I was on this train last night, actually, at it was a pretty wild experience once you realized the entire train was outfitted in Star Wars ads. The lightsabers are definitely a nice touch. That said, trains occasionally get the all-car treatment, and I remember one Yamanote line train being made up in Meiji Chocolate-bar wrap (as part of an anniversary event, being used as a call back to the lines original brown colour), and another time when a train was made out for a breath mint add where all the handlebars were shaped like mint packets!

One note, however, is that it is actually a Sobu Line Local (JR) train, not the subway.

Meiji Yamanote Train: http://www.japantrends.com/ride-the-meiji-chocolate-choo-choo-yamanote/

I know my AU phone stopped automatically receiving push e-mail, but would still respond to manual queries no problem. Were you unable to send/receive mail at all?

Well, both AU and Docomo reliably delivered consistent data reception throughout the earthquake period, for what it's worth.

As a resident of Japan, it strikes me as far more productive to donate the money I would use to buy a Geiger counter to disaster relief aimed at helping those more directly affected by the quake and tsunami. The government has been strictly monitoring levels in food and has been quite quick to prevent shipments of any food which might present even a small risk.

except that the type of BBS/Bulletin-Board page you linked to in the second link remains fairly common and popular today.

Why? Because it's easy to have it and a cell-phone version. As a lot of internet-browsing gets done on cell-phones, this has meant that many sites create their cell-phone version first and the PC version second.

There is certainly a lot more aural stimulation in Japan.

Actually, the advertising cars (not just for politicians, but also often for second-hand stores and garbage recyclers), at least for elections came about partly due to the wording of Japanese election law as I understand it.

But you are certainly right that there are far more audio-visual displays (and giant advertising screens) even in smaller cities here in Japan than elsewhere. Interestingly though, I had to think about whether one actually existed in my city... you sort of tune them out.

I also think Mixi is a good example... though I think it has a fairly clean design, it also illustrates how important (picture) emoticons are -- something which has been inherited from the cellphone culture.

Heck, even a few steps from Ueno (towards Ueno-park or Asakusa) can lead you to a relatively quiet area. I think that attempting to ascribe Japanese web-design layouts to the city layouts betrays a lack of familiarity with Japan as a whole (Japan != Shibuya. Tokyo != Japan), and simply "others" Japan as an easy way to explain difference.

I think there does exist a certain "do-it-yourself" attitude within Japan which favours home-grown solutions (especially in the technological/mobile area -- look at how closely the carriers control development of cell phones). Mixi, for example, created their own version of twitter (and, made it linkable with twitter, but only for twitter->Mixi, not the other way) and emulated what they saw as the best parts of facebook (the "like it" / "ii ne" button anyone?).

At least if you keep in plugged in it can be a doorstop *and* space-heater.

Still, it will be interesting to see how Sony's handling of this will progress... it seems like an amazingly big hole to miss in QA testing.

I wonder why they suddenly felt such a rush to "plug" this "hole".... did some new hack allowing pirated games to be played recently come out which utilized the "install other OS" function?

Although I must say I can't see this as being done on purpose -- no matter how much Sony might like to see the "fat" PS3s be cycled out of use.

Though I certainly think that the ACTA treaty does not qualify, can you not imagine any instances where it might be necessary for a government to debate something in secret?

Are there issues where the public at large should trust their elected officials to make the decisions which best suit the needs of a populace as a whole? Are there perhaps situations where the populace as a whole knowing might lead to worse decisions being made? I'm honestly not sure as to the answer to these questions, but I do think that there are probably issues (for example pertaining to national security and military intelligence -- again, both areas into which I do not think ACTA falls) where the populace as a whole is best served by not being informed.

The point of debate is certainly to discuss -- that isn't the issue... the question is how wide an audience should participate in the discussion.

And admire their resolve to make the treaty public -- indeed I am curious to see what it contains.

However, I wonder if parliamentary decorum doesn't traditionally restrict public discussion of issues currently up for debate...

Just because it is an unwritten rule does not mean it should be casually ignored... as much as we might disagree with the end results.

Same is also true in Japanese...

Gohan can mean both rice and a meal. Generally speaking when you ask "Did you have Gohan" you are asking whether someone ate a meal, not whether or not they had rice.

Bread and Cake are two distinct words and neither have anything to do with the characters for candy (and, in fact, are not written using Chinese characters in the first place).

Except that that isn't really true anymore anymore. Phones cost around $500, but the major carriers break that out into monthly payments, and give subsidies for agreeing to a long term contract -- generally 2 years (the system variest from Carrier to carrier, but that is basically the situation with AU, Docomo, and Softbank).

The $30 voice plan does cost $30, but then you add in the data plan and you add $10~$42 / month depending on use. And e-mail useage counts towards data use (there are systems analagous to text messaging, but phone e-mail basically plays the role that texts do in America/Canada/Europe).

There is of course still tax and the Universal Access Fee. But, there aren't any "system access fees".

Certainly the plans are generally better and more clearly advertised in Japan, but the situation has changed coinciderably in the last few years.