世論 What Japan Thinks

Not that this has anything to do with surveys, but it gave me a laugh:

This giant Japanese emoticon has been naturally formed on the slopes of the 2,210 metres high Kumagetake mountain in Hokkaido. Mr Kikuchi, the person who first spotted it three years ago as the snows naturally melt in August, took the photo from the top of the nearby 2,291 metre high Asahidake mountain.

The full story in Japanese may be found here.

A number of Japanese blogs are publishing what purports to be a confidential memo from SoftBank on the pricing plan for the new 3G iPhone; I found it at Uhyohyo no hyo. Assuming the memo to be genuine, what they are offering is as follows.

New Super Bonus

The “New Super Bonus” is a special iPhone-only tariff. For the handset, the price is a stunning 61,920 yen, payable in 24 monthly installments of 2,580 yen. However, with a special discount of 1,780 yen per month, that takes the price down to the Steve Jobs-promised under $200 level of 19,200 yen, 800 yen per month. Next we have the basic packages of White Plan and S! Basic Pack, 980 yen and 315 yen, for free calls outwith 9pm to 1am to any other SoftBank phone and basic mail and web access fees respectively.

iPhone-only Platinum Pack

With the above covering the basic facilities, next there is the data plans. First is Platinum Pack 1, offering unlimited Yahoo! Mail and MobileMe mail for 1,800 yen per month. Next is Platinum Pack 2, offering unlimited Safari-based browsing for 6,800 yen per month.

Release dates

The 8GB SoftBank iPhone will be released on the 11th of July, the 16GB towards the end of July. Pricing for the 16GB version is yet to be decided.

Adding it all up

The above sums up to a total charge of 10,695 yen per month, but, and it’s a big but, no free minutes to other service providers and no free calls from 9 pm to 1 am. A 300 free minutes plan, for instance, costs 8,190 yen per month.

I noticed during the last month or so that a few times Debito’s blog went a bit funny, spewing out random characters instead of the usual blog, behaviour that some might argue was an improvement, I suspect.

However, today (21st May) I got a hit from someone searching for “Debito”, so I did the same search to see what was going on and:

Eh, no debito.org! The site is still running, but even trying the site-specific site:debito.org turns up not a sausage.

I also noticed that Occidentalism.org dropped off Google recently, but I susupect the reason for that was due to a lot of keyword stuffing in hidden text, something that doesn’t seem to be happening at Debito’s site.

In order to try to comply with Google’s guidelines for publishers, and to try to look a bit more professional, I’ve added a Privacy Policy to the site.

It basically says I will not give away or sell anyone’s email address or other personal data, but I keep logs of visitors (as do just about all web sites) for analysis and improving the site.

If you want to create your own, I used this one from Direct Marketing Association this one from Synclastic.

This is breaking news, but Matsushita have just announced that they are doing to get rid of their 80 years of history and change the company name to Panasonic to reflect their main brand name. The National brand, used in Japan mostly for white goods like refrigerators and vacuum cleaners, will also disappear, it seems.

The founder, Konosuke Matsushita, was found to be the greatest company founder or proprietor according to a survey carried out two years ago amongst Japanese of all ages.

No news in English to date according to Google, but there is coverage in Japanese.

Just in case you bought or were given tickets for the Japan End of Year Lottery and want to find out if you have won or not, here are the results. I haven’t seen them reported anywhere else in English, so I thought I’d post here. First, look at a sample ticket.

The two highlighted numbers are the ones of interest. The top two-digit number is the 組, gumi, or ticket group that this ticket belongs to. This one is 57 gumi. The second number is the serial number, in this case #134963.

By the way, if you are looking for the winners of the Year of the Rat New Year Postcard Nengajo lottery, the results were published on the 27th of January. That one’s got a nice booby prize of two rat-themed stamps!

