Japanese internet speeds & costs

There's been a thing on Digg recently about the speed and cost of internet services in Japan. Service, of all kinds, is genuinely good in Japan. In the UK it's treated as an additional cost - my parents bought a new fridge in April, it stopped working in May, and, after they refused to replace it, it still hasn't been repaired even in August as the company "can't get the part", and the retailer refuses to have anything to do with it after the sale. Disgusting frankly, and simply wouldn't happen in Japan. (BTW, the retailer is Curry's, a company that has close to a monopoly on electrical sales in the UK, and the brand was Samsung. Be warned.)

I worked out that it costs us about ¥6,000 a month for a 10mps ADSL connection here. That includes the obligatory ¥1,785 a month to NTT for thprivilegege of using their telephone lines. It doesn't include the fact that NTT owes me ¥210,000 in deposits I've paid to actually rent (you never own) telephone lines from them over the years. NTT is now doing a special promotion that would cut our internet cost to about ¥5,000 a month -- they advertise '¥2,625', but that's before router rental and other nicely hidden charges. After being ripped off by this company for 20 years, I'm reluctant to switch.

I did come across Speedtest.net too, and checked my download time. It varies significantly from Europe, but to San Francisco, it's not too bad:

Technorati: Japan; internet speed; customer service;

Malay Lesson 1

Malay Lesson 1

Watch the video

A pilot video for the forthcoming (probably maybe) SweeTnation video podcast.

Munich: could even be Spielberg's best so far?

We finally got to see Munich last week. It wasn't a top priority film, but, at the time, there was nothing else worth watching in Kobe. As it happens, though, Munich was well worth it. Every time I see a Spielberg film, it seems great at the time, but then quickly fades. He's good at the short, reasonably gripping story, but not so good at making real classics. I'd even include Schindler's List and Private Ryan in this. Both are great movies, but no so good the second time round. In both cases the political message vastly overshadows the story and there are too many Hollywood gimmicks.
Although a week has passed and I've had time to think, I still believe Munich is much, much better. It too has a political message, but it isn't as pro-Israel or anti-Arab as I was expecting. In fact, the film seems to lean strongly towards criticism of the Israeli campaign to kill the instigators of the Munich terrorist attack. But, as I say "seems to", this is perhaps something many people won't like: it doesn't take sides all that clearly. Having said that, the movie is very clear in condemning the openly terrorist orientated activities perpetrated mostly by Arabs.
In the story, following the attack and killing of an Israeli team of athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli version of the CIA, Mossad, commissions one of its agents to find and kill 11 of the Palestinian masterminds behind the attack. This, as far as I can tell, is all based on truth, and most of the 11 targets were eventually assassinated.
Eric Bana plays the lead role as the Mossad agent and does a really superb job. He's very ably supported by his team both in the story and in their acting roles. Daniel Craig is excellent as a rough, South African Jew, and Ciaran Hinds is fantastic as the 'cleaner' who looks after the cover-up details of each assassination.
As the story progresses, the team of assassins work alone, using shady French underworld connections (the one really difficult to believe part of the whole story, and perhaps another American sideswipe at the French) to track-down and kill each of their targets. But as none of them are trained assassins, the team soon begin to have moral reservations about what they are doing and see themselves, quite rightly, as little better than the people they are trying to kill. The ending is fairly ambiguous, but presumably, Eric Bana's lead character ends up with a far more morally correct view of the world compared to his Mossad controller played by the ever brilliant Geoffrey Rush.
The movie isn't short, but it flies by. I had my doubts when it was Oscar nominated and, although, apart from Wallace & Gromit, this is the only nomination we've been able to see because Japan screens movies so very late, I can now understand why Munich was nominated. This is not a 'let's support the poor state of Israel' movie at all. It's really, really good.
(Once again, however, watching the movie in Japan was a bit of a disappointment. The cinema was packed, but most watchers had never heard of the Munich attack. The really, really funny scene, where Mossad tells Bana he needs receipts for everything, raised not a titter. You could just see the audience thinking, "Well of course he needs receipts! Why are those foreigners laughing? Even assassins have to account for expenses." What a country?!)

