lazysupper

There’s a lineup of 15 bands today at Koenji’s 20000volt, an even dubbed “Street Heroes” presented by Akutare and 00SQUAD. Doors open at 14:30, starts at 13:00. Entrance is 2,300 yen. Map is on the Koenji page.

AKUTARE
00SQUAD
HAT TRICKERS
KRIEGS HOG
CROSS FACE
F.L.Y
ISTERISMO
SKIZOPHRENIA (Tsuyama)
DEATH DUST EXTRACTOR( Tsuyama)
REALITY CRISIS (Aichi)
ORDER (Aichi)
??? (Aichi)
SYSTEM FUCKER (Aichi)
ORGANISM (Osaka)
VEKTOR (Hamamatsu)

Tagged as: Koenji, live, music, punk

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The first time I lived in Japan, from January 2003 to mid-2004, I was stunned by how archaic this “high tech” nation’s banking system was. At first i thought my painfully slow-moving, paper-based branch in Kiryu, Gunma was simply the consequence of being in a small town. I was wrong.

After five months in Kiryu, I moved to Nagano. My new branch was in downtown Nagano — a city that just five years previous had hosted the Winter Olympics, the biggest winter sporting event on earth. Surely my new branch would be the pinnacle of banking modernity.

Not so.

The main Mizuho branch in Nagano was another 2-level step back in time: 40 or so uniformed bank employees shuffling papers from countless desks to endless filing cabinets; dozens of seats for waiting customers; and a smoking section.

And then there were the ATM’s out front. They closed daily at 9pm, if memory serves me right. Except perhaps on Fridays when they stayed “open” a bit later because when they closed Friday they closed for the weekend! No money til Monday! Now that’s customer service! That’s using “Automated” tellers to their full potential. That’s absolutely retarded. If I (or anyone else) was not able to withdraw money for the weekend by Friday evening it was going to be a very boring, or very hungry, weekend.

Now, living in Tokyo, I can get money out of the ATM all weekend long. And up until midnight too! Why there are “hours of operations” for a machine I’ll never understand.

But what brought up this rant from years-old frustration? Two things:

#1. Two weeks ago my friend was in town from Canada and had to cash some traveler’s cheques. In most countries traveler’s cheques are treated like cash. That’s one reason people travel with them. Simplicity and security — that’s their purpose.

However, unsurprisingly, cashing traveler’s cheques in Japan is no simple matter. They must be cashed at a bank or post office. So off we went to the Minami Asagaya Post Office. Once inside, it took us 52 minutes to cash $500 worth of traveler’s cheques.

#2. Last week I sent a furikomi (ie: bank transfer) to pay for a replacement screen and digitizer for my smashed iPhone. It got sent to the wrong branch. Mizuho phoned the next day to inform me of the error and that I had to pay them 890 yen to correct it. But wait — could they correct the problem right there on the phone? Oh no. No, no, no. They required me to go to the bank, with the ATM slip from my transaction, and remedy the situation in person. I went to the bank the next day. It took 62 minutes to “send the money not to that branch, but rather this branch.” It also required the efforts of no less than three bank employees.

However, I guess I was somewhat lucky that day. Had they not taken so bloody long I might have been crushed to death by a 100-tonne crane on my walk back to work.

Tagged as: Japan

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Not even fully through the second round yet, and the 2009 Masters Tournament has already seen a number of firsts.

Shooting a 7-under 65, America’s Chad Campbell had the best start in tournament history.

At age 73, Gary Player played… in his 52nd tournament, out of which he made 30 cuts, got 3 wins, and on Day Two became the only man to hit 12,000 strokes at The Masters.

At age at 17 years, 6 months and 23 days, Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa became the youngest player since 1952 — and the second-youngest playesr ever — to play in a Masters Tournament.

Canadian Mike Weir also had his best opening round at Augusta ever, with his 4-under 68 putting him in a tie for sixth place at the end of the day.

And, perhaps most importantly, the greatest golf tournament on earth released the greatest sporting app on earth. It’s true. The Masters iPhone app (iTunes link) is by far the best sports-related app so far. Period.

The tournament that gave advertisers the finger in 2003 rather than bow to pressures, has created a single-sponsor app (IBM) that blows everything else in its class away. It is probably the fact that they care less about advertising revenue and more about their standards that the app is so good.

Features include:

Live, streaming video from the Tournament including Amen Corner Live, holes No. 15 & 16, Masters Extra, the Par 3 Contest and Player Interview from 3 locations.

Live Leader board featuring an over/under scoring view, player information and pairings with tee times.

Course Information with flyovers, player tracking, and hole details.

