Time Magazine: From Japan With Love

The cover story of the December 1, 2008 Japan issue of Time Magazine, titled Japan Reaches Out, describes Japan’s growing soft power making it a responsible world leader, in spite of its poor political and economic situation.
Foreign interest in learning Japanese is stronger today, with nearly 3 million people worldwide studied Japanese as a foreign [...]

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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die

Complementary to Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling “The Tipping Point“, the authors, brothers Chip and Dan Heath, offer a very practical guide to effective communication that is different from the other mainstream views.  The 6 critical elements to make ideas stick (called “stickiness” which Gladwell first coined in his book) are:

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories

The initial letters spell out [...]

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Mount Takao

On a beautiful autumn day, we visited Mount Takao along with several thousand other people – boy, was it ever crowded!  From Shinjuku station in Tokyo, we took the Keio Line to Takaosanguchi station, about a 50 minute train ride (using the semi-express train).

At a height of almost 600m, Mount Takao offers several hiking [...]

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Tokyo Subway Manner Posters

Even though Tokyo subways are generally very crowded, I haven’t observed much bumping or rude behavior at all, and the trains and stations are also quite clean.  I wrote about Tokyo subways in a previous blog post.
Tokyo Metro launched a series of ads this year to remind subway riders of “manners”.  Every month, a new [...]

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Japan in The News: Tokyo tops Michelin Restaurant Guide

Paris is well known for its high culinary restaurants. 
A total of 173 restaurants in Tokyo earned a least a single star in the latest edition of Michelin Guide, a famous guidebook that rates restaurants around the world.  Nine restaurants were graded with three stars which equals that of reigning champion Paris.  Tokyo boasts the [...]

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Japan in the News: Japan’s Economy, World’s Second Largest, Is in Recession

Today’s article in the New York Times has declared that Japan’s economy is now officially in recession after two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth (which is the official definition of a recession). 
Japan banks, like those in Canada (see previous blog entry about this), have been relatively unscathed by the financial crisis.  But Japan’s [...]

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Visa’s Expat’s Guide to Japan

A new handbook titled “The Expat’s Guide to Japan” was just recently made available by Visa to provide information for expatriates and their families who are currently residing, or planning to reside in Japan in the near future.  The book contains helpful information on living in Japan such as introductions to Japanese culture, lists of [...]

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Financial Times: Boring Canada’s Financial Tips for the World

James Flaherty, Canadian Finance Minister, recently wrote a commentary in the Financial Times titled Boring Canada’s Financial Tips for the World.  Certainly, the biggest news today is the global economic and financial meltdown, but Canada seemed to have minimized the impact as a result of its financial system and policies, which Flaherty describes as “boring”.  [...]

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Asian Leadership Summit 2008

Asia is a diverse region with 46 countries, 3.5 billion people and 3,300 languages – there are 4 times more college graduates and 12 times more engineers in Asia compared to the US. Earlier this month, IBM, along with HSBC and GE, co-hosted the Asian Leadership Summit in New York.
The IBM was very well [...]

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Visit to Kyoto – Part 2

… continued from Part 1.
Day 3
We started the next day with a subway and bus ride to Ginkaku-ji Temple, also known as the Silver Pavilion. Outside the temple, there was a commercial street filled with food stalls, shops and restaurants.
 
Originally designed as a retirement villa for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa in the Muromachi [...]

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