transparency in my reporting.

Eh, why not? This is my Japanese language blog*.

I've been hesistant to post a link here because I suffer from the universal condition of all gaijin. A mixture of pride and self-conciousness about my language ability. There's always a sense of competition about Japanese for some people, me included. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction both to correct other gaijin's Japanese, and to loathe the gaijin that do it to me.

But if I keep carrying some sort of concealed shame about my linguistic shortcomings, I'm not gonna get past them.


*My studies are still very much a work in progress, so if you can read Japanese, I apologize for the terrible grammar and writing. The content is generally pretty awful too. I set myself a standard of 500 characters a day, so it's been a push to write as much as I can, more often than not. I also still don't have very much breathing room in terms of vocabulary. Very often, what I say is shaped by what I know how to say. If I were to say the same things in English they'd probably come out a lot differently. Still, enjoy.

shoot the fucker down

I was just reading an article about the new Japanese global imaging satellite, after another from a couple weeks ago about an international initiative to restrict the use of space to "peaceful uses".

So a thought occurs to me. America has expressed it's intentions again and again to build the "star wars" satellite defense system, to the loud objections of other countries. But if America were to decide to build it, there would be nothing to stop other countries to shoot it down during it deployment-phase. Meaning the project would have to be conducted in utter secrecy, without congressional or voter approval.

The president has been known to think of this "wartime" government system as granting him whatever power he desires to "combat terrorism". Is it possible that the deployment is underway already, or soon to be underway?

If that's the case, would the chinese and russians not have a reasonable case for shooting down american satellites, knowing that they could well be "dual use" satellites?

I have a feeling that if America doesn't straighten up and fly right, china, russia, and to some extent japan and europe as well could become involved in dangerous satellite sabotage and espionage.

That's just a thought though.

NHK

Do you pay your NHK? Does anyone? (besides me)

I just read a little editorial on the state of affairs at NHK, and it looks like change is on the way. None too soon if you ask me.

The number of non-payers is an enormous and growing burden on the broadcaster. The whole world seems to know that not paying for NHK doesn't really carry any penalties, and consequently, they don't pay. NHK is looking at all the possibilities they can to figure out how to make people pay, but it's pretty clear the only viable option is to institute a penalty for not paying.

What gets me about the whole debate is what it shows about the contemporary culture of responsibilty. Several years ago, people were almost equally aware of the lack of penalties for non-payment, but paid anyway... out of a sense of duty. Several weeks ago, when I decided to pay for NHK, my office was insistent that I shouldn't pay, even if I do watch. Other people I've talked to as well think it's borderline insane to pay NHK.
We're leaving the Japan of prior eras, when duty to the society overshadowed personal well-being, to be sure. And that's a good thing. But I worry that the new Japan will build itself on top of the words of Horie sha-chou "If it's not illegal, it's ok". Or even worse, seeing as not paying NHK is indeed illegal, "it's ok, so long as you don't get caught"... the Huser ideology.

(update: I'm not entirely sure on this one, but I think the Huser thing may actually be something more like "the penalties are lower than the profits to be made in breaking the law")

up 569 points ftw!

the nikkei index pwns joo. Livedoor losses are now totally offset, and the dow is a bitch. Japanese market at its highest in over 5 years.

in other news, ftw does not mean "fuck the what", but "for the win". Fuck the what!

a rolicking good time for the whole family

I've watched three movies in the last three days. "Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room", "Untergang" and "Nobody Knows".

