Business Names

I walk by this shop all the time when I'm in the area, but it's usually at night when I'm on my way to a restaurant in the area. I finally walked by during the day when there was enough time to take a picture of this business's name. Translation: POS System Register.

This makes me chuckle every time I walk by. And what makes it even funnier is the rest of the stuff, old school cash registers and the like, displayed in the window. The various devices look like they were made in the 70s or 80s and haven't been touched since then.

So I guess the company's name is apt. Hopefully everyone knows what "POS" stands for. If not, click here.

Business Names

TV Commercials (except the ones I'm in) are Evil

Back in the day, commercial advertising in the states was limited to either A-list celebs, or nobodies like me.

But recently things in the US have become more Japanese. A lot of the lines that were never crossed before, such as the stars of a TV drama leading an ad that airs in the middle of said drama, are miles behind us now.

I've never been a fan of TV commercials (although they sometimes help pay the bills), but Corey Levitan puts it more eloquently than I normally do:

Just as advertisers weaseled themselves onto pay cable and into DVDs, they've figured out how to prevent me from skipping over their irrelevant and annoying messages on television as well.

And it's you weasels who let them do it.

If you're a TV commercial hater, then give the rest of this a read.

TV Commercials (except the ones I'm in) are Evil

New Shinjuku Burger King

I don't normally get all excited about hamburgers, but I'm so tired of McDonald's and Lotteria that little things like this make me happy.

A new Burger King outlet recently opened near Seibu-Shinjuku station. That's two in Shinjuku (by my count--I'm probably wrong though), and this new outlet, despite marking the border between the train station and the seediest part of the ward (Kabuki-cho), is 100% non-smoking. Well, except for those two tables out front of course.

This place used to be a Lotteria--located only about a hundred meters from the south exit of Seibu-Shinjuku station (go down the stairs, cross over to McDonald's and turn left).

I haven't been in there yet, but I will venture inside soon.

McDonald's still gets my 100 yen every morning when I buy coffee though.

New Shinjuku Burger King

Whale Slaughter: Elementary School Field Trip

Wada, Japan, one of the last legal bastions of whaling in this country, brings the youngsters out to watch the slaughter.

Japanese children as young as ten are watching whales being slaughtered to teach them the "cultural importance" of Japan's controversial commercial whaling industry.

The picture to the right is an AP photo snapped by David Guttenfelder of local schoolkids in Wada, Japan reaching out to touch the severed head of a Beard's Beaked whale.

Please read the rest of the article on your own.

Whale Slaughter: Elementary School Field Trip

Royal Parks First Floor Gets Some Love

The deceased AMPM shop space has been dormant for quite a while, but it looks like someone has decided to take the plunge.

I have a feeling that it's going to be yet another clinic as those have been popping up at a feverish pace in Hanakoganei lately.

It's definitely not large enough to be a gym, but oh well...

The deck space out front means that it's likely to be a service industry company that gambles on the location.

Royal Parks First Floor Gets Some Love

TPR News

It's been a while since we posted a TPR News over at Trans-Pacific Radio, but here's the latest one that was just published five minutes ago.

TPR News

Chicken and Beer

One of the staples of the Korean culinary landscape, at least if one heads out to eat, is chicken. And beer. There are shops everywhere that sell the two together. It's a wonderful thing.

The accompanying shot is of a shop near my brother-in-law's new apartment. Chicken in abundance. The place is called "Boor", but it should be spelled "bueo" when romanized. I'm being a bit nitpicky, but I think it's obvious why the proprietor chose the spelling that she did.

How else would they be able to borrow the Hooters logo that is the central part of the storefront advertising? Incidentally, Seoul got it's first Hooters last year.

Intellectual property rights aside, this type of advertising plagues the nation of Korea. It's no wonder that nobody seems to give a hoot about architecture because the building's facade is going to be plastered with these vinyl encased beds of fluorescent lights anyway.

Apparently there are moves afoot up in Seoul to cut down on this type of advertising. One can only hope that it catches on nationwide.

Until then, I'll try to get my brother-in-law to pop by this place and check what type of outfits the waitresses wear.

Chicken and Beer

Mitsui Outlet Park Iruma

**Although it's no longer new, this post continues to draw a lot of interest. I have therefore updated it slightly to remove some of the information that is no longer relevant. Updated July 7th, 2011.

A new outlet shopping center, Mitsui Outlet Park Iruma (三井アウトレットパーク 入間) opened in Saitama this week, and we paid the place a visit yesterday afternoon. It's big.

We found some good "opening" sales, but not every shop was providing shocking discounts.

