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20 Nov 09
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Mummies, mass murder and pseudo-science! Top 3 Cults of Japan! Since my previous list of top worst image characters of Japan proved to be such a roaring success I thought I should provide you all with another ranking of a very similar subject: cults.If you start looking I’m sure there’s plenty of freaky cul... |
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18 Nov 09
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The one who dealt it… Last week we had a manager's meeting of quite some significance since we are starting to solidify the plans for the coming year. The plan was for all the department heads to outline the general direction and strategy for the year ahead. In addition to the... |
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17 Nov 09
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I do feel a bit gay actually... Now, I should start things off by saying that I'm a pretty regular guy who is not overly concerned with my appearance, I'm not particularly a slob, but you can hardly call me metrosexual either.A little while back I got an offer from the hair salon I use... |
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16 Nov 09
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I quit quitting! As I have mentioned a little earlier, for more than 15 years now I was a user of the Swedish snuff tobacco called "snus". Not only was I a user, I was a pretty heavy user and the volume of nicotine I put into my body was probably equivalent to that of a... |
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15 Nov 09
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Will the real Japanese sports drink please stand up? One of the more predictable things that a new comer will make fun of when arriving in Japan fresh off the banana boat is the name of the sports drink called "Pocari Sweat" and how they will try to convince the locals how unappetizing it sounds to drink... |
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12 Nov 09
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All aboard the CC train! I think I have earlier talked a little about corporate mail culture and how this can sometimes take amusing shapes. One very useful function for mails is how easily a CC "carbon copy" of the communication can be sent out to people who might benefit from... |
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11 Nov 09
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Crash course in mastering corporate communication visuals! For some reason it seems like illustrations and how pictures can be used to convey messages across cultures has been a topic I touch upon from time to time here. One reason is of course that my good friend Martin has this as his profession and is... |
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09 Nov 09
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Pissing on the parade... The other day I talked to one of the sales reps, a Japanese guy about my age, I'm a personal friend with since earlier, and he was extremely happy as he told me that he had a few weeks earlier had a cancer screeing test that gave preliminary positive... |
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08 Nov 09
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A postcard from suburbian Tokyo Ok, for the first time ever, let me introduce an accidental guest blogger here on the page. I mean "accidental" since he wrote it as a comment on this post but I thought it was too funny and insightful to be hid away just in the comments, so after getting... |
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06 Nov 09
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One of those dull posts about blogging To be honest, keeping up the blogging now for soon three years is a little up and down. A couple of months ago I felt like I had gotten into a bit of a rut. The visitor number was flatting out a bit and the number of comments posted were also decreasing... |
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05 Nov 09
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Corporate games Life in the multi national corporation can sometimes be a bit tedious, but there are games that can be played to liven things up and make it more entertaining. One of these is playing "meeting tag", this can be done both an international or national level... |
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03 Nov 09
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How to know if your partner (the word "partner" used here to save me the trouble of specificying gender) is trying to murder you for money After a few stale weeks in the Japanese news, some pretty entertaining news have emerged. Ok, "entertaining" is perhaps not the right word, but odd and slightly bizarre are probably more suitable, and as if that wasn't enough, the whole ordeal played out... |
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02 Nov 09
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The image characters we rely on for protection As I previously, tongue-in-cheek, did the ranking of the top 3 worst image characters in Japan (here) I didn't really think much about it and aimed for a entertaining slant for the post. However, as I the other day noticed the official image character of... |
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01 Nov 09
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How it is to be a salaryman As a part in my much appreciated series of tv commercials that realistically reflect how it is to be a salaryman here in Japan I post this great new commercial. Sure, the previous one is still relevant for the good days but this one actually more properly... |
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31 Oct 09
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The objects in the mirror might be more bizarre than they appear Seen today on a Japanese product specification sheet (in Japanese mind you, so this is not one of those funky "language mishaps" things, translated here for your amusement):If there is a performance difference between the performance as stated her in the... |
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29 Oct 09
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Fantastic Facts: Swedish coffee is great! As an expat Swede, I can actually live without most things from back home, there are some things that I like and buy if I get the chance, but very few things that I have trouble to live without. Two things actually.The first is “knackebrod”, the Swe... |
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28 Oct 09
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Sometimes it's the little things Sometimes it's the little things that can get me really annoyed at work... I received an e-mail from a colleague in the head office which was basically a forward of another e-mail from another person (no document or anything, just text) and the text in... |