None of them was rolicking, or a good time for the whole family.
All three were quite good... though untergang was probably only good because I haven't practiced my german in so long. All three were also drawn out stories of downward spirals into death. "Nobody Knows" in particular was stiflingling sad. Great, really great, but nauseatingly sad at a couple points.

streaming level two on keitais.

e*trade japan offers streaming level 2 market info on keitais as of today. Orders can be processed for as little as 472 yen. I thought amateur trading was easy and populist when I was with e*trade US in 99-2000. my mind = blown.

in other news, I am in the market and losing money as of today! w00t.

seems like I should mention that Horiemon got his ass hauled in today. It's not a matter of "if" any more, but how much, and how much will the investors have to bear? as though it were ever a matter of if... My overly optomistic take is still that this is the best for the market. If we had to spend a whole year worrying about this insignificant player, the market would stand to lose a lot more than if we put that unpleasantness behind us as soon as possible.
The market never favors democracy and freedom. This time too, the expedient and secretive courts are going to help out the economy. Seems like I should have some compunction about being in the market knowing that... maybe.

the worst kind of blog entry.

the worst kind of blog entry is the entry that consists of nothing more than a link to an article that you liked. This is that kind of entry.

"The Stock Market" by Mark Cuban. I feel redeemed in knowing that I've felt the same about the market since 1998 as one of the most successful men in it.

re: two top singles from last year.

this shit is bananas.

this is just shit.

I don't really like either of those songs, but "since you've been gone" is just terrible. The only redeeming part is the midi sounding guitars throughout the whole song... no wait, it was the sub-avril chorus... no that's not it. Was it the utterly inane lyrics? The singer's unconvincing bleating?

Oh yeah, it's the guitar bridge lifted directly from Maps.

There was an interview with vanilla ice about the "under pressure" sample where he explained it something like:

The original was "dun-dun-dun-du-du-dun-dun, dun dun-dun-dun-du-du-dun-dun" whereas his version was "dun-dun-dun-du-du-dun-dun, tchk dun dun-dun-dun-du-du-dun-dun". So it was an orginal creation.

(had to get the "since you've been gone" hate off my chest.)

worrying about the monbushou scholarship, and my dark past.

Lately, every night, just before bed I remember that I did nothing about the monbushou scholarship today either. Everyday, that feeling is a little worse. But the application isn't due until the middle of the summer. Granted, I've got a lot of work to do between now and then but this worry is out of proportion to the problem.

Then it hit me.

In 1996, and 1997 I made a damned big mistake twice. Two times I let too much time pass to make a proper application to college. Consequently for two years, I was out of school, and getting dumber and lazier by the minute. Where I ultimately wound up was also the direct result of postponing and postponing.
Submitting rushed, sub-par applications to my real school of choice, Reed, got me admission (twice!), but didn't get me enough money to actually attend. (family equaled very broke) Not taking control of my life at that point, and not accomplishing what I know I could have is my single biggest regret.

Having that happen again is just an unbearable thought.

Today, I wrote to the SF consulate.


(ps, even seeing the reed website just now gets me queasy with regret)

I hate this cold.

a book so good I bought it twice.

Today I was out shopping in the aforementioned super-mini-mall plaza out on the edge of town (a bitch by bus). Walking from one of the buildings to the other, I took my first tumble of the year. It was a full-on, "feet go up, butt goes down" kind of fall. It didn't hurt, but there's always a sense of disappointment with the first fall of the season. I'm always holding out for a miraculous perfect season.

But this time, it wasn't just the shame and disappointment. Evidentally, the book in my pocket also flew out. I was reading "the wind up bird chronicles" in Japanese (*coughSHOWOFFcough*), so I figured it wouldn't be such a big deal to pick another one up. Besides, it was only 500 yen.

I was right, it wasn't a big deal... for me. In most Japanese book stores, paperback books are sorted by the publisher, and then the author. So I had to ask the staff of the book store. They looked at me like I had asked for a quarter pound of plutonium. When they figured out that I meant a japanese edition, they first showed me to the hardcovers. I asked about a "paperback" edition... and things got confused. The japanese word probably isn't *pay-paa-bakku*, but I figured book store people would suss it out. wrong-o.

It turned into classic Japanese frantic-search mode. One staff member got on the phone to ask about it, and was getting transferred to and fro (by people who were probably also being thrown into frantic search mode). Another started searching on the computer. Another... well he went to deal with other customers. Still, there were two people looking when I figured I might as well take a look at the spines of the books since I was pretty familiar with how mine had looked (the paperback publishers use recognizable spine designs). It took me about 8 seconds to find my book.

