Product on Nanikore

Suzuki Choi Nori

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 14:37:44 +0000

The Suzuki Choi Nori was an interesting concept - a budget 49cc scooter for students and shoppers for short about town runs, with the added factor that it was going to be wholly made in Japan. In 2003, this was a major piece of marketing for a vehicle which retailed across its range from ~58,000 to 85,000yen on the road, whereas most ‘real’ 50ccs at the time started from 100,000yen (about 770 Euros or 660 GBP today).

choinori-suzukisite1.jpg" alt=“The Suzuki Choi Nori. Image courtesy of an old suzuki.com page.” caption=“The Suzuki Choi Nori. Image courtesy of an old suzuki.com page.”

That’s not even my assessment - that’s from their press release ( available here in Japanese), where they also said they planned to sell 2,000 of these a month. Suzuki defined three main benefits for the scooter:

Weighing in at less than 40Kg dry, and getting 76Km/litre it would be a highly economical and convenient machine at that price point.
A cute design based around beautiful curves.
Using a new lightweight engine.

I remember seeing them outside motorbike and even bicycle shops, in their bright colours and with their colourful adverts, along with the big red circle announcing they were Made in Japan. Even the name was cute, deriving from a phrase to mean ‘a short hop’.

The vehicle itself was basic to the point of it potentially seeming crude and yet the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan listed it in their ’ 240 Landmarks of Automotive Technology’ where it sits in 2002. That’s some recognition for a scooter whose only rear suspension is the padding on the seat.

Why was it on that list then? It was probably due to the engine which was a four stroke aluminium unit, had a push rod design, and used a high speed plating process on its piston, simplifying the whole design and keeping that weight down.

They also managed to hit a price point with the more expensive Japanese labour compared to the South East Asian country rates where most small scooters were and are manufactured - and all Triumphs nowadays. That was an achievement, and is why it was a key part of the pitch - it wasn’t cheap parts - it was a clever design built with Japanese skill.

However, it wasn’t even two years into its eventual four year production run before that production was moved to from Japan to Taiwan, and before they stopped making them completely in 2007.

The more famous models were those with the distinctive and colourful ‘fenders’, and that’s that’s not painted metal or fibreglass either, it’s solidly moulded coloured plastic. They would later be removed on a second model called the Choi Nori SS which had a different headstock and handlebar design. It seems to lose something though over the original.

The Suzuki Choi Nori SS courtesy of Hachimaru’s Blog.

Looking on the auction sites now, there’s a ’normal’ 2004 model with just 12Km on the clock with an asking price of 110,000yen. Most go in the 30,000-50,000yen range, but for a cheap 49cc which are all at least 13 years old, that’s not bad if you’re a seller. Is the Choi Nori a latent classic in the making? Is it the new Corgi? Who knows!

I’m somewhat curious to wonder if that was Suzuki’s plan all along - create a modern mini classic - dare I say a another Cub? No matter what their goals might have been, the plan lasted but a few years.

The dream lives on though, as there are indeed plenty on used auction sites, and a few fan groups remain such as http://www.suzuki-choinori.com/.

So what killed the ChoiNori? Sales? Not really since Suzuki claim they shifted 10 million of them, but more likely the old classic of an engine which needed investment to meet emissions standards, which in Japan were increasing, and it was unlikely it could hit Euro standards without R&D and which more critically would likely require a more complex engine design.

For me at least there would be another factor. In Japan, where there are a lot of slopes and I wonder if the Choi Nori could cut it and not just for power but the whole design.

I actually tried one out many years ago when I had a Honda Zoomer for around Tokyo as I liked scooters for inner city riding, albeit with the weird caveats that entails (which is a whole separate post). I’m not above also saying that the Choi Nori SS does look like a smaller, rounder Zoomer from some angles! All I really remember was that the Choi Nori didn’t like my bulk very much and felt more like a powered bicycle than a motorized anything. Also, that lack of rear suspension was not fun. The shop selling it said it was indeed being bought by students and people looking for cheap local transport which could be parked anywhere. I’d say it hit that target quite well.

