Hiko's Blog

New YouTube Vid: 日本人妻を持つ外国人夫の悩み

2013-02-27T23:34:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsnQHZzOfXs

My First Look at the Tokyo YouTube Space

2013-02-20T01:41:00.002+09:00

Last Friday, I was among the lucky Japan based YouTubers to get an invite to go over to Roppongi Hills for the opening of the new Tokyo based YouTube Space, just the third in the world to be established after Los Angeles and London. I was very excited to first hear about the plans to develop such a space in Japan, and admit, perhaps let my own expectations and imagination get the better of me in the lead up to the party. The party itself was a great opportunity to talk to fellow YouTubers, as well as Google and YouTube staff, and to get to talk to a few of the people outside the current YouTube community, that YouTube is clearly looking to reach out to with this facility, in order to bring in more polished exclusive content here in Japan. The conversations and what I saw were informative in terms of the direction that YouTube seems to be trying to move into, and the role for the new space.

YouTube and Me

So to set a bit of background in to what I was doing at the opening party, I've been lucky to have had many opportunities now to meet with and talk to YouTube staff in Japan, and have been invited to give talks at YouTube organized events like the partner forum in Tokyo, and late last year to give a seminar on copyright law and using third party material in videos to the current batch of YouTube NextUp winners.

When I was originally invited to become a partner back in the days where there were not many partners around, some years ago now, I was in the awkward situation of being torn between wanting access to the cool bonus features partners had access to, but being wary of my YouTube hobby leading to any ethical issues with my job as a commercial law attorney at the time (specifically, the issue that receiving any payments from Google could give the appearance of a conflict of interest when providing legal services to competitors of Google). The compromise I took was that I accepted the partnership invite, but never set up monetization until I stopped working at that law firm. In fact, I believe I set up monetization the next day after I changed jobs and stopped work as a commercial attorney...

The good thing about not monetizing was that I think it took the edge off the hunger some YouTubers feel for getting more views, or the ever elusive "feature" (if you don't know what that means, go ask your grandad about YouTube back in the old days, around 2008...). I was genuinely interested, as I still am, in how to get the most out of the new features YouTube regularly added, and giving my feedback as a user to the people I was occasionally lucky enough to meet and talk to. I think I give good feedback, and I always tackle things from a position of understanding and respect for the YouTube staff, and I feel that they have been good to me in return over the years. A lot of people spend a lot of energy whining about YouTube, and granted, sometimes with good reason. But I feel lucky as a partner that I occasionally get the opportunity to get in early on new features (Victor and I got live Hangouts a few days before they were opened for general use for example), and it is great to be able to get a "vibe" for where things are going with these events.

So the aim of this blog is to try to give my impressions of the YouTube Space in Tokyo, and the general impressions I got from the many conversations I had at that party.

Imagining the YouTube Space....

I honestly don't know a lot about the Los Angeles or London Spaces (other YouTubers clearly know a lot more, certainly about the LA space at least). I will therefore admit some guilt at perhaps letting my imagination run away with myself imagining what the Tokyo Space would be. Indeed, the features I imagined for a dedicated YouTube space, and to some extent what I consider to be an "ideal" Space from a regular Vlogging YouTuber is are the following:
- A number of dedicated studio rooms for recording, oriented around single or small numbers of users. Basically a clean space alternative to our regular offices and bedrooms.
- High speed internet connections, wired and wireless everywhere (including direct plug in feeds into Google Hangouts for guaranteed stable high resolution broadcasts)
- Portable green screens, furniture (chairs, desks, etc), tripods, props, etc for setting up recording rooms.
- A range of video recording equipment (DSLRs, HD Camcorders, Prosumer and Pro Cameras)
- A range of sound recording equipment (lapel mics, wireless mics, boom mics, etc)
- Configurable lighting equipment
- Editing facilities with high end computers offering top end software, and staff available to give tutorials or advice in effectively using such software (ie, people you can ask to help with tasks for Adobe After Effects, Premiere, etc, and popular Mac Software).
- A booking system allowing use at all hours based on hour by hour availability of rooms.

I was looking at this as a "normal" YouTube creator, which in most cases is someone who:
- Physically works alone, and collaborates over the internet with people in nearby and remote geographies
- Who is always on the lookout for the best hardware and software tools to get, and wanting the opportunity to try such kit out
- Someone who is always looking for ways to shoot and edit cleaner looking and more polished videos
- Someone who prioritises ease of shooting, speed of editing, and quality of output

With the above image in my head, I must admit, I posted some rather embarassing Facebook updates about looking forward to going and molesting the cool equipment there... I admit it. I got a little over excited.

Idealism, Meet My Friend, Reality.

Now, the "Space" I just described is the facility that I would create, if I was Google, and I was making a space to help improve video quality by offering existing creators the tools, resources and space they need to churn out production level video using familiar workflows. Based on my conversations with YouTube staff, I am still optimistic that this is the kind of thing the Space will be able to be used as and over time will become more like. However, they introduction to the Space at the party brought home what the primary focus of the Space will be, and where YouTube is directing its primary efforts to right now.

YouTube is enormously popular in Japan, and it has even now overtaken its long time rival, Niconicodouga as the top video site here. However, despite YouTube's efforts to get its enormous audience here more interested and focussed on locally produced original content, with vloggers selected for it's NextUp Program given weeks of coaching and training on video production, and a budget to upgrade their recording kit, it is still fair to say that only a relatively small proportion of Japan views go into locally made YouTube exclusive content.

Google seems to have a reasonably clear global strategy for YouTube, as the vehicle through which it ultimately wants to effectively compete with, and replace traditional broadcast media. The primary focus of the YouTube Space appeared to my eyes to be as a stepping stone more for traditional broadcast media to transition over onto YouTube than for current YouTube creators to step up, although there is the potential for that kind of use also.

A Strategy to Beat Commercial Television in Japan?

Looking at Studio 1, a large recording stage and studio 2, a full studio sized green screen room, I must admit, I first felt my heart sink a little. These were facilities clearly not aimed at vloggers looking to step up, but rather for established production crews to record in an environment and in a manner they are familiar with, but in a way that lets them easily "broadcast" through to YouTube via the specialized studio control room also set up there. These are not rooms or facilities a lone vlogger could easily use. Besides the enormous amount of space they offer for one person, you need people on the cameras, in the control room and so on to use them. You need FRIENDS. Real life ones. I saw nothing but issues...

It seemed to me they had gone and made a facility designed for commercial TV production to come and use to make professional grade tv shows the way THEY are used to. It wasn't new media taking over, so much as old media being hand-held into new media. Here I was with dreams of user creator hordes stampeding over traditional media via YouTube, and here is YouTube instead offering the dinosaurs wheelchairs and a red carpet to get the best spots on YouTube instead. Reality started to hit a little hard, and I admit I felt some disappointment.

It wasn't until I started talking to some of the other, less familiar guests who were not YouTubers and not Google Staff that I began to better appreciate the potential for this kind of studio...

Japanese TV has a problem. As easy to watch and digest as it is, it is by and large crap. I don't want to sound mean. There are some good dramas, some nice short original shows and so on. But the problem is that prime time commercial broadcasting, much like many Japanese movies, are hamstrung by the compromises needed to satisfy the many interests behind the running of TV. They have quotas of registered Tarento to give air time to, largely through talk shows and variety shows, usually interwoven with commercial sponsors, advertising companies like Dentsu, and certain time and format constraints that mean broadcasting is done to ensure you see certain actors, being presented in a certain way, with certain musical jingles in the background, played with certain commercials. TV between 5pm and midnight in Japan is largely indistinguishable between most channels. The current "in" tarento will be saturation marketed through a drama on one channel, a talk show on another channel, a commercial on the next channel all at once.

In all this, there are thousands of talented and creative cameramen, script writers, producers, production staff all trying to get their work through and recognized. I have met and talked to these people whose life has focussed around wanting to "break" in broadcast production, and been disillusioned by the real life world of commercial broadcasting in Japan.

Coming to Japan as a television addict, and overworked salariman, I soon discovered that Japan has excellent "indies" television production which can be seen mainly after 1am on the commercial channels. This is the time when commercial channels will give the most talented and creative young producers an opportunity on limited runs to try broadcasting the shows they actually want to make. Being the graveyard shift, the time is low risk to advertisers, and is a limited means of discovering and rewarding young production talent. Only very rarely do the great shows on during this time period each night ever break into pre-midnight broadcasting.

