General on Nanikore

My Kiva.org Update 2015

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:02:34 +0000

I’ve covered Kiva times over the years I’ve been ’lending’ through it, so I thought I’d put up a post about where I am as we copme to the end of 2015.

At the end of 2014, I’d lent 125USD total in 3 years, and lamented I was far behind the average 330USD lend rate, and having just 50USD to rotate through loans.

Now I’ve got 105USD on deposit with Kiva, and have made 300USD in loans. I’ve also donated some money to Kiva itself. I think that counts as a good year for my Kiva involvement, and I hope in 2016 I can put a little more in there. I also collected all 7 of the ‘Social Performance’ badges, which is one of the ways Kiva tries to gamify the experience a little.

One thing I will say though is that I see quite a lot of small US businesses on there now, which you wouldn’t see before, such as a Manhattan fresh food start up. It’s certainly no bad thing, just something I hadn’t noted before. For my part, I think I’ll keep my small loan rotation focused on other parts of the world.

Kiva on, people.

Modern Hoaxes & Frauds from Japan

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 21:30:36 +0000

One thing that seems to happen all over the world, are hoaxes and frauds, like Piltdown Man, crop circles and Justin Bieber being a lizard, to name but three. Some have been subtle, and yet others were put on display almost as challenge hoaxes, such as those by entrepreneur P.T. Barnum. Many fall somewhere in the middle. Is there a difference between a hoax and a fraud? I’m going to say a fraud is pretty much a hoax in these situations, but where someone has intentionally benefited either financially or through reputation. Let’s say that shall we? Here then, are four hoaxes/frauds from Japan over the last couple of decades.

When is a stem cell not a stem cell?

Early 2014 was an interesting time in Japan with the rollercoaster scientific ride which was RIKEN and Obokata-san’s announcement they could re-program adult cells to become stem cells in a process called STAP (Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency). This was an exciting announcement, given with great fanfare in January 2014, making Obokata a celebrity in Japan, right down the apron she claimed to get from her grandmother which she wore during the experiments (and later proved to be largely untrue).

This news of a simple way to create stem cells was published in Nature magazine in fact - not a lightweight outfit in itself. The Japanese media lapped it up.

Quickly though, many peers became unimpressed, initially citing doctored images, and by April 2014, these doubts had made Obokata quite irritated, and so the press rallied to support her, given the pressure being put on their allegedly photogenic star scientist.

However, it was all for naught. In July, Nature retracted the paper as Obokata could not recreate the results she claimed to have been able to do 200 times, neither could any other lab; her mentor - Yoshiki Sasai - tragically committed suicide just a few months later, in August. It all came to a close in December when Obokata resigned, after six months working with an independent team and still not managing to recreate her results.

Like most hoaxes/frauds, this one took a lot of time in the checking and unraveling which could have been better spent researching in what is a very worthy field, so I label this one a fraud, and given allegations Obokata hadn’t been entirely honest on her doctorate submission either, we await if she can make a comeback in the field.

Not The New Beethoven-san

It seemed that for years a man called Mamoru Samuragochi had been earning a fairly tidy living being known as a deaf composer, indeed a modern day Beethoven - except that he wasn’t actually writing the music. Also, he might not even be deaf.

The music was actually being written by another composer, a music teacher named Takashi Niigaki, who effectively was ghostwriting for the rather more flamboyant and charismatic Samuragochi.

This all came out in February 2014 (a good time for these things in Japan it seems), when the composition “Hiroshima Symphony #1” was about to be used by one of Japan’s Olympic skaters at the Sochi Olympics. In fact the truth was outed by none other than Niigaki himself. I expect since this was on an international stage, Niigaki decided it was time to get some personal credit for his work.

Incidentally, the New York Times called Samuragochi ‘beloved’, and referred to the incident as a hoax, but I’m going to have to call fraud on this one. The two were in cahoots for 18 years, and whilst I don’t doubt either of them had talent, they needed each other - would Niigaki’s work have received the same attention it had done if it was he doing the PR for it, or does it get more attention to have a hippy looking, deaf ‘composer’ fronting the works?

Sadly I can’t find any details of how it works under copyright, but Niigaki claims he’s received 70,000USD for his work with Samuragochi, and with his tune soon to be getting massive exposure in Japan with the popular skater Daisuke Takahashi, I have to assume the timing was related financially.

That Samuragochi may not be totally deaf is just another twist on this, as claimed by Niigaki and others, and even the man himself admitted, “The truth is that recently I have begun to hear a little again.”