That’s all a long time and quite a few kilograms ago for me though. Nowadays most electric assist bicycles cost more than the Choi Nori, so I wonder where it would fit in today’s world. Sales of 49cc scooters are still solid, perhaps better with higher petrol prices and social distancing, but that wasn’t the Choi Nori’s selling point, it was the price and the way it looked and what it did, but I do suspect the ‘hybrid electric’ bicycle owns that space now.

All that said, one of my goals once this COVID thing is in the (tiny) rear view mirror, is to get another ride on one and report back! I might even drop the fan club a mail and see if it’s still healthy.

Ride on Choi Nori!

Sorting Out : GoPro

Thu, 30 May 2019 12:30:17 +0000

Rather than just review a product, I thought I’d review a whole company and make sweeping and simple recommendations on how to improve their business with the benefit of having no experience in their market. So, sorting out GoPro.

That said, I often think reviewers and opinion pieces on the internets should spend a bit more time talking about what they wanted or expected from things in the first place, and what their experiences have been, so we as readers get a little context. So first then, let me explain my history of usage with GoPro action cameras.

My GoPro History & Usage

My first GoPro was a Hero 2 HD in early 2012. I loved that thing, in its plastic case with spring mounted buttons, 720p video and distinctive look. I had the screen ‘bacpac’, and replaced that with the wifi bacpac, which in hindsight was a mistake. I actually had 2 of them - I lost one in Guam whilst swimming with my family. I had to quickly help someone, and the floaty the GoPro was on just floated away somewhere! On the positive side, I had backed up all the footage the night before, so I didn’t real lose any memories.

I soon bought another Hero 2, whilst on sale before the Hero 3 came out, as I found it was really filling a niche for me, and it helped a lot with getting footage for family movies, snowboard and motorcycle days, and be a camera the kids could use at the beach and all the other outdoors stuff we do without worrying about it getting wet and such. I also really liked the timelapse on it, which continues to be a key use for me even now.

A few years later I sold the Hero 2 on Craigslist, and with a bit of saving, I bought a GoPro 5 Black in late 2016. I liked the higher frame rates, lack of need for case, and the touch screen. I was then gifted a new 7black for Xmas 2018 from the family, and sold off the 5 (I really don’t need 2 action cameras at a time). Broadly I’ve liked the stabilization, the new timelapse modes, the photo improvements. The crashing [potentially] due to orientation? Not so much.

So that’s me and GoPros. So what’s my opinion, and thoughts on the company, products and directions?

The Hardware

I find GoPros to be generally well made. Everything seems to fit well, and of course their mounting system has been the standard for the market for quite a while, which helps since their own brand accessories and batteries are usually at least double the cost of anyone else’s and explains why most of my accessories are third party.

The one aspect of the hardware I think is ridiculous is the DRM’d mic port. It’s just a silly way to spin up some revenue. I don’t know why GoPro don’t just let people use any adapter or even BlueTooth for mics. I’d be keen to see the economics on that.

In newer models you can now do portrait video. I’m no young InstaInfluencer, so maybe there’s a market for this, but all the people I see with action cams, and all the footage I see online from actions cams? None of it is portrait. Vertical video is from the smartphone market. I could be tainted here since watching the ‘Community’ forums, it seems that the auto orientation feature they have now seems to be causing more crashing for very little benefit for people who actually use it in social media.

The Applications and Services

Software is not GoPros strong point. At all. I suspect they know this since much of their application range has been bought in.

The first desktop app of theirs I used was Studio, which was a very, very basic, not to say clunky editor, but did let you stitch together time lapses and I used it for that a few times.

It helped organize footage, but I already have workflows for that, so I didn’t use that side so much. It also helped update the cameras and indeed it seemed to work fine for that. Ironic now that GoPro’s own support steps start with ‘manually update your GoPro’ and not use Studio’s successor for that.

They replaced Studio with Quik on mobile and desktop, but now you had to log in to GoPro to use it (since sort of dropped). It has some nice functions, but is a more limited editor than Studio in some ways (e.g. no timelapse now) if that was your need. It doesn’t help that it doesn’t recognise HEVC capable hardware correctly in many cases including mine, meaning it refuses to play those files which are often high resolution, high frame rate clips, so often I don’t use it for playback, which is ironic given GoPro market so much of their product appeal as high frame rate / high resolution… which requires HEVC. Of course you can still play it back in VLC or Quicktime if the underlying hardware supports it (mine does).