I counted no less than 204 outlets in my facilities map. Important details that I discovered during my wanderings through the enormous two-floor mall: expensive coffee can be purchased at a few different places including the Tully's coffee shop on the second floor near the bus terminal exit, cheap coffee can be found near the register at the Family Mart convenience store on the first floor; in terms of sportswear, Puma had the coolest shoes and Nike the best prices; there's a food court on the second floor called "Forest Kitchen" if you're in search of slightly cheaper fare--bento (boxed lunches) and onigiri (rice balls) can, of course, be found in the Family Mart; kids with just a little too much energy can be brought to Club Yu Kids on the second floor next to Family Mart.

Transportation

The closest train station is Iruma-shi on the Seibu-Ikebukuro line. But then it's a 20 minute bus ride from the station to the outlets (map in Japanese).

Or at least it would be on a normal weekend. As you can see from the picture to the right, there were lines to get into some of the shops, and the place was packed even though it was a weekday. The free shuttle bus from Musashino-fujisawa station was supposed to take only 15-20 minutes, but it ended up being about a one-hour-trip because of the traffic (shuttle bus service will cease after Golden Week 2008). Mitsui Outlet Park is equipped with six separate parking areas, so they're prepared for the onslaught, but the poor roads surrounding the place aren't. The shuttle bus approaches the outlets from a right turn lane on route 16 that doesn't have a protected green light, so a vehicle is able to squeeze through oncoming traffic about once every two to four minutes. It's ridiculous.

I recommend paying for a bus ticket from Iruma-shi station instead. It should cost between 190 and 300 yen per person (there are several buses that head toward Mitsui Outlet Park including the number 30 and 31), and the buses won't get as bogged down in traffic because they don't try to turn into the poorly governed entrance. Actually, I can't swear that the number 30 doesn't turn into the parking lot as it's a new line set up specifically for the shops and we didn't take it. We did, however, take the 31 back from the shops, and that took 20 minutes on the nose. That bus goes to Iruma-shi station as well. It cost 190 yen per person. The bus stop is across the street from the outlets to the left of the Eneos gas station.

Mitsui Outlet Park and Costco

This is Mitsui's fourth, and largest, outlet mall in the Kanto region. They also have shops in western Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. While not the easiest to get to on busy days, the Iruma outlets carry the added bonus of sitting directly adjacent to a Costco wholesale market. For those who aren't familiar with the many wonders available at the giant wholesaler (membership required to shop there), you're missing out! Membership cards work at all 500+ Costco's worldwide, and the range of items sold there is shocking. Additionally, Costco's little dining area provides a cheap, albeit not very healthy, alternative to the pricier food in the restaurants in the outlet mall. Remember those huge slices of pizza and bottomless cups of cola? Yup, Costco in Japan is pretty much the same as back home. Membership for one person/family costs 4,200 yen (per year).

Anyway, the place is worth a visit, but I recommend waiting a week or two, or maybe until after Golden Week. There's something for everyone--from LEGO Clickbrick to Coach accessories, from Fred Perry to Bose, and from BCBGMAXAZRIA to Franc franc.

Mitsui Outlet Park Iruma

Changwon Starbucks has Smoking Lounge

Changwon city, South Korea, is a rapidly growing city. It sits about 50 minutes west of Busan by bus, and it's one of the only properly planned cities in the country. Canberra, Australia, apparently, was used as a template for the city.

The population is still rather small, but it's attracting jobs and development like few other municipalities. What that happens, the chains come flocking.

This is a picture from the inside of the city's first Starbucks. It's massive. The one thing that I found to be different about this particular shop was the fact that it is the first Starbucks I've seen with my own eyes that has a smoking room in it. I have no idea why Starbucks felt compelled to do that as the Korean citizenry is quite amenable to the idea that smoking should be done outside.

Starbucks outlets in Japan, by all accounts a much more tobacco-friendly nation, have ashtray-equipped tables outside their outlets.

Changwon Starbucks has Smoking Lounge

Hanakoganei is Growing

I'm continually thinking about what should be done to make this area more convenient and livable for taxpayers (i.e. me!), and therefore an intense fascination and expectation starts cooking inside me every time a lot is cleared and the foundations of a new building are being built.

Naturally, I was quite concerned about the financial potential of the eki-mae (near/in front of the train station) neighborhood when the convenience store in my building closed. In retrospect, however, I think that their failure to put alcohol on the shelves might have been their undoing. And I don't know, maybe Daiwa House, the proprietor of the building, told them they couldn't sell chu-hi because the tenants upstairs would have to deal with drinkers, young and old, on all-night benders in the deck chairs below (yes, they had patio furniture out in front of this convenience store). Basically, the closure of that shop can probably be chalked up to a bad business decision (no alcohol equals no business).