The proof in this one is the calibre of future works by either of them.

I’m Your Biggest Fan!

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but that may not be the case when the other person doesn’t know you’re doing it, you’re claiming it as your own, and accepting awards and money for it.

In 2006, Yoshihiko Wada received a fairly prestigious award in Japan - the “Education, Science and Technology Minister’s Art Encouragement Prize”, except that, following an anonymous tip, it was alleged that Wada had in fact copied some of ‘his’ works from an Italian artist, Alberto Sughi.

If you look at two of the items side by side, they do look a little more than similar - that’s assuming you can find images as they seem a little scarce nowadays.

It’s not as if Wada had just randomly found the images either - he’d met Sughi whilst in Italy, studying, and claims to have worked with him, which might be stretching it a little, since that’s not how Sughi remembers it - he thought Wada was a fan and remembers he took a lot of photos of his work.

“I never knew he was producing works like this. They’re stolen” - Sughi

This then, has the added wrinkle of plagiarism to it, making this the only one here most definitely not a hoax. Wada also lost the award - and the tidy sum of money associated with it, and given his defence argument, it’s not difficult to see how:

“I borrow others’ compositions and add my own ideas,” he insisted. “Only artists who’ve studied abroad can understand the subtle differences in nuance.” - Wada via BBC

I’m not sure where he’s going with that, and neither it seemed, did his peers. It seems like he thinks it’s OK because it was outside Japan, so no one inside Japan would notice? Perhaps he underestimated the global nature of modern art.

The sad thing here, like most artistic frauds, is that Wada seems to be a fair painter in his own right, a body of work which is now likely to be discredited or even ignored after this.

Making up History

I’ve saved one of the older hoaxes till last, because for some reason, I find this one the most annoying.

Shunichi Fujimura was an amateur archaeologist who participated in over 180 digs around Japan, and was responsible for making incredible finds which raised huge questions about when humans had first arrived in the archipelago, and thus how and from where they had come. At each dig it seemed he’d find stone objects in ground strata which suggested they were much older than expected.

In late 2000, he and a team had been working at a site near Tsukidate in Miyagi Prefecture, and after a few decent finds, Fujimura announced they’d found proof of human dwellings almost 600,000 years old. That’s a significant difference to what was then believed - most estimates put it at around 40,000 years ago that people had arrived in modern day Japan, via land bridges from mainland Asia.

It seemed almost unbelievable - and indeed, it was. The man had his doubters, and it seems they were correct when Mainichi Shimbun released photos of him actually burying the finds before they were excavated. They then did an interview with him, and he tearfully confessed that pretty much all of his most impressive finds were fraudulent, some going back to the 1970s.

That someone would do this to aggrandize their standing in a community may be understandable, for it did gain Fujimura a great deal of respect and drew admiration from peers, with the Japan Archaeological Association [JAA] and even local and national governments, some of which themed tourism campaigns around the finds.

It’s not clear though as an ‘amateur’ archaeologist, how much this financially benefited Fujimura, or whether it was just the adulation he craved. The man himself, by way of explanation said something along the lines of ‘being tempted by the devil’. This perhaps parallels that he was sometimes referred to as having ‘divine hands’ when it came to finding exciting artifacts.

Eventually, when he was outed by the Mainichi, he seemed to come clean as to the scale and duration of the lies, meaning much of his work could be quickly debunked, and updates were made in many textbooks to reflect that various sections they contained were now known to simply not be true.

So why does this one annoy me? Mainly because some scholars based years - decades - of research on his findings, trying to figure out and piece together the history Fujimura’s finds suggested, and the generation of archaeologists who would have to unlearn his findings from their textbooks. That’s a lot of other people’s time wasted for an ego boost. Some suggested he did it for vague nationalistic reasons, but I think was just an average man who got swept up by fame and forced himself to make the next ‘find’ even more incredible than the last, perhaps not appreciating the knock-on effects these finds had internationally. A review by peers found that the JAA was also somewhat at fault, in not checking for tell-tale staining and other environmental effects on the finds, which should’ve raised questions earlier.

So there are four hoaxes from the Japanese archipelago over the last few years, which join the thousands of others from around the world. Some hoaxes are sometimes started as a bit of fun, such as the crop circles, but as with many things, many seem to have more serious intent, either for fame or simply money. Having looked at these four, I came away at least thinking they should have taken a leaf out of P.T. Barnum’s book and managed to put on a bit of a show with some of these!