Tags: Japan; movie; review

Vodafone to leave Japan

OK, what's the real story here? Any idea? I've had 3 phones in the last 3 years. We wanted prepaid and Vodafone is the only one that does that now because NTT says it encourages crime i.e. "We can't make enough money on them". But if you go to Seiden, Midori, or any major electrical chain near us, they'll tell you "Vodafone's not good and it's expensive compared to (NTT) or (KDDI)". It happened to us twice. Even a good friend kept telling us KDDI was cheaper until his student also agreed with me that, actually, no he'd been duped and Vodafone is much cheaper. It is if you actually do the simplest of comparative shopping.
So,
-- Vodafone definitely didn't help themselves by being cheaper (again)!
-- There seems to have been a similar reaction (I admit, probably unplanned or coordinated, just natural) by retailers to NOT sell Vodafone -- so lower margins to distributors?
-- They certainly DON'T have the handset gimmicks that KDDI & NTT roll out on a weekly basis
-- At least in Kobe, they thought it was a good idea to staff their own stores with foreigners. Especially in Kobe this was probably a very stupid thing to do.
-- I needed a top-up card just yesterday. I was heading to the nearest 7-11, but happened to pass a Vodafone shop, so in I went. But, just as in Spain, you take a number and wait 10-15 minutes to get served. Similar at NTT, I guess, but that just means that Vodafone shops should have ONLY sold handsets and not provided the service.
In any case, I expect Softbank will pretty quickly discontinue the prepaid service forcing a monthly charge. I'll do some investigation to compare prices again. Really burns me to have to sign with NTT or KDDI though because they're both such MAJOR rip-off artists. KDD for years had a monopoly on all international calls and gouged and gouged for it - but at the same time they ran famous advertising campaigns proclaiming they were "Ichiban Yasui" the cheapest available. Well of course, they were the ONLY company available. Today they have colourful, techie handsets, but the pricing is high, their music download service is designed so that you lose what you buy over time because of DRM and, did I mention, they aren't cheap. NTT's idea of marketing and competition is still limited to giving 1 in a million customers a present such as a teddy bear or a coffee mug. They have such a lock on the market that they can basically do whatever they want, and do.
Oh yeah, and in hindsight, changing to the Vodafone name from J-Phone was probably a very bad idea.
So was Vodafone stupid and poorly informed about Japan? Almost certainly yes.
Was it deliberately pushed out of the market by distributors in precisely the same way that Palm was, a combination of having products that didn't update weekly as is the case with Japanese models and the problem that local distributors refuse to sell overseas products? Very probably yes. (This is a fate that Apple avoided by growing so large so quickly with its iPod, but you can guarantee that the next big assault on the iPod will be through huge margins to the distributor to encourage sellers to push certain products.)
Will consumers lose out by Vodafone's withdrawal? Well, the fact that Softbank is taking over (probably) there's a glimmer of hope as Softbank has a good record both of great customer service, but also for shaking up the Japanese establishment. But I guarantee that our fantastic prepaid phones will be discontinued and we'll be left with paying a minimum of ¥4,000 a month just for the privilege of owning a phone, and a lot more of using it.

Tags: Japan; Vodafone

Japan can be so depressing

It frequently amazes me how I put up with Japan -– it certainly finds it hard to put up with me. Speaking the language helps a great deal, but if you're not Japanese there are just so many times when you're simply not welcome. Moving to a new job is fraught with problems and costs, and moving to Big R more than many. Still, having got over the fact that I have to pay for the move in order to enjoy the honour of working there, we went out and found an apartment. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn close. Nice friendly chats with the representative real estate agent, papers signed, back to Kobe to arrange removals.
That was 10 days ago. Today I get a call from the agent to say so sorry but the landlord, having kept us waiting, doesn't want foreigners. Deal off. What a complete and utter twunt! Earlier on another twunt landlord wouldn't even let us look at his property. I never even met these guys! Maybe I smell? If Japanese speaking professors working at Big R who've lived peacefully and legally in the country for 20 years aren't welcome, then clearly it's not just the smell.
Well, it's their property so it's their call and they can be as racist as the next person, but they're still twunts. It costs us about $1000 a time to visit Tokyo so we need to splash out yet again to meet with yet more of these morons in the hope that one of them is actually more interested in money than racial purity and will actually let us live there.
Right now I really think I've wasted the last 20 years of my life.

Tags: Japan; Real Estate; Foreigner; Racism

At a secret address....

Called my new office today to get the official postal address that will reach me in April. One of the office trollettes answered, but seemed a bit confused by my request. Why would I want the address? Very silly question perhaps. After a few minutes of waiting on hold and trying very hard to be polite, I was finally passed to a senior troll who kindly gave me the appropriate information. Clearly it's meant to be a secret and not something given out to just anyone! I was, afterall, told last week that I wasn't allowed to attend meetings prior to joining the school on 1 April. As you can imagine, I wasn't overly heartbroken by the news. But having an address that's kept secret from employees, now that would be amusing. It is ironic that they already expect me to give up days to work for them even though I'm not yet on their payroll. Japan is a wonderful place indeed.