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27 Oct 09
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I think you called the *wrong* guy A while earlier I talked about my manners when talking with tele-marketers and how they have a habit of making me slightly unpleasant to deal with after a certain point (post here). Well, there is some people that can make me much more unpleasant to deal... |
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26 Oct 09
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It's not what you say, it's how you say it, or is it? A sales related meeting earlier where a review of the sales of the month was done with each of my company's branch offices in Japan through the beloved teleconference system. My favorite was the Sendai branch manager, responsible for the Tohoku region... |
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25 Oct 09
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Love defined - the moments that stay in your heart After a request from Karen quite a while earlier on more "mushy" stuff, since full male frontal nudity for some reason wasn't considered "romantic enough" according to her standards, I thought I should make another try. In a relationship, I think there... |
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24 Oct 09
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Corporate insanity, and this time I really mean it! One of the better things about the humble company which employs my services is that the culture around working hours is not ridicilous. Usually the office starts to clear out from around six and after seven it's usually pretty empty in the office.... |
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22 Oct 09
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Complete Coma! I just remembered a pretty great anecdote that I best share with all my readers. I have not yet really dissected the drinking culture here in Japan , but rest assured that this is a topic that is lingering in my mind and will be dealt with when and if a... |
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21 Oct 09
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Hey! Why don't we chose nude kids as key visuals for this product?! I am currently leading a shorter project that, among other things, involves creation of a series of advertisements for an upcoming campaign. Normally, the lady in charge of branding and marketing communications would be the one developing the ads, but she... |
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20 Oct 09
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Hey, what about the sports?! As I sometimes watch the news on the local Japanese tv, it's inevitable that I also happen to watch some sports news. If you have been following this blog I think the obvious lack of posts mentioning sports make it pretty clear that I am no huge sports... |
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19 Oct 09
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You had me at “Haneda will become a hub airport” Ok, I admit that I have been a bit skeptical and perhaps a bit unfair to prime minister Hatoyama and the DPJ as they assumed reign of Japan from the good 'ol LDP and Taro Aso . However, to my surprise the new government seem to be exercising something... |
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15 Oct 09
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If this is your pizza, how does your burgers look? Once upon a time, when I just had started this little blog and the number of readers were somewhere around 2-3 pageloads per week out of which I was at least half, I did a post on how Japanese treat pizza and how it can sometimes manifests itself in... |
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14 Oct 09
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Careful planning is the key to success! Wednesday next week we have a very important teleconference with management to discuss a large upcoming marketing study for a certain product and hope to have the approval to go ahead.However, before that big meeting with the big shots, we'll have a more... |
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12 Oct 09
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Japanese rice is sticky As a shorter interlude between all the heavy posts dealing with weddings, work, Japanese culture and all that stuff that is so challenging to comprehend, I thought I should break things up with a lighter post for a change. My little niece has been eating... |
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11 Oct 09
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Getting Married in Japan Part 6 - The "Profile Video" In all honesty, this next installment in this immensely popular series of posts does not deal with something that is a necessity for a wedding in Japan, but it still is something that is very likely to be discussed at some point. The topic at hand is the... |
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09 Oct 09
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I had a dream... This morning I had a dream just before waking up…I dreamt that I was in Paris (scary already, huh?) with Mrs. Sunshine-Salaryman and we were looking at some goods from street vendors...There we met a creepy looking young girl around 10 years old, who w... |
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07 Oct 09
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Typhoon season, the hyped up big one Autumn in Japan is typhoon season and I have experienced many typhoons during my ten years in Japan and generally they're a bit hyped up in foreign media. Sure, it's a bit windy and it rains quite a bit making it unpleasant to go outside, also trains keep... |
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05 Oct 09
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2 Million Dorks spending $4.5 BN USD on 377,873 sqkm of land? To follow up the “Otaku” and Akiba theme since a few posts back, I believe that I have some new insight into this that you might be interested in knowing. The other day I had a discussion with the Boy about the Japanese dork phenomena, triggered by... |
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02 Oct 09
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Getting Married in Japan Part 5 - I appreciate your gift so much that I want to give you a gift as thanks As you probably have read in my previous post in this educational series of posts, there’s a lot of money circulating around in the system in conjunction with a wedding in Japan regardless of the type of ceremony, reception or such. It can happen that... |
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30 Sep 09