The 2011 Nutshell

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:39:00 +0000

I’ve never been one for massive reviews of the year just gone by - it always seemed somewhat redundant if not impossible to squeeze 365 days into a post - but here’s a few observations of 2011, and some things I’m hoping to look into in 2012.

Obviously 2011 was dominated as far as events go by the massive earthquake of March 11th, and the thousands which followed it and the social questions it triggered. Right now it seems we’re back to ’normal’ levels of earthquakes. It was all quite surreal. For me, the trip to Iwate to help in some of the tsunami clean up re-enforced how resilient people can be in the face of true tragedy, even the though the continued leaking from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor captured the news headlines.

On a smaller, but also personal note, our family car was written off in July by some person running a red light, but thankfully no one was injured in either vehicle. It also seemed odd that in 2011, hospital staff were complimenting us on having our kids fastened into the appropriate child and baby seat, but it brings home the fact that still in Japan, children are either held by parents (or more usually, grand-parents), or are allowed to wander around the vehicles whilst in motion.

But enough about me.

One thing I have been following was my meagre 25USD Kiva investment, which is now 91% paid back by the Mật Sơn 1- Đông Vệ Group, who I loaned the money to as part of a larger group loan to help their manufacturing business. I’m now going to re-invest that amount into another group, and add another 50USD to my fund and support another group. Right now I’m looking at fishing as well as manufacturing in Asia. I think microloan groups are a worthy investment to help communities grow and support themselves, and since I live in Japan, any money would accrue such tiny interest it’s hardly worth it anyway.

This blog actually hasn’t done too badly this year, going from ~150 to 450 views per month, but it’s a personal thing, so thanks to those people who visit it. Every now and then I think I should spend more time on it, or concentrate on a single vertical, but in truth, I’m interested in a lot of things, so it’s unlikely I could ever settle on one thing. WordPress does let me pull out the five most popular posts of 2011 though, so here they are!

1. Home page
2. Dog Day (犬の日)
3. The Baker and the Bromate
4. Volunteering in Iwate Prefecture
5. New Header Photo: Heads
6. Quakebook

OK, so the home page doesn’t really count I suppose, hence the #6 in there. The Dog Day post I noticed a while ago constantly gets a few views per week, which has convinced me to do a few more articles on perhaps lesser known Japanese cultural traditions. ‘The Baker and the Bromate’ was probably the most researched post I’ve ever done, and I was quite pleased with it; the ‘Volunteering in Iwate’ pretty much wrote itself, and I was pleased to receive a few emails to say it’d helped people prep for their own work there. The new header photo post making the top 5 is probably more of a tribute to Jaume Plensa and his sculpture work - thanks Jaume! Bringing up the top five then was my review of the crowd sourced ‘Quakebook’ which was put together after the quake to get some peoples stories out, and help raise fund for survivors of the tsunami.

I was also quite surprised that two of my posts were mentioned in podcasts - the ‘Baker and the Bromate’ post was on JapanTalk #228, and the slightly more whimsical post about the “City of Ghosts” story was mentioned by John C. Dvorak on the No Agenda podcast.

Towards the end of the year I decided to give the National Novel Writing Month a go - writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. I’ve written short stories and such over the last five years, but this was a whole new scale of things. As you see from some of the posts, it somewhat took over my life for the month, but I was actually really pleased with what came out, and over the next year I’m hoping to revise it a little bit to make it at least readable and understandable to a third party.

Right at the end of 2011 I stepped in to update the toyrunjapan.com website at the last minute to upload info for one of our large toy runs, which was the first web coding I’ve done in a very long time - at least it seemed to render OK and no one complained. I think in 2012 I’ll spend a bit more time on the overarching site we’re looking to put these toy runs under, reviewing some old HTML, CSS and JS knowledge, and see how it goes.

So on the whole, 2011 ended a bit more on the upbeat than it was looking at the beginning, but a reminder that the people of Tohoku are going to need support for a very long time, and I hope the Japanese government stop squabbling and mucking about, and actually deals with the issues.

2012 then, should be a good challenge, and I’m looking into new professional qualifications, language tests and whatever else is of interest after the family time and work!

