Bone on Mar 25 2007 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
This is a follow up story to our earlier coverage of the Yakuza turf wars in Nishiazabu, Central Tokyo (we advise to read the first article for context before going on). Next Wednesday will mark 49 days since Ryoichi Sugiura (杉浦良一), a director of the Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会), a Tokyo Yakuza gang, was shot and killed [...]
Blue on Mar 16 2007 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
Baidu.com. Heard of it? Possibly not, but Baidu is a $3 billion market capped internet beast in China with, according to Yahoo! Finance, over $125 million in cash. If you are of Chinese decent and live in Asia, chances are you know them very well. Baidu listed on NASDAQ in 2005 and everyone who bought [...]
Red on Mar 13 2007 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
Changing jobs is always an emotional experience for the best of us, but what do you think was going through Yasuyuki Higuchi’s (樋口泰行) mind when he accepted the job of Microsoft Japan COO last week, switching Jobs in more ways than one. While he was notably cagey at the press conference, it feels as though [...]
Bone on Feb 07 2007 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
Yesterday morning at 10am in the well-to-do area of Tokyo’s Nishi Azabu, a member of one Yakuza gang (the Yamaguchi-gumi, 山口組) shot and killed a very senior member (a 幹部 or kanbu, which roughly translates to “director”) of another Yakuza gang (the Sumiyoshi-kai, 住吉会) on the side of the main road between Roppongi and Shibuya, [...]
Blue on Jan 15 2007 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
“BNE has arrived!” – well that’s what the stickers tell us. What stickers? If you don’t know, then you either don’t live in any one of many big cities around the world where they are now officially everywhere, or you just don’t get out very much. These BNE stickers have become the centre of a [...]
Red on Nov 23 2006 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
An old friend of mine, visiting Tokyo for the first time in 5 years, mentioned something interesting a few days ago that stirred dormant thoughts in my head about inflation in Japan. He mused: “Sitting on the Narita Express, coming in to town, I started remembering the old Tokyo of five years ago and wondering [...]
Red on Nov 16 2006 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
The way that Newsweek changes its front covers (and lead articles) to cater for its local audience is old news. It seems that Newsweek has particularly been sensitive to their US readership when it comes to the war on terrorism. You can read about the most recent editorialism here on this page detailing how the [...]
Red on Sep 29 2006 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
Every gaijin who was in Japan in 2005 remembers Takfumi Horie. Riding by the seat of his pants, his company, Livedoor, was the symbol of new Japan. Young people, breaking the rules, creating the rules and doing things that they truly believed would better Japan. Unfortunately, when Horie made a hostile take-over attempt for NBS [...]
Blue on Sep 15 2006 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
Japan’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal against the death sentence for Asahara Shōkō (麻原 彰晃), the former leader of the doomsday cult, “AUM Shinri Kyo” (Supreme Truth Sect, now known as Aleph). The decision clears the way for 51 year old Asahara Shoko to be hanged for his role in masterminding the 1995 subway [...]
Blue on Aug 14 2006 | Filed under: Japan: News and Media
At around 7:38am this morning, there was a widespread blackout in Tokyo. This is all but normal in this city. Stopping all trains, and traffic lights, it was a shock that lasted over an hour. A blackout of this scale has not happened in Japan for 30 years, some 800,000 households were affected. The blackout [...]