Talking to frustrated creators in the commercial space at the party and previously, it dawned on me during the party that the real potential of the YouTube Space, as a means of raising the profile of YouTube and standing up to seriously compete as a broadcast medium of equal standing, was to get these abused and ignored "indies" producers onto YouTube. And this facility offers them the ability to make the jump from traditional to web based broadcasting in an environment that is comfortable and familiar to THEM and their workflow.

As presented on the night, I began to look at the YouTube Space as a way for more traditional professional creators, and commercial interests to look at getting up alongside commercial broadcasting on their own terms, and to bring the talent that exists in that space between being squeezed out of regular TV and unfamiliar with the web, onto the side of YouTube. I think that is an excellent strategy, and one that offers an exciting new outlet to very talented creators out there not on YouTube that might not otherwise get the opportunity to have their work seen.

I would love to see the Space be a serious production studio that gets these kinds of creators seen and recognized, and I think it is commercially smart for YouTube to invest in this as a strategy. Ultimately, more users on YouTube, more engaged for longer means more potential for standout original content to also get clicked on, watched and appreciated by new users. There is a "knock on" effect that will benefit high quality original content creators already on YouTube from this.

But What About Us?

I was going through the spectrum of emotions on this. Excitement, denial, disappointment, anger, compromise...

But unlike a normal person trying to cope, my geek instincts and emotions got involved also. As I walked around the studio spaces, the feeling I felt more than anything else was frustration. I was trying to reconcile what I was seeing with my dream space I described above. "Where are the high speed wired connection ports?! There are none-anywhere!" "Where is the editing room?!" "Where are the cameras and equipment we can use!?" "The Green Room is nice, but how about a smaller room with a green screen I can put up?!" I was looking for the things I was expecting and not finding them, and getting that knot in my stomach of frustration you get when putting together a PC, or using new editing software for the first time. That feeling of, it SHOULD have this, but it DOESN'T. WHY NOT?

After talking to one or two Google Staff, I got some helpful answers.
- Yes, there are no wired ports, but you don't need them, there is high speed WiFi everywhere here.
- Yes, those studios are big, but there are a bunch of small booths at the other end of the space you can use.
- Yes, the control room is a big live production set up, but there is an Editing Room with computers and lots of software installed you can use.

For all my frustration, there were answers for each point more or less. The YouTube staff were apologetic also - the event is aimed at a lot of different interests - it wanted to appeal to commercial creators and sponsors, but also cater to YouTube creators at the same time, and there was some acknowledgement that the YouTube creator features were not on display as prominently as the more commercial features were. Indeed, the event was a PR event to showcase the facility from a more commercial point of view, and to showcase the top creators in Japan already on YouTube, through invited partners and NextUp winners, and to give us all the chance to mingle, which it did. But it was also acknowledged that it was not an event for us creators to just go in and molest camera equipment. They assured me I would get the chance later...

I walked back around to find the booths and the editing room. I saw the booths, and they were okay, regular sized empty white rooms, used on the night for party logistics. I also saw the editing room, which was locked. I asked the staff member by the door if I could go in and have a look. The guy told me "No, there is lot's of expensive equipment in there..."

I thought to myself, "Yeah, that's ENTIRELY the point..."

But point taken, the facility does have YouTube creator friendly features, but they weren't on show that night. Which was disappointing, but I still remain optimistic and look forward to the chance to go check them out.

So, What IS The YouTube Space?

The good thing is that there were a bunch of features explained on the night that I learned as things progressed, and a bunch of extra information now available on the live page for the Tokyo YouTube Space.

The YouTube Space in Tokyo is a medium sized studio facility, taking up half a floor in the very central and very expensive Roppongi Hills Building (so Google splashed out to give us the facility somewhere convenient). It is made up of three main studios (one large, one a green screen room, and one a window-side more regular shooting space from a web perspective). It also has a sound recording room that strikes me as being a nice room for recording a hangout from with nice sound quality. It also has a number of smaller rooms and 3 booths, that can be used for a range of purposes, from changing and make up rooms for larger productions, to smaller work or shooting rooms for smaller scale setups like... erm... me.

I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of a lounge, cafe area and kitchen space. Again, I presume this was there more with large productions in mind, but I would love to see facilities like the cafe and lounge to be available for YouTubers to meet up to brainstorm and plan out creative projects. Some whiteboards might go a long way in this regard also. I REALLY liked the idea of the cafe within the space, and hope we can get to use that or something like it in parallel to others using the main studios. Of course we could do the same thing in Starbucks downstairs, as we already do, but there is something nice and creatively focussing about being able to meet to brainstorm in a dedicated creative studio space.

There is also a training room which I guess will be used mainly for creator oriented events, and one would hope seminars and so on about production.

The Edit Room is separate to the control room, and just as I wanted, has high spec Macs and PCs with software like Final Cut, CS6, and so on. Again, it would be really nice if they could allow individual creators the opportunity to use this room to edit project and collaborate, and for there to be access to help for us to learn to effectively use these pro-tools.

In fact, looking at the information given on this page on the YouTube Space site, I can see that it appears many of the items from my wishlist are covered to different degrees:
http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/about-tokyo.html

The other point that the staff at YouTube emphasized was that the Space is still being finalized and they would be taking an adjust as you go approach to determining how broadly to make the facility available, and how to set it up best for people to get the most out of the Space, and that they would look to feedback from early users on how to do that.

Kicking the Tyres

Information on the website, and from other YouTubers at the event seemed to point to the facility being available, at least at first only to limited users. Apparently this is the way things have gone with the LA facility, really only being open to some of the biggest players on YT in the States. However, YouTube is a very different animal in Japan, and how time and resourcing in the facility will be allocated is yet to be seen.

Apparently it won't be set up as booking a time slot for parts of the studio as I had first imagined. People to whom the facility is made available will need to submit an application containing a production plan and outline to be vetted and approved before permission to use the Space will be given. This again implies the primary focus will be for more "serious" productions by traditional crews, and for planned collaborations between groups of YouTube users with access to the studio physically.

I suspect my "plan" would be like many - I would want to get on my bicycle late Wednesday night, set up a high quality DSLR cam and Mic onto a high speed wired connection for a live hangout, drink a beer, talk and shout more obnoxiously than the conditions of my marriage license will allow me to do at home for an hour, pack up, and bicycle home. Perhaps, on other days, I might want to rock in to edit a project in the YouTube Space Edit Room, and get some advice from other users and staff there. Or just hang out there to shoot and edit small solo projects like music videos and time lapses. It's not clear yet how open the facility will be to that kind of use, and if so when. But I am hopeful that it will at least let me go in to try out the YouTube Creator facilities, and have a run at using the equipment there to shoot a simple video, to figure out the best kind of workflow for a user creator there and how the facility can be used to help enhance my video making and production abilities, and for it to do the same for others.

On this, I will will look to make a more serious sort of a plan, and take the opportunity one day to more fully use the rooms and equipment that were not available to me on the night, and to compare this against my "dream list" at the top of this blog, and make suggestions for users wanting to use the space, and YouTube for making sure it meets the needs and desires of user creators as well as it clearly seems to be set up for indies and commercial production.

Exciting Times...

The best thing about the party for me was the chance to meet and talk to many friends, both vloggers like Sayulee, Ericsurf6, Nothingeverlasts, Megwin, asakawaz, ariorali and so on, as well as the YouTube staff I have gotten to know over the years, and to geek out on our shared and common interest in making YouTube bigger and more fun for us both as users and creators. We got to talk cameras, sound, the new channel design, the move towards reemphasizing subscriptions, and the future direction of YouTube and where this studio Space fits in.

The cool thing about YouTube is that despite what some people may say, they DO care about ordinary users and they do listen, and try to fit us in to the complicated framework of other goals they have, which also include taking over broadcasting, transforming the way we watch and interact with media content, expanding viewership, raising quality, and making money along the way. It's a lot of responsibility for a few people. I left the Space wanting to see more, but looking forward to see how much of the potential of this space can be unlocked.

Check out the links below for more information.

http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/tokyo.html
http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/about-tokyo.html
http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/create-tokyo.html
http://www.youtube.com/yt/space/faq-tokyo.html

Photos above are copyright of Google.

New YouTube Vid: 日本人の妻はどう？？？ Ask a Japanese Housewife!

2013-02-13T23:34:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPA_jYIvqhE

New YouTube Vid: Love and Marriage in Japan

2013-01-30T23:50:00.001+09:00

"Japanese Women Won't Marry Low-Income Earners, Reveals Poll" http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/japanese-women-wont-marry-low-income-earners-reveals-poll.html So what makes for a good marriage - and is it something we should even aspire to. And what about kids? Adoption? We talk about all this and how it works in Japan, so sit back and enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEtlNXyA7HM

New YouTube Vid: Coming Up This Year on Hikosaemon Channel!