明けましておめでとうございます 2011

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:30:27 +0000

Happy New Year 2011, or 明けましておめでとうございます 2011! (Akemashite Omedetougozaimasu). Another year begins; for some reason a lot of people didn’t seem to like 2010, but for us, it worked out pretty well. As far as the site goes, it was a down followed by an up - I’d pretty much put it on a hiatus last Xmas after moving it to Wordpress.com and re-organising myself a bit online, and then in late July re-opening nanikore.net, but keeping brightblack.net pretty much offline. I decided I only had the time to post to one site, and brightblack was more of a historical relic. I may, later this year though, put that back online in it’s old HTML4 hand coded glory.

Anyway, back to the point, thanks to all those who have read, commented and mailed me about the posts in the last year, and to everyone anyway, have a great 2011.

This Week’s Top Three Podcasts [Airport Edition]

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:37:51 +0000

I’ll admit I’m a bit bored here at Narita airport, so to break the intensity of announcements, planes going past and people who seem to have an unbelievable amount of luggage even after check-in, here’s the top five selection of podcasts as I look at my MP3 player. I should note these aren’t necessarily the ones I usually listen to, just a few from this week:

“You Look Nice Today” – A whole lot of irreverent and irrelevant humour in an ad-lib setting. Kind of geeky, jokes about heraldry and such. Strangely it seems to work on train journeys. It’s very likely to remind you of the odd drunken conversations you regularly had with friends at University.
“PC Perspective Podcast” – If you become incredibly aroused and excited when listening to tech specs, or if you like debates of SLI graphics cards vs. multi GPU-on-a-card solutions, then listen to this. Actually this is kind of an interesting podcast of you’re a computer builder enthusiast.
“This Week In Start-ups” – Jason Calacanis hosts a show dedicated – with a California slant – to new start-ups, entrepreneurial spirit, tips and advice. Every week they have a guest on who are usually interesting to listen to, discussing their own start-ups. I recommend the audio over the video podcast, which looks a lot duller than the audio sounds.

Obviously I listen to a lot more podcasts than this, but as I sit here trying to balance the laptop and a cup of coffee, shamefully pimping Windows 7 and Windows Live Writer to people passing by with their luggage, these are the ones showing in my recently played list.

明けましておめでとうございます 2008

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:17:44 +0000

明けましておめでとうございます 2008, or Happy New Year. Another year looms upon us like a great looming thing. Overall, I thought 2007 was pretty good, so I think I’m about ready to kick 2008 around for twelve months, and see how that feels.

See you there.

Happy New Year 2006

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:32:25 +0000

Ok, this post has been delayed by a couple of days, but I see that more as a good thing. Either way, I really wish everyone a good new year, and hope it’s better than 2005, no matter how good your 2005 may have been. I know mine was incredible, so if 2006 is anywhere near as good, I’ll be just as tired and penniless in 365 days time.

As far as New Year’s Eve goes, for the first time ever my partner and I spent the night in by ourselves drinking wine and eating good food and generally relaxing, after a hectic week of returning from the UK, (literally) going straight into work from the airport, and the previous night at another Southern All Star’s gig. More of that in another post.

US$100 laptop is GO! (Sort of...)

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:54:04 +0000

It was good to see some good news come from the project to produce a USD100 laptop for poor regions and developing countries. Nicholas Negroponte, MIT MediaLab personage, and co-founder of Wired magazine was at a UN forum, and along with the project’s CTO unveiled a prototype of the laptop which they’re hoping will help the developing world get on the internet ladder and bring awareness and communications to those people who currently just don’t have the means to get it.

Basically, they’ve developed a small laptop running Linux, and using a very clever LCD, a wind-up battery, wireless, speakers, microphone etc. which by late 2006 will weigh in at USD100 (currently it’s 110 apparently), which they’ll sell to governments, charities etc. for exclusive usage in poor areas of the world. Go to the site above, or check this link to the pics - the machine looks very cool, and hopefully they can sell them in wealthy areas at a big profit sometime to fund even more into poor areas.

Overall, I think this kind of project is really useful, and combined with things like Geekcorps might help a lot of people get on the ladder to help their own countries. Of course, this kind of relies on bringing food, shelter and safety to huge numbers of people beforehand!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

wayan — 2005-11-20

You’re right, the MIT laptop, in combination with training, support infrastructure, and well thought-out distribution, will be a geat boon to the developing world.

Its only too bad we’re not hearing an equal amount of hype about that implementation environment for the shiny, flashy, new thing. Then again, as one of those building that environment, I’m a little biased.

gurahamu (the nanikore guy) — 2006-01-25

Sorry for the delay. I actually considered joining GeekCorps (or at least trying to!), but got waylaid with marriage en route! However, I have tried to follow it’s progress, and yes, I do think it’s doing valuable work. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t get their work mentioned along with this little hype bubble. Whilst Negreponte’s heart may be in the right place, a little more inclusion may help.

