Stories about Japanese from June, 2008
Japan: Iwate-Miyagi Inland Earthquake
On June 14, an inland earthquake reaching M7.2 on the Richter scale struck the Tohoku region of Japan. In Iwate and Miyagi, the hardest hit prefectures, 10 have been confirmed dead, about a dozen are missing, and more than 200 people have been injured.
Japan: Reflections on the Akiba Massacre (Part 2)
The massacre on June 8th in Tokyo's Akihabara district sparked heated debates in Japanese blogs about the limits of citizen media. Two Ustream users who were on at the scene just after the killing shot live footage of victims of the knife attacks, images that were was streamed onto the Internet and attracted as many as 3000 viewers before going down. While many have criticized the decision to stream the images live from the scene, others have described what happened as inevitable.
Japan: Reflections on the Akiba Massacre (Part 1)
When all the dust had settled and the knife rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara district last Sunday, which took the lives of seven people and left 17 injured, had come to a close, many were left wondering what it all really meant. In this post, bloggers offer their perspectives about what may have driven Tomohiro Kato to kill and injure so many people.
Japan: Toyota's Kanban System, Applied to Humans
A post by blogger boiledema [ja], offering an alternative perspective on the background of Tomohiro Kato, offender in Sunday's Akiba massacre, has drawn a huge reaction, with over 1200 bookmarks [ja] on Hatena. boiledema suggests that Toyota's system of Kanban production is being applied to human beings, through unstable short-term...
Japan: The problems facing Japan's IT industry
An article in the New York Times a few weeks ago, describing a chronic shortage of engineers in Japan, received support from many Japanese bloggers. The article explains that young people in Japanare more interested nowadays with fields like finance or medicine, or creative careers like the arts, then they are with engineering, with one estimate putting the shortage of engineers at almost half a million.
Japan: Bloggers on Akihabara knife rampage
A knife attack in Tokyo's Akihabara area has taken the lives of at least seven people and left many more injured. The suspect apparently crashed a two-ton rented truck into pedestrians on an intersection close to Akihabara station, and then began attacking onlookers. Bloggers at and near the scene describe what they saw through words and photos.
Japan: Popularity of Q&A services
Results of a survey by NetRatings Japan, Inc. released on May 23rd and posted at japan.internet.com revealed some surprising trends among Japanese Internet users. One of the interesting findings was that the popularity of Q&A services has been skyrocketing in recent years. One blogger offers their thoughts on the tendency of Japanese net users to rely too heavily on easy answers from such services.
Japan: Haunting Beauty
Edo from Pink Tectacle introduces a digital art genre by Yoshitaka Kawakami. Most of the works are about haunting look of school girls. The artist's gallery is here.
Japan: Mixi and Anonymity
Mixi is Japan's most popular social networking service, with over ten million users. A new competitor has entered the scene, however, with Facebook having just having been localized to Japanese. One blogger comments on the differences between these two SNS and on the problems with Mixi's culture of anonymity, criticizing its reliance on the illusion of "conscience".