The importance of kitchens

Looks like we've found our new apartment. It's not cheap, but it could be a lot worse. The only problem is it doesn't have a kitchen as such, rather a living room and kitchen combined. Typically, of course, I'd never thought about this before, but it probably is useful to have the kitchen off in a little cupboard like space away from the dining area – not a modern design perhaps, but it does mean the cook can make mistakes in private. The open plan idea does give the opportunity for cooking videos, I suppose.
We will spend a little money on a new work top and we'll need a couple of new rugs, but otherwise, all is set no doubt. We're just waiting to see if the landlord is anti-foreigner (we lost one, much larger although similarly priced apartment because the landlord won't allow foreigners in – such is Japan's racial thinking).

Tags: Japan; Lifestyle; Tokyo

Pride and Prejudice

I'm astonished that this edition has received the praise that is has. It isn't a bad movie, but it is not as good as many of the reviews suggest. As some people have pointed out, the movie was clearly made with people who have never read the book nor seen the definitive BBC production. We went trying as hard as possible not to compare the two, but, of course, the movie falls far, far short. Inevitable, of course, as the Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth drama is just so, so good. The first thing we did after seeing the movie was to immediately watch the DVD again -- and so understand just how much the movie failed.
It does have some good points, but let's start with the bad: casting. Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennett??!! Give us a break! Sutherland is a good actor, but this isn't his part. Does the character change his name to 'Gordon'? The movie begins with Donald looking like something out of a wild west movie and desperately trying not to sound like he couldn't quite do a British accent, let alone an upper class, eighteenth century one. As the movie progresses Sutherland's role is far more suited to Mr. Hurst, complete with ever present glass of wine and slurred lines, than to Mr. Bennett, to the point that you wonder if he was given the wrong acting directions. Yes, he comes across as kind and caring, but not educated or sharply intelligent. Almost a movie killer.
Unfortunately, the list goes on. Keira Knightley is the perfect Jane Bennett, so why on earth miscast her as Elizabeth? So with the two leading Bennett roles so horribly wrong, the movie was more than a little silly.
Having said that, while his performance is markedly different from the brilliant Colin Firth, Matthew MacFadyen does an excellent job. The directing is poor -- the silly way he falls instantly in love at the first glance is too shallow and hollywood to be good -- but he's innocent, while at the same time being a true Darcy. Excellent stuff. Simon Woods does a great job as Mr. Bingley, and Brenda Blethyn is good as Mrs. Bennett, although, again she will be compared to the definitive.
The story is necessarily chopped to fit into the time, but it is also poorly reconstructed. Mr. Wickham has at most 3 minutes on screen, despite the importance of the character in defining how Elizabeth and Darcy are supposed to feel about each other -- very poorly produced.
Finally, however, there is the photography and the locations. These are excellent and, I suspect, far more authentic than the BBC production with a much more earthy, unpolished feel than no doubt was the case in the late 1700s.
Sadly, the movie comes across as a made for America, Hollywood fudge on what it could have been. Knightley is of course one of the best young actresses around and although she should have played Jane, her performance is still excellent. She just can't pull of the dazzlingly intelligent, sharp witted character she is supposed to.
So, all in all, a movie worth seeing, but only if you've never seen the BBC production and only if you don't care whether or not it follows the book. It seems thrown together as a production and perhaps should be left to be viewed on a DVD rather than the big screen. But, if that's the case, get the BBC production at Amazon instead. You'll never regret it.

Tags: Pride and Prejudice; Movie

The Great Office Choosing of 2006

So today I got to choose my new office. At first I was impressed that I was actually given a choice. There are three (only three?) offices available so I was shown each one. The first was great. About a third larger than my current office, sixth floor, overlooking a great view of Tokyo in general, lots of light. Great!
"You probably can't have this one, though," I'm told.
"Eh? Why not?"
"Well, we have a special rules for choosing offices. There are three criteria: the age of the professor, how long he's been at Rikkyo, and, er, something else I don't remember."
"And?"
"Well, we have three new professors coming this year. Another one is three months older than you, so he gets first pick."
"Oh, OK," I said, "No problem. Let's see the other two."
So the other two won't be quite so good, but they can't be that bad, right? The second office was in a 20 year old building that looks about 60 years old. It's damp, rather decrepit, and, in the honoured tradition of Japanese educational institutions every where, painted grey. (Although I'm not sure if it's battleship grey or dull-sea grey.) There's only one power point, and, speaking to the guy in the office next door, the ancient looking thing that, I'm told, is the air conditioner doesn't work. The view is still OK, but now looks over some rather nasty looking roofs.
On to the third. The third office is ground floor, but a way away from the main building. It's carpeted and clean, but that's about all than can be said. It's currently used as a psychotherapy room. In the end, I chose this one simply because it's clean and, as the room is being converted from a therapy room, it'll get a new air conditioner.
Once again, Rikkyo proves it is nothing if not traditional. "Here's the room you can't choose." As usual, you just live with it. Japanese are so keen on fairness it's actually very unfair!