Even though the shop is still empty, it now looks like there was nothing to worry about. Old businesses are being recycled all over the place. Even though one of Matsumoto Kiyoshi's (a massive chain of drug stores) branches closed at the end of last year (which also worried me), it turns out that they were just moving 150 meters up the street. They now have four times the floor space and a much better location.

The old building, which was a bit of a ghost hall for a while, now has a Docomo (cell phone provider) outlet on the first floor and an izakaya on the second floor. Not that either of those businesses are particularly convenient for me (I have an au phone, and we already have several izakaya near the station), but it's an obvious signal that there's enough potential business in the area for these companies to come in here.

I'm not saying that Hanakoganei is becoming the Kunitachi of the Seibu-Shinjuku line (although that would be nice), but it's getting nicer and nicer. My word of advice to the city planners at this point, if they're reading this (ha!), is not to forget about nature. We know there's a giant park on the south side of the station, but there are only about five or six trees in the entire eki-mae rotary on the north side.

Please dig up a few of those sidewalk bricks and plant some saplings.

Hanakoganei is Growing

Magazine/Comic Browsing (except nudes) Blocked at Convenience Store

A small army of people can normally be found huddled in front of the magazine racks leafing through their favorite comic books and magazines.

One thing that you'll often notice when walking into a convenience store in Japan is that there is a line of people (usually guys) reading manga (comic books) or perusing some other form of paperbacked entertainment. In most places you're not required to actually purchase the magazine--one can basically read the mag in its entirety and then leave without buying anything.

I never really understood why this is allowed.

One convenience store near Kamishakujii station on the Seibu-Shinjuku line in western Tokyo has decided to take a stand against this practice. Some poor worker was made to go through their entire rack of print material and bind all of it shut with plastic packaging twine. That must have taken a while.

I was so surprised to see that a shop manager had done the necessary profit-geared mental acrobatics (in other words, they figured out that customers tend not to buy magazines they can read for free) that I failed to notice an even odder managerial decision.

The only magazines that weren't restricted from perusal were the ones with adult content. Maybe the workers want easy access to them during the duller hours of the afternoon?

Sorry, kids, we've padlocked your comic books. But there's some other enjoyable material just over to the right. You're welcome!

Magazine/Comic Browsing (except nudes) Blocked at Convenience Store

Have you ever seen a Tokyo convenience store go out of business?

Until recently, this was an AMPM convenience store.

The AMPM in our building decided to cash in its chips and get out of town (Kodaira-shi, Tokyo). AMPM is a huge chain, so they must have really been hurting!

Have you ever seen a Tokyo convenience store go out of business?

SONY to do away with DRM

I threw a bit of a hissy-fit a couple of years ago over the digital rights managment (DRM) software that SONY was building into its CDs.

As soon as you popped a SONY CD into your computer, a nasty little program would load onto your computer. While being illegal in and of itself, it had the unexpected consequence of making the computer more susceptible to a viral attack.

Well, there are finally whispers that SONY has reversed course and decided that it needs to be a little more realistic about this matter.

SONY is expected to make an announcement soon about its decision to ditch DRM.

SONY to do away with DRM

Resumé Padding

Fake degree scandals are a dime a dozen in South Korea (click here, here or here for recent examples) . The testing/credential-obsessed nation has been forced to do some soul-searching as it turned out that non-Korean English teachers (mostly teaching kids at private language schools) weren't the only ones being dishonest.

Now it appears that the same thing is going on in Japan. Personally, I'm not surprised because like South Korea, Japan is also crazy about testing kids into oblivion in order to earn four-year holidays at name-brand schools so that they can then cop desk jobs at name-brand companies.

The story in the Yomiuri was quiet enough. Japan has suffered through its own share of corruption scandals this year. Dishonesty has been rife enough in business and politics that people are a little corruption-weary at this point, so there's no telling if the masses are willing to tolerate another eduction-related scandal at this point. Many will recall the string of bullying-related suicidesbullying-related suicides that broke in junior and senior high schools at the end of 2006. Perhaps this next scandal will have to wait until 2008.

In case you didn't read it, here's a quote from the Yomiuri article:

Forty-eight academics at 43 universities possess bogus diplomas they were
awarded by overseas organizations claiming to be universities, an Education,
Science and Technology Ministry investigation has revealed.

The "overseas organizations claiming to be universities" are, of course, diploma mills. So, yes, this is exactly the same as what has been going on in South Korea. It should be interesting to see how everyone deals with this in the coming months. However, the way that the Japanese media has dealt with it thus far signals that they are content not to add to the soul-searching that is already going on.