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Sell! Sell! Sell! I think I've mentioned it earlier, but if you encounter me in business I'm generally a pretty nice and mellow fellow, especially downwards and sidewards since I usually save my aggressive behaviour for local and international management upwards, when... |
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29 Sep 09
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I only understand what I chose to understand, but that doesn’t guarantee full comprehension, if you understand what I mean Generally, I hate interacting with members of the global senior management, there are many reasons for this, but the biggest reason is the inability of most management to understand and/or look into any complexities that can not be broken down and... |
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27 Sep 09
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Informative illustrations, making it simple As I've brought up a few times before, I've got an old buddy who's working as a professional illustrator. Obviously he's good at illustrating stuff, but his speciality is to making informative illustrations that can make it easier to understand something... |
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26 Sep 09
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Sexy spam comments One of the fun things about blogging is getting immediate feedback and some interaction with the readers through the comments after each post (so yeah, don't hesitate to write a comment, I read them all with great interest!). I have received the... |
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22 Sep 09
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Worst Image Character of Japan - Top 3 2009 Before I kick this epic post off properly into it's full glory, my own personal stance to the topic in question should probably be clarified. As many of my readers probably know, "Image Characters" are very popular here in Japan. Plenty of companies and... |
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22 Sep 09
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It's not golden, but at least it's silver This week, Japan is lucky enough to be in a year when the so-called "silver week" occurs, when the stars are perfectly aligned and "respect for the elderly" day and the "autumn equinox" day come with just one day in between resulting in that we get that... |
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19 Sep 09
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Akihabara is not the place to be... Just earlier in the day I made a quick stop at Akihabara, the Japanese "otaku" geek heaven here in Tokyo, since that's the only place I had a chance to find what I was looking for.The following things went through my head as I was making my way through... |
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18 Sep 09
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I’m really sorry and apologies for all the trouble I’ve caused… As I brought up a little earlier, Japanese have recently been shaken by two big celebrity scandals. One which involved a celebrity and her husband, involved in some minor use of narcotics and another one involving a celebrity involved in some minor use of... |
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16 Sep 09
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Getting married in Japan Part 4 – Financing the wedding As I hinted at in my previous entry in this immensely popular series of posts, getting married in Japan can prove to be a quite costly affair. Like everything, you can of course pay a higher or lower amount depending on how you chose to do things. A small... |
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13 Sep 09
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This is Japanese boobs, for real this time Recently, I have seen more and more people finding their way here after a google om "Japanese boobs" or "Big Bosoms" and I actually feel a little bad that I have been tricking those people here under false pretenses since there's probably more Tom of... |
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11 Sep 09
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Commuter Terrorists – The Blocker As I am a salaryman, my primary means of transportation is of course, the subway and commuter trains. I use this to and from work as well as to appointments outside the office with outside parties (customers, suppliers, whatever). To say that I like the... |
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09 Sep 09
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My boss has a coach... Once every week he comes into the office; the business coach. My boss, Mr. Shachou has a coach to help him become better at business and to give him advice and guidance. This coach is an american businessman who has been involved in starting up a few big... |
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08 Sep 09
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...not really dry, but not really wet either... kinda ... moist? Coming back again to the topic of the subway in Japan, but this summer, the private Metro subway have in some stations placed this interesting contraptions in the platform (look at the picture), the purpose of these devices is to shower the poor commuters... |
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07 Sep 09
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The tables have turned now, haven’t they…? In Japan , behavior is dictated by your position towards the person you are interacting with. In theory, this is nothing really strange at all and something that is valid for all cultures and people I believe. However, in Japan , and especially in a work... |
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06 Sep 09
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A commercial so close to the real life of a salaryman it's scary... Ok, again, I usually don't put up that many funny clips and commercials from tv and such here in Japan since there are so many other places and people that do it better and faster than me. But I just thought that this amazing commercial for the korean... |
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04 Sep 09
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Unemployed in Japan, poor LDP! Again, coming back to the topic of the election and the aftermath. As you all probably know by now, in this election the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) saw a horrible election, getting the number of seats reduced from around ~300 to only ~100 and the... |
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03 Sep 09
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So goth it couldn't be more goth even if it tried... Ok, I should warn most of readers here again since this is once again one of those posts that won't interest anyone except possibly one or two readers that never comment anyway, but since I don't write for any audience other than myself really I say screw... |
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