I look forward to a future where japan begins to lay things out logically. But, maybe I'm a dreamer.

(don't get me started on the video store where they sub-categorize drama into a million tiny pieces like "human drama" and "crime drama" and "romance".)

ambitious uppity japan

I like what I'm seeing out of japan lately; I like it a lot. Last night, Koizumi told the sloppy american beef exporters to fuck off after they slipped an explicitly forbidden cow spine in with the "good" stuff. This week, when the market went bananas, the foreign press moaned and grumbled, and then the japanese market had huge up day, completely out of pace with the grumbly global media. The demographic problem is more and more often phrased as an opportunity for Japan to show the world how it's done, rather than a crisis because we can't keep up with denmark (likewise fossil fuel prices). Hell or high water, Japan wants a permanent seat on the UN security council.

All around, Japanese culture has always resisted completely assimilating, but this year she's going well beyond that. Japan is acting like the world's second biggest economy, and not playing ball with global consensus. The BSE stuff is a small but symbolic effort to step out of the shadow of America... to turn America back into a customer instead of a boss. So long as America can politically wedge open the door and force in it's inferior, infected beef, Japan is a vassal state.

I think a whole bunch of economic and cultural flowers could bloom if Japan were to assert itself more in global politics and economics.

("ambitious japan" was a weird, largely contentless, ad campaign over the last few years, celebrating japan's ambition)

fuuck you, Ernest Hemmingway.

God, is Hemmingway boring. I started to give him a second chance after the "for whom the bell tolls" debacle, but about 20 minutes into listening to "a farewell to arms", he's blown it.

If you wanna be carried away into a very prosaic world not unlike ours, but minus all the relevance, I suppose his books are acceptable. For me though, he just doesn't go any farther than being a travel writer, travelling in places where the trees are "brown" and the roads "muddy". He conjures no beauty, truth, feeling from the landscape, or characters. They just interact in ways that don't have even the humanity of a Sopranos character.

That and war and manliness are just the bottom of the barrel of boring.

keitai sunset

keitai sunset
Originally uploaded by notnato.

For all my scattershot griping and blabbing on about the stock market, you might think I wasn't as happy and content as I've ever been.

You'd be wrong.

impulse engines.

You wouldn't believe how well I've handled my money for the last week. Today was payday, though, and my discipline is slipping. Today I bought, on impulse, a pan lid, a 1.5L bottle of coke, an 88yen bag of chips, instant mushroom pasta, powdered cheese pasta sauce, a bottle of water, and a 5 piece "cheese-potato" from DonDon. Not really that bad.

The real money vanished in a different way. I transferred a huge sum of money to my brand new e*trade japan account. It was a strange feeling to look at the screen of the atm and know that if I pushed the "yes" button that my savings would be decimated instantly. I pressed it anyway. I also had to make two seperate transfers, so I had to pay 1260yen in fees... only slightly less than my impulse shopping for the day.

Tomorrow, I steal a page from Mary's book. I'm going to get up early and take a bus out to the Showa Daibutsu. I don't know how it looks covered in snow, but I will soon. I'll try to get some pictures for sharing.

why they hate the consumer?

AU announced their fancy pants new music player cell phones today. The coolest model has a 4 gig hard drive attatched. But knowning the music biz like we all should by now, I held out my excitement...correctly.
Alongside the new keitais, they premiered their new music download service for keitais! Which is to say, that it don't matter what you do, that $30 cd of yours is not going into this keitai. There's still no keitai out there that lets you use your own music (I think). Bastards.

They even pretend to sweeten the deal by allowing you to back up your downloaded songs on your computer. Again, knowing what I know, I think that means they've created a non-Mac compatible piece of software that is so invasive of your systems processes that they need not fear you actually being able to "back up" your music to CD. If this were the states, I'm almost sure we'd be looking at Sony Rootkit part 2.

