Cicadas causing Internet headache
Yomiuri News, June 17, 2006—While Internet firms often grapple with man-made worms, Japanese telecommunications companies have been working on ways to counter a natural Internet pest of their own–cicadas. Across western Japan, kumazemi cicadas have been disrupting Internet service by piercing fiber-optic cables during the summer months to lay their eggs….

Screaming cicada “locusts” are the most remarkable part of the Japanese summer. The sound is deafening EVEN in the concrete jungle of Tokyo—it is astounding that these bugs could thrive in the totally paved and nearly parkless Tokyo environment, but they do.

 Perhaps laying their eggs in the fibre-optic lines festooned on the concrete utility poles is the only way the cicada can survive in treeless urban Japan. From what I read in this Japan blog,”magnoysamsara” the crows of Tokyo are also tearing optical-fibre wires for their nests too.

 Also check out this news report from the Register in the UK: Spiders attack Manchester phone network“… a BT engineer his girlfriend was having problems with her phone because.. spiders had eaten through the line…”

Thinking the unthinkable…

Why Vodafone should ring off from Japan and America
The Telegraph: Sir John Bond, who becomes Vodafone’s chairman in July, should review its global strategy. The mobile operator is in investors’ bad books, with its shares trading at a steep discount to the sum of its parts.
But a change of strategy - if cleverly executed - could replace the discount with a premium. The solution is to sell Vodafone’s Japanese and US businesses. Not that it will be easy to exit them well. Take Vodafone Japan, which has been a particularly bad performer. It’s not obvious who would buy it. As a result, Vodafone may find it hard to secure the 7.7bn Pounds Sterling the business is worth on CSFB’s estimates.
That said, there is little strategic benefit in keeping Japan. Vodafone’s initial attempt to force Japan to use the same handsets as the rest of the group is one of the reasons it fell behind. What’s more, Japan’s poor performance has had a negative impact on Vodafone’s stock, disproportionate to its size.

Saaaaa.
Actually, Vodafone is cursed in Japan.
When British cellular giant Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) bought into Japan by acquiring J-PHONE, the Japan operation was neck and neck with KDDI in the market for the No. 2 spot. However, Vodafone Japan peaked just around the time officially changed its name “J-PHONE Co., Ltd.” to “Vodafone K.K.” (K.K. stands for “kabushiki kaisha”) October of 2003. It’s been a slide ever since.

At the start, he company was riding high on J-PHONE’s swift adoption to flat rate mobile data pricing of KDDI/au rather than the foot dragging attitude of DoCoMo.

Vodafone’s present woes come from it one-size-fits-all suite of handsets and services it has tried to unsuccessfully foist off on the Japanese rather than customizing their phones for Japan.

Vodafone has been claiming the its Japan operation has been on the mend for years now, when in fact its Japan business is suffering a steady decline without a hint of hope. It’s only a matter a of time before stockholders of the parent company Vodafone Group, demand a dump-and-run of Japan. As article in The Telegraph observes, if somehow Vodafone could get out of Japan (and the USA) the stock of Vodafone Group would be 30% higher. Yow.
To quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!!“

Japan’s 5 TV Stations to Start Webcast With Dentsu
Tokyo–Japan’s five major television networks, including Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. , plan to team up with advertising giant Dentsu Inc. to distribute their programs over the Internet from next spring….Dentsu to arrange ads for TV programs and to set up a new company to distribute the programs free of charge, the sources said. The five TV stations will provide the new company with programs for the Webcast.

This great news for you folks studying Japanese. TV provides you with real Japanese that people use and the drivel that is found in anime and manga. All the major TV network will be FREE: TBS, Fuji Television Network Inc. , TV Asahi Corp. , Nippon Television Network Corp. and TV Tokyo Corp. Cho bery godo (Really very good).

Manabe named leader of anti-spyware squad
MSN-Mainichi: TV celebrity Kaori Manabe has been named the leader of the “spyware extermination squad” during an event held Thursday in Tokyo….

Yikes, I want to use some spyware right now so I can call the “extermination squad” …. however, I don’t know how effective that would be. Like all the other other anti-virus companies, Computer Associates International Inc. –the sponsor of the squad– neither reported nor detected the Sony rootkit spyware until just recently. Meh.

Accton Launching Skype Cellphone
WWJ—Taiwan-based Accton Technology unveiled its Skype-enabled Wi-Fi phone, the SkyFone WM1185-T, in Tokyo…a talk time of up to four hours with a stand-by-time of up to 20 hours and is likely to be initially priced at over US$150 …

Combined with free phone service provided by Skype software, a WiFi cellphone here in central parts of Tokyo would be ideal. In the central areas and in the younger upscale parts of town there’s always an open WiFi connection available. Most of the train stations have a WiFi available at a modest (or free) charge and Yahoo!BB WiFi is quickly expanding. I’m such a cheapskate, I would just leach off open WiFi where I could find it,. At my previous job in the downtown banking district of Yokohama there was 100% free-WiFi coverage and there’s total coverage at no cost in my upscale neighborhood in the ‘burbs between Tokyo and Yokohama.
There are a couple GSM/WiFi cellphones already offered in Japan but these phone require the use for-pay WiFi networks and not free, non-cost Skype calls. This WiFi SkyFone(tm) by Accton uses a built-in Skype client that allow the cellphone to perform free Skype calls which previously required the use of a PC.