2013-01-23T23:27:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfTTxUWnD8M

New YouTube Vid: Taiwanese Animations and Internet Business in Japan

2013-01-09T23:37:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm6zkrkgsyw

New YouTube Vid: How to See Tokyo in 3 Hours! ３時間東京ツーア！（日本語字幕付き）

2013-01-09T22:36:00.001+09:00

A 10 hour layover in Narita unfortunately usually only means 3 hours you can spend in Tokyo. Most don't bother, but my cousin took up the challenge on the stopover back to NZ, and so here is how I showed him Tokyo in 3 hours! You can see the tour I took my cousin on here on this Google Map https://maps.google.com/ There are plenty of other great spots we could have done within this loop, the biggest being Akihabara of course. The Imperial Palace, Ginza and Hamarikkyu gardens are also on the way but we didn't get to see. But we did what we did, and it was pretty sweet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nn92f0Xq3s

2013年明けましておでとう！ What are your New Year's Resolutions?

2013-01-05T00:40:00.001+09:00

So here are mine, and my geeky wishes for 2013

2013 Resolutions:
- Get my life in order: get permanent residence for Japan, choose schools for the lad, look for a house to buy
- I want to take the lad to karaoke every now and then, get back into singing myself
- Will also aim to post my own vids on alternate weeks to 2.5 Oyajis. Back to weekly vlogs
- Will keep Two and a Half Oyajis going, showing more familiar and less familiar faces
- Continue writing my falling with style series on my blog. Shall try to blog once a week
- Get back involved with rugby again, even if it is just taking the lad to watch and carrying water
- Get back to being more involved with the YouTube community and more interactive on twitter
- Post and blog more in Japanese
- Make a Kinetic Typography vid
- Lose 10kgs. Gotta get back into some sort of shape with some exercise
- Speak nothing but English at home all the time, to help make the lad more bilingual

2013 Wishlist:
- MS Office on iPad would be great for lightening my work bag each morning
- How about more proactiveness from Japanese carmakers and govt on driverless cars? Would be great in traffic jam prone Japan
- More international flights from Haneda. I'd be quite happy if they filled in all of Tokyo Bay to expand the airport
- Google plus is a great SNS, but it will become another Orkut unless they release read/write APIs to make it more convenient
- For cameras, mobile and action cams in particular, the big thing I want is better sensors that handle low light & higher fps
- I want to see someone get smart Tvs right and to see more hdmi dongles to let you turn any screen into a smart tv
- I want to see more development and display options for Google Hangouts, including Niconico style live comments on YouTube
- TV DVRs that let you stream live and recorded programs to mobile devices in the house, release us from on box, one tv
- I want more DSLRs to have firmware allowing you to plug them in and use them as USB webcams
- An iPad mini 2 with parts to match the iPod touch. Will almost certainly get one then
- A YouTube mobile app that uncompromisingly offers the same functionality as on PC so partners can fully work from phone/tablet

Video Information
Turn on Captions for English subtitles! キャプションで英語字幕あり！是非TwitterやFBやG+などなどで話あって、毎週水曜日の２．５オヤジーズのライブトークをチェックしてください！ Follow me and talk to me on the web! www.hikosaemon.com www.twitter.com/hikosaemon www.facebook.com/hikosasemon https://plus.google.com/100624241693398887245/posts 今年もよろしくお願いします！ Have a great 2013 everyone! Shot using my new Samyang fisheye lens on my GH1 camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71U1EJLe_ck

New YouTube Vid: Japan's Election Result - What it All Means

2012-12-19T23:28:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyHgDIKQ1A0

New YouTube Vid: Check 2.5 Oyajis Tonight with Mqtodd talking immigration, d

2012-12-12T10:05:00.001+09:00

Give us Your Questions for Mqtodd talking Japan, Immigration & dolphins Tonight on Two And A Half Oyajis on Gimmeaflakeman at 22:30 JST! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnNYqQrg1V0

New YouTube Vid: Answering YOUR Questions about Japanese Culture, Politics and Life

2012-12-05T23:29:00.001+09:00

Great fun hangout session chatting with commenters and talking about living in and things about daily life in Japan. Great fun! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uItqjafnu0M

Hikonews - The World Seen from Tokyo This Week

2012-12-05T10:59:00.001+09:00

Hey everyone, December is here - roll on Christmas!

Japan is of course now focussing a lot on the upcoming national election on December 16, with the prospect of the ruling DPJ collapsing, but reluctance by many to send the LDP back in (even though they look likely to end up the biggest party), it has been a mind boggling week of new parties, and merging parties all angling to position themselves as the most viable next alternative to the DPJ and LDP, with many polls indicating it is likely that the third top party may end up getting close to the number of seats as the number 2 party, given that the DPJ is polling at around 10%. This means every day there are new parties, new allignments, new policy announcements and retractions. As a pure piece of theatre, it is actually pretty interesting to watch and follow.

The other thing is of course the rush in science news this week, with organic materials found on Mars, and tonnes of water found on Mercury, as well as Voyager 1 discovering a new magnetic field region on the edge of the solar system. Very cool stuff, and good to see space agencies starting to see the merit in using more budget on firing up lots of space probes for pure science, and not getting trapped in the pure commercial and military satellite launch business.

Lots of other cool stuff - annotations from below taken from commentary I used when I first discovered and posted the articles below. Enjoy, and leave your comments on which ones you find interesting!

Peace

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More proof that a lot of limited edition Japanese fast food ideas are clearly the result of some people losing bets.

The Best Japanese Junk Food of 2012 »

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So, a bit of news going around about the latest preparations for another North Korean rocket/ballistic missile. About 10 years ago, this kind of thing triggered real panic in Japan but I think Japan is getting used to it, the last launch even provided an unprecedented opportunity for South Korean and Japanese military to cooperate with Japan sharing Aegis intelligence on the launch (which almost led to an intelligence sharing treaty that fell apart at the last minute due to another surge in anti-Japanese sentiment in the South). So what is this about then? Well, for one thing, DPRK wants money - and South Korea and America have taught it that the best way to get money is to misbehave. So it is misbehaving. There is a national pride agenda, since they messed up the last launch. There is a deterrent agenda - the rockets they are testing have the capacity to reach the US, which creates a deterrent against US direct military action that middle eastern enemies of the US don't have. Also, DPRK makes money selling rockets and rocket technology, and this is a good reminder that for all their poverty, they still have some smart people. Japan has learned this game - it will use the launch to justify more missile defense spending, and for sanctioning DPRK at the UN, and as a justification for taking a harder line and not giving them money, which is a great favor to Japan, and increases the benefit to DPRK of releasing still held Japanese abductees.

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China is a modern sophisticated country with a lot of very smart people running it. But in spite of that, it's attitude to territorial disputes is one that requires Hillary Clinton to be patronizing to them and ask them to follow international legal dispute resolution mechanisms. Apparently in a recent meeting, they told her, anything they claim is theirs in response to this lesson, where she was encouraging them to participate in ASEAN established frameworks for resolving sea border disputes. It was in these discussions that a Chinese delegation member pointed out that if they wanted to, "China could claim Hawaii". This didn't get a lot of press in the US, but in Japan, it has gotten a lot of attention, mainly for hope America can understand a bit better what sort of BS Japan is forced to put up with from China. China's view of course is that the international system was used to rubber stamp China's humiliation and looting by western powers and Japan in the 19th century, so they don't put a lot of faith in it to undo those injustices now. Which I understand, but they need to be taught that they don't get to behave like that.

Clinton Reveals China Claim to Territorial Rights in Hawaii »

This weekend Japanese netizens have reacted to an article by MSN Sankei News that China had suggested to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that they might be able to assert territorial rights in Hawai’i. While Clinton used the example to emphasize that any claims to territorial rights should be arbitrated through the correct channels, it seems that the news has been received by some netizens as demonstrative of a pro-active Chinese territ...

From what I understand (Tokyo Cooney told me the story once), Ben and Jerry's has made some stalled attempts to get into Japan, where it was basically cut off by the Haagen Dazs mafia threatening to cut off anyone who carried the competing product. Well, nice to see Ben and Jerry are back trying to sneak into Japan through the back door again in Kichijoji, and getting rave reviews on their Japan special edition Yuzu Citrus Icecream.