New Orleans

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 15:12:15 +0000

It’s hard to know what to say about the tragedy in New Orleans, now into it’s fifth day.

It’s hard to believe that thousands are suffering and dying in what is supposed to be a wealthy, advanced nation. It’s hard to understand why many went on the rampage piling on the misery. It’s hard to understand a lot of things here. Why people didn’t leave when they knew days before the scale of what approached. Would I have? I don’t know. Then again of course is the fact that for many people, the poorest, they simply couldn’t get out.

I wonder what was going though many viewers minds as they watch the 24 hour news channels (which I mostly don’t see).

What would happen to my community if it happened here?

Media coverage has been mixed. The BBC did a rough assessment of world tabloid commentary with some interesting opinions here. Some blame America’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty, some blame the President himself. All agree that they are amazed at what has happened and the response of the people and the government.

As day 5 has come and gone, the Federal Government, From Mr. Bush down are being roundly criticised, and New Orlean’s Mayor Ray Nagin grows increasingly tired and emotional, clearly frustrated at what he (and many others) see as an almost unwillingness to help the mainly poor people left in drowned New Orleans.

“I don’t know whose problem it is, I don’t know whether it’s the governor’s problem, I don’t know whether it’s the president’s problem, but somebody needs to get their asses on the plane and sit down the two of them and figure this out, right now.”

At a fund raiser, rapper Kanye West claimed the issue was racial, repeating a question many have made of media coverage:

“I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it says they’re looking for food.”

That comment, though it went out live on the East coast, was deleted from the recorded West coast version.

As the tragedy goes on, all I can say is that I hope the weak and desperate find safety, that these morons who went on the rampage and cost lives find justice, and that somehow they manage to rebuild their lives and their city. As for the politicians, well, I agree with the Mayor of New Orleans:

“This is ridiculous. I don’t want to see anyone doing any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don’t do another press conference until the resources are in this city and they come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops which we can’t even count.”

Tsunami Reporting

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 02:05:48 +0000

I’ve not posted about the Tsunami here really, I feel many other sites are doing a great job, and I don’t think I can add anything to what was a huge disaster across Asia. The sheer scale of it makes our little human politics look kind of absurd. I read about it initially on my mobile whilst browsing Yahoo News in Shiga Kogen, and I thought it was some kind of typo at 20,000 dead or missing, and then even that figure started to rise exponentially, and it looks like it’ll keep going higher for a while yet.

The venerable Boing Boing have awarded CNN ‘The Most Tasteless Reporting Award’ for the tragedy thus far for " Tsunami’s Shatter Celebrity Holidays". They’re right. I couldn’t care less about celebrities who made it out, but lost an expensive car.

I did get some good information through the local Amnesty international group here in Tokyo - they’re recommending looking at the MSSRF and their Tokyo affiliate if you want to donate money that will really help people, both now, and to rebuild. The MSSRF specialise in sustainable agricultural and rural development in India.

Also, many Net companies have links to main aid organisations, including at the time of writing Apple and Amazon.com as well as virtual groups like bloggers without borders.

Thoughts go out to those who have lost loved ones, and to those who just don’t know, and are still looking.

Merry Xmas

Sat, 25 Dec 2004 13:04:36 +0000

There, a completely original blog title there. Indeed it’s been an excellent and Merry Xmas - got up at 10am, opened presents, made breakfast, loafed around for a while, went out for a walk and came back to make dinner and continue the loafing. Good stuff.

Tomorrow we’ll go to Shiga Kogen for 3 days snowboarding which just extends the relaxation zone. Posts when I get back!

Test 2: Life Quote

Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:02:42 +0000

–
“We all enter this world in the same way: naked; screaming; soaked in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn’t have to stop there.”

– Dana Gould

nanikore.net
brightblack.net

The move is afoot!

Sun, 21 Nov 2004 03:53:34 +0000

After those couple of annoying months looking for an apartment, and then the month of talking to NTT, water, gas, electricity, and changing addresses and all that, tomorrow we will be moving to our new, bigger apartment.

I’m currently sat amongst a pile of boxes which rather disconcertingly contain everything I own which definitely proves that I am in no way materialistic. In fact, I’m wondering what I did with my cash…um…actually, forget that, I *know* where all my money went - snowboarding and having a good life.

