Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Charles, climate, Dalai Lama, Japan, kendo, Nara, news, Spain, visit on October 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Two prominent world leaders are visiting Japan – Britain’s Prince Charles and the Dalai Lama. See various news coverage in the links below:
Dalai Lama in Japan after health scare
Dalai Lama arrives in Japan
Prince Charles visits forest restoration project in Nagano
Prince Charles, Camilla tour Nara, meet Aso
Prince Charles calls for joint effort to fight climate change
Prince [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged behavior, blink, book, irrational, research, sway, theory on October 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by the brothers Ori and Rom Brafman tries to describe and explain why we all make irrational or poor decisions because of a number of hidden currents or tendencies that “sway” our judgement such as:
Loss aversion – our tendency to go at great lengths to avoid possible [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged escalator, Japan, signs, station, subway, tickets, Tokyo, train on October 26, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Tokyo’s subway is a microcosm of Japanese society itself: congestion, maximum use of minimum space, state-of-the-art technology, good and bad manners (a future post on subway “manner” posters soon), cleanliness, accidents, suicides, endless announcements and business opportunities — the subway has it all.
The Tokyo Metro Co Ltd. carries 5.9 million passengers a day along [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bubble, economy, Hirohito, Japan, Showa, war, war salaryman on October 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
A few weeks ago, I attended the FujiFilm Square photo exhibition in Tokyo called Showa Japan seen through Dutch eyes. The photographs, most in black and white, were both fascinating and interesting and I noticed a new book (not yet published in the US) titled Showa Japan: The Post-War Golden Age and Its Troubled [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged carpet, earth, ecology, festival, films, green, movies, Roppongi, Shibuya, Tokyo, Toyota on October 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The 21th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is being held in Roppongi Hills and Bunkamura (Shibuya) from October 18-26, 2008.
This year’s theme is ecology stressing the importance of preserving the global environment, with the tagline “Ecology = Preservation of Earth’s Environment“. The green carpet was made from recycled plastic bottles, which replaced the traditional red [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged booth, convention, cosplay, games, Japan, Microsoft, models, otaku, Playstation, sony, Tokyo, xbox360, YouTube on October 15, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Last weekend, the annual Tokyo Game Show was held in Makuhari Messe Convention Center in Chiba (just outside Tokyo), where otaku game players gathered to get a first hand look at the latest and upcoming games.
Thursday and Friday were business (press) days with attendance about 25,000, while the weekend was open to the public [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged economics, fish, Japan, sushi, Tsukiji, sashimi, tuna, maguro, bluefin on October 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A recent feature article in The Mainichi Daily News titled The Maguroeconomics of tuna, the grand champion of fish cuisine describes the tuna, or maguro, as the most popular fish in Japan especially when eaten as sashimi. See also my previous post on the book titled The Sushi Economy, about the economics of tuna and [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged China, history, IBM, innovation, replica, virtual-world, YouTube on October 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A few weeks ago, the History Channel aired a fascinating documentary about work undertaken by IBM and the Beijing’s Palace Museum to recreate the Forbidden City. The program tells a story of culture and how history, art and technology came together to bring one of the world’s greatest treasures to life. The Forbidden City Revealed [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged atoms, Japan, news, nobel, physics, quarks on October 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Earlier this week, a Japanese-born American and 2 Japanese scientist won the won the Nobel physics prize for discovering the fundamental asymmetry of the universe.
Yoichiro Nambu, who was born and educated in Tokyo and moved to the US in 1952, of the Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, received half of the $1.4M prize for [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged British, Japan, moat, news, palace, Spain, swim, Tokyo on October 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »
A strange story earlier this week about a British tourist, living in Spain, who swam n@ked in a moat around the Imperial Palace. This news story was widely covered locally on TV. He was just released from police custody.
N@ked swimmer evades police in Tokyo palace moat (Reuters)
Shock as bald Briton bares all at Tokyo palace [...]
