Archive for August, 2007

Kyoto University Emissions Tax

Kyoto is famous in Japan for many things, in the past for classic temples like Kinkakuji and Kiyomizu-dera and for being the capital of Japan from 794 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. It is well-known more recently for things such as the Kyoto Protocol and Kyoto University. This week, Kyoto University became the first University in Japan to introduce a so-called “University Environment Tax”, to attempt to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases within the University.

Getting Pregnant in Japan – Part Three: Handy Internet Bookmarks

This is the third installment in a series about my personal experience of being pregnant in Japan (or perhaps I should say, of my wife being pregnant). Although I hope that some of the observations have value for gaijin of both sexes, I’m intentionally writing this series from my own perspective – a Gaijin Father in Japan.

WaiWai: Gals refresh body and soul by ‘recycling sex’ with old beaus

Posh women are increasingly returning to the arms of their old beaus, even if they’re as fat, bald and stinky as their husbands, in a phenomenon Shukan Gendai (8/18-25) labels “recycling sex.”

“Mie,” as we’ll call the 38-year-old housewife, comes from a more expensive part of Tokyo and is a case in point.

Double Byte “Internationalized Domain Names”: A Superficial Alternative (Part 2)

This is part two of our writeup and perspective on IDNs, especially double byte Japanese domain names. Without going into too much more history or spurting out much more technical jargon, lets explore some day to day aspects of double byte domains, how they are (or rather aren’t) used, and why they just aren’t the glowing future of Japanese internet real estate that initially they may seem to be.

Getting Pregnant in Japan – Part Two: Which baby books to buy, and in which language?

This is the second installment (find the first here) in a series about my personal experience of being pregnant in Japan (or perhaps I should say, of my wife being pregnant). Although I hope that some of the observations have value for gaijin of both sexes, I’m intentionally writing this series from my own perspective [...]

Double Byte “Internationalized Domain Names”: A Superficial Alternative (Part 1)

Internationalized Domain Names, heard of them? Double byte web addresses. You know the ones – the 日本.jps and the 価格.coms – you must have seen them lurking somewhere? Yes, these are called IDNs, or Internationalized Domain Names.