Season's Greetings and Happy New Year!

Wishing all our friends all the very best this holiday season and in the new year! Click here for an animated greeting.

Eel Powered Christmas Tree

This is another one of my posts classified under "This happens only in Japan". While this unique way of harnessing the electrical power seen in some underwater organisms is a good demonstration of innovative thinking - I would doubt that this is ever going to be feasible. Yet, something like this would be difficult to do in the Western world - I can just imagine the protests over animal cruelty.

Top Japanese buzzwords of 2007

An intriguing compilation of buzzwords. They are gonna decide on the top 10 soon - are there any here that particularly tickled you. I was fascinated by the fact that "Compliance" has made it to mainstream vocabulary in Japan. "Temp" is another one - a newer phenomenon in Japan than in USA.

What's wrong with this picture?

Here's a street corner full of vending machines - pretty typical for a Japanese tow. But can you spot the odd one out?

Yes, you are not imagining things - one of the vending machines has feet! In another one of "It happens only in Japan" series, here's a brand new personal safety idea - wearing vending machine disguise.

If this is not the first time you've come across an odd invention from Japan, you're not the only one. In Japan they even have a name for these - "chindogu", or “queer tools.”

Click here for the article from NYTimes.

Spirit of Japantown festival in San Jose

There's a lot of Japanese action right now in Bay Area - I missed going to this one though. I've been to Japantown a few times - it's really quiet most weekends. There's a couple of nice art shops selling Japanese handicrafts. The ACE hardware store was probably the first one in Bay Area selling Japanese style electronic toilet seats. Check it out if you get a chance. To see it on the map click here.

San Francisco's Hotel Tomo Jacks Into Japanese Culture

WIRED has this coverage of the newly renovated Best Western Hotel Tomo in San Francisco - a haven for Japanese culture fanatics and videogame lovers. Miyazaki's movies playing in the lobby, PlayStation3 in the deluxe suites, murals with Japanese street scenes - seems like a great place to stay. More here.

Fall Festival brings 17,000 cranes to San Francisco's Japantown

Paper cranes with messages calling for peace and prosperity fluttered in the wind over San Francisco's Japantown on Friday, which made Richard Hashimoto rejoice. So, too, Carol Murata.

For the past eight months, Murata and Hashimoto have overseen the behind-the-scenes doings of a project that culminates today with a daylong festival to celebrate the start of fall and San Francisco's official 50-year connection to Osaka, Japan.

The sister-city relationship was born out of the aftermath of World War II, when President Dwight Eisenhower asked San Francisco Mayor George Christopher to pick a place in Japan to reconcile the differences between the former enemies.

Like San Francisco, Osaka is a port city with an identity that goes far beyond its country's borders. Today's festival features dancers, drummers, speeches, a religious blessing and a hanging of cranes on the 100-foot-tall Peace Pagoda that anchors Japantown. The flying cranes are part of a centuries-old Japanese tradition that has been adopted for today's festival.

"This is the first time we've had anything hanging from the pagoda," said Hashimoto, a native of Japan who is president of the Japantown Merchants Association. "It's of great significance."

For the past three months, visitors to Japantown have written their most treasured wishes onto thousands of pieces of origami paper. Volunteers then folded those papers into the shape of cranes, which were put into streamers that Friday were attached to the pagoda in Japantown's Peace Plaza.

About 17,000 cranes were completed. People wished "for health, prosperity, 'hope my mother gets well,' peace - a lot of peace," said Murata, a Japantown merchant who helped organize the crane project.

One young wisher, she said, asked for "my brother (to) stop pulling my hair."

Osaka Mayor Junichi Seki, who is visiting San Francisco, was ecstatic to see the flying cranes. Among the activities today is the renaming of Japantown's Buchanan Mall to Osaka Way. In February, Seki hosted San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on a trip he took to Osaka.

"Fifty years is quite a milestone," Seki said. "I believe (the relationship) is quite an asset to both cities."

Today's festival is called the Aki Matsuri, which means "Fall Festival" in Japanese. The tradition of folding cranes is a symbol of long life and happiness. Along with the streamers, scores of banners with cranes flew on Friday from Japantown's pagoda.

Murata says she made a wish that was folded into a crane now fluttering from the pagoda.

She said she wrote, "I hope this event turns out OK."

If you go

The Aki Matsuri (Fall Festival) happens today in San Francisco's Japantown, at Post and Buchanan streets, from noon to 8:30 p.m. For more information, go to sfjapantown.org.

E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

For India and Japan, a freedom fighter's legacy endures

Things are really changing at Japan under Abe-san - seems to be a revival of sorts of nationalistic pride. Although bothersome to its close neighbors, many a Japanophiles believe that it's all part of Japan retaking its rightful position in the world. Nationalism need not equate to militarism and I think that this current trend is quite benign.

It surely is a great gesture by Abe-san to visit Kolkata and meet with Netaji Subhash Chander Bose's grandchildren. Once forgotten under the Nehru-Gandhi scheme of things, Netaji's legend has continued to grow in the recent years and many would argue that he was perhaps the most daring of the Indian nationalists who really upset British to the point of abandoning their imperial ambitions in India.

Not All Is Well In Japan

The Japanese industrial juggernaut seems to have done much better in the recent years than the Americans. But things are not going too well for some of the earlier success stories. Sony is the one name that just can't seem to regain its lost glory. On peak of consumer electronics industry worldwide in the 90s, it lost the gaming market first to Microsoft XBox in the high end, to Nintendo DS in the handheld and now to Nintendo Wii in the mass market consoles. Its Walkman franchise is all but dead in face of the onslaught from Apple iPod.

It comes as no surprise then that Nintendo's market capitalization exceeded Sony's for the first time. What comes as a surprise though is that Sony seems to be in deep slumber - all this is yet to awaken it. Here's an article from Forbes that talks about Sony's options and how it seems to be taking the path of least resistance.

In the automobile industry, while Toyota seems to have fulfilled its promise of being the global number one, the 90s success story of Nissan with its Gaijin leader seems to be getting derailed. Profits have taken a hit for the first time under Ghosn. See this article from Forbes.

The mystery of the Golden Turd of Tokyo

Finally I have figured out what that huge piece of turd is actually supposed to be - well, it is the golden beer foam - the building it's on is Asahi's beer hall. Quite appropriate I would say, but you do need a wild imagination to think of that abomination as beer foam.

Click here for this article from 3Yen.

An interesting travelogue on Tokyo

Chris Steele-Perkins' lens gives you a view of Tokyo that's intriguing, mysterious, multi-faceted, complex, dichotomous.

Mount Fuji Webcams from Around the Five Lakes Area

Mt.Fuji and Fuji Five Lakes(fujigoko.tv)

When Dr Singh met Japan's King

Sorry for the long break from blogging about Japan. Things are starting on a great note for 2007 though. The Indian Prime Minister was in Japan in Dec. and 2007 may be a record year for Japanese investments in India. Abe-san seems to have a preference for India too - though Japanese companies would continue to invest heavily in China, India might catch up in the coming years.

Here's wishing the very best to Indians and Japanese all over the world in this year of the Wild Boar!