Anyhow, we’ll be out of here at 3pm tomorrow, back briefly the day after for the landlord inspection, and then we’re officially resident somewhere else. I’m using the same moving company I used before - Mammy - because they’re always half what other companies charge and still do a decent job.

I have fond memories of this apartment, and it’s another milestone, but we’re both looking forward to this new place, and having a bit more space, being a bit more central in Tokyo, and whilst we’ll be a bit further away from some friends, we’ll be closer to others. We’ll also have space to invite people round too.

In a couple of hours, I’ll take this desk to pieces, and be left with my 6 year old Powerbook G3 laptop sat on the floor …

Moving again

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 12:28:20 +0000

This is kind of a heads-up post. One of the reasons why I’ve been a little erratic (i.e. slow as hell) on posts of late is that the contract on my apartment is almost up for renewal and we’ve decided to move into something a little bigger. I love this apartment, but when I moved in in late 2002 it was just intended as a cool crash pad for just one, but now, with the two of us, we’re a little pushed for space. Thus, we’ve spent an increasing amount of time over the last two months looking at hundreds of floor plans and rejecting a good 99.5% of them for one reason or another - I hate having the cooking range in the living room (pretty common in many Japanese apartments) and my partner prefers south facing places, short commutes and places which have ‘wa’ (just joking there!). We’ve so far burned a few weekend days running around Tokyo taking a look at them.

For a flashback of the last time I moved, check out the November section of my 2002 notes. All the usual things have occurred - floor plans which had ‘misprints’ as to the direction of the balcony, buildings which claimed to be 6 years old which looked pre-war and estate agents who were unhappy with my racial origins. What can I say, I’m pale.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

dr Dave — 2004-10-09

Nice new abode (the virtual one)… as for the physical one, in the cold streets of Tokyo… All I can say is mucho gambatte kudasai… I probably won’t be telling you anything new by pointing out how much of an issue your lack of nippon ancestry will be, with most landlords. I went through that not a year ago and this wasn’t much fun. Actually, if I may even bicker with words, this is not even a matter of skin color… as one of the real estate agent, presumably trying to make us feel better about the 95% rejection rate told us: “Gaijins are difficult, but as long as you are not chinese or korean, there’s a chance…” ahem. Anyway, having at least half the prospective tenants Japanese should make your search a bit easier, but expect a lot of “ahhh, chotto muzukashii desu nehh”. And btw, I think usually agents absolutely do not care about that (they’d be happy to make their commission no matter what), the problem is usually with the owners, who are most often much older, much more prejudiced and much more afraid to deal with gaijins…

graham — 2004-10-12

Thanks for the post dr.Dave. I agree completely. Most agents don’t want to deal with me, especially as my partner is Japanese, but it makes it a bit stressful for her. Yesterday one rep from Livable didn’t even bother doing an aisatsu with me or distributing meishi. However, she still paid for a taxi to show us a place and so is interested in making commission.

As for Oya-san (the actual owners), some have turned me down flat, some has paused and hoped I went away. For my current place, the OYa-san was not sure at first but felt better when I had a chat with her in Japanese, mainly about gomi… I also gave her some brochures about my company and I think that helped too.

I also agree that of all us disgusting gaijin, caucasians such as myself don’t get the brunt of it. A Philipino friend of mine said she had a hell of a lot of problems finding a place to live. It’s a shame it seems to be so tolerated. People wanting to be racist is a fact of life anywhere; letting that get in the way of business is something I just don’t understand.

Death to key money!!

Extreme Ironing!

Mon, 14 Jul 2003 02:19:26 +0000

Check this out…something for the snowboarding season… extreme ironing.

It is what it says - get your (cordless) iron and board out and get the wrinkles out of that shirt…at the top of a mountain. Why not indeed!

General on Nanikore

My Kiva.org Update 2015

Modern Hoaxes & Frauds from Japan

When is a stem cell not a stem cell?

Not The New Beethoven-san

I’m Your Biggest Fan!

Making up History

The 2011 Nutshell

明けまして おめでとう ございます 2011

This Week’s Top Three Podcasts [Airport Edition]

明けましておめでとうございます 2008

Happy New Year 2006

US$100 laptop is GO! (Sort of...)

Original Comments

New Orleans

Tsunami Reporting

Merry Xmas

Test 2: Life Quote

The move is afoot!

Moving again

Original Comments

Extreme Ironing!

明けましておめでとうございます 2011