I don’t use it at all then on the desktop, and have only a couple of times on mobile where the story maker function is quite good, and it will edit non GoPro footage also. On the desktop it does let you select the overlays for the data-logging the camera does, showing GPS location, speed, orientation etc., but that’s a novelty at best, and the doesn’t seem to work with other editors anyway.

I’ve submitted a few feature requests to GoPro to enhance Quik, to make it more useful, such as for lossless cutting, SD card testing, and file fixing - things the GoPro users specifically need, so we’ll see if any of that happens. Having a basic editor is OK, but beyond that I think they’re better pitching it as a utility on the desktop, and doing a deal with an existing ‘free’ editor company like BlackMagicDesign (who also make cameras…hmmm).

The Plus offering of cloud storage and damage cover was initially too little, too expensive, and initially restrictive on quality of footage and didn’t really fit into many people’s workflows. Here in Japan the Plus pricing is 7,200JPY a year (for ‘unlimited’ storage). A 200GB Google Drive is 4,560JPY a year, but doesn’t get you the insurance aspect.

As ever, the idea of on the road cloud backup is nice, but implementation is clunky. It also shows that subtle weakness - it needs a smartphone or other connected device to get the most from it, and for most people, they’re just going to use their phone. I do think this is a good idea for the product though, because again it plays to the core - usage of cameras outdoors, in difficult conditions with the risk of damage.

Live streaming was another new feature rolled out, and unfortunately another I don’t really have a usage scenario for personally. Again, this isn’t a GoPro issue, this is my issue. I’m interested to see how this catches on compared to people just using their phones and apps like Periscope for this functionality.

Bottom Line: I don’t think the Insta crowd use GoPros more than active outdoor people use GoPros. The insurance concept is nice and to make it better for the GoPro usage scenario, so perhaps less time on chasing those ephemeral social media users who broadly aren’t the core market, and more resources on action cam users who are?

By The Numbers and the Business

I don’t believe that share price etc., should or does have an impact on product mix all the time, nor do I think equity share price reflects a company’s success or value all the time, but let’s just look at 5 years of share price for GPRO. It peaked on October 3rd 2014 at 86.97 USD just after the IPO in early 2014. It’s spent much of the last 3 years between 5 and 10 USD. That’s not healthy in the broadly capitalistic system.

Again though, latest figures show the company is showing improvement with an increase of 11% in cameras shipped, and the Plus product is seeing some improvement with an increase of 50% sales, year on year, which I suspect may coincide with allowing any footage to be uploaded. It seems clearing up the Karma drone situation seems to have helped too, and they’re done writing it off. A nice idea the Karma, just not done well, and the plug pulled.

The Bottom Bottom Line

Years on from their founding in 2002 then, they’re still a camera company. They still sell a lot of cameras, but the smartphone trend of an annual refresh cycle seems to leave GoPro with serious quality issues on release and increasingly annoyed users on the community forums. Perhaps they need to lower their cadence to every other year, and use the off year to build support and fix firmware, or the company operations need rethinking.

GoPro should acknowledge that the ‘mainstream’ days are going away. They need to re-embrace their original and new niche customers who need cameras that work in odd places, stuck on odd things, and see the target more as YouTube/Vimeo than FaceBook/Instagram. Everyone else will use a waterproof smartphone, or use ‘real cameras’ for higher quality.

As for other markets, I think there’s room for action cameras for a while yet, and whilst GoPro missed the drone market both by a wide margin in terms of the time window and delivered a seemingly flawed product in the Karma, ‘rugged smartphones’ could still be a market for GoPro until they can identify something else.

Less marketing, more support for grass roots - for something designed to capture once in a lifetime or out there footage, a level of support on forums etc. is vital. The ’ Community’ is OK, but there’s so little official comment on there or letting people know what’s considered a problem and what isn’t. Whilst Asia only accounts for ~15% of sales, getting a chat session for support outside (and sometimes inside) US hours is not easy, which is a shame, and in my experience, whilst the support is friendly, it’s very heavily scripted, and not always conclusive. (My experience was that we went through the generic troubleshooting, and when I could still replicate a freezing issue, was told to turn auto-orientation off, and there, fixed. Turning off a feature to stop a problem is not a fix. I received 2 case numbers, but didn’t get a transcript for either.)