Tags: Education; Japan

British coolness

This is so, so, so cool that I just had to post twice in one day – rather than twice in a year as usual. It's a presentation projector the size of a matchbox. This would a great alternative to not having a large screen and brings the possibilities of PDAs and mobile phones, which could already pack considerable processing power, becoming close to full fledged PCs because the small screen size is overcome. I really hope these things aren't the usual "we spent so much developing this that we have to charge the earth for it" type gadgets. Even better, they seem to be British. How long will it be before it's commercialized in the US and the original inventors are forgotten?

Tags: British; Invention; Gadgets; Presentation

Last day of UMDS – almost

Girl's DayYesterday was almost my last day of duties at UMDS. Having been here 15 years, it has been a long time coming. It still feels as if I'm living out of a suitcase, as if I don't truly belong, so it's not really a big deal to be moving on.
The last day was spent in six hours of entrance exams. UMDS is struggling – badly. Fifteen years ago we got about 15,000 applicants for less than 1,000 places. With entrance exam fees going at ¥35,000 a time, that's a very nice little earner. Or at least it was. Yesterday, there were only just over 100 people taking the exam. Overall, UMDS is getting only about 1,000 applicants a year in four lots of exams, so entrance exams no longer bring in the money. The school refuses to believe this, though, and year in year out we must make ever greater efforts to attract more applicants to the exam. A futile, stupid, money and time wasting exercise when there's many other ways to generate income, especially for a school with such great potential in many areas.
Over the years, UMDS has made a lot of mistakes with entrance exams too. The worst was when it gave the same papers two weeks running. I was actually the professor who broke that particular scandal – and scandal it is in Japan, something that certainly hits the press! There we were, calmly watching the sweating examinees when a girl put her hand up and I went over.
"I did the same exam the other day," she said.
"Oh?" I said, "Hold on, I'll ask about it."
She turned out to be right. About 50% of the papers given out across several hundred examinees that day where copies of the earlier one. We had to stop the test entirely and re-start it with the correct papers. Problem was, half of the people got the correct paper first time. A total mess. Perhaps it's not surprising that UMDS is in such a deep mess when, as a business school, it can't organize such things despite thousands of man-hours of checking and re-checking by bored, under empowered admin and faculty, none of whom want or dare to take initiative.
Even yesterday brought something new, though. The second paper was English – or at least the strange, English-like language examined at these times. Before the exam, our team leader, himself an English teacher, was joking about some of the examinees wearing sweat shirts with English on them and how they could be used to cheat. At least I thought he was joking. Once we got to the room he made two people turn their sweat shirts inside-out before the paper started! Partly to see just how serious he was prepared to be, I pointed out that at least five others had some form of English on their clothing. One had "Freaky Massive" on his shirt, for example. Sure enough, all five had to either remove their sweaters of reverse them before the exam started.
Such is Japan. I'm sure it'll get even more weird once I get to Tokyo!

Technorati Tags: Japan, Education, Exams

Well I do feel a little green

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 90% Spider-Man 80% Green Lantern 75% Catwoman 70% Iron Man 60% Superman 45% Supergirl 45% Robin 43% Batman 35% The Flash 25% Wonder Woman 0%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Top 10 Best Macintosh Games Ever (so far!)

In our recent visit to Singapore, my good friend Asyraaf introduced me to Halo and a football game on the Xbox. Halo was too much -- made me feel ill! -- but the football game was great. Great, except that he'd thrash me everytime. He'd choose Man Utd and I'd chose Tottenham and I'd lose 6-0 -- how unlike real life, eh? He did far less well when I chose Boca Juniors, haha! He'd never heard of one of the best teams in Argentina, unsurprisingly. So if anyone needs to survive a match with someone 34 years younger than them on Xbox football, my advice, turn to Boca Juniors.

In return, I introduced him to Battle for Wesnoth. Not really a fair exchange as Wesnoth is a lot less physical and quite a bit more complex than the Xbox games, but we managed to team up to beat the computer at least.

So this got me thinking, what are the best 10 games I've ever played on a Mac? Of course, the choice is limited, it being Mac. Windows machines are basically game boxes anyway so they have a lot more to choose from. But I've played a few. Here's my selection.