表参道ヒルズに唯一あった、アメリカの有名アイスクリーム店『BEN＆JERRY’S』。現在も行列が絶えない人気店だが、12月1日に東京・吉祥寺に新店がオープン！吉祥寺店でしか食べられないフレーバーがあるというので、さっそくお店まで行ってきたぞ!! さすが人気店とだけあって、記者が到着した13時過ぎにはかなりの行列が…コレはかなり並ぶかな？と思っていると、店員さんから「オープン日は限定フレーバーのユズシトラスキスを無料プレゼントします！」という嬉しい声が！うおおおおっ！タダキター！コレは何時間でも並べるぜっ!! 1時間ぐらい待ってやっとアイスクリームを注文。ユズシトラスキスと定番のバニラ、1番人気のチェリーガルシアキター!! どれもスゴいクリーミーで濃厚ウマい…並んで良かった。（涙）それに吉祥寺店でしか食べられない「ユズシトラスキス」、普通日本で作られるユズのアイスというと、ユズの果汁や皮を活かしたシャーベットのようなものになると思うのだが、BEN&JERRY’Sのアイ..

The game of musical chairs happening among Japanese political parties prior to the December general election has been tragicomical to watch, especially in the case of the Japan Restoration Party/Association - an attempt at a credible "third force" sponsored by the very popular mayor of Osaka, who joined with the recently retired governor of Tokyo to form a very right wing party. I'm interested in Hashimoto - he IS right wing, soundbyte oriented and a populist, who I think represents a brand of politics more like what we see in the west, where politicians lead and are accountable for policies, than the Japanese model of politicians being puppet actors for bureaucratic handlers. However, a lot of his popularity comes from his "new-right" anti-central, anti-Tokyo agenda. And from his ability to read and follow populist trends, including the strong anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan. So I think it was short sighted and a bad move for him to allign with ex-Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who represents pretty much what most of Hashimoto's Osaka fans despise most, arrogant Tokyo leadership, and has contradictory positions on key policies. For example, not only is Ishihara pro-nuclear, but he also openly says Japan needs to have a nuclear weapon deterrent against China. When asked what he thought about the Japan Restoration Party's manifesto promise to "phase out" nuclear power by 2030, he chuckled and asked the reporters "what does phase out mean?" When told it means getting rid of nuclear power, he said "I'm sure that policy promise will need to be fixed then..."

The tie-up with Ishihara also convinced Your Party's Watanabe to angrily cut off merger talks with Hashimoto - with whom the Restoration Party could have been a credible center right party, but as it is, it is an incoherrent fringe right wing comic party. A real shame in some ways, but interesting to watch.

維新・石原代表/“原発ゼロ”公約知らず　最賃廃止知らない/記者失笑 »

維新・石原代表/“原発ゼロ”公約知らず最賃廃止知らない/記者失笑日本記者クラブ主催の党首討論に参加した「日本維新の会」代表の石原慎太郎前東京都知事。衆院選公約で「既設の原発は２０３０年代までにフェードアウト（消失）」するとしていることを記者から問われ、「それは違う。公約は書き直させた」と答えると、失笑をかいました。自党が掲げた公約にもかかわらず、「フェードアウトってどういうことですか」と記者に問いただす石原代表。原発ゼロは「願望」などと批判して「公約は直させ...

Furthering the theory many had of the LDP after it selected Abe as leader that it is almost trying to see how badly it can campaign and walk back into power after complete collapse of the DPJ, Abe suggested publicly recently that the way forward with nuclear power is to make new reactors, using the latest technology, put in "extremely safe locations". 2chan commenters asked with a bunch of seismic maps, "where exactly in Japan can it be considered "safe" to put a nuclear reactor in Japan?!"

安倍氏「最新の技術をつぎ込み、非常に安全な場所に（新たな原発を）つくる」 »

1 名前：サイベリアン(東日本)：2012/12/01(土) 15:01:44.77 ID:AlPSdwu00 東京新聞:安倍氏「原発新設も」自民総裁規制委基準満たせば自民党の安倍晋三総裁は三十日、本紙などのインタビューで、原子力規制委員会が新たに定める安全基準を満たした場合、原発の新設を認めることもあり得るとの考えを示した。安倍氏は、政権復帰した場合、今後三年間再生可能エネルギーの導入に向けて最大限努力する姿勢を強調する一方、「イノベーション（技術革新）による脱原発依存が、なかなか進まないことも起こり得る」と指摘し「最新の技術をつぎ込み、非常に安全な場所に（新たな原発を）つくるのがいいか、当然検討すべきだ」と述べた。既存の原発の再稼働は「国民に選ばれた議員で構成する政府が判断すべきだ」と述べた。消費税増税については、来年秋に実施するかどうかを最終決定する際、「デフレが深く進行し、好転の兆しがみられないなら、当然（税率を）上げない」と明言した。旧日本軍の従軍慰...

I read stuff like this and at first I laugh. Then I remember they have a bunch of missiles aimed at us, and nuclear weapons. And then I cry a little...

North Korean Archeologists Discover Ancient Unicorn Lair (Seriously) »

Archeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences in North Korea claim they have found the "lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong." Yes, folks. A unicorn. The unicorn that their good old King used to ride back in the day.

Shisaku's take on the calligraphic abilities of the leaders and their slogan messages at a recent party leader debate at the foreign press club.

Eleven Party Leaders: By This My Hand Revealed »

If the current public opinion polls hold up, and the Democratic Party of Japan suffers losses commensurate with its betrayal of the high hopes the voters had had for the party when they voted it into power in 2009, leaving the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Restoration Association as the top vote winners, then we are all in big trouble. How do we know this? Calligraphy. The leaders of the eleven parties held a joint press conference yeste...

Credit to Ken-YN for translating these, although a lot are of course recognizable as corrupted English

35 widely unknown Japanese internet slang terms »

This recent ranking survey from goo Ranking was quite an effort to translate, a look at current net slang that are not yet widely known. Here is a related survey from a couple of years ago. Demographics Over the 5th and 6th of October 2012 1,064 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.2% of the sample were female, 10.5% in their teens, 13.7% in their twenties, 26.6% in their thirties

Fascinating brief look at the life of the recently deceased boss of Japan's biggest Yakuza syndicate by Tokyo Reporter

Former Yamaguchi-gumi boss Yoshinori Watanabe dies, played role in Kobe quake relief »

Watanabe presided over the gang during a crucial period in its 97-year history

Having done three years in the Japanese IT trenches in my early years - I can attest that YES, this is true, and it actually is much better now than it used to be.

The question isn't really "how" or "why" you can work such long hours. It isn't anything as overt as a boss ordering you to or anything like that. It is a culture where everyone needs to be seen to be pulling their weight, and where the social sanctions and subtle retaliations from superiors for not being seen as pulling your weight mean that people just accept that working yourself to the brink of death is accepted as par for the course. Anyway, interesting, still true, and backed up by facts. Good blog.

Shocked to see how co-workers are working! »

I’ve been working as a translator for a Japanese IT (information technology) company since June this year, even though I’m such a computer-illiterate person. lol Anyway, it just happened and my translation work doesn’t really require something technical so much, and even if it does, I can always ask around the engineers to get the exact image. So my point here is that I’ve got a chance to see inside of a Japanese IT industry.

Fascinating color photos of Japan 100 years ago, and a technicolor video of familiar scenes of Tokyo pre-war in the 1930s. Most western taught history of Japan seems to start in the mid-30s with the start of Japan's road to war, yet the Meiji, Taisho and early Showa period is to me far more fascinating, and underappreciated. Many western history buffs seem to dismiss the pre-war rise of Japan as a single road leading up to militarism and aggression, yet the sudden burst of development Japan achieved during Meiji and in the years after that are really without precedent in World History. Japan basically went through a Renaissance, Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution in the space of 40 years without being colonized, and came out of it a modern, democratic, constitutional country able to fend off the military aggression of Russia. The picture of pre-war Japan is never as simple as it seems. Well worth learning about.

１００年前の日本の写真:ハムスター速報 »

１００年前の日本の写真:ハムスター速報１００年前の日本の写真 Tweet カテゴリ☆☆☆ 0 ：ハムスター２ちゃんねる 2012年12月2日 15:00 ID：hamusoku ばらつきはありますが大体100年ほど前の写真です 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ソース

Measures taken by Uniqlo stores in PRC to avoid being burned or vandalized in anti-Japanese pogroms, including hiding signs and using non-branded shopping bags, and in one case in Shanghai, posting signs supporting PRC's territorial claim over some uninhabited Japanese islands, has apparently drawn some domestic retaliation with some Japanese consumers turning their back on the retailer for appeasement of China.