Given DJI has just entered the high end action camera market with the Osmo Action which does 80% of what the 7 Black does, this isn’t like the days gone past of Yi jumping in and taking those ’lower end’ GoPros sales, this is really attacking GoPro’s core.

The Very Bottom Line

So that’s it; a view of GoPro, my history and usage of GoPro, and some notes on where I think they are and aren’t. I generally don’t do brand loyalty, in the same way that companies don’t really do customer loyalty, but I’ve liked what successions of GoPro engineers and the business have done, and I’d like to see them succeed, but their continued seeming belief that they’re Apple and that they’re selling a lifestyle I don’t think will translate into success in the very long term.

New Tyres - Michelin Pilot Road 2

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 02:21:29 +0000

I’ve discovered that one of the few downsides to owning a very reliable motorbike is that even though you do the regular checks on it, there are times where you think, “When was the last time I checked that?”. For me recently that was the tyres, as I knew they’d been on quite a few years, so I did a close inspection, and whilst they had wear left, there was a small amount of crazing in some of the tread, and since I actually have a lot of riding to do over the winter, I decided it was time to swap them out. I asked around, checked in on the GaijinRiders forum and I was actually surprised that for the two things I needed to know, I was getting quite a few people saying the same thing - for my bike and riding style, the Michelin Pilot Road 2 tyres would fit the bill, and the best place to get them fitted was a small shop in Setagaya in Tokyo called Speed Stars.

I called them a couple of days before to confirm the tyre and the dimensions, and they’d said they’d need to order the tyres in, which I thought might mean a week or so wait - actually it would be the next evening. That’s just good service and market knowledge.

The shop is about an hour from me, but it’s a decent run on a good road, so no problems there. The day I went the weather was miserable and raining, but I’m an all weather rider, so I got on the rain gear and the trusty 2006 Honda CB400 SF to make the run.

The SpeedStar people come across as really friendly, and had the job done in less than an hour. I’d actually arrived a few minutes after they opened and there was already a couple of people in - I get the feeling this place is really popular. I waited in the adjoining cafe they own, where the staff were friendly, even showing me around her own bike (a nice Harley) and chatted until the new tyres were on. They’ve got a very nice atmosphere there, and it’s the kind of place which is worth stopping in if you happen to be passing in Setagaya. The pricing was good too - cheaper than NAPS, and there’s a small discount for paying cash, but even if NAPS were a little cheaper, I’d still go to SpeedStar just for the people and service.

I’ve now done a few hundred kilometers on the Road Pilot 2s, and they really area a good tyre - very stable with good cornering and you can really feel the improved rolling characteristics over the old Battlax. That cornering is going to be important - I love riding the twisties and I’ve also noticed they’re a lot better in wet corners too.

I’m looking forward to getting a few thousand more kilos under these.

Useful Summer Products

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:33:33 +0000

Japan is hot and humid in the Summer, which is something I don’t need to tell anyone who has actually been here for it, but here’s a few things I have found which makes it that little more tolerable, especially if like me you actually like to get outside in it. One thing not explicitly on the list is sunblock which I apply liberally and frequently … and liberally again. Surviving n Japan has a round up on that, but in the meantime, here are some useful summer products.

Taichi Arm(our)ed Mesh Gloves
Just to start with a motorbike oriented one - my old summer gloves somewhat fell apart at the end of last summer, and because I like to ride my bike year round, I decided to pop down to NAPS in May during one of their sales and try on some gloves. I tried on a LOT of gloves. Aside from the four fingers and thumb per hand, I seem to have hands which don’t fit in a lot of gloves very well. The Icon gloves are nice, but the fit and size of the ones at NAPS weren’t quite there. These Taichi ones instantly fitted - like a glove. On the bike they let enough air through but don’t feel ‘drafty’ if you know what I mean, and the straps are well made from rubber and fit well. Importantly, there’s enough space around the thumb to allow easy reach to the indicator (blinker) switch - that’s something not to underestimate.