Now to the winners:

Top prize: 83 gumi, #136917: 200,000,000 yen

Close but no cigar prize 1: 83 gumi, #136916 or #136918: 50,000,000 yen
Close but no cigar prize 2: 82 or 84 gumi, #136917: 100,000 yen

Second prize: 03 gumi, #187951: 100,000,000 yen
Second prize: 65 gumi, #119970: 100,000,000 yen
Second prize: 31 gumi, #100682: 100,000,000 yen

Third prize: 01 gumi, #152735: 10,000,000 yen
Third prize: 90 gumi, #100823: 10,000,000 yen
Third prize: 31 gumi, #145940: 10,000,000 yen

Fourth prize: second digit of gumi equals 1, #194938: 1,000,000 yen
Fourth prize: second digit of gumi equals 0, #149856: 1,000,000 yen

Fifth prize: any gumi, #158207: 100,000 yen
Fifth prize: any gumi, #158830: 100,000 yen
Fifth prize: any gumi, #190624: 100,000 yen

Sixth prize: any gumi, last four digits of serial number equal #0258: 30,000 yen

Seventh prize: any gumi, last two digits of serial number equal #78: 3000 yen

Eighth prize: any gumi, last digit of serial number equals #3: 300 yen

End of Year Lucky Prize: any gumi, last three digits of serial number equal #960: 10,000 yen

You have one calendar year from the 7th of January 2008 in which to claim your prize.

Whilst researching the previous posting, I discovered much to my surprise this was available:

Yes, for a mere 798 yen (just over US$7 at the moment) you can buy the strap of the web site! I’ll have to approach Strapya to see if they also want to make brainscannr the strap!

Note: if you buy through the above links you can support both of our sites.

There’s been a terrible electrical storm here tonight, so no time to translate, so instead here’s a fun wee site called 脳内メーカー, Nounai me-ka-, or to translate literally, Brain Insides Maker that I saw on television a wee while ago, but due perhaps to overwhelming popularity, I’ve been unable to access it until recently. Based on your name, this site diagnoses what your brain consists of. To illustrate, here is me, Ken Y-N:

The blue kanji around the outside are worries, and the solitary purple character in the middle is my crime.

You can also diagnose compatability in couples. Here is perhaps the most famous Japanese (well, she’s ex-Japanese now) and gaijin pairing, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s brains:

The blue front of John’s brain is his wants, the gold pushed to the back is money, and the mass of purple Hs are for hentai, or perversion. Yoko’s brain, on the other hand, is full of nothing.

Other options are to find out your brain in a previous existence and what fetishs you might have. The site also works from mobile phones, but you might have to squint a bit to make out the pictures on them.

UPDATE: Mari’s diary also posted about Brain Maker, including a translation of all the kanji used to help those of you who can’t read Japanese.

PS: Just a quick reminder that you might also like to visit the not as impressive as the above My Buddhist Name for some Buddhism-related sillyness from me.

With Japanese mobile cameras capable of scanning QR codes and doing OCR of text, and with television and print advertisements frequently featuring search keywords, and even RFID-enabled advertising terminals, it’s a refreshing change to see the pictured decidedly low-tech advertisement.

The katakana script text reads “Daburyu Daburyu Daburyu Dotto Obamasen Dotto Comu”, or in plain English www.obamasen.com, an advertisement for the Obama railway line running alongside the Japan Sea on the northern shores of Hyogo prefecture, not some cryptic message of support for Sen. Obama, the US presidential candidate!

I saw on the television this morning a new service (currently free) for camera-equipped mobile phones. Surf to http://kaocheki.jp (顔ちぇき) with your mobile, snap you or your friend’s face, post it off to them and it comes back and tells you which famous person you resemble. Even if you don’t have a mobile or live overseas, you can try attaching a photograph (full face, filling about 80% of the frame) to an otherwise empty mail message addressed to female@kaocheki.jp for women, male@kaocheki.jp for men, or mix@kaocheki.jp if you’re just not sure. This direct method is not guaranteed to work. Mobile phone snaps are usually up to 240×320 pixels and 30 to 40 kilobytes in size, JPG in format, so attaching a 5 megabyte TIFF will probably not work.

UPDATE: Wifey snapped my mug last night, sent it off to the female address above, and in reverse order, at number three I am apparently 16% like 仲間由紀恵 Yukie Nakama, which I suppose is nice. At number two is 中島知子, Tomoko Nakajima, who I am 18% like. She’s one half of the comedy duo Othello. At number one, with another stunning 18% resemblance, is だいたひらる, Hikaru Daita, a dead-pan and rather plain-looking comedienne. The software must be broken! Wifey has just informed me that for the either/or address too Hikaru Daita was my top match.

Also note that although you may be able to email photos from another address, you cannot view the results from browsers other than those on a mobile phone it seems, but the reply email does contain the top match. Whether or not they only reply to mails from mobile phones is another big unknown!

Who do you resemble?