude, who runs a fantastic bed and breakfast near the beach, close to Kurihama in the south western corner of Tokyo Bay. The NOBI BEACH CLUB.

Two students were eager to try out the experience and we got the train together to Keikyu Kurihama station (about 1 hour of out Tokyo).

There's a popular country park about thirty minutes walk from the B&B, that has a variety of attractions including a spectacular Godzilla statue.

Sunday Morning we had the first lesson at 9am. This included standing poses like Trikonasana and Parsvakonasana , and inverted poses like Sirsasana (headstand) and Adho Mukha Vriksasana (handstand) . After breakfast we had some free time to explore the countryside around Nobi.

The afternoon class focused more on stretching and twisting asanas and ended with pranayama (breath control). In the evening Mr G, organised a very tasty barbecue and we sat, laughed and talked around the fire.

On the Monday morning we got up good and early for a silent meditative walk along the beach to a suitable location on the boardwalk for Surya Namaskara ( The Sun Salutation ). We performed ten rounds of the sequence of forward and backward bends and stretches in the glorious morning sunlight before heading back to the B&B for the morning yoga class. This lesson was challenging, but the excellent eggs and bacon provided for breakfast were a good reward for our hard work.

We had some free time to enjoy walking along the beach and into the forest that starts right outside the house. We ended the weekend with a trip to Jude's favourite eatery: the Kalika, an excellent Nepalese restaurant overlooking the sea.

Paola runs lessons suitable for all levels. Private lessons for a minimum of two people are available. We are also planning many more yoga by the beach weekends starting in June 2010. For more details drop me an email or contact Paola directly from YogaSan

Yamanote line suspended (Mar 23 2010)

2010-03-23T20:10:00.005+09:00

no one likes to see that!

Apologies for the spelling, this was from my cell phone earlier this evening. The JR Yamanote line, JR Shonan Shinjuku line and the Saikyo lines were all suspended. My normal trip home from Ebisu to Shibuya was somewhat delayed. After some deliberation I worked out the quickest route would be the one stop south on the Hibiya line to Naka-Meguro and one stop north again on the express Minatomirai line to Shibuya. It only took an extra 15 minutes, but I foolishly did not collect a free subway line ticket from the station staff offering them for the alternative routes, so it cost me 260 Yen. When I arrived at Shibuya the trains were still suspended. I look forward to details tomorrow of what happened.

Since there was no point entering Ebisu station I failed to get a photo of the new platform edge doors that have appeared after the long weekend. I'll try and take a shot tomorrow.

Update: it made the front page on the Japan Times printed edition today with a photo of some people being helped off a stuck train. The root cause was an obstacle hanging from overhead wires. More than 2,000 commuters were trapped on trains in the incident that lasted 90 minutes.

Ebisu Station 0:45 am

2010-02-24T00:48:00.002+09:00

Transport Bookshop in Tokyo

2010-02-07T23:57:00.007+09:00

Just come back from a trip to Nishiyama bookstore in Ikebukuro.

View Larger Map

If you are looking for a transport bookshop in Tokyo this is the place to go. It covers trains, planes, boats, trucks, buses and cars; plus some movies and war related books. Most of the books are secondhand and in English but there is a good collection of German and French language books and magazines on trains.

If Ian Allan is one of your favourite publishers, or the initials BNSF mean something to you, I don't think you will be disappointed.

The shop is well organised with almost all the books well ordered, though I was surprised to see a street atlas of a small town in England amongst all the railways books.

The one thing that is missing though, is books on Japanese railways. I found one slim booklet on the Light Rail systems of West Japan, and a couple of books of photos of Japanese trains with Japanese text, but that was it.

Only five minutes walk from Ikebukuro station this small shop is worth a visit if transport is your thing. But If you are looking for fiction or more general second handbooks then go just a couple of stops south on the Yamanote line to Blue Parrot books in Takadanobaba , or carry on further south to Ebisu to Good Day Books.