Frogg Toggs ChillyDana
I often wear some kind of head towel, because, to be honest, I sweat a lot. I also like to get out and do stuff - or indeed stay in and cook, so it works there too. Usually I’ll use a large cotton kerchief or a towel solution, but we found this.

Camelbak
If you like going out on these hot, humid days for any amount of time and distance, but don’t want to keep dipping into the (plentiful) vending machines, taking your own water with you, I’ve found, is a really good move, especially if you’re on two wheels. I decided to invest in one of Camelbak’s most basic products - the classic 2 litre water bag, in a simple backpack mount. It does seem to keep that water a little bit cooler, and the tube dispenser means there’s less mucking about with lids and cumbersome bottles. You can also put the bag itself into most backpacks on the market, so there’s no doubling up on baggage.

Keen sandals
Since where we live has sea, sand, rivers, stone and pavement, I like to have a decent pair of sandals for just walking around with the family - something which can go in and out of water without it being an issue. Previously I’d had a pair of Teva sandals, but since their distribution in Japan seems to have fallen apart at the same time as those long serving sandals, I decided to try Crocs last year to see if the low price was worth it, and frankly they just annoyed me for the whole Summer.

This year then, I’m giving the Keen Newport sandals a go, and so far they’ve been fantastic for all surfaces - very comfortable, and you can even jog in them if you’re so inclined for short distances. They’re not cheap though at 9,500en for my pair, though it looks like they’ll last a significant amount of time, and feel good at the same time.

[Not] Unlimited Mozy

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:40:22 +0000

Something interesting happened on February 1st. in the incredibly exciting realm of online backups we found that it’s not unlimited at Mozy. Let’s just address one thing first: backups. Please make backups and make them regularly. Even better, have an onsite and an offsite backup. For me, offsite used to mean burning to DVD-R and shipping to the parents, nine time zones away, and thus preserving all my family’s pictures, video and a few other bits in case something Bad (™) happened.

Initially I went with JungleDisk/Amazon S3 for this, but in November 2009 shifted to Mozy - unlimited backup for 5USD a month which made more sense for me and meant I could also backup all the .dv videos and music, then about 140GB in total, now about 175GB.

As I say then, on Feb. 1st. Mozy dropped their unlimited plan, and implemented a tier based system. Instead of unlimited for 5 USD/month, it would be 50GB for 6USD/month and additional fees per 20GB above that. For me then, that would be about 21USD / month - a decent price increase.

As I posted on their forums, on the now 847 post complaint thread:

“I appreciate storage (even with EMC behind you) costs money. Bandwidth costs money. I can understand your move to a tiered, non unlimited plan, I really can. That said, here’s my two thoughts:

- you set the baseline too low - I see a lot of people on Twitter, and myself between 150-200GB, and for us, there’s just no economic reason to stay once our plans expire. For me that’s 10months, though I need to be careful to avoid the auto-renewal if I decide to leave (and unfortunately take my parents with me). I don’t think we’re abusing your generous unlimited offer with that amount per month. My fee likely covers my cost to you.

- but honestly, what irks me most is that I learn about this on Twitter, and on Lifehacker. I don’t have an e-mail from you, I don’t see anything on the blog from you. That just seems to imply you’re not interested in customer relations. As I implied above, that I only get mail from Mozy after they’ve charged my credit card, but not for a product offering shift like this means that I think you’re going to have a painful reaction from users who don’t watch every product announcement not in their mailbox.

Again, it’s a bold move by Mozy and I’m sure others will follow, and users will chose to stay or go, but really, whoever handled the rollout of this announcement needs to be given a little talking to.”

The first company blog entry for the change came on February 3rd. A touch late for many. That support forum thread is 99% complaints, accusations, as you can imagine.

I didn’t get the email notification Mozy say they sent. I use Google Apps for mail and had a look but found nothing. I asked about this and Community Manager Mike responded that so many e-mails going out at once probably set many ISPs spam alarm bells ringing. I find this fairly plausible, but given I’d already seen it on Twitter it was essentially moot within 24hours anyway.

“Mike, thanks for posting, and I wish you all the best too.