Uniqlo Reports Comparative Losses After CEO’s Senkaku Remark »

Uniqlo, a major fashion retailer in Japan headed by Japan’s richest man, Tadashi Yanai, posted comparative losses for the second month in a row in October. Many netizens took this as an opportunity to voice their opinions of the company following a controversial incident regarding the Senkaku Islands, as well as the general evaluation of the brand as something to be embarrassed wearing.

It's kind of funny to read something explaining "saihatsu boushi" as a cultural construct since I am so accustomed to it, but indeed, it's something that is a big part of how you make up for messing up in Japan, and the kind of organizational learning that underpins the processes that lead in the positive to Japanese detail oriented quality where it happens (good QA in Japan is usually the result of multiple sets of countermeasures for different issues found in the early days). The idea is that it is forgivable for things to mess up once, but not to have the same things mess up twice. You could see this prominently in the quake last year. The immediate quake response was very good - showed many of the lessons of Kobe being learned. However, the tsunami and nuclear accident were "new" problems that Japan is still doing the post mortems on. If there is any brightside to all this, give 10 years for the analysis and new manuals to be drawn up, but Japan will probably be a lot better at dealing with nuclear meltdowns and super-tsunamis in future.

Collapse this post

Saihatsu Boshi - Key to Japanese problem-solving »

Making sure problems don't happen again is a good thing, and the Japanese have developed a structured process for doing this. Many non-Japanese are not comfortable being forthright about their errors that led to a problem. The Japanese however, are expected to put aside their pride in the pursuit of perfection…

I know cases of husbands taking wives' names in Japan. It is not uncommon at all - a number of my friends did this, as did my wife's own grandfather (no joint names in Japan, but you can choose to take the other's). However, I had no idea about the prevalence of adult adoption by SME owners and rich families looking for heirs. Wow.

Adult adoption in Japan: Keeping it in the family »

UK Only Article: standard article Issue: Survival of the biggest Fly Title: Adult adoption in Japan Rubric: Family firms adopt an unusual approach to remain competitive Location: TOKYO Main image: 20121201_ASD001_1.jpg ANDREW CARNEGIE, a 19th-century tycoon, famously said that inherited wealth “deadens talents and energies”—one reason why he gave most of his fortune to charity.

Shisaku recommends this and I like it as well, at least pointing out some obvious home truths that people get lost in when talking about Japan's "decline". It's not all roses and wine for Japan - but using total GDP as a measure of wellbeing is completely wrong, Japan should not be competing against the USA and China. It should be competing on per capita GDP and life quality indices against Norway and Australia instead. As things are, decline or not, I'd still rather live in a declining Japan than a rising China. http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2012/11/29/gerald-l-curtis-the-declinist-debate-is-a-diversion/

Asia Unbound » Gerald L. Curtis: The Declinist Debate is a Diversion »

CFR experts give their take on the cutting-edge issues emerging in Asia today.

Last one for Japan stuff - my son watches a LOT of YouTube, although almost exclusively train videos at the moment, including a lot of children's songs in Japanese about trains, toys and so on. So I didn't really register the first time I heard this one playing until I noticed the lyrics. It starts out in the video and lyrical style of a children's song about working commuter trains. And then it darkens a little with the chorus chime "the only thing is... the train can never change his job, he can't change jobs, he can only keep moving forward stuck on the railway lines he is placed on". Turns out it is a very clever HR recruiting tv commercial jingle. Very well done, catchy and funny

Science and Tech

Some sarcastic notes in the comments about the relatively light budget being allocated, but nonetheless, it is nice to see the US government trying to get into the battery improvement game. Saw research in this area myself when I used to work in renewable energy. Unfortunately, in an age where we are accustomed to Moore's Law and technology improving exponentially over short time periods, the chemical limitations of batteries, and nasty issues with disposal mean that there isn't a lot of room to improve them without completely changing paradigms of how you store energy. On large scales, mechanical and fuel based energy storage seems the only way to extend batteries. Really hope the added attention of the US government can figure out some clever ways to make my iPhone last a month on a charge.

The Department of Energy Wants To Make Better Batteries By Recreating the Manhattan Project »

The U.S. Dept. of Energy has big plans. They want batteries that are five times more powerful than what we've got today, and they want them to be five times cheaper. All that in just five years. It's a tall order, but they've got a plan: recreate the Manhattan Project.

This is pretty cool - strikes me as a cool way of doing a family portrait to send abroad. Hope to see these spread around more.

A Neat Look at How the World’s First 3D Photo Booth Works »

Earlier this month, we wrote that the world’s first 3D photo booth had popped up in Japan. The studio looks like it’s designed for ordinary portraits, except the “photographers” capture you with fancy handheld scanners and then turn your into miniature sculptures instead of photographs. Since then, more information has emerged that provides a better look at how the whole thing works

I find it incredible how every day we find life on Earth in places we presume it cannot exist (hot sulfuric acid, freezing brine Antarctic lakes), and here we find all this water AND organic material on the closest barren rock to the Sun. It really leaves you certain that at least on a microbiotic level, there has to be life not just all over the solar system, but on all these other planets we are discovering all over the place also.

NASA Finds Water and Organic Matter In Mercury »

NASA has confirmed a surprising, counterintuitive discovery. The burning hell known Mercury—the closest planet to the Sun—has water. Frozen water. Three new research papers, based on data obtained by the Messenger spacecraft, show undeniable evidence.

I always wanted to be an astronaut as a kid, and dreamed of living above earth in a space station. I've never seen anything as awesome as this before that makes it all so real - a tour of the ISS by a crew member about to leave who lived there for over a year. Amazing stuff. Hope I get the chance to do something like this myself as a tourist within my lifetime.

YouTube and other Cool Stuff

YouTube Japan getting its game on with new original content channels - revenue paid in advance, in order to get programming from commercial tv networks and other sources. Nice to see YouTube starting to really take the fight to regular tv. LOVING new Battlestar Galactica on Machinima Prime also.

YouTube Japan adds new 'original content' channels: trains, horror and drawing on faces »

We've seen our fair share of out-there Japan TV programming -- and that looks likely to increase. YouTube has struck a deal with 13 companies that will add original shows and videos to the constantly-growing Japanese library, new videos promised daily. There's a pretty broad array of partners, with a slight focus on comedy and pop-culture, which should mean a shorter language hurdle for us occasional global viewers. Into high-speed trains?

I really wish I had caught this - the political leader debate live on Japanese YouTube-esque site Niconico Douga, where 1.4 million were able to watch the leaders debate while grafitti-ing their screen with live comments streaming across as they spoke. For example, when a leader said something people agreed with, users would start typing "88888888" (pachi pachi pachi pachi) which is an internet play on words for the sound of applause. If someone started saying something dodgy, or hit the nail on the head, there were lots of "kitaaaa!"s (OK, HEEERE WE GO!). Really would have loved to have seen it and joined in live with English comments. Did anyone catch this?

首相の頭上に「8888888」　140万人がみた「ネット党首討論会」 - ITmedia ニュース »

首相の頭上に「8888888」 140万人がみた「ネット党首討論会」 - ITmedia ニュース首相の頭上に流れる「8888888」。日本のネットにとって歴史に残る夜だっただろう。ドワンゴが各政党に呼び掛けた「ネット党首討論会」が11月29日、東京・六本木の「ニコファーレ」で行われた。民主党代表の野田佳彦首相や自民党の安倍晋三総裁ら10党の代表が集まり、視聴者からのコメントが時折流れる中1時間半にわたって議論を交わした。ライブ配信したニコニコ生放送には約140万人が来訪。「フルオープン」で開...

Final one for the day - a pretty awesome Nickelback parody about Instagram. Yes, guilty of about half these...

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

Hikonews - the Best Japan, YouTube, Tech and Random News of the Last Week (Nov 27)

2012-11-27T13:43:00.001+09:00

Here is a bit of an experiment. I like to do little mini-posts of stuff I've read that I find the most interesting on G+ and FB, but you of course only see it if it pops up in your stream when I post it. Here are my pics of the most interesting reads of the last week, by category. I'm thinking of picking out the stuff I find most interesting and posting it as a summary blog every now and then, categorized by Japan news, Tech news, and YouTube + Random news.

What do you think - is this something worth doing each week?

Read on and tell me what you think!

Japan and Japanese Language Media

Paranormal Mystery Magazine "Mu" predicts in it's December edition that, in accordance with the Mayan prediction, the world will end on December 23 and all humanity will be eradicated. It also features a preview of its January edition, where it will discusses Dwarves, UFOs and Nazi treasure hunters...

ムーに異変！ 12月23日に人類滅亡するはずが『次号予告』があると話題に : 痛いニュース(ﾉ∀`)

blog.livedoor.jp

1 名前：ジャガーネコ(徳島県)：2012/11/18(日) 20:28:58.11

Every Docomo mobile phone ever released going all the way back to 1987. Pretty sweet.