I'm sure there are more second hand English language bookshops in Tokyo, A search yields this list from American Airlines which includes a few I've not heard of. And if you'd rather shop online I discovered Infinity Books Japan , but it's not the same as browsing a dusty bookshelf looking for something unusual.

Anyone got any more bookshops to share?

Frisk 'Hello Idea'

2010-01-15T20:51:00.002+09:00

WTF? It's a Mint! more great adverts from Ebisu station.

Update:
From YouTube, the video advert too :

My Nephew

2010-01-01T04:38:00.002+09:00

This is a photo of Ben my nephew.
Happy New year to all my readers.

Tokyo Tech Party Dec 17 2009

2009-12-08T21:34:00.007+09:00

It's been Christmas in Tokyo since November the first when Mitsukoshi turned on the lights on their Christmas tree. But now is the season for Christmas parties.
Coming up next week is the Tokyo’s Biggest Tech Party Ever .

It's happening on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 from 7pm until 10pm

At the Restaurant and lounge 57 Fifty Seven
B1F 4-2-35 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo.

(Google Maps here )

It's Free Entry!

There will be a cash bar, and "light food menu", (make of that what you will)

It will also be the first ever “Beers for Bytes” charity event. The money will be donated to Room to Read’s wireless computer lab projects in Nepal and Vietnam, as well as other developing nations.

Who's coming ?

Well, it could be anyone from these many Tokyo technology related groups :

Asiajin

Asiajin is a weblog focused on Asian startup companies, websites, and technology communities. Their mission is to provide timely articles about Asian Internet in English. It was started by Akky AKIMOTO and Shunichi ARAI in 2007.

Digital Eve Japan

Digital Eve Japan is an international organisation of women interested in computing, the internet and digital lifestyles and is based in Tokyo with members throughout Japan.

They host meetings, workshops and speakers to learn more about a variety of computing and net-related topics, as well as social events.

International Computer Association (Japan)

Established in 1970, the ICA (International Computer Association) has grown into one of Japan's largest, most influential organizations covering Information Technology and Business in Japan. The ICA provides a forum for information exchange, networking, and identification of business expansion opportunities with many of the key movers and shakers in Japan.

Tokyo 2.0

Tokyo 2.0 is a not-for-profit community event run by a steering committee of volunteers. It has hosted a number of very popular monthly events during the past two years.

Mobile Monday Tokyo

MoMo Tokyo is the leading networking organization supporting Tokyo’s mobile industry and has become a key gathering point for corporate managers, entrepreneurs, developers, analysts and the media in Japan.

Launched in Japan in September 2004, MobileMonday Tokyo hosts regular networking events that routinely attract 100-200 participants working within the wireless industry.

Tokyo HackerSpace

The Tokyo HackerSpace initiative was created from discussions at TokyoBarCamp 2009. It's a collective made up of programmers, engineers, IT administrators, artists, chefs, musicians, and people interested in geek culture. The goal of the group is to converge technology, arts, crafts, and music. If you are interested then please join the mailing list.

Tokyo PC Users Group

The Tokyo PC Users Group may sound like a club for users of Windows-based computers -- but, in fact, many of our members use Macs or various flavors of Linux as well as Windows. Nor is our focus limited only to personal computing. TPC is a club for technology enthusiasts of all sorts, from beginners to seasoned pros.

Tokyo OpenSolaris User Group

The Tokyo OpenSolaris Community is one of the largest communities in the world of OpenSolaris. And since Tokyo is a massively big city with connections around the world, we intend to grow globally. If you are interested in Japan or Japanese technology or if you ever come to Tokyo for business or pleasure, then please feel free to subscribe to our lists and talk with us and come to our events. English or Japanese is fine. We have many people who speak both languages quite well, and the more diversity the better. And you don't have to live in Tokyo to participate. We are an international community, and we expect to have members from all over the world.