But speaking of Japan not giving a shit about the well being of it's computers... I imagine this country is teeming with viruses on their computers as well.

wrong, wrong, wrong

huh, the tokyo market is going crazy up today. I guessed wrong, I suppose. That doesn't really bode well for my investing acumen, though going up in general increases my odds wihout acumen as well.

edit as of 2:30... the tse is warning that volume may force them to close early today as well. Somehow if more than four million orders are executed in a day, the infrastructure runs a risk of compromise... or some such. seven or eight million orders placed (not executed could also mess her up).
also, "for the forseeable future", the TSE has trimmed a half-hour from it's day giving traders 2 full hours for lunch now. What is this, a mediterranean country?

edit again, at 2:32, both the order and execution capacity are at over 90% of their daily limits. This mess is all sort of an embarrassment for the TSE, except the normal trade volume　for a full month is only slightly more than the daily limits. Volume of orders is just off the charts. This is unmistakably a bumpy ride.

one more edit: CNN needs to work on how it writes headlines. "Japanese securities official dead" while it certainly is more flashy, does not have the same meaning as the first line of the article: "An executive of a Japanese securities firm involved in takeover deals by the high-profile Internet startup Livedoor has been found dead".
People caught in pretty bad misdeeds still commit suicide in Japan, and this may be a fishy death (prolly no), but a high ranking executive is not a "securities official". The livedoor stuff is actually an example of the securities officials getting off their asses and doing their job. Not a suicide-worthy shame.


One last thought on the market for a while... Even though I don't even have cent in it yet, the silly intricacies of market politics are already consuming a good portion of my blog. Money does eat your soul. Then again, I'd probably only be staring. at the. ceiling. otherwise.

conservatism is heavy. I grow heavy.

I've felt recently like modern "conservatism" is built on a belief that the world is impossibly black and irredeemable... like the conservative refuses to afford an ounce of trust to the world. Conservatism is dismissive of any and all dreams that aren't grounded in greed or deception. For the conservative, there is always a counter example that justifies treating the world with hatred. Like the coldest of men are the greatest of men.

I think the world drives us all in this direction. Tragedy after tragedy, violation after violation accumulate as we age, and we lose out trust and brightness.

In today's news is one of those tragedies that makes the world blacker and heavier for me. Today, the otaku murderer guy from the late 80's was given his final, unappealable death sentence. The black part is that I'm quite happy about it.
I oppose the death penalty, pretty strongly. I don't respect the authority of the state to control the literal life and death of humanity, nor the ability of the courts to determine guilt and innocence without flaw.

This guy, though, I'm glad to think that he will die unpleasantly, and at the hands of the state.

oh dear. down 3%

I certainly didn't think the market would tank quite so badly today. Much more than the tanking of the market though, the really troubling thing was the early close. Today was the first time in the history of the TSE that the market closed early.
The market driving computers were evidentally overwhelmed by the number of orders. That the were tons of orders being pushed through is, I think, a good thing. The market had already lifted a little off of its daily lows, so the volume of orders was likely caused in part by people snapping up perceived bargains.
But shutting the market down is a terrible thing. The TSE had another outrage regarding the market-infrastructure in december when a single order was beefed up. The number of shares and price of shares got switched, and the order was carried out. This further trouble with the infrastructure will not be welcomed by the international investment community. (which incidentally makes up over 70% of the market cap of the TSE).

Even worse though is the fallout from the underinformed individual investor. These two days of crash belong almost entirely to the individual japanese investors being spooked. Now, the market choking on volume of orders will sound royally shitty to the gut-reacting housewife daytraders. I can't imagine tomorrow will be a good day.

However, it is a matter of live/die by the sword/irrational indivual investor. I wonder how long they're gonna stay spooked.

shit

待って。日本のテレビでもshitが言えないの？今ロンドンハーツで女の人が言い出したとピーップになった。
Oops. I meant to put that on the J-blog, but it's interesting anyway. Just now on London Hearts, they seem to have censored the word "shit" from the mouth of a Japanese woman. Or maybe it was fuck. Either way, it strikes me as odd to take out foreign language swear words.