Japan Inc. articles from January 2003

Japan Inc. archives from January 2003

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... NOVEMBER'S KANSAI EYE ARTICLE is memorable for the wrong reasons. Alex Stewart's treatment of two featured foreigners' wives as unnamed appendages was highly offensive. Kyle Barrow's wife has a name -- Yoko -- which could easily have been...

Correction.
January 1, 2003... J. Dax Hansen, co-author of A Web of Rules in the November 2002 issue, works for Perkins Coie L.L.P. He can be reached at Dhansen@perkinscoie.com.

Debunking Japanese Stereotypes. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... DAVID MATSUMOTO OF SAN Francisco State University has an interesting new book for sale that basically says we are all wrong when it comes to analyzing the Japanese. In The New Japan: Debunking Seven Cultural Stereotypes, put out by...

Chiba offers offices at half price to foreign firms. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... In order to promote foreign investment, Chiba Prefecture and Chiba City started offering office space for foreign firms in December. And the good news is that the rent is about half the market price. According to the plan, they will offer 10...

Telecom story updated. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... We ran a story in our November issue explaining why calling from a fixed line to a mobile phone, or keitai, is so much more expensive than keitai-to-keitai calls. Some fixed-line carriers argue that this is a conspiracy among mobile carriers to...

Government worried about foreign exodus from stock market. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... A working group of the Financial System Council (FSC), an advisory body to the prime minister, has begun deliberations on the growing exodus of foreign companies from the Japanese market, the Asahi newspaper reported. With the delisting of the...

Japan's TV broadcasters trail in race to go digital. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... Digitalization of TV broadcasting is a big national project. According to the government plan, terrestrial digital broadcasting is due to start in three major cities -- Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya -- in December 2003, and every TV program in Japan...

Feeding your pet through your cellphone. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... NTT-ME started pet-feeding services in November, using an automated feeding machine with a camera installed inside. The machine, iSeePet, stores pet food inside. You can access the machine through your keitai or PC to control feeding time. You...

Microsoft to let government see source code. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... Microsoft has said it will let the Japanese government see the source code for Windows to appease government concerns about using the software in its c-Japan initiative. The Japanese government will get specific information on security holes in...

Portable wizardry from WiLL. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... The SV-AV30 is the latest portable wizardry in the WiLL line of designer products that are supposed to appeal to a hipper, trendier audience (mainly women, in fact) by combining funky design with useful features. The first wave of products did...

Wildseed on making ringtones sing. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... In early 2003, Kyocera is planning to release a new phone for the US market (code-named Delta 2), which is aimed at the "young and fun" segment and optimized for entertainment. The Delta 2 will feature Wildseed's "Smart Skin" intelligent...

France's brand new baby i-mode. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... In November, France's Bouygues Telecom (more than 6.6 million subscribers) saw the safe arrival of a bouncing new baby i-mode, complete with about 85 content providers and two handsets (NEC and Toshiba). Judging from the Web site, the look and...

Cars for the M generation: Toyota's G-Book steers online autos to the masses. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... TELEMATICS TECHNOLOGY IS DESIGNED to give drivers remote access to data over a wireless network. Usually, this technology is centered on the car navigation system and the driver's cellphone. But the racy little WiLL CYPHA has changed all that,...

Test time for universities: as the number of college-age students dwindles, schools fight to stand out amid the crowd. One university's answer; give the freshmen laptops, wire the campus and teach mass communications. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... EDOGAWA UNIVERSITY SHARES ITS quaint campus with Edogawa Women's Junior College in Kashiwa, Chiba prefecture. It has nearly 1,500 students and less than half a dozen buildings. Edogawa is typical of hundreds of campuses across the country...

Hot dog: Canine translator gives Fido the gift of gab. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... JAPAN IS A COUNTRY where people in times of recession will happily fork out [yen]15,000 for a therapeutic regimen of Dead Sea mud packs, a massage and ear wax removal. Thing is, it's for their dogs. Small wonder that a gadget heralding a...

Feeding that foreign TV habit: you don't have to rely on videotapes from Mom anymore; many shows can be found via broadband and P2P. (Upfront).
January 1, 2003... YOUR HEART RACED WHEN you found it in your mailbox. A videotape from mom. You spend the next six hours in front of the TV, soaking up whatever boob-tube culture she had recorded back home. It was a mini-vacation. Now more homesick expats...

For the occasional hotspot user. (Radar Screen).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... To tap into the many wireless LAN hotspots found in Japan today, all you need is a laptop, a wireless LAN card and a provider. You can get connections at your local Starbucks, McDonald's and many other chain food stores. But why pay a monthly...

Interpreters to the rescue. (Radar Screen).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Being in Japan can be tough if you don't speak the language. What if somebody suddenly shows up at your door babbling something you don't understand? Or your secretary may call in sick and you may have to take an important business call in...