The Evolution of the Mobile Phone in One Giant Picture

feeds.gawker.com

Late last week, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank apparently "lost" the data of 5.6 million of its customers. Really hoping this isn't another case where it turns out the data somehow ends up in the hands of groups that use the data to target loan sharking and other "anti-social" activities...

三菱東京ＵＦＪ銀５６０万人分情報紛失　NHKニュース

www3.nhk.or.jp

三菱東京ＵＦＪ銀行は、平成１７年までの１０年間に取引があった顧客の口座番号など、合わせて５６０万人分の個人情報を紛失したことを明らかにしまし…

I get asked this a lot and have no good answer - a nice summary of getting your hands on a smartphone when visiting Japan from Mutantfrog blog.

Using a smartphone as a visitor to Japan

www.mutantfrog.com

I just landed in Narita and came to my friend’s apartment in Koenji, Tokyo last night, coming to Japan for the first time since I finished graduate school last March, and for the very first t...

This series of photos is causing a lot of "discussion". Much of it is about the ethics of taking photos of people without their consent rather than the subject of the set itself. (Via Hiko Saemon)

Tokyo Rush Hour Seen Through A Foreigner's Lens Goes Viral - japanCRUSH

www.japancrush.com

Check out Google autocompletes for "People from Nagoya are..." in Japanese. Actually worse than the nasty autocompletes for "People from Fukushima are"

Googleで「名古屋人」と入力して表示される予測キーワードがヒドイ / 頭おかしい・性格悪い・クズなど

feeds.rocketnews24.com

I must admit, I don't know that I'd read his book, but I'd watch the movie.

British CEO who blew whistle on Olympus close to movie deal, Reuters says

www.tokyoreporter.com

Michael Woodford is close to signing a movie deal with the British film production company The Ink Factory

Tech Stuff

Some good webcam choices - I have the Microsoft Webcam Studio myself, and am very happy with it

Five Best Webcams

feeds.gawker.com

The best webcams are the ones that are affordable, easy to set up, offer great video quality, and doesn't make you look like a blurry, standard-def mess when you wave at the screen.

This is pretty good for camera hunters - mirrorless cameras are light, portable, and some, like the Panasonic GH2, are serious close to cinema level video shooters you can get for under a grand. Good list here - and as a Panasonic GH1 owner, I fully recommend its successor on the list, which is recommended as best for video.

Best mirrorless cameras for less than $1,000

feedproxy.google.com

YouTube and Cool Random Stuff

Best Video of the 2012 Tokyo Youtube meetup shot by Psychomelody! With Hiko Saemon Victor Boggio Rhyming Gaijin James ElevenColors http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThREEkZmA_w

2012 Tokyo Youtube Meetup

November 3rd at Shibuya Deseo. It was a fun time! I was shooting random video, so I'm sorry if I didn't get everybody. If you see yourself, let me know!

PSA: For the 1000th time, the rotation of the Earth does not make flushed toilets spin in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere!

Explained in Englishhttp://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/122222
and Japanesehttp://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AA%E3%82%AA%E3%83%AA%E3%81%AE%E5%8A%9B

Australian Toilets Don’t Flush Backwards Because of the Coriolis Effect - Mental Floss

www.mentalfloss.com

Australian Toilets Don’t Flush Backwards Because of the Coriolis Effect

Here is a bit of awesome for your day - Beatboxing Flute "Hard Knock Life":

Beatboxing Flute "Hard Knock Life"

Beatboxing Flute player Greg Patillo in an ode to Jay-Z. I shot this on a trip to NYC in May 06.

Okay, stop doing what you are doing, and look at this adorable startled baby Red Panda. And while I have your attention, the Japanese practice of calling Red Pandas "Lesser Pandas" - come on, that is messed up. Seriously, naming anything as

a reference like "Lesser" is just asking to give the subjects psychological issues. Seriously, if Japanese are going to call red pandas "Lesser Pandas", I think they should call Monjayaki "Lesser Okonomiyaki", or Yokohama "Lesser Tokyo" or something. Now watch the cute baby red panda.

この可愛さはズルイ！　ひっくり返るほどビックリするレッサーパンダが可愛いすぎ!!

feeds.rocketnews24.com

There is definitely less enthusiasm in gaijin circles for YouTube NextUp this year over last, so it is nice to see some real people I consider to be in the "community" get recognized among this year's winners, braladyJapan, hetarebboy and pdrkabushikikaisha among them. Can't wait to see how these channels power up with YouTube's investment and support!

YouTube Japan Blog: YouTube が動画クリエイターを支援。「YouTube NextUp」プログラム、対象者決定！

feedproxy.google.com

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YES YES YES YES. I have already played Liberty City start to end on my iPod touch, my 4S and my 5 (still have to on my iPad) and even completed, I still play it nearly every day, and I still think it is the best of t

he GTA series. But that said, Vice City is a huuge game - kinda mind blowing that they can port it to iPhone. I'm never going to buy a gaming console, or possibly have to download any other iPhone game ever again after this..

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City hijacking Android and iOS on December 6th for $5

www.engadget.com

Following the footsteps of its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Guilt, Procrastination, and Love...

2012-11-26T23:57:00.001+09:00

Hey everyone. I've been away a while. And as I plan out the next chapters of my falling with style series, or a photo blog, or a tech review, I've watched in the last three months as time has slipped away and I haven't updated this blog with anything.

Guilt, self loathing, and demotivation are the biggest killers of a lot of hobbies. Blogging, or video blogging is a lot like jogging. It feels great when you are doing it, and you find yourself planning ever greater and greater things. But sometimes you hit a bump in the road that stops you briefly, and then things get busy, and life catches up, and then you start to feel guilty about your inactivity, which makes starting again feel like a chore, which demotivates you.

The key to lasting on YouTube for over four years for now - a hobby that takes time and work, and a lot of people drop out of after a year or so - is to find ways to keep it simple. As Danny Choo counselled me, and as I've tried to do things here. I've become busier, and that's a good thing, but this blog is a source of great joy and satisfaction for me, and it is time to admit that my ambitions for it started running ahead of my life situation, and so now I am back, but I want to run things by baby steps and build it up slowly again on my own terms.

So... Whassup?

As a rule, I don't talk much about my own life, but since it has been behind my slowdown, I thought I might update you. In August, the family and I went on a trip to Wakayama, near Osaka, where we enjoyed the imported Australian beach and the pandas at the Safari Park. It was a great trip and a nice break from my routines.

When I got back, I got put onto a few busy projects at work. I changed jobs this year, back in February, moving from an incredibly busy job with long hours that I couldn't control, to a job that has proven to be busier, but with more control over my life, that lets me do interesting and challenging work, but also ensure that between 6:30 and 8:30, I can scoot home most nights to have dinner and give my wee toddler a bath and put him to sleep, before logging on to work some more. I'm busier than I'd like to be I admit, but it's better than being trapped in the office as I was before.

The new job is challenging me in ways that are both stressful and exciting at the same time. I've been advancing, and being given a lot of added responsibilities, and for the first time really, I'm getting to supervise and train teams, which I am enjoying. It's very rewarding, and I'm getting to put all my combined skills together at once in a way that let's me show off my best. I remember joking with an investment banker friend in Tokyo from my High School once, when he told me "you know, there is NO ONE in New Zealand who works as hard as we do." I got a good laugh out of that (it's TRUE), but it is also kind of the point. I left the lifestyle of New Zealand for the excitement and opportunities of Tokyo. I came here to have an interesting life, and Tokyo is rewarding me for it. If I ever want to return to a simpler life, I'll do it - it is always reassuring to me that more laidback lifestyle options remain open to me in reserve. But at the same time, if that is really what I wanted, I would have left a long time ago.

I love Tokyo, and have a great life here. I'm getting on top of the recent surge of demand for my time, but in order to do that, I'm going to post a few mundane posts to get back up to speed. So bear with me

Photos

Even my Instagram hobby has suffered a little as of late, but I do continue to post photos of my life here, in ways that I hope show a little of why I love this place so much. It's been a while since I have posted, so check out the extended update of pics below, and follow my Instagram to see more. Also remember to watch Two and a Half Oyajis every Wednesday at 10:30 to keep up with the latest news and interesting people in Japan brought to you by Gimmeabreakman and myself, and say hi to me on Google Plus, Facebook or Twitter.

Enjoy the pics!

New YouTube Vid: The Best Little Known Blogs and Vlogs in Japan!

