The umbrella's get in the way of accurate readings unfortunately.

As someone who lives in a mountainous area of Japan, I will hazard a guess:
Japan is not exactly teaming with wildlife choices are:

Bear
Deer
Rabbit
Fox
Tanuki (a dictionary will tell you its a racoon-dog, more to the racoon end of the scale though)
Kamoshika (Hairy mountain goat thing)
Monkey

Throw everything out that hibernates.
Throw out everything that has terrain limitations in very dense bush, or steepness.
Throw out things that are difficult to catch or dangerous.
Think Kamoshika's are protected/endangered are pretty elusive and don't leave the mountains....

Monkeys seem like a good choice, and are probably slightly more similar to us (in case they start showing full blown radiation sickness) than an Andrias japonicus

IE9 is not a decent browser. If it was 2007 maybe, but its lack of compatibility with modern web standards makes the whole IE family a massive ball and chain holding back web progression. Please see if any of the other 'alternative' browsers give you better power consumption. IE is not the solution. For anything.

Changing the firefox search engine default via the pulldown only affects searches entered in the search bar... this version will use bing for searches entered into the address bar too. (which otherwise needs a change in about:config).

Considering that 96.42% of firefox users don't even know that about:config exists even if they wanted to change it back to google, there is a vague point.

(I won't even get into the amount of times I've boggled at people entering yahoo.co.jp into the search bar and then typing out a full www... into the yahoo box)

and FreeBSB too. FreekingBSD.

No problems with my Fedora/KDE here... in fact have started installing this for new linux users too where I previously would have put Ubuntu since the Unity debacle... my only problem is that Fedora versions get EOL'ed a bit quickly, so probably needs an upgrade at least yearly... systems are of course ok, but a bit concerning when software updates stop working too.

I agree, he sounds like he would be better suited to education in Soviet Russia...

Don't have much to compare it with, but its easy on Fedora.... only commandline you need at least as far as LAMP goes is setting up your mysql root password. Although Ubuntu has historically been the noob-friendly version, changes with the latest version has been chasing a lot of people away. That said I'm a KDE user anyway, so don't know if the Gnome changes have affected Fedora too.

On any modern Linux, think LAMP is going to be pretty much part of the install process anyway... the part that might frustrate is getting your head around firewalls and permissions, but that doesn't necessarily involve commandline either. The Red Hat family has a good server reputation and you could pick up a bit of a marketable skill while you're at it...

Ok, maybe you're right about needing someone to update it full time, but...

http://freshdigital.info/computer/patent-wars-diagram-who-is-actually-suing-who/

Yahoo is still "The Internet" in Japan... weather, shopping auctions = yahoo. Search? About three weeks ago I was trying to help a student with their English google-fu... (I got sucked back in to teaching after the earthquake)... when I asked them to show me how they were trying to search, the first thing they typed into google: yahoo.jp

Not sure exactly how much of a separate company they are over here though, they were actually one of the biggest early pushers of broadband, handing out free ADSL modems + 6 months free access a few years back outside train stations.

Wikipedia also tells us the Yahoo Japan did $3.8 billion dollars in revenue last year, so I guess someone is still using it....

this.

Already in this thread there are so many "Fedora SUX" type comments, and its beyond me that people won't at least try another desktop before heading off elsewhere... with Ubuntu (and presumably all the other default gnome distro's) all getting the same response, this is turning into a "Linux SUX" issue, especially for first-installer types...

What concerns me in particular, is that at least with the KDE 4.0 debacle, there were quite a few "This is BAD... But I can see it being good in a few versions" type comments.... with Gnome 3, can't think I've seen a single positive comment, at best "changes are sorta manageable".

(KDE *is* really nice now too (Fedora 15 here)... in the same way that gnome is now giving people a poor impression of a lot of distro's I think the poor implementation in Kubuntu has caused a lot of ill will towards KDE too, although I can't speak for recent versions )

As someone who does occasionally use GIMP for professional use, I'm afraid to inform you that its CMYK support is not what you think it is.... there is a CMYK colour picker and thats about it. So while its suitability for professional use might be debatable, its a fact that doesn't support CMYK properly and hasn't for years.

There is a plugin with rudimentary export support (Separate+) but doesn't really cover all bases, and the import plugin can only handle TIFFs.

Must second Knoppix.... I used one last week after not having used one for a few years and was REALLY impressed with the updates... This on a machine that neither Ubuntu (which I usually use for others (but am starting to reconsider)) or Fedora (which I always use for myself) could boot, at least with default options. Straight into Compiz too. Had kind of stopped using it after the other distro's started shipping as live discs too, but it was the most notable "Linux rocks!" moment I've had in the last few years... promised to seed it for a few months too.

Don't know if I'm missing your question here, but Inkscape and GIMP are fine on KDE - until you mentioned it, I've never actually thought of them as being anything different (or maybe never having been a gnome user than for more than a few hours, didn't notice their gnomishness). Have never bothered to check how much overhead they pull along with them...

People might want to watch a movie on a train commute... where I live an hour each way is not particularly unusual. Also have you considered what could be done with a phone that has HDMI out?