Ninjava

Nin-Java , (NIhoN-Java) is an English speaking Java User Group based in Tokyo with over 200 members.

Tokyo Linux Users Group

On June 16, 1994 TLUG was born as the "LINUX" conference on TWICS, which was the only public access Internet Service Provider in Japan at that time. The atmosphere was exciting and friendly, and everyone began helping each other fix problems and learn about Linux. One of the early members commented, "It felt like we were all on the edge of this frontier and that together we were taming this networked, high-tech jungle. It was great!"

TLUG is a non-profit users group, whose members exchange information on the development and use of the Linux kernel and Free Software Foundation tools. Physical and online meetings are held in English and Japanese. All are welcome.

AppleCert

AppleCert group is a non-profit association for engineers focusing on Mac OS X and Apple technology integration. Our primary focus is to sustain a peer group of like-minded engineers to build their technical skills at an accelerated pace.

GreenITers

GreenITers are for people who want to “Green it !” the world we are living in via clean technology.

Mobile in Japan

The Mobile in Japan community is active both on the various groups and on the blogs.

So there could be hundreds of people showing up next week to meet, mingle and party.
I am sure a big majority of the people coming will be bringing their poken, so if you are going to be in Tokyo and want to meet some friendly techies, come on down.

RSVP by email by Sunday, December 13, 2009. There is also a
Facebook event to sign up on to where you can see who has already confirmed.

( This is also my entry to the December Japansoc, Blog Matsuri hosted by Dumb Otaku, on the subject of "Technology". )

Geek Up Your Ass Gently

2009-10-28T21:38:00.003+09:00

I just caught the last few songs at this guerrilla gig under Shibuya station on my way home tonight. Awesome good sound. will buy their new album released today. www.geeks.co.jp

Update: considering they were playing by the side of the road in the middle of Shibuya the sound was pretty good and very very loud, which was what attracted my attention while walking through the station upstairs.

Their "First Debut" album is called Magical Vox Paranoia. "The best rock album of the year" they claim! It looked like they have a loyal fan base that were out in force to support the four lads. They had fliers which I have scanned for your delight :

There were a lot of people taking video and photos so I hope I can find some to share.

Windows 7 Advert

2009-10-23T20:50:00.001+09:00

I know I said I would not cover Windows 7 but this advert on the Yamanote this evening caught my eye:

Meet the Korean Government

2009-10-21T21:45:00.004+09:00

I've not blogged much about Korea these days. It's been over two years now since we left, but I still have fond memories of the year we spent there. The launch of Windows 7 tomorrow reminds me of how I covered the launch of Windows Vista in Seoul. I won't be covering the launch of it's replacement in Tokyo. All I can say is, I hope the latest version works with the Korean websites.

So while Korea is a distant memory I still notice news items about the country. [And of course I can hardly forget North Korea which dominates the news at least once a week with some sort of crazy or interesting antics. Here is just one of the two examples in today's paper alone.]

So I was intrigued by the advert on the back page of the Economist this week : "Business Round table with the Government of South Korea". Restructuring South Korea's economy for a post-crisis world. Register now at www.economistconferences.com/kr09. Turns out it's only 1,990 USD and no onerous requirements. Sounds like a bargain to me. Go and heckle some of the ministers at the grand Hyatt Seoul on Nov 4th? Sadly I won't be able to make it. Perhaps we could put together some suggestions for those that do. What do you think?

Ojarus, Strange performers. Ueno

2009-10-17T21:04:00.003+09:00

These street performers at Ueno were quite amusing.

They've travelled widely in Europe too with their performance ojarus.com.

Typhoon rail disruption

2009-10-08T07:04:00.004+09:00

Typhoon 18 (Melor) caused a lot of wind and rain last night peaking at 3am in Tokyo. The worst seems to be over now but I have never this many impacted rail lines on the status screen before.

Here's the latest view of the storm's progress from the Japan Meteorlogical Agency