Tokyo Stock Exchange crashes from excessive porn downloading or something!

Trading still suspended on Tokyo bourse
REUTERS:The Tokyo Stock Exchange, Asia’s biggest bourse, said on Tuesday it is still unsure when it will be able to resume stock trading, which was suspended before the opening due to problems with trading systems.…more…

The Tokyo Stock Exchange has tiny glitches all the time because of the mega-funky linking of the 2-byte Japanese systems and the rest-of-the-world’s systems. Whenever the Tokyo Stock Exchange goes down for more than 10 minutes, the exchange officials and computer venders have to make formal report to the Japanese Diet. I’ve worked on a few of those reports from the network switching end….. and let me say the reports are paradigms of pure vagueness, smoke, mirrors, and lots of groveling apologies. However, these Diet reports/apologies never solve anything long-term and the mystery glitches have continued for years now.

Japanese company claims fibre-optic data transfer record
APP: ….developed technology to transmit a two-hour movie in 0.5 seconds, the world’s fastest speed achieved with fibre-optic cables in the field….Kansai Electric used fibre-optic cables on power-transmitting steel towers to achieve the speed of one terabit per second, which is more than 100 times faster than inter-city data transmissions currently in use…

Japan Factiod: More than 95% of Japanese households right now have fiber-to-the-curb capability.

Kansai Electric is Japan’s second largest electric company based out of Osaka. The fact that they can use use existing infrastructure of their power-transmition network to deliver realtime movies on demand is amazing…and LONG-awaited. I worked on the world’s first video-on-demand via Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) in Orlando Florida for Maybe-the-Largest-in-Japan Inc. and that was nothing but heartaches. It worked but each set-top box which had to be provided for less than $100…but actually it cost us $5,000 to implement. Needless to say, I’m no longer working on that doomed project.

From what I have been told by my friends working in Kansai Electric, this implementation is only costing $200 per household—Hot damn, maybe I ought to buy shares in Kansai Electric’s shares of common stock [No way Jose’].

Japan’s Willcom unveils smart phone
TOKYO — Willcom Inc., a Japanese low-cost wireless telephone service provider, unveiled ….a smart phone by Sharp Corp. …that combines handheld computer functions with a phone….the W-ZERO3…comes with a sliding keyboard that allow users to send and receive lengthy e-mail messages as well as surf the Web and perform other data functions…more…

Jaapn has the most advanced cellphones on the planet. Period.

Japan also has the crappiest cellphone interfaces on the planet. Exclamation point.

Even more oddly, almost no cellphones in Japan have Treo or Blueberry style keyboards. There’s just one Docomo with a built-in thumbboard. There’s nothing remotely PDA-like available here because thumbing on the phone numeric keypad is relatively efficient in Japanese (because the Japanese language is so inefficient for any kind of key input). Finally, it took a foreign company, WILLCOM Inc, to figure out that corporate users need a better way to answer their email and work while on the go. When they start selling the phone for less than 50,000 yen or (about $430 USD) in December, they ought to capture the lucreative market estimated to be as many as 27 million persons who want “high-end multi-function phones.”

FOCUS: Mobile phone-using ‘Red Feather’ campaign launched
TOKYO– A mobile phone-using fundraising system made its debut in the annual “Red Feather” campaign which began on Oct. 1, enabling those who are hesitant to stop in front of people holding collection boxes and make contributions to easily donate money….
“The ‘Red Feather’ campaign is widely supported by middle-aged and elderly people, but we would like to lure young people in their teens and 20s,” said Atsushi Fukui, chief of the accounting section of the Central Community Chest of Japan…..”QR code” printed nationwide to enable users of camera-equipped mobile phones to read them….

Japan’s train stations have a strange gantlet to run every October—mumbling elderly and squealing teenage volunters selling akai hane (赤い羽) red lapel feathers for donations to the Community Chest charity. In the past, no salaryman could show up at work without wearing one of these red lapel feathers. However, today’s corporate restructurings, flextime, working online, and general social apathy has made Red Feather sales plumet.

Never fear–it’s Japan’s beloved Keitai (携帯電話) cellphones to the rescue! Using QR codes and online web donations, the Community Chest of Japan is trying to boost more modern donations.

Running the “Red Feather Charity Drive” (赤い羽根募金), the Community Chest of Japan is the affiliate of United Way International. Read more about the Red Feather on their English website.
Watch the TV commercial of Japan’s Red Feather/ Community Chest featuring their poster girl, Japanese actress Satomi Ishihara shown here (in Japanese of course),

Fake Kyodo story on China invasion of Okinawa on pseudo Yahoo site
Kyodo News, TOKYO: …..a pseudo Yahoo! News website …carrying a fake Kyodo News credit and falsely announcing that Chinese warplanes had invaded Japanese airspace over Okinawa were posted on Oct. 19…. the fabricated article saying that the Pentagon had announced the ”invasion” …over China’s gas exploration projects in the East China Sea…more…

While China uses sophisticated filters keep its Internet near sterile, the Japanese Internet is far more fun. I wouldn’t doubt that a Japanese geek created this fake site just as a creative “troll“…and now feels proud of the publicity and his notoriety.