Welcome to the sixty-ninth edition of the What Japan Thinks
newsletter.
I missed out last week what with Obon and everything!
Just a reminder that the reborn Japan Blog Matsuri is looking for
entries:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/13/the-japan-blog-matsuri-lives/
Gaijin web buzz
===============
As predicted, the Debito-related buzz is getting rather loud:
http://www.occidentalism.org/?p=908
http://victorymanual.com/2008/08/18/making-apples-of-plums/
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=5680
His column on "gaijin" == "nigger" in Japan Times didn't go down too
well:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080805ad.html
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080819zg.html
I think it's a ridiculous comparison, and he says "gaikokujin" is OK
(so is "negro" OK then?), yet he uses J and NJ for Japanese and Non-J
all the time.
Other News
==========
My brother makes the paper again, this time not for a good reason:
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/08/17/snp-msp-ala...
He deleted the offending entry from his blog, however.
Site stories
============
Dinosaurs:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/06/what-japan-thinks-of-dinosaurs/
That was far more popular than I expected!
Huge snow emoticon:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/10/japans-largest-emoticon/
I had hoped for more social media linkage.
What people wish their spouses would do:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/10/what-wives-wish-their-hubbies-w...
Cats and litter trays:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/13/researching-cat-pee-and-poo-par...
Recycling laws:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/16/pc-recycling-law-followed-by-ve...
Low cellphone skills:
http://whatjapanthinks.com/2008/08/16/cellphone-mastery-low-in-japan/
Blogging
========
I was partially tempted to use "n----r" or other obfuscation as I
worried I might trip some of your spam filters. If I did, sorry, but I
think that sort of self-censorship is stupid.
I tried setting up AdSense for feeds, but it didn't work. However, I
still managed over 600 hits, and even after disabling the hack I'm
getting 50 or so views a day.
Still haven't got my new PC set up, mostly due to wifey insisting I
import 800 Mb from her Sent Mail folder, which is a lot of trouble to
copy over! I'm learning a good bit about Vista however, but I'm still
to get my video card working in full accelerated mode.
I read a review of the Asus Aspire One I wanted, but it's pretty bad
on key areas; price is a little high and battery life low. Talking of
prices, I looked at new printers (after buying extra ink, curses!) and
I was amazed at what you can get for 20,000 yen these days.
And finally
===========
There was some news (in the public domain, so this isn't secret info!)
from last week flying about the office where we and a bunch of other
companies are being sued for patent infringement. The same company did
a similar scatter-gun attack four or five years ago with the same
patent (or one very similar), and at that time I told my boss that it
didn't cover the claimed-against product, and anyway it was easily
demonstratable that there was prior art (IMO) from almost 20 years
ago. I'd better stop there...
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