Viewing archives from "April 2007"

Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.

hahahahaha! Thats just so good. Gives "sheepdog" a whole new meaning. The article goes on to say how the general lack of sheep in Japan aided the scam, since many Japanese don't know what a sheep looks like... oh come on!



The best part is that the scam was discovered when a Japanese movie star, Maiko Kawamaki, went on a talk show wondering why her poodle wasnt barking or eating dog food!!! Can you imagine! Need to get this footage, links in the comments please!

She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.

Now I dont even know what crestfallen means, but it sounds pretty damn hilarious! Following the show, hundreds of women called the police fearing the worst of their own new "poodle".

One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.

"became suspicious" - not "they realised it was in fact a fucking sheep", just became a bit suspicious!!!

So if you're living in Sapporo, you just bought a new poodle, you're completely retarded and your dog is a farm animal... it might be time for you to become a little suspicious.

A great story found by bhappy.

In a previous oldSushi Blurb I mentioned the ordeal of one Westerner who got himself in to some trouble (he threw a taxi driver on the ground then stole his phone... then went and told the Police about it...) and ended up in a Japanese prison.

Some good reading and some great reasons to be careful what you do while staying in Japan! Namely DONT HIT TAXI DRIVERS! Stippy.com is releasing the story in multiple parts, and I will keep as up-to-date with it as I can.

Part 1: "The Taxi Ride"
Part 2: "The Beginning"
Part 3: "Bad Cop, Good Cop"
Part 4: "Processing"
Part 5: "Manga and Routine"
Part 6: "The Guards"
Part 7: "The Driver"
Part 8: "Day 15"

Here is a pretty interesting article on living and working in Japan. The article is specifically talking about the gaming industry, however a lot of the points made can easily be related to the Japanese working system in general.



Page 1 details some general facts about the Japanese working system, and some of the ways a Westerner might find him or herself in Japan, with page 2 detailing some of the differences between the working ethics.

I particularly like this part about working hours, and how Japanese workers are not necessarily 'working long hours', more that they are just hanging around because its not generally accepted to leave the office before your direct supervisor. I saw a LOT of this over the last 4 years, even in the school systems, and it always got to me. Foreigners are generally expected to fit in with these working hours too, but its something I decided early on not to become a part of, regardless of the consequences. The trick is to do it over time gradually, and make sure you get your work done on time. Then there 'should' be no problem. One of the authors of this article agrees with me

according to proper Japanese etiquette, nobody leaves until the boss and no individual leaves before his or her immediate supervisor. Regardless of whether a single individual has any work left to do. This is compounded by “slacking” during the day according to Tavares. “Japanese don’t ‘work’ long hours,” he said. “They just stay at work for long hours...

The article gets a bit more game focused on pages 3 and 4, but has some good general points on page 5 with a great summary of the UK, US and JAPAN working environments:

“The UK is a pub culture - people like to doss and arse about a lot, but they are very good and very skilled at their jobs - when they do them.”

“The US is a corporate culture, everyone is a cog in the machine, even in a smaller company, so there is far less responsibility towards the company and its finances and people assume that they should have the best wage, best equipment, best software, best everything, even if they don't use them. That said, they have great responsibility to the work itself and there are some extremely clever and diligent people there. Corporate politics, gossip and rivalries can get a bit too much.”

“The Japanese games development culture is still slightly "salaryman", everyone kind of avoids responsibility by remaining quiet but they persevere by themselves until they get the product done. Unfortunately, this lack of sharing is hurting the technical development of the games industry here in Japan. The Japanese never give up until all the details are in place and they try and leave nothing haphazard or rough-edged, or oozappa (in Japanese).”

Heading to Wakayama any time soon? If so, dont forget to send me a squid flavoured postcard from the deepest underwater mailbox on record... pfft, as if you'd forget!

The mailbox is located 10m beneath Susami Bay with mail being sent by means of special waterproof plastic postcards. The mailbox is officially part of the Susami post office, taking 200 peices of mail a day in busy times, and it even has a special key!

... and this guy is offering an Amazon gift certificate worth 10 times the amount paid on postage for sending him a postcard (squid flavour optional) from the underwater yuubinkyoku. No mention of the scuba expenses or risk of being eaten by giant octopi however...

Japan's biggest wireless operator, on Monday unveiled a new mobile phone equipped with a motion sensor that lets users play games like the popular Nintendo Wii console.

With DoCoMo's D904i, made by Mitsubishi Electric Corp, users can swing the handset like a tennis racket or wield it like sword to control game play, instead of punching on the keypad.

I fail to see how this will work since you have to be looking at the tiny screen in order to play these games, and 'swinging like a tennis racket' with both my head and hand is not something I want to be doing on the train...



I had a look at the Specification on the DoCoMo Japanese site, and it does look pretty cool though, although 'not quite' Wii-like just yet. But it appears to have other features, like turning the phone on its side and the display will also switch to a widescreen display automatically.

It also shows off some of the motion sensing game capabilities here. Mitsubishi are also introducing a couple of other phones which have games that take advantage of the built-in camera, I guess much like the PS2 eye-toy.

The phones were just announced, and are set to be on sale in May 2007, just a couple of weeks away. I also love this final quote from Yahoo News, absolute quality:

Earlier this year, DoCoMo, which caters to 54 percent of Japan's mobile phone users, introduced a phone that features a touch-sensitive screen and a model that gives off a relaxing scent.