· June, 2008

Stories about Japan from June, 2008

Trinidad & Tobago: Poetic Port of Spain

  30 June 2008

Trinidadian blogger Sweetlime dips into the newly published Echo of Basho. He discovers that even though haiku and Port of Spain are as distinct as “oil and water”, authors Alec de Verteuil and Dawn Glashier have melded them beautifully.

Japan: Minimum Wage

  19 June 2008

James blogs about the minimum wage policy in Japan with a chart comparing the wage standard in different countries.

Japan: Iwate-Miyagi Inland Earthquake

  17 June 2008

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)

  16 June 2008

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)

  14 June 2008

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

  13 June 2008

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: Hair Pin Art

  12 June 2008

Ryoko from Pingmag writes an interview feature on the renovation of traditional silk craft into modern hair pin design.

Japan: The problems facing Japan's IT industry

  10 June 2008

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.

Kuwait: Japanese Bug Fights

“Is there a game show the Japanese haven’t invented yet?? Japanese Bug Fights is a site with videos of bugs of different species battling out in a small glass arena,” writes Lebanese blogger Mark, who lives in Kuwait.

Japan: Bloggers on Akihabara knife rampage

  8 June 2008

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

  8 June 2008

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: Death Art

  5 June 2008

Chiemi from Pink Mag blogs about an art exhibition on death theme. The writer inteviews the gallery owner Narutoshi Sekine about this art category.

Japan: Haunting Beauty

  5 June 2008

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: OpenWeb.Asia

  5 June 2008

Serkan Toto blogs about the openweb.asia project which is designed to be a network of premium blogs written in English that deal with IT, Tech and web stuff coming from Asia.