Japan Inc. articles from January 2005

Japan Inc. archives from January 2005

No terra firma: a personal account of the Niigata earthquake.(LOOK!)
January 1, 2005... AN EARTHQUAKE of magnitude six on the Japanese scale rocked central Niigata Prefecture, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, on October 23. David Boudreau, a software-consultant based in Nagaoka City, filed this first-hand account of the...

Localization services from a user's point of view.(INDEPTH)
January 1, 2005... LOCALIZATION IS A VAGUE, all-encompassing word that can mean anything from moving the steering wheel of a car from one side to the other to changing the formatting for a telephone input box. But perhaps the most common perception of...

The rise of Eizo Kobayashi: and how investing is becoming Itochu's new business line.(UPFRONT)(Cover Story)
January 1, 2005... DECEMBER 14, 1999, is a date that Eizo Kobayashi will not easily forget. It was the day that one of the world's largest trading companies, Itochu Corporation, pinned its hopes on an entirely new form of financing, the listing of a technology...

Embracing the silent voice of secret script: Yuca Ishizuka's art project in Shanghai encodes the secrets of women's script'.(ART PROJECT)
January 1, 2005... In feudal China women were fettered by brutal marriages and foot bindings and deprived of education. Those repressive conditions were perhaps one reason that several hundred years ago women in Hunan Province miraculously developed their own...

The compleat education: Japan's international schools get high grades for academic standards, diversity, and values.(EDUCATION)
January 1, 2005... INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS in Japan are selective, and the types of students who attend these schools you perhaps will not find in Belchertown or Hicksville USA. ********** IT IS A DIVERSE CROWD, with students from all over Europe, Asia,...

Tokyo's office stock vulnerable in a major quake: no municipal vision, few buildings meeting the latest safety construction codes.(REAL ESTATE)
January 1, 2005... Niigata prefecture, a mountainous region about 125 miles north of Tokyo, was struck by the nation's deadliest earthquake since 1995 on Oct. 23. The quake struck in Niigata at 5:56 p.m. local time, registering a magnitude of 6.5 as measured by...

A marriage maestro wed to innovation: Masahiro Hirose has successfully customized nuptials to revive the wedding industry.(FEATURE)
January 1, 2005... TOKYO businessman Masahiro Hirose is a bit of a maverick. He runs one of Japan's most innovative wedding planning and production agencies, yet secretly he yearns to be a politician. ********** SO FAR HIS AMBITIONS have been frustrated...

When gold turns to fool's gold: dealing with "Nice Guy, No Action".(VOICE)
January 1, 2005... LET'S see a show of hands: how many of you have struggled with one or more buchos (division heads) during your stay in Japan? Be sure to include those in your own company, your suppliers and your clients... Uh-huh, just as I expected-everyone...

Japanese getting into the brogue: ECC opens in Ireland the first on-line English language school.(LETTER FROM IRELAND)
January 1, 2005... A REFURBISHED Georgian period house, a moment's walk from leafy Stephen's Green in Dublin, Ireland, is not where you would expect to find teachers giving English conversation lessons to students in Japan. ********** HOWEVER, SINCE...

Secondhand alchemy: Japan's Anchor Networks recycles junk into cash.(PROFILE)
January 1, 2005... JAPAN'S obsession with the latest consumer products, coupled with its throw-away culture and tightening government regulations, has created an entire industry around recycling and exporting "junk." The most notable segment of this industry is...

Entering the Japanese market.(MARKET)
January 1, 2005... TRIANGLE Technologies assists relatively mature technology-based ventures in penetrating the market in Japan. Dr. Daniel Isenberg, Triangle's CEO, discusses the benefits of doing business in the Japanese market and the steps that high-tech...

Scandals are a feature of the landscape, but small cap stocks are the real investment story in Japan.(INVESTOR INSIGHT)
January 1, 2005... ONE CONSTANT feature of the Heisei Malaise has been scandals-most having to do with hiding the true extent of the balance sheet damage done by plunging stock prices and land values-but also about sloping quality control practices that allowed...

In the eye of a brainstorm: the state of Japanese science as observed at Neuroscience 2004.(EVENT)
January 1, 2005... SEVERAL hours before the doors opened on Neuroscience 2004, the San Diego Convention Center took on the feeling of a university campus at midterms. ********** CLUSTERED INTO AN AREA less than one square kilometer (smaller than...