There's 36 million blogs in China and MSN Spaces leads the pack. Sounds like an alternative universe as non-Chinese blog tracking services don't even have half of the 36 million that Baidu seems to be tracking.
That is a one heck of a lot of blogs. 2+ blogs per blogger.
MSN China leading the way. Who knew?!?!
People's Daily Online -- MSN Spaces rated the leading blog service provider in China
I learned something today about making lists in Japanese.
For instance, in English, it is common to write a list of items such as:
"A baseball, basketball, volleyball and soccer ball."
In Japanese that would be:
ベースボールやバスケットボール、バレーボール、サッカーボルーなどの。。。は、
Translated, that would be:
"baseball ya basketball, volleyball, soccer ball nado no ... wa"
Does anyone else have any other interesting differences in grammar [yamamori hodo arudarouga] between English and Japanese?
Phenomenal post by ex-Blink COO, Ari Paparo, on why Blink (a bookmark service a bit like del.icio.us) died after raising $13M before the Internet bubble burst.
There's so many lessons to be learned here. Plus, I had friends working at the company. Ari is great for sharing all of this with all of us.
In the past few weeks I've had the pleasure of meeting up with two people that I may not have otherwise met without weblogs and the Internet.
Sean O'Rourke of the Organized Shopping Blog and Umair Haque of the Bubble Generation Strategy Lab both came through Tokyo and I was able to meet with them over dinner.
There have been many benefits from starting my blog 5 years ago, but the best ones are how it has enabled me to meet new people that I probably would not have met otherwise.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Livedoor is one of the top 3 Internet businesses in Japan (behind Yahoo! Japan and Rakuten.)
Why does Japan have to be so bad at English? It really boggles the mind. I hope you don't own any Livedoor stock...
Taking a page from Defectiveyeti.com's Bad Review Revue, here are a few choice quotes from reviews of "Memoirs of a Geisha":
"A more fitting title for Memoirs of a Geisha would have been Cliffs Notes of a Geisha." -- Dustin Putman, THEMOVIEBOY.COM"Memoirs of a Geisha builds a beautiful garden, then runs an interstate through it to let more people in."
-- Rob Vaux, FLIPSIDE MOVIE EMPORIUM"This is, in fact, quite an ugly film."
-- Eric Lurio, GREENWICH VILLAGE GAZETTE"An Eastern movie made to resemble the most unchallenging Western ideal of what the East is."
-- Jeffrey Chen, REELTALK MOVIE REVIEWS"Robin Swicord...who adapted the novel for the screen, doesn't bother much with Golden's prose, apparently because it wasn't cliched enough."
-- Luke Y. Thompson, NEW TIMES"The filmmakers make characters crasser, ignore nuances within geisha tradition and give characters attitudes and dialogue highly unlikely for Depression-era Japan."
-- Kirk Honeycutt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER"A bloated melodrama more interested in poses than inner lives (according to some Japanese-culture-vultures, it gets the poses wrong, too)."
-- Peter Canavese, GROUCHO REVIEWS"More like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Memoirs of a Geisha."
-- Ed Gonzalez, SLANT MAGAZINE"...if ever a movie represented Hollywood marketing, this is it."
-- Laura Clifford, REELING REVIEWS
Memoirs of a Geisha [rottentomatoes.com]
I said I was tired of this topic and then Dirk pointed me to this scathing review. Andrew Lee gets at what I have been trying to say all along. The stereotyping and the blatant cultural inaccuracy is what bothers me more than anything else.
Early on in the production of the film it was decided that the traditional white-face make-up of the geisha would be offputting for American audiences. Instead we are presented with a toned-down, westernised geisha – Sayuri even has blue eyes. Geisha hairstyles are lost too, and replaced with long loose hair and styles that are more reminiscent of those seen in Chinese films also starring Zhang, Li and Yeoh.In one of the central scenes of the film, a dance starring Zhang, any pretensions to cultural accuracy go right out of the window. It was obviously decided that geisha dances – which in reality are slow, graceful affairs – were not visually interesting enough for audiences used to seeing Zhang flying among the bamboo. So what we end up with is a mish-mash of imagery, as the filmmakers opt to mix theatrical kabuki-style dancing with Hollywood razzamatazz. Wearing a wig of long, flowing black hair reminiscent of women in Chinese ghost stories, Zhang dances dramatically while balancing on eight-inch platform shoes and holding an umbrella in a blizzard of fake snow. A spotlight shines down and koto drummers dictate the frenetic beat – the effect is much closer to Chicago than anything in the geisha world. To make matters worse, the costume designer has dressed Zhang in shoes worn by a tayu for her coming-out ceremony, which will surely upset many geisha aficionados.
