Ippoippo

Here in Japan, there is less of a Christmas card giving culture. Not suprising really, because Christmas was imported in from the West, and pretty much the commercial aspect only.

In Japan, although the calender is based on the Western one now, the importance of New Year has not declined. Also, like the Chinese, there is still the 12 year cycle of different animals for different years. Here in Japan, we’ll be celebrating the start of the Year of the Dog, but a couple of months before the Chinese who do it at the traditional New Year start.

So, since New Years is important, they have New Year Postcards rather than Christmas cards. People sometimes go to the shops to get ready made ones, with appropriate messages on them. Sometimes, especially with the advent of cheap photo printing at home, people make their own homemade ones.

So, what everyone does is writes LOADS of these cards (its also used as a way to keep everyone up to date with your address and contact details) and sends them off in the run up to January 1st. Then, on January 1st, everyone gets their ‘nengejo’ (New Year cards) at the same time.
Well, thats the plan, except this year, there was a slight cockup. What I like about this, is that they will be collecting them again, and redelivering. Whats the point of that!

Meanwhile, some other news snippets.
Once again, the Japanese tabloids have been amusing me, and thanks to WaiWai section over at MDN for the translation. This story should not be read by the more prudish viewers.

Meanwhile, back in the UK the cold-snap continues… and for the South-East of the country, a little bit of snow is proving to be a national disaster in the making. The comments at the bottom of the page gave me a good chuckle.

Finally, this also made me chuckle about Police Officers in the UK being caught by Revenue Generating… sorry I mean Speed Cameras.
To be fair, most were done so when on their way to an emergency… but I noticed some were genuine speeding cases it seems. Muppets.

Been reading some other news articles and stories.

The BBC is reporting how Broadband speeds are increasing in the UK. Though, it does make me chuckle when I see stories about the UK just starting to release 24Mb connections, when I’ve been using my 45Mb connection for 18 months, and 100Mb is freely available to a lot of people in this part of Japan.

Mind you, not all this technology stuff is good, especially when you can make big cockups like this. 40 Billion Yen (which is 200 Million UK Pounds, assuming the article was using the US Billion, rather than old British Billion) is a pretty impressive cockup.
Also got to love MDN’s WaiWai section, on their reporting from the Japanese tabloid Press.

This year, it turns out News Year Eve is going to be one second longer!!! Whoooooo, get extra time to enjoy parties

Finally, I’m still busy sorting out the wedding photographs. I was digging around for some information on Photoediting, when I found these examples.

You can now get a WMV format copy of the BBC Newsnight programme on Peak Oil, thanks to Global Public Media (as discussed by myself in an earlier post).

I also found some more Peak Oil related stuff here.

Meanwhile, it seems like most of Europe is not living up to it’s promises, with regards to the Kyoto Agreement, except for us (the UK) and Sweden. Typical!

Merry Christmas all… well Boxing Day (St. Stephens Day) since I’m a day late with this post.

Its been a busy long weekend. Friday was a day off work, as it was the Emperor’s birthday, and it’s when I gets to do his speech (think of the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day). Friday was spent collecting two turkeys, plus hosting a party for a couple of our friends.
Saturday was spent cooking said turkeys ready for the Sunday. Once that was done, it was time to collect our Wedding Photos and DVD from Harajuku, now that they were ready. Then we went off to our favourite restaurant for a bit of a special Christmas Eve meal. Very good it was too.

Yesterday, we went over to the parents-in-law to make British style Christmas dinner for them, plus younger brother, older brother, older brother’s wife and two kids. As parents don’t have a sufficiently large oven, it was the reason for cooking the turkey on the Saturday.
Trifle went done really well with the Japanese this time, though of course I had my normal Christmas pudding!

Yesterday, I was a in a good mood. Santa-san (as they call him round this parts, though that makes me laugh a lot) brought me a PSP!!!
My original guess was that Yuko had brought me an iPod, so was rather chuffed to get the PSP instead

Although, as usual, Christmas just isn’t Christmas in Japan, it’s been a pretty good weekend. Mind you, I see it wasn’t a White Christmas again this year

Japan is very cold at the moment, and suffering really badly from the heavier than normal snow (except, Tokyo and surrounding areas is not getting any snow).

Meanwhile, the economists in Japan are getting into a bit of a tiz, because the population shrunk this year in Japan.