2012-11-21T23:25:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntEshxmpaR4

New YouTube Vid: 2012 Tokyo YouTube Meetup Highlights from Hikosaemon

2012-11-05T23:16:00.001+09:00

Awesome party, awesome night! Thanks to all those who came and made it such a success, starting with the YouTubers listed below who you should go and subscribe to right now. Please let me know if you have more names for me to add that I missed. Enjoy! Organizers and Performers http://www.youtube.com/KatMcDowell http://www.youtube.com/Hikosaemon http://www.youtube.com/Gimmeaflakeman http://www.youtube.com/Ciaela http://www.youtube.com/Rhyminggaijin http://www.youtube.com/messypro1 http://www.youtube.com/LifeWithRG http://www.youtube.com/Sayuleemusic http://www.youtube.com/Kirbycrescent http://www.youtube.com/nothingeverlasts http://www.youtube.com/megwin YouTubers LIVE! http://www.youtube.com/Nihonjenn http://www.youtube.com/kraminjapan http://www.youtube.com/Garageprotv http://www.youtube.com/LifeYouTV http://www.youtube.com/BushidoDevilDog http://www.youtube.com/BraLadyJapan http://www.youtube.com/EricSurf6 http://www.youtube.com/Yumyumsesame http://www.youtube.com/Warpedgaijin http://www.youtube.com/Meaphe http://www.youtube.com/ShiverZ66 http://www.youtube.com/Milkjamjuice http://www.youtube.com/Softypapa http://www.youtube.com/edtomorrow http://www.youtube.com/claytonian http://www.youtube.com/subtokyo http://www.youtube.com/PDRKabushikigaisha http://www.youtube.com/Mimei http://www.youtube.com/Denitson http://www.youtube.com/ozzy78 http://www.youtube.com/cerberustenshi http://www.youtube.com/tkyosam http://www.youtube.com/elevencolors http://www.youtube.com/crappycartoons http://www.youtube.com/psychomelody http://www.youtube.com/Tokyozeplin http://www.youtube.com/NipponQ http://www.youtube.com/Warmothstrat http://www.youtube.com/Sakanajin http://www.youtube.com/daiki3768 http://www.youtube.com/tmk8558 http://www.youtube.com/kansaijesse http://www.youtube.com/chillinkansai http://www.youtube.com/oneokusagi http://www.youtube.com/smurphy77 http://www.youtube.com/dystle http://www.youtube.com/warpedgaijin http://www.youtube.com/arishaintokyo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmuM7-hmv-g

New YouTube Vid: 2.5 Oyaji Pre Party Halloween Party!

2012-10-31T23:53:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tXTsACE-yw

New YouTube Vid: Come join us LIVE with an open Halloween Hangout Tonight on Two And A Half Oyajis on My channel h...

2012-10-31T11:10:00.001+09:00

Video created with the Socialcam app on iPhone: http://socialcam.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKURKnR9yI

New YouTube Vid: 2012 Tokyo Youtube Meet Up! - This Sat Nov 3!!!

2012-10-29T23:06:00.001+09:00

Saturday, November 3, 2012 Open: 5pm Party Time: 6pm-9pm Let's party with the Japanese youtube community!! 日本の　Youtube コミュニティーのパーティーです！！動画作る皆、動画見る皆ウェルカム！ Performers/ Artists: Kat McDowell Nothing Ever Lasts SAYULEE Rhymin Gaijin Ciaela Kirby Crescent Milkjamjuice and more!! MCs: Victor (Gimmeabreakman) Hikosaemon Place: Shibuya Deseo www.deseo.co.jp/ Open: 5pm Party Time: 6pm-9pm Ticket: ¥3000 (Includes 1 drink ticket) Map: http://goo.gl/maps/NNcVR Facebook Info Page is here http://www.facebook.com/events/372538542825179/ === The Lowdown : 「どんなイベントになるの？」という質問に対して回答させていただきます。イベントとして二つの目標を立てています：１）一般的なYouTubeギャザリングになる事、つまりいろんなYouTuberやYouTubeを楽しめる人が触れ合って、話したりする楽しい場になる事２）YouTubeライブのコンサート・イベントにもなる事。YouTube出身のミュージシャンやアーティストのライブ・パフォーマンスを開催して、みんなでPCじゃなくてライブで好きなアーティストを楽しめるようにする事。両方の目標の実現に向けて、渋谷のDeseoクラブを貸し切って、クラブは２つのスペースを活かして、片方のライブ・ステージでバンドを聞いたり楽しめたりできて、もう一個のスペースでラウンジの雰囲気でみんなが喋ったり、ゆっくりできるようにします。今までになかった、日本の中でのもっとも面白いYouTube関連のイベントになるように目指して頑張って行きたいと思っています。是非是非遊びにおいで下さい！　m(_'_)m Just in response to Micaela Braithwaite's question about what kind of event this will be, it will basically be two things: - A regular YouTube gathering and get together running from 5 to 9 - A YouTube Live type event with YouTube based bands/acts playing live between 6pm and 9pm In order to offer the best of both worlds, and let people enjoy live music but also chat and get to know each other, we picked the club Deseo because it has two rooms, one with a live stage set up, and another regular room for those that just want to chill and talk. It's a great club, in a great location, and we're aiming for the modest goal of being the best YouTube party ever held in Japan. Word to your mother. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q4MFEgZnuM

New YouTube Vid: Oyaji Parenthood in Japan

2012-10-10T23:10:00.001+09:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1RJ5LqumAU

New YouTube Vid: Two and a Half Oyajis With QIRANGER Tonight!

2012-10-03T18:34:00.001+09:00

Which is better, Japan or Korea!? Watch us duke it out tonight. Give us Your Questions for QIRANGER Tonight on Two And A Half Oyajis on Gimmeaflakeman at 22:30 JST, 9:30am Eastern Standard Time, 14:30 GMT. Come join us LIVE! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-oVNiT6sgg

Quick Summary of How the New Copyright Law Criminalizes Downloading in Japan

2012-10-02T10:58:00.001+09:00

Egg thrower arrested, 060805_144716, a photo by Manic Street Preacher on Flickr.

Here is a nice pithy summary in LifeHacker Japan of the new Copyright Law and with it, what changes and what doesn't that I have put into English.

Put simply streaming of uploaded illegal music/video is still fine. Downloading could however lead to criminal penalties.

Criminal Penalties
- Apply to downloading of MP3 and similar data of content known to be pirated uploaded sound and video media
- There is no crime if the uploaded content is not reported by the copyright holder
- Penalties available are up to 2yrs prison, 2m yen fine ($24,000US) or both

What is not illegal
- Viewing or listening to pirated video or music on the internet
- Downloading content unaware it is pirated
- Viewing or listening to streamed pirated content such as on YouTube (crime not applicable to cached downloads)
- Saving pirated data sent to your computer via email
- Saving photos, text and such on your own computer.

Hope this helps those with questions! (NB - this is not legal advice, and I am not qualified to give advice on Japanese law. If you need specific legal advice, please consult a Japanese attorney, or contact the Culture Agency for guidance).

New YouTube Vid: JetDaisuke Rocking The Oyaji Hooouuse

2012-09-26T23:37:00.001+09:00

check out http://youtube.jp/jetdaisuke. Qiranger next week, PropagandaBuster also lined up in the near future! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTZCie-RL2o

New YouTube Vid: Give us Your Questions for JetDaisuke tomorrow night on Two And A Half Oyajis on My channel at 22...

2012-09-25T09:38:00.001+09:00

Video created with the Socialcam app on iPhone: http://socialcam.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1R5XuA_Bwk

A View From Japan on The Last Week of Disturbing Events in PRC

2012-09-19T00:54:00.002+09:00

It's hard for me to summarize the kinds of feelings I have about watching the pogroms going on in China against Japanese people, that seem to be barely attracting attention as this is somehow Japan's problem. But the stories are stupefying.