Business needs change, strategies change, sheer costs change, and that’s part of the world. Per my previous post in this thread, one thing I hope Mozy is hearing, aside from people’s unhappiness with the costing, is the communication. I found out via Lifehacker - no email for me. That’s not impressive. When I went to the blog at http://mozy.com/blog/ there’s nothing there either.

Given this thread, and the pounding #mozy is taking on Twitter and elsewhere, which I’m sure Mozy anticipated, it’s obvious a lot of people liked the service as it was, and many will leave due to the change. I hope those who work in Mozy stay employed in whatever direction Mozy is going. A company is always made up of it’s staff and it’s customers.

As for me, I have a few months for myself and my parents until renewal, so I’ll likely wait and see what happens.”

To which Mike responded:

“Thanks. The emails went out last night, however because of the volume of emails, it took a while for all of them to be sent. Also, because of the volume, I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit a lot of spam filters. The Mozy blog was supposed to contain this content here, but they moved it because of the high traffic (they didn’t want to bring mozy.com to a crawl).”

I’m actually finding this quite interesting, both in how to manage this from Mozy’s point of view, and how to seize some advantage. You only have to check out some Twitter streams for Feb. 1st. to 3rd. to see how this works: mentions of Mozy, #Mozy

Note that the hashtag seems to have a lot of spam like entries still pimping the unlimited and free plans - it’s fair to say Mozy has zero control over this.

Basically, it’s a pounding at best. Mozy in their Twitter stream is obviously on the defensive and they don’t really have any carrot to dangle. Also, note that up until the end of January, Mozy would go for days without posting - now it’s more than hourly.

Now see how competitor Crashplan is working this with their ‘mozyonover’ 15% discount link thrown out all over. @crashplan.

There’s a key couple of key phrases repeated in there such as “We appreciate your business.” and “Welcome” as well as careful retweets, and the re-iteration of their migration discount URL.

What comes out of things like this is that it makes people go and take a look at competitors - I looked at quite a few but I should say that I’ve gone with Crashplan. Crashplan have an interesting client which allows me to use their app to backup to another local machine as well as their online service (or even a friend’s PC).

Sustainable?

One thing that did occur to me is why. Obviously Mozy wants out of the large storage consumer market - chances are it just doesn’t have the profit margin they need and is more trouble than they feel it’s worth. I suspect the sweet spots are indeed these sub 50GB people, and the small business users. I wonder how long till others decide to drop ‘unlimited’; I suspect that may depend on how Mozy fares.

I think there are questions over anything called ‘unlimited’ though I honestly believe 170GB isn’t a huge amount of data, people backing up terabytes is almost impressive. Perhaps its because to me Mozy was a last resort - my main machine, a Mac - has a Time Machine drive as live backup, and I take weekly snapshots to a couple of attached hard drives.

Mozy, with it’s download speed even on my nice fibre connection, isn’t going to rival an eSATA2 HDD for restore. However, if someone walks off with that drive and the diminutive Mac Mini, then Mozy just paid for itself.

As you can see from my posts, and some of the others, I just can’t get angry about this. Yes, it’s a pain uploading all that data to another site, but my Mac is happy to do that whilst I sleep, and it’s still on Mozy whilst I move. If anything, I hope it makes people think more about offsite storage.

Nikon D40

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:29:52 +0000

After three years with my little Canon IXY 500, I recently received a new camera, and it’s my first stumbling footsteps into the world of D-SLR cameras in the shape of Nikon’s new entry level model, the Nikon D40 ( Japanese).

Whilst I’ll still be taking my IXY out for quick point n shoot bits, like snowboarding, I wanted to learn to use a ‘real’ camera, and hopefully get better family and day to day pictures. The Nikon sports a 6.1MP sensor (only 1MP more than the IXY) but excels way beyond the compact in image quality - even I was amazed at the different in depth, light and colour the Nikon has, so as someone who stuck with tiny cameras for years, I would definitely advise people to check out the weird, and increasingly ‘cheap’ world of digital SLRs. As ever, before we bought this, we spend time at DPReview.com, where the D40 got a great review.

Hopefully, after I’ve finished learning what all the buttons do I can actually upload a few decent pics to the Gallery and spend a bit of time doing spot the difference.