1. Football Manager (ex-Championship Manager) (currently SI Games)
   This is the one game that can keep me quiet for truly hours, as is probably true for most computer game playing football fans. It can be beautifully complex. There is no linear objective other than making a team as good as possible. The buying and selling of players and the beating of better, richer teams are the two factors that really make it fun for me. Naturally, I almost always choose Tottenham. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose (in other words I get fired by mid-season in the first year!), but it's always fun. Other times I choose a really minor team and see how high I can take them. Without a budget to spend (or a really good young player to sell off at an inflated price) this is a really tough option though. It's the only game I've seen that even ranks you on an 'addiction level'. This game breaks marriages.


2. Diablo II and Lord of Destruction (Blizzard)
   Blizzard has to be the best game developer for the Mac -- and it also issues its games in both Mac and Windows format, a very sensible thing to do. It is one of the few developers that allows full online game play for both platforms too -- what more do you need? Diablo is another game that can be played again and again and again. I only recently took a character beyond the 'Normal' level and into the 'Nightmare' level. I don't think Blizzard really explains this properly. The Nightmare level takes you through exactly the same game story as normal, but everything is that much more difficult. Sounds boring, right? But it's not! You get much, much better items and get to build an even more powerful character. Even now I haven't gone beyond Nightmare into 'Hell' level, but it must get even better. The development of your character is the true fun of the game, of course. Once you've been through the story once, it's fairly easy to do it again. The graphics are simple, but all that's necessary. It works. It's lots of fun. It kills hours too.
3. Heroes of Might and Magic III (now defunct, from 3DO, also now defunct)
   Although it went unnoticed by most of the world, Heroes 3 represents the biggest loss to the Mac world ever. It would possibly be my favorite game if it wasn't for the fact that it was destroyed by the developers in version 4. The original distributor (developer?) 3DO is also no more although I don't know if the two events are related. Heroes 3 was a simple interface, basic 2-D graphics (although with excellent artwork nonetheless) and irritating music. But the game play is superb. Five difficulty levels, dozens of scenarios, most of which can be used multiplayer, and strategy level that's engaging without being horrendously difficult. It was the most balanced and repeatedly playable turn-based strategy game ever. All my family loved it. Then, in the move to OS 9, for some reason this was all thrown out in favour of fancy graphics and more complex strategy. The beauty of H3 was in its simplicity. In H4, you basically just ran around a gaudy, semi-3-D graphics map in search of clues, often never finding them. It was slow. It was boring. It was complete and utter crap. We miss Heroes 3 even today. Freeverse has announced it will develop Heroes 5 for the Mac, but even this includes sparkly 3-D graphics. We don't want them. We want the old, boardgame-like feel of good old Heroes 3.
4. Civilization III (Firaxis
   Still one of the very best strategy games. Only recently updated -- a bit of a rip off with version 4 already out for Windows. Again, graphics are taking over from game play. More multiplayer is needed.
5. Apeiron(Ambrosia
   Great fun little shooting game from Ambrosia. Played it for years. Great to get really, really big scores.
6. Warcraft III(Blizzard)
   I used to play version 2. The graphics in version 3 are nice, but they're a bit over powering. Keyboard control is difficult, but the campaigns are engaging and fun. I've never played this online, but playing against the computer I lose every bloody time so I'm probably not ready!
7. Hearts of Iron (Virtual Programming
   I only just discovered this one. I'd tried something from the same game engine before and it was unstable and annoying. HOI is not well supported and crashed on me a lot at first. When it works it works well and the strategy is great -- the whole of WWII on a global scale, and you can play any one of the main countries.
8. Ghost Recon(Ubisoft
   I've played Call of Duty and others, but this is better because you work in a team. In the end, I get killed several times before completing a mission. In real life you'd have a much better perspective of what's around you than you can have on a computer, but it's fun to try. Very gory tho'.
9. Return to Castle Wolfenstein id Software
   Simple FPS with lots of monsters to kill. Good stuff. I suspect this may soon lose its position to Doom, but that's still too scary for me to play except when it's light!

In truth there are many more, especially ones I've played on Mac OS 9, but these are the ones that still last in my memory and, except for Capitalist Pig, remain in my gaming library. Heroes 3 is probably the best game ever, but it was so badly screwed up in version 4 that it went from excellent to complete crap in a matter of seconds. We're looking forward to version 5, but having seen the screen shots and he 3-D graphics, I won't be buying it unless we see rave reviews from other players. So here's a message to Freeverse: we're looking forward to Version 5, but let's have a Mac OS X version of Heroes 3 as well. I'd pay money for that immediately.
I'll update this list as I think of more/other games that I've not played for a while.