Boblet; Japan Learned things and Japan diary, by Oli Studholme

Playing Halo 2 in Japan

Posted by Oli  @  11:26 PM · 02 December  to   Gaming · Japan

Halo 2 is half way to internationalised, pretty much everything except the Campaign mode dialog. Check out what I’ve found out about Halo 2 in Japan

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Eating Fugu・（河豚）

Posted by Oli  @   3:50 PM · 19 January  to   Japan · Life

I recently went to eat Fugu・（河豚） with Miwa and her parents — it’s always good to have potentially fatal experiences together ;-) Here’s a description, some photos and some information about blowfish.

Results; non-fatal (this time! phew ;-), interesting, but not as amazing as the price would suggest.

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Japanese Animation

Posted by Oli  @  10:41 PM · 04 January  to   Humour · Japan

Recently I’ve been having fun watching PiNMeN and Popee the Performer on TV. They’re both CG animation series from Japan that rely solely on the animation (no dialog). Very strange, and very funny!

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Cheesecake is not fluffy

Posted by Oli  @  11:03 PM · 01 January  to   Japan · Life

In Japan cheesecake is a light, fluffy dessert that tends to flavourless. I wanted to remember what a cheesecake based on cookie crumbs, real fruit topping, and cheese tasted like. Behold, the Cherry Cheesecake! (warning: to be avoided by dieters everywhere ;-)

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Halo 2 questions

Posted by Oli  @  11:59 PM · 19 November  to   Gaming · Japan

A Japanese Xbox to ensure compatibility with Japan’s Xbox Live service? Or an imported American Xbox to ensure Halo 2 in all it’s English goodness? I really hope “i18n” issues don’t get me — here’s hoping that Halo 2 and Xbox Live are multilingual and internationalised! Can someone tell me if they know? ;-)

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How to add a GeoURL for Japanese websites

Posted by Oli  @  12:29 PM · 29 October  to   Japan · Weblogging

GeoURL is a neat piece of metadata that lets you see what other GeoURL-registered websites/website authors are physically close to you. I’ve finally added GeoURL tags to my pages, and have discovered I’m near … some tide prediction websites. Woop!

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Safari, Rikai.com and HTTP 1.1 compression

Posted by Oli  @   1:49 PM · 26 October  to   Japan · The ‘Net

I’m trying to find out why I can’t see Todd David Rudick’s great Japanese study tool Rikai.com in Safari. Is it due to the HTTP 1.1 compression used? I hope the Safari developers can tell me…

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Zatoichi・（座頭市）; Beat Takeshi’s new movie

Posted by Oli  @   6:32 PM · 10 October  to   Japan

Zatoichi・（座頭市） is a new movie from ‘Beat’ Takeshi, based on an old and very popular Japanese story of a blind swordsman. Fantastic sword fights, and moving ambient sounds and music make this a great movie — highly recommended!

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Sino-Japanese Relations Further Strained by … an Orgy(!)

Posted by Oli  @   6:25 PM · 03 October  to   Humour · Japan

An Osaka construction company is surprised by the uproar caused when their company holiday leads to the hiring about 400 Chinese prostitutes during a 3-day orgy in Zhuhai. The Chinese Foreign Ministry acts deeply offended while trying to pretend sex is not one of their biggest tourism earners. The Japanese Foreign Ministry and News Media pretends nothing happened. The company wonders what the fuss is about. With bonus ‘Crazy Japanese Sex Toy’ link.

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Microsoft and Competition

Posted by Oli  @   5:17 PM · 12 September  to   Japan · The ‘Net

China, South Korea and Japan announce plans to help develop a decent OS, Microsoft cries foul. Microsoft goes before the US Congress to talk about virus susceptibility in it’s OS, and a new security hole is found. Hehehe.

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Nature, in all it’s glory

Posted by Oli  @   3:55 PM · 11 September  to   Diary · Japan · Life

Some interesting experiences I’ve had with nature recently; celestial, meteorological, predatory and aquatic.

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Electronic Dictionaries from Sharp

Posted by Oli  @   1:23 AM · 21 August  to   Japan · Life

Miwa and I have been doing some more electronic dictionary (denshi jisho) research, and we think that the best two are the Sharp PW-9800 and PW-9700, because of the screen clarity and size. We’re leaning towards the PW-9700.

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Shopping for a new Electronic Dictionary

Posted by Oli  @   2:30 PM · 19 August  to   Japan · Life

We’re going to buy a new electronic Japanese-English dictionary (denshi jisho).

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Reven-ji for Engrish!

Posted by Oli  @  10:23 AM · 09 April  to   Humour · Japan

I came across Weird Japanese T-Shirts via Chanpon.org. This site has some great Japanese, and is a little melodramatically funny in it’s own right (bizarre, wacky, stylish!). I like the one of Soseki Natsume saying I am a pervert in…

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Bureaucracy and the Immigration Department

Posted by Oli  @  11:39 AM · 08 April  to   Japan · Life

Life in Japan is bureaucratic(-ly stupid) more than most places, but sometimes it’s just stupidly stupid. Case in point; the Immigration Department. I recently went to change my work visa to a ‘Spouse of Japanese national’ visa. Although my…

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2003.04.04 Friday-ish

Posted by Oli  @  10:57 AM · 04 April  to   Diary · Japan · Weblogging

Thursday was playing Kung Fu Chaos and teaching. Kung Fu Chaos is pretty cool, but definitely needed a few more levels. The teaching was .. well teaching. Friday was visiting Michiko in Omiya. Her place is pretty cool and has…

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Fax or all-in-one Home Office?

Posted by Oli  @   9:45 AM · 16 March  to   Apple · Japan

Internet, why has thou forsaken me?? I’m in a big dilemma about whether to buy a basic monochrome fax (like a Sharp Fappy - Fax makes it happy) or a Brother MyMio (a colour fax/inkjet/scanner/photocopier that Miwa insists on…

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Blogging and Japan-Newbie Perspective

Posted by Oli  @   8:22 AM · 14 March  to   Japan · Weblogging

Last year I started to really notice weblogging, and even gave Radio Userland a 1 month spin. I’d been reading Dave Winer’s Scripting News and some other blogs occasionally for a while (a year or two), but hadn’t really…

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Unicode, UTF-8 and MSIE5.2 (Mac)

Posted by Oli  @   9:41 AM · 05 March  to   Coding · Japan

Why does using Unicode have to be so hard? I’m trying to use Unicode to make Japanese/English files. However I found that how I save the file makes a big difference to how they’re displayed on my three test browsers…

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Humour in the face of war

Posted by Oli  @   9:09 AM · 25 February  to   Humour · Japan

The world is presently focussed on Iraq, and a potential war that nobody wants, but some want less than others. However living in Japan there’s also another danger - North Korea. The statements North Korea makes are even more unusually…

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Innovation And Japan

Posted by Oli  @   9:14 AM · 22 February  to   Japan

I was interested to read the article Linking Innovation and Diversity (posted on 1/21/2003) on Z+ Blog (it’s just on the main page). Their quote from Nicholas Negroponte’s article on Creating a Culture of Ideas sounds exactly like Japan at…

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