Solio saves!

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:43:02 +0000

One little gadget I got last month was a Solio. Basically, it’s made of three solar panels connected to a rechargeable battery. It’s multi purpose really - either charge the battery from the sun, and then via connectors, charge up a mobile device (e.g. iPod, Palm, GameBoy Advance etc.), or run whilst charging. if there’s no sun, you can charge the Solio from a wall and just use it as an extra battery.

It ships with the iPod connector, but there are quite a few more. I’ve just send off for the mini-USB one to charge my Palm 72 with. I’m waiting for one to work on the PSP and/or the DS Lite too.

You can order it from their website, or from a few major retailers - here in Japan Bic and Yodobashi allegedly carry it, but I went into Bic’s main shop in Yurakucho here in Tokyo and the only one they had was in a small glass case near the stairs - and not the main stairs either. The Japanese press release we showed to staff was met with weird looks and “ask in the iPod area” responses. That said, if you go to Bic Camera’s website, you can order it easily from there, but it may be cheaper ordering it direct.

I have to say I really like it - not just because I like odd eco-friendly things, but because it’s really useful either for charging as you go, or as the bolt-on battery. worth a look.

Honestly Bad Coffee

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 05:18:27 +0000

Every now and then it’s good to try something you don’t often try. To be honest to yourself. However, a bad time for this is before a meeting at work, and a bad thing to try is a different variety of something you aren’t keen on anyway.

For me, this was a different type of canned cold coffee from the works fridge. Generally, I don’t drink these, but when one is called " Honesty" you have to at least give it a try right?

Wrong.

This was awful, vile, disgusting. If this coffee was a relative, you’d send it really nasty socks at Xmas. If you see this in the konbini, give it a miss. Honestly.

Where is the Honda?

Wed, 05 May 2004 21:47:22 +0000

As some of you may know, I’m thinking of getting a scooter (landlord be damned). So, we went to the main Honda bike showroom in Aoyama last week, except they don’t stock scooters but the nice front desk ladies helpfully printed out the honda.co.jp web pages for the nearest dealer to me, which is near Jiyugaoka (a 15 min bus ride). So off we went.

As it was a nice day in Golden Week, we walked there, carefully calling ahead to make sure they were open. My mistake here was not saying ‘and do you have this specific model in stock’, because when we arrived they only stocked bikes costing 400,000yen and above. To be fair, they did have 3 scooters in, none of which I was interested in (and neither were the staff). When we asked about the model I like (the chunky Zoomer) they said they didn’t stock them, but we could look at one that was in for repair.

Repair?

Would I like to see a broken one? Maybe I’m unfamiliar with modern sales techniques, but I’m not sure this is the way to sell things. At least she offered though. However, I couldn’t sit on it or touch it (as it wasn’t theirs, which is fair enough), but I could look at it. Unfortunately, I’d already done that a few times around the station most days for a weeks.

The bottom line is that when I try a different dealership next week, I’ll call forward before I go. What’s wrong Honda? Seems you don’t want me to buy one - maybe I should try an alternate vendor.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

neal — 2004-05-06

Cool! I want one of these and one of the wheelman too! You have access to some cool stuff that will never make it to the uk. Arse! Hmmmm maybe I should start an import business….???? I think you are crazy for getting a bike having experienced the thrills and close spills of japanese drivers…. but thankfully the rugged construction of the Cube we drove kept us safe (!)

gen — 2004-05-10

graham, you should be checking Yahoo Japan Auctions for used scooters- buying new is silly.

If it was my money, I’d be looking at one of the newer stripped bare models that are popular- the “el cheapo” ones because they are less expensive to own and less tempting for thieves.

Suzuki’s Choinori and Honda’s Zoomer are the ones that I am referring to.

graham — 2004-05-10

Thanks Gen. I looked at the Choinori, but it’s a little too small for me. Having looked around a lot I’m still thinking of the Zoomer. As for new vs. used, I’m still not sure. Obviously price is important, but I’ve heard from friends that 2nd hand scooters can be ’thrashed’ (as we say in the UK), that is, a bit warn out by over-enthusiastic young owners.