About the iPhone and SmartPhones - perhaps two reasons SmartPhones haven’t worked here is (1) the lack of WiFi as you point out, and (2) that Japanese portables tend to be smaller so there’s less of a need for something smaller than your laptop?

I just realised, in fact, in the article I wrote on what the iPhone needs I described a device that was less of a PDA and more of a keitai.

Oh, and continuing on WiFi, two nights ago I stayed in a very large central Osaka hotel (New Hankyu Hotel) which features absolutely no net connectivity, not even in public areas, barring a modem port on the room phone. There was also a catalogue in the room for other top hotels around Japan (200+ locations, mostly business rather than leisure, I felt) yet there was no symbol in the quick feature guide to say there was internet available, and neither did the text describe if hotels did have this. In contrast, I was in a wee leisure hotel a bit off the beaten track near Salzburg, and they had wireless routers all over the place, but I had no PC to check it out!

Scandal comment:
I was a little disappointed that no one pointed out the media’s role during these scandals, some going on for 27 years. Seems that western world scandals are much shorter, perhaps because they maybe quick to feed their scandal thriving media.

My old Billy Blanks tapes are going on EBay!

Just a thought…

There are so many reasons that’s a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad idea and not one that it makes any sense.

I don’t have time to type it all right now, but that’s just a wretched plan.

The inevitable question, in most matters economic or political in Japan, is: Why the fuck do the powers that be think the answer to everything is overpriced, unnecessary construction?
How many crooked brothers-in-law can politicians have? Can’t we just pay them off to grow clover and leave something of a country worth having behind?

Here’s the site of the new project. I think you’ll find it familiar:

http://maps.google.co.jp/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.707562,139.662387&spn=0.008886,0.01502&t=h&z=16&om=1

Nakano is like a Shimo-kitazawa for non-hippies that gets no love. It is, supposedly, the single most crowded neighborhood in Japan (in terms of residents per square kilometer), but it’s “Green Space” (the site of the infamous Nakano spy school) looks likely to be sold to developers, thus putting Nakano even further into violation of earthquake safety regulations stipulating a certain amount of open space per square kilometer per resident. As it stands, Nakano has pretty much no open space larger than a baseball field.

While it is very well-served by the mass transit network, it’s hard to see how placing such a project here could be justified. It is, after all, a convenient spur off the central hub more than a part of the hub itself.

“Well, buildings are usually made out of some steel and, often in Japan, some concrete, so you might say the steel and the concrete become partners, so I’d like to take a look at Steel Partners. . .”

?

Worst segue ever.

Good show overall, though.