...
In the end, all the cultures involved with this film come off badly. A Japanese cultural symbol has been thoroughly misrepresented – so much so that the film is simply titled Sayuri in Japan, shrewdly omitting the word “geisha”. Chinese actresses are taking a beating from their own countrymen, accused of treachery. And the American production is grist to the mill of those who accuse the US of insensitivity to any culture but its own.
Still wanna go see this film?
Speaking to journalists in Tokyo before the film’s premiere, Marshall said: “I think there is a misconception about what a geisha is across the world, certainly in the western world. One of the joys of this movie was to clarify what a geisha is.”
That comment encapsulates for me everything that is wrong with Hollywood.
Vote with your wallet. Do not pay to see this film in a theater. Discourage your friends from paying to see this dreck. If you must view it, find it on your local Intarweb.
FT.com / Home Asia - Japan through Hollywood’s distorting lens
Excellent, excellent post by Galbraith.
Joshua deserves his payout. He's done more for the Internet via memepool.com and geourl and then del.icio.us (essentially single-handedly) than the vast majority of people on the web.
Beware the second round....
Stephen Roach, a NY-based economist for Morgan Stanley has an article in the Morgan Stanley GEF on the Japanese economy. He sees all the signs of growth for Japan but cautions us against two scenarios: 1) US or Chinese growth not meeting goals and thus impacting Japan, and 2) the challenge that the Bank of Japan has in normalizing a monetary policy that has been in anti-deflation mode for over a decade.
Use greasemonkey to turn any page you want to into "A Yahoo! Company" branded page.
(for those of us who haven't sold our companies to Yahoo! for tens of millions of dollars...)
I've been pondering this "Memoirs of a Geisha" movie from the time it was announced. Thus, I'm not surprised that few are going to be satisfied with the movie except for people who don't know anything about Japan.
Some Chinese fans are incensed that Chinese actresses are portraying Japanese characters. Some Japanese are disappointed in the inaccuracy of the portrayal of Japan and Japanese culture. We'll soon see if the strategy to use Chinese actresses will lead to sales of tickets in Chinese-language countries. I predict low sales in Japan. Japanese people are not going to pay to see a ham-handed portrayal of their own culture by Americans, much as how "Lost in Translation" did not sell in Japan.
Personally, I'm not really dying to see the movie. I'm sort of tired of the topic, to be frank.
Memoirs of a 'geiko': Japan's real geishas resent the mystique - Yahoo! News
Hollywood geisha raise eyebrows in Asia - Yahoo! News
Chinese geisha give slanted view of Japan's oldest professionals - MSN-Mainichi Daily News
This is VERY FUNNY! Must see TV :)
A nice article on the recent warmth in the Japanese economy. Nothing new here, just an overview.
Companies are more optimistic, as is evident from a surge in spending on factories and equipment. According to a survey published last week by Japan's largest business daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, such spending will rise 15.2 percent this year, the first double-digit gain since 1991.There is also increased enthusiasm for Japan among American and other overseas investors. In mid-November, Goldman Sachs held a hedge fund conference in Tokyo; 700 fund managers attended, mostly from the United States and Europe. That was seven times the turnout at the first such conference six years ago, participants said.
Foreigners now account for almost half of all trading on Japanese equity markets, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. They have helped spur a rally in the benchmark index, the Nikkei 225, which touched a two-decade low of 7,607.88 in April 2003. On Monday, it reached a five-year high; most of the gains have come since July.
New Optimism About the Japanese Economy After a Bleak Decade - New York Times
If you run a Mac, this is a very nice screensaver.
"Soundstream is a Mac OS X screensaver created with Quartz Composer.
It consists of a randomly moving particle generator (reminiscent of Flurry) that reacts to the sound level picked up by your computer's microphone."
Very funny- click to read the details.