Anime in America: Japan's animated movies have risen from cult status to cultural force in the US. Next up for the moviemakers: winning approval from Mom and Dad.
January 1, 2003... LANTERNS LINE VILLAGE WALLS. An abandoned theme park. Temples, lakes and food fit for gods. It's a cartoon, but a beautiful, stunningly realistic one that leaves the audience hushed at this dinky art house theater in South Florida. Most wait...

Law firms going global in Japan. (Special Advertising Section: Law Firms in Japan).
January 1, 2003... The Japanese public, traditionally much less litigious than the Western standard, is currently rethinking the role of law in society. TV quiz shows featuring lawsuits are increasingly popular. More law firms are advertising on the train, and...

The year ahead.(Japan)
January 1, 2003... And the supporting cast is a jaded generation too comfortable to get passionate about anything. Takenaka's bad-loan drama, starring the Gatekeeper of Hell, plays out on center stage. The third wave of buyouts lurks behind the curtains. BAD...

Dr. Oh No! The name is Bomb. James Bomb.
January 1, 2003... Suffering scribe gives garbled 007 manuscript the Goldfinger and scores a point for human translators everywhere. IT BEGAN, AS MY jobs often do, with a telephone call. My British friend Gavin, a translator, had been approached by a...

International Schools in Japan. (Special Advertising Section).
January 1, 2003... You're moving to Japan to work Great, but what do you do about your family's educational needs? You might be surprised to learn that Japan is home to numerous multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-purpose and globally competitive educational...

Business in Japan just became affordable Miyazaki helps call centers slash costs. (Advertisement).
January 1, 2003... A call center used to be just a place where operators answer questions from customers, handle orders and complaints and do sales on the phone. But in recent years, call centers have become important tools in overall corporate strategies. ...

Nanotechnology in Japan. (A Special Section for Professional Investors Focused on Japan: Investor Insight).
January 1, 2003... "The new, new thing. It's easier to say what the new new thing is not than to say what it is. It is not necessarily a new invention. It is not even necessarily a new idea -- most everything has been considered by someone at some point. The new...

Directory listings.
January 1, 2003... Architecture-office solutions Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd. Kasumigaseki Bldg. 35F, 3-2-5 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6035 www.mitsuifodosan.co.jp Okamura Corporation Hotel New Otani Tower, 4-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku,...

Recruiting for restructuring. (Sponsored Section).
January 1, 2003... DaiJob.com is probably best known for being the largest bilingual online recruiting jobs board in Japan. It is not so well known, however, that the company also has a rapidly growing practice offline, with an executive search for companies that...

So much for "buy and hold": persistent bear markets should be shaking our faith in a fundamental investing tenet. (Money Watch).
January 1, 2003... DURING THE US BULL market between 1982 and 2000, the mantra was "buy and hold" and "stocks for the long run." The argument was that the average return on stocks in the US over the past century or so has been around 6.5 percent -- or much better...

Making water. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... With the exception of dips in 1997 and 1999, demand for bottled water has shown steady year-on-year growth. Last year, the market surpassed 1.2 million kiloliters, more than six times the volume of a decade earlier. Leading the pack is...

Moonlighting for crumbs. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... The business weekly Diamond surveyed 800 salaried employees from ages 30 to 50 about holding down outside jobs. Of the total, 39 percent said they've had outside jobs. Of these, 12 percent were currently working, and 27 percent had held the...

Bowing and scraping. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... Nikkei Business provided seven hints about how to write a letter of apology in Japanese. They are: 1) Acknowledge mistakes directly and in a frank manners 2) Use sincere expressions; 3) Strongly express an intention to rectify the problem, 4)...

Risky work. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... A survey by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare looked into the physical complaints of workers who put in late night shifts. Stomach and digestive complaints topped the list; they were mentioned by 51 percent of the respondents. High...

Why things go wrong. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... Type the Japanese words "Mafii no Housoku" (Murphy's Law) into the google.com search engine and you'll get 12,300 hits. You can thank the Nihon Murphy Fukyukai Japan Society for the wide acceptance of Murphy's Law in Japan. Nikkei IT magazine...

Tiger's 13 strokes back. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... Who are the most popular sports stars in Japan? In the 10th annual survey of 2,000 Japanese conducted by the Chuo Research Co., Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners, with 23.0 percent of the votes, was head and shoulders above the other...

Smoke gets in your eyes. (Blowfish).
January 1, 2003... The number of Japanese adult males who smoke fell to 49.1 percent, the first time the figure has fallen below the halfway point since the former Japan Tobacco Monopoly (now called JT) began conducting its survey in 1965. The figure for males...