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no smoking

Published 21st of May, 2008. Stored under japan

While I’m not adverse to a total ban on smoking in Japan, entering a pub where no one is smoking was kind of strange. I haven’t been back to the UK since the smoking ban was enforced, so I had no idea what it was like.

You can smell all sorts of new and exciting smells, like; wood, beer and sweat.

Needless to say I gave up after one pint and got a drink at my local where all the normal people were.

Japanese text – a guide

Published 9th of Mar, 2008. Stored under japan

Translating Japanese typography to the web.

Many foreign designers in Japan are faced with the un-easy task of formatting Japanese text for bi-lingual or solely Japanese language based websites. By rule we should already understand such principals before embarking, but the rule in this case is far from the norm.

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100% readability

Published 21st of Nov, 2006. Stored under japan

After reading a friend of mines blog and wholeheartedly disagreeing that my blog actually needs to be readable, I have finally bitten the bullet and adopted the 100% text size mandate.

The idea is, text on the web should be readable. Have a peek at his site for more information, and other usability ramblings.

100% E2R

how to say "I".

Published 16th of Jul, 2006. Stored under japan

In English, how many ways can we refer to ourselves?

I, my, me, one’s self, in person & one’s.

So in all that’s six ways. By far and wide “I” would be the most used. However some languages have a multitude of ways to refer to one’s self, and Japanese is by far the most confusing! Japanese has well over 11 ways of making self references:

• 01. 私「わたし」”watashi”. (formal, female japanese)
• 02. 私「わたくし」”watakushi”. (formal)
• 03. 僕「ぼく」”boku”. (male japanese, childs japanese)
• 04. 俺「おれ」”ore”. (male japanese, from boss or elder)
• 05. 拙者「せっしゃ」”sesha”. (samurai)
• 06. わたれ “wataru”. (not sure about this one, may have it wrong, childs japanese)
• 07. 自分「じぶん」”jibun”. (one’s self, myself, in person)
• 08. うち “uchi”. (one’s self, formal)
• 09. 自身「じしん」”jishin”. (ones, formal)
• 10. 自ら「みずから」”mizukara”. (one’s self, in person)
• 11. 自我「じが」”jiga”. (one’s self)

I’m convinced there are a lot more out there, with regional dialects and so on.

Japan is changing

Published 12th of Jun, 2006. Stored under japan

It appears that the newst law in Tokyo has come into effect, and it’s to do with traffic.
Before, in the past, one could ride ones bike to where one pleased and just dump it with a lock on the wheel. Now one has to take ones bike to a designated spot and clamp it to a machine or pay a space rental fee. This is the same deal with motorbikes, where once before, parking your scooter anywhere was easy and legal, now it’s totally out of the question and illegal!

Shibuya has changed a lot since I first came here in 1999. I’ve only been living in Japan since 2001 but since that time a lot of the things I loved about Japan have gone or changed for the worse. Here’s my anal list:

• All night game centers were closed. Game centers now close at midnight
• Tabacco vending machines close at 11pm
• Beer vending machines are totally removed
• smoking is banned in busy places like shibuya (although no one cares)
• PSE law comes in to ban consumer electronics over 5 years old
• traffic law comes in to ban slinging your bike anywhere you please

So I guess next it will be a ban on smoking in public places, including bars and resturants. This will be a hard ban to get through parliment but it will go through sooner or later. It’s shame really because I only just started smoking again this year, and if the ban was implemented last year I wouldn’t have given a monkeys.
Still, I would welcome it, I would have to change my routine. Fags are so cheap here, at just 270yen a pack. That’s about 1 pound 25 pence.

I may end up moving to the countyside… actually that doesn’t sound so bad.

On April the 1st, Japan will be the same no more.

Published 25th of Mar, 2006. Stored under japan

A new bill was passed into Japanese law some time ago outlawing the sale of Japanese electronics over the age of 5 years old, if they have an internal power transformer.

This is a disaster for the electronic hub of Tokyo, a place called Akihabara. Or “electric town”. April the 1st (no fool) will be a very quiet day, as half of the stores that were open on the previous day will either have little stock to sell or shut entirely. Somewhat rich pickings for those of us that want these electronics in the coming days. I shall be checking out the situation on monday and hopefully get a bargain or two! (I’m in the market for a TV)

Somewhat alarmingly, this also spells the end for several popular electronic items such as the Sega Saturn and the Sega Dreamcast, both of which have internal transformers and both of which are over 5 years old. Understanding this, I went for a shop at a not-so-local place an hours journey on the train from my house. For just over 10,000円 ($100 / 50GBP) I was able to snap up the following items (all boxed):

• Original Sega Dreamcast (water cooled version, salary man box)
• Sega DC Karaoke machine (slots in under the console, has Sega Microphone and 16,000 songs!)
• Dreameye (dreamcast webcamera)
• 3 controllers
• Seaman microphone
• Seaman VMU
• keyboard, mouse
• Samba De Amigo unit (amazingly it only cost 1000 yen / 5GBP $10!! This thing would cost you hundreds on ebay)
• Some games

I’m considering picking up a Saturn, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. The only game I’d want to play on that system is Panzer Dragoon.

On monday I’m going to pick up some NES and SNES things, just incase. All these goods are fairly common right now, but will become very scarce in just a few days, limiting their sale to overseas only, and even such giants as Yahoo Auction (the ebay of Japan) will enforce a ban on listing “fire hazzard” goods. Fire hazzard my arse.

If you know of any Dreamcast goods that I haven’t picked up, do tell. To my knowledge I’ve only missed out the Steering Wheel unit (I already have DC sticks and VirtuaOn sticks)