Toudai’s Akamon, circa 2008 Once in a while, people tell me that they want to study in Japan. Most of the time, they speak no Japanese. Fortunately for these people, the Japanese government has been actively pushing a programme that will see numerous top Japanese universities offer full undergraduate courses in English. Known as the [...]
This is the post about my visit to Kagoshima in southern Japan. I am really pushing out these articles at the breakneck speed of a limping three-legged turtle, considering that I was in Japan in early April and so far have written on barely two places. At this rate I should be done around the [...]
Japan National Tourism Organization made a simple map showing the locales of some popular anime titles and the major anime retail hotspots across Japan. While an interesting initiative, the map itself is rather light on details, so this is more of a standard tourism brochure with a twist than an actual guide for people looking [...]
Sharp is releasing an Aquos Android clamshell phone with a 16-megapixel camera running Gingerbread. This is the latest step in Android’s quiet and gradual takeover of the Japanese phone market. I believe that Japan will eventually become a strategic stronghold for Android and in turn this will serve to shore up Google’s historically weak performance [...]
A small Japanese start-up called Neurowear is marketing what it calls “Necomimi” — head-worn fashion gadgets that move in response to brainwaves. The company calls it “Augmented Human Body”. Or to put it in simpler terms: goddamn nekomimi cat ears that you can learn to control telepathically with your mind. This is serious science at [...]
So not too long ago, I was in Kagoshima, the southernmost prefecture on Japan’s four main islands. It is a rather backwater place despite the abnormally large role it played in Japan’s contemporary history, but it is very beautiful. Kagoshima is also the location of Nishi-oyama Station, Japan Railways’ (JR) southernmost train station.
So I am finally back in Singapore. Experiencing post-trip lethargy as usual. I figure I should get started on blogging now before it becomes impossible for me to return to my usual weekly schedule and I fall into the eternal dark void of procrastination. Nagasaki was the first city in Kyushu I really visited, not [...]
Gunkanjima, officially “Hashima”, is a tiny island just outside Nagasaki Bay. Consisting mostly of man-made concrete-covered landfills, the island was a coal-mining operation run by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and once boasted the highest population density in the world. Today, the only way to land on the island is by forking out 4,300 yen for a [...]
Concert booklet and T-shirt I expected last year to be my first and last chance to watch Maaya Sakamoto perform live, but I was wrong and my sentiments at the time were rendered somewhat hyperbolic in retrospect. In spite of the recent events in Japan, I managed to make my way to Osaka International Convention [...]
Sendai, Miyagi prefecture (Kyodo News/Associated Press) I don’t normally like to write about breaking news because generally I find that I have neither the first-hand expertise nor the retrospective hindsight to comment on most real-time events non-trivial. The story would be very different if the earthquake had happened three weeks later when I will be [...]
Miyajima, Hiroshima (sauce) It seems like I’ve been going to Japan every year for the past few years due to various reasons, so I guess this should not come as a huge surprise. Yes, I am flying to Japan again. Yes, I will be there for Maaya’s “You can’t catch me” 2011 tour, specifically the [...]
Gadget Tsuushin (getnews.jp) has made some tongue-in-cheek predictions about what will happen now that the Tokyo Metropolitan legislation restricting sales of certain targeted manga and anime has been passed.
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