Resumé Padding

Global Domination

I don't know what other markets Starbucks has moved into, but I have read that they are on a worldwide expansion mission of McDonald's proportions. There are currently somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 Starbucks shops around the world, but last year they publicized the fact that they are aiming for 40,000 locations. To put that number in perspective, the golden arches of MickeyD's can be found in front of around 30,000 storefronts globally.

While looking for a bottle of my favorite Scotch, The Balvenie Doublewood 12 Year Old, I happened upon the two bottles of liqueur pictured here. The asking price, if I remember correctly, is in the 3,000 yen range (US$30-ish), so you can bet that I'll be saving my cash for future bottles of The Balvenie, but I have to say that the pair of Starbucks liqueurs only just barely surprised me.

Coffee and spirits have long been mixed (although I rarely, if ever, dump my gin into my after-dinner coffee), and pricey bottles of coffee-flavored liqueur are a logical extension of the Starbucks branding of low-key sophistication.

Shinanoya's Shinjuku branch carries the Starbucks offerings, if you are so inclined, as well as a whole lot more.

Global Domination

Big Bucks for Freelance Audio Transcription

I occasionally peruse the job ads. Just to see what kind of opportunities money is out there. I don't know about you, but I often find myself wondering about any differences that may exist between the published hours, responsibilities, wage, benefits, etc. and reality.

While cruising through Gaijinpot.com this morning, looking for interesting tidbits on nothing in particular, I noticed a job ad for audio transcription. After clicking the link, I found that the company in question, Urban Connections, a "language solutions" firm in Tokyo, was hoping to add more freelancers to its network of audio transcribers.

An audio transcriber, just to be clear, is anyone who puts what is being said on paper. What is being said can involve everything from the minutes of a meeting to an interview to governmental press conferences, and the typing might be done live (on site) or while listening to a recording of the proceedings.

Anyway, Urban Connections is looking for freelance transcribers who would have the option of working at home, and the published wage is 8,000 - 10,000 yen per hour (US$70+/hr) of audio transcription. They ask that applicants have some free transcription software, an internet connection, Skype (which is also free), and a transcriber's foot pedal (which can be purchased for between fifty one hundred dollars).

Wow! That's a lot of cash for typing. So I dug a little deeper.

I googled "Urban Connections, transcription" and was led directly to the company website. Sure enough, they do a lot of conference organization, translation, interpretation, and transcription. And they're looking for interns, by the way.

The first two sites returned in the Google search were part of the company's site. Number three, however, linked to a Metropolis interview with Urban Connections founder Larry Greenberg.

Summary of the interview:

"We rarely outsource transcription work for people to do at home."

"We pay by the hour, which starts at JY2500 for a qualified person."

And what about a highly-skilled transcriber who brings
more value to the job?

"A 70-word-per-minute typist who is very knowledgeable about current
events, for example, could expect JY3000 per hour."

Oops.

It looks like this is one of those rare cases where both the job ad (ie. false advertising) and the reality (ie. about one third the published wage for experienced transcribers) have been made public at the same time.

Either someone at Urban Connections is trying to bait a bunch of people into applying so that they can search for the proverbial diamond in the rough, or some staffer really goofed on the wage over at Gaijinpot.com when they posted the ad.

Big Bucks for Freelance Audio Transcription

NOVA Closes Shop

NOVA appears to have gone belly up. The company has filed for government protection under Japan's Corporate Rehabilitation Law.

The official line is that NOVA is in the red to the tune of about 44 billion yen, but Japan Economy News' Ken Worsley estimates that the company's debt is even more astronomical (perhaps as high as 55 billion yen).

This picture was taken at the Takadanobaba branch at about 5 p.m. today. The customers in the picture were somewhat taken aback that the end had finally come. I heard several comments about how many "points" and how much money (thousands of dollars) had been lost.

"So is the money gone?" they asked somewhat rhetorically. At least the questions seemed rhetorical.

I wish that I had had information about a class action lawsuit that was underway to give them.

Is there one?

NOVA Closes Shop

Are You in a NOVA Apartment?

If so, you had better listen to this. TPR interviewed several people connected to NOVA, and a lot of useful information ended up in the podcast posted over at TPR in the form of a podcast titled Nova Employees: Their Voices, Their Stories.

Are You in a NOVA Apartment?

Prospective NOVA Employees

You should definitely click on this or this before buying your ticket to come and work in Japan.

Prospective NOVA Employees

Calling All NOVA Folks!!

TPR is looking to interview people who work for NOVA language schools. It doesn't matter what your position is within the company, please get in touch with them if you're willing to be interviewed for a docomentary that they're doing.

So if you or somebody you know might be interested, click here for more information, or email: transpacificradio@gmail.com.

For more evidence that the end is near, read this article from the Mainichi.

Calling All NOVA Folks!!