Well, take a look at a sample of news stories from my RSS feed over just the last couple of days:

Government organized nationalist mobs ransack a Japanese owned Jusco shopping centre
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730513.html
Government organized nationalist mobs ransack a Rolex shop???
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730539.html
Japanese citizens in China attacked
http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/09/15/anti-japanese-violence-in-china-as-chinese-ships-violate-japanese-territorial-waters
The Weibo account of a PRC government newspaper advocates dropping an atomic bomb on Japan
http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/09/16/chinese-state-owned-media-china-should-drop-an-atomic-bomb-on-japan/
Government organized nationalist mobs drag a Chinese citizen out of their Toyota Corolla and beat them into an apparent coma, and leave them in the street
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730647.html
A Chinese blogger proudly displays a trophy of an anti-Japan rampage - the emblem of a car they destroyed that they believe is a Mitsubishi (don't point out that it is a Mercedes emblem)
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730689.html
A Panasonic factory (a hugely pro-China country deeply invested in China) is torched and left unrecoverable
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20120916-OYT1T00592.htm
Pro-China Canon and Panasonic factories attacked and destroyed, sometimes by their own workers
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20120917/t10015068211000.html
A Korean Samsung factory torched - a case of mistaken identity?
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730815.html
The Chinese Foreign Ministry keeps up its mafia diplomacy "all riot damage should be reimbursed by the government of Japan"
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730827.html
Hundreds of government coastguard escorted fishing boats head off to confront the Japanese coastguard in the Senkakus
http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/09/18/will-hundreds-of-chinese-fishing-boats-overwhelm-the-japanese-coast-guard/
Smiling staff at an Audi dealership in China pose under a banner "We must EXTERMINATE the Japanese". Perhaps they are still using the pre-1945 Audi marketing manual?
http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/09/18/audi-dealership-in-china-we-must-exterminate-the-japanese/
Ever versatile at localized marketing strategies, Audi Japan assures its customers via its twitter account that it doesn't really want to exterminate its customers and all Japanese people.
http://rocketnews24.com/2012/09/18/249172/
Government sponsored mobs attack a car from the Italian consulate in Guangzhou
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730961.html
A Japanese volunteer aid worker to help after recent earthquakes in China is attacked and injured - prompts some soul searching online in China

http://rocketnews24.com/2012/09/18/249033/
McDonald's, French Supermarkets attacked in China by mobs
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1730995.html
Chinese bloggers start to compare the organized mobs and violence to the Cultural Revolution
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/1209/18/news079.html

Little Coverage in Western Media

I was asked by a cousin of mine today why I think that western media is giving so little coverage to the nationwide campaign of government orchestrated pogroms against Japanese and foreign interests in China. My take is that it ultimately boils down to "not our problem". There is a hypocrisy I find particularly in English language news coverage of the region that when the same Chinese mobs burn down the US Embassy as they did after the US bombing of the China Embassy in Belgrade, or other similar protests around the Olympics and such, it is dismissed as brainwashing and government orchestrated. Yet, whenever Japan is targeted in protests, the nationalist mobs are sympathetically referred to as "activist civic groups" and the violence is justified by some understandably offensive action by Japan.

I think it's fair to say that there is little sympathy or understanding for Japan in the west in its disputes with its neighbors, which are presumed to stem from its brutal war in the region 65 years ago. I was educated in this way, and grew up surrounded in NZ and Australia with lingering strong anti-Japanese views perpetuated both through the bitterness of war veterans, popular movies and books, and translated into modern campaigns against whaling and so on. Western media tends to cover the region and Japan with an editorial line that Japan remains untrustworthy, and this comes across in how these kind of events are covered in the news. When local residents question inaccurate foreign coverage, we are often questioned "why we are defending Japan" when in any other country, we would simply be reporting inaccuracies. It's frustrating at the best of times, and heartbreaking at times like this.

History Issues

I grew up hearing stories of Japanese terrorizing and mass murder of Chinese in Singapore - a place where I grew up as a child. I also heard and have learned myself of the nature of pogroms in Eastern Europe that caused some of my own ancestors to leave and escape to the new world, forced to live in an ongoing climate of mob terror and intimidation where they were. It is sad that rather than learn the lessons of this kind of history to seek to prevent it repeating, instead seem to view this history repeating before our eyes in China as something Japanese people today somehow either deserve, or something that is not the interest or concern of non-Japanese. It is most ironic that the PRC itself, a country that celebrates a calendar of historic wrongs and injustices it pledges to correct is itself now the militarized out of control nationalist mob run country Japan was in the 1930s, and completely unaware of the irony of the situation it is in.

The PRC, Reform, and Chinese Democracy

The mobs in China are government organized - they even bus people in and hand out t-shirts and banners to them. They are also closely monitored. This is a government that doesn't tolerate protest - look at how it clamped down on dissent during the Beijing Olympics, and indeed, the way its leaders in 1989, who retain some control of power in the PRC today in order to avoid ever being held to account, willingly turned tanks and the People's Army against peaceful student protesters who dared ask for more democracy. So why are these protests allowed, and why to this extent?

Well, a quick scan through the news and you can see a bunch of stuff happening in China right now that the government is understandably keen to divert attention from:
- The corruption trial of the police chief in Cheng-du, who covered up for Bo-Lai's (a man previously expected to rise to the top of national politics) wife's murder of a British citizen
- The disappearance of the Chinese vice president from public view
- The upcoming reshuffle of the Chinese Communist Party leadership behind closed doors

The Senkaku islands issue was just fortunate timing for the government there to organize a distraction. The "provocation" here is nothing. The Japanese government merely agreed to purchase the islands it currently leases in order to ensure nothing provocative is done with the islands - and to stop the Tokyo Governor looking to implement a Korean Takeshima style approach of digging in to ensure sovereignty of the islands. The Chinese reaction to something that has no significant meaning or change to anything since the US transferred sovereignty of the islands back to Japan in 1971 is purely orchestrated as a smokescreen for sensitive domestic political housecleaning it wants to get done.

The protests serve another function - the PRC often points out that as a large, diverse and developing country, open democracy is not well suited to China, and other nations should appreciate the CCP agenda of prioritizing stability in China first. These protests certainly seem to confirm that somehow, PRC citizens are not sophisticated enough to handle open democracy.

And yet, Taiwan and Hong Kong (both run by pro-mainland democratically elected parties still) as well as Singapore show to differing degrees that democracy can work, and work without anarchy in Chinese societies. I think it is insulting and self serving of Chinese leadership to say that their own people cannot handle democracy. Sadly, these orchestrated mob pogroms will reinforce the view inside and outside China that the CCP is the only option for a country that would otherwise fall into anarchy in an instant. I don't think that's true - the CCP is precisely the REASON for these mobs and the mentality that sends them into torching foreign businesses and attacking foreign nationals in frustration at being unable to express political frustration in any other way.

Hope for China?

I originally planned to learn Chinese, and took Japanese as a fallback because it was available as a school subject and Chinese wasn't. I also hope that my son learns Chinese as a functional third language. Or at least I did.

The sad thing about this whole week of continuous racist rampage in China is that the victims too afraid to leave their homes and go out are the Japanese who are most committed to a world view of embracing China's rise, and cooperating with China to share Japan's wealth and know how to help China rise to its full potential. Parents send their children to China to study in the hope that the partnership between China and Japan will be a positive and fruitful one, that their children will be in the best position to contribute to support in future. Now those parents, whose children love and support China most, have to worry about their children being attacked for being identified in the street by their language or ethnicity. Companies that have invested enormously in China, at the expense of Japanese employees and local economies in Japan, like Panasonic and Canon, have had their factories, that employ tens of thousands of Chinese destroyed and burned, sometimes by workers of those plants. All of this as part of a diplomatic and political strategy being played out by a government party that uses tactics recognizable to anyone in Northeast Asia as the kind of extreme shock tactics used by mafia to extort and control victims.

My conclusion is that the future remains bright within free thinking and democratic Chinese countries. I still want my son to learn Chinese, and I hope to even join him learning about Chinese history and culture in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. But not the PRC. The PRC without democracy, and under the continued rule of the CCP is going to remain a place where all who live there, Chinese and people from any foreign nationality, will be subject to the violent whims and bloodlettings that the party there uses in order to ensure its long term continued grip on power - a grip it has demonstrated repeatedly it is quite prepared to hold onto even at the cost of short term economic gain. Regardless of how wealthy the PRC becomes, so long as it remains the political mafia state that it is, just like the DPRK, there is no hope of true partnership without unacceptable risk.

The ongoing Japanese project of relocating its manufacturing base to China is being proven to be a huge mistake. There are safer, cheaper, and more stable alternatives emerging, particularly in Thailand and Myanmar, where I hope makers forced to shut their factories consider relocating to instead. I also hope that Japan is the first country to vote in the UN for Taiwanese independence, should the day come that its great friend and partner in the region become ready to make that move.

Above all, I remain hopeful and optimistic that China can free itself from CCP rule peacefully, and become a society that can follow the path shown by countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan itself, to move on from being a nationalist dictatorship to becoming a new and thriving free thinking democracy, as I believe its destiny to be. Then I hope that the above stories will be relics of an unfortunate history, read alongside the Cultural Revolution and the Tienanmen Massacre as lessons for what can happen when societies allow themselves to be dominated by totalitarian nationalist governments.

Peace