What I found really amazing was in the video section. Not only is there live streaming video, but the video you choose will play in the background while checking out the leaderboard, course info, main video page, etc. It also streams the video in a small window in the title bar (top right corner in screenshot above) without skipping a beat.

However, as I’m in Japan, rather than watch live streaming video I get to read “This content is unavailable in your region. Please make another selection.” Not surprising, as television networks seem to think we are still in a world of borders. Hopefully one day they’ll start acting like The Masters.

I hope the IOC and VANOC are paying attention. I want to see something like this for the 2010 Games.

Tagged as: golf, iPhone, Masters, PGA, Sports

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Starting last Friday (3/6) morning people could get a hotdog in almost any neighbourhood in Japan.

No, this is not some national bailout scheme to feed the hungry masses. It’s the due to the launch of a new menu item at the nation’s favorite Western fast food franchise — McDonald’s. And the new item is the (aptly named) McHotDog. I guess the simpler and tighter-sounding “McDog” would risk getting lost in translation over here.

The dog is offered only as a breakfast item… part of Ronnie’s “Living Morning” campaign (whatever that means). But who really wants hotdog after 10:30am anyway? Well, unfortunately I haven’t had a sunrise craving tubesteak recently, so the only photo I have is of promotional poster on the Marunouchi Line.

Tagged as: food, Japan

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The learning site formally known as iKnow (www.iknow.co.jp) has, after being offline for upgrades for the past couple days, come back online (and rebranded itself) as an app within a more comprehensive site called smart.fm.

The responses to the site’s blog post on the name change and update run the gamut from the hateful:
“I agree with the ‘This totally sucks’ people.”

To the critical:
“It sounds like a radio station, not a language learning site.”

To the diplomatic:
“And the new setup looks nice—though I still prefer the old site to the new.”

To the hopeful:
“I’m not wild about the new layout, but I guess I have faith that either you’ll fix it or I’ll adjust to it eventually.”

To the pleading:
“I don’t like it !! the design of the page is also not friendly!!! too complicated?? could u pls change it back?”

To the gushing:
“I like it! I know everyone will get used to it soon enough. ”

I said previously that I loved iKnow. And personally, I think the “iKnow” branding worked — but only insofar as anything “i” works. Steve Jobs and the “Apple Assault” of gadgetry and form-over-function product marketing makes me want to smash every iThing I see. This probably explains my love-hate relationship with my iPhone. But I’m no marketing wizard (hence I don’t work at Apple) so who am I to say? Rebranding genius or rebranding suicide? Only time will tell.

However, it’s not like they just released “New Coke” or something. They’re a small Tokyo-based company with a web-based learning tool that has so far really only been known within the language-learning community.

This move could allow them to break out of that pigeon hole and start taking on bigger fish in the learning/research pond (Wikipedia, About.com and HowStuffWorks come to mind).

More to post after a few hours of testing out the new format…

UPDATE March 6 1:06AM
The actually learning app “iKnow” is unchanged. It is (I think) exactly the same. Also, when I click on my my username or Home it takes me to my profile/progress page. And it has “Lists I’m Studying”… something I’d complained about NOT having before! Score one for Cerego (the “iKnow” company).

Also nice on my user page is “new comments on a question you started.” Not sure if that was there before. If it was, I didn’t notice it.

They’ve also added a Shoutbox. This shouts to … Everyone? My friends? Other shared-list people?

The GUI is a bit more plain than before. Not so “Web 2.0-ish”. But that’s fine with me. Web 2.0 is too “Steve Jobs” for me anyway.

Some glitches with drop-down menus staying dropped down as well. This and other typical beta issues.

Tagged as: apps, iKnow, Japanese, web

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Just installed WPtouch, an iPhone theme plugin for WorPress. However, according to its creators at Brave New Code is “more than just a plugin”.

More than just a plugin, WPtouch is an entire theme package for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, WPtouch makes your WordPress website load lightning fast on touch mobile devices, show your content beautifully, all while not interfering with your regular theme.

It’s actually pretty sweet. It took about 60 seconds for me to have a mobile-friendly site. Something I would not likely have done on my own any time soon. It’s a simple and effortless out-of-box solution that, if one desires, can be customized to the branding of their site.

One problem I did run into though is when I clicked on the included link to “View lazysupper’s Regular Theme“. It took me to my regular web theme fine enough, but when I clicked back to the WPtouch theme … I couldn’t. I exited the page completely and closed Safari. When I reopened the browser I found I had a persistent problem — I couldn’t get back to the WPtouch theme. It then cleared Safari’s cache, history, and cookies. Problem solved. But it’s still a problem — something I’m will be addressed in an update.

I’ll have to tinker with it at some point, but for an instant mobile presence things couldn’t get easier than WPtouch.

Tagged as: iPhone, tech, web, web design, WordPress

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