Japan Parliament Upper House Elections

Japan's Parliaments Upper House elections took place just this weekend. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's (or Abe-chan as I like to call him) Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) experienced a crushing defeat as newspapers and tv-channels have been reporting worldwide.

Abe's party still has the upper hand in the Lower House (Upper Hand in Lower House...). Especially since as far as I know the Upper House doesn't command so much power in the parliament, similar with the case in UK. However Abe-chan certainly isn't doing well, and the Japanese people have proven that with their votes. Abe-chan has refused to resign from his post as he "wants to keep his promises to the Japanese people" It will be left to be seen though if Abe-chan will be forced out of his office.

Anyways that is just to tell you that there were elections in Japan, the real thing starts here.

So I was looking trough the extremely interesting voting results. It's basically a list of the people, with their names and pictures and amount of votes they received.

I was excitingly going trough this list full of typical looking dull Japanese politicians faces, when something catches my attention...

I get a feeling there is something unusual in here...

Hmm, what could it be....

Kind of like a Japanese, but still somehow unusual.....
The red rose means he got in the Upper House
His name is written in Katakana and it sounds strangely Familiar.
TSU-RU-NE-N MA-RU-TE-I
Birthplace....FINLAND

そうそう、皆さん、このメガネのおっさんは、Ｍａｒｔｔｉ　Ｔｕｒｕｎｅｎ　フィンランド出身の日本の議員。
なんてすばらしいでございます！
実はＭａｒｔｔｉ　Ｔｕｒｕｎｅｎさんは日本初めての外国人の議員ですよ。（彼の前に韓国人は議員になったことがありましたが、その方は日本人として国会に入りました）。

よ～～くみてください！
まるでArnold Schwarzenegger みたいでございませんか？

Yes, he is Martti Turunen! The first foreigner even to sit in Japans parliament, he is finnish and reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger, not due to his looks, but due to his achievements. Now is not the first time he got in Japan's parliament. He is a member of the Democratic Party of Japan that got the upper hand in the Upper House in this election.

CONGRATULATIONS & GOOD LUCK MASA!

homepage(japanese)

wikipedia english

wikipedia finnish

wikipedia japanese

and while we're talking about elections I'd like to remind Japanese readers to take extra care when talking about ELECTIONS in English. I wonder how many conversations around the world took an interesting turn lately when a Japanese gentleman or lady took up the topic of JAPANESE ERECTIONS, in the dinner table.

Hiro: "So John, have you heard about the erections in Japan"
John: "Umm, erections...? I think I haven't"
Hiro: "At the moment everyone in Japan is talking about the erections, how are the erections in your country?"
John: "..."

(well, it's not so funny, but it's been prove to happen...)

もし、英語で選挙について話すことになったら、気を付くてください。

Snowing in Sweden

Poor swedes...
(Finnish language article)

Strawberry Fields

イチゴ狩りいってきました。
Went picking strawberries on a field in espoo

It was a sunny and windy day, very pleasent, not too cold nor too hot.
The firmly blowing wind at the fields gave a refreshing athmosphere.

My thanks to the driver and hardworking strawberry pickers. I now have almost two KG of strawberries (4 Liters), don't know what to do with them.


これおまけです。

Brands

Nokia is the world's 5th most valuable brand according to Interbrands famous analysis.
According to Interbrand, Nokia is the only top 5 non-USA company.

We also beat Japan, since Japan's biggest brand Toyota is at no. 6
However Toyota is increasing it's brand value the fastest, with Nokia increasing it's value the second fastest.

Nokia's competitors are far behind: Samsung at 21. Motorola at 77.

What makes Nokia's brand so valuable? Well without looking at the research in detail, I guess the fact that there are not many cell phone companies, but almost everyone has a cellphone.

Although I don't think Nokia's brand is very powerful, it is still the number one brand in the cell phone market with just a few major companies. Plus lately they seem to have put some good effort on the brand with the new flagship stores.

And don't even think of asking me how to calculate a brand's value, but for Nokia it is apparently 33,7 billion dollars. Understanding that a brand carries value is easier to understand though. Look at the worlds biggest brand Coca-Cola. Basically they sell spiced water and sugar. Anyone could do that, but only with a famous brand behind it you can be able to sell it all over the world.

Here is the top 10 (Parenthesis contains value in billions of dollars):

1. Coca-Cola (65,3)
2. Microsoft (58,7)
3. IBM (57,1)
4. GE (51,6)
5. Nokia (33,7)
6. Toyota (32,1)
7. Intel (30,9)
8. McDonald's (29,4)
9. Disney (29,2)
10. Mercedes (23,6)


source

Oh boy...

This leaves me wordless again.

なによりも怪しい！！

Water

Finnish bottled water is dirtier than the water from the tap.
For example Evian was tested and it proved so that it had "Hundreds of times of more bacteria than finnish tap water"

In fact if the tap water would be changed to the bottled water it wouldnt pass Finnish regulations on water cleanliness.



:)

Truck Dismount

I just remembered a game I used to play in the past: Truck Dismount
The objective is to drive a man sitting in a truck against the wall and hurt him as much as possible by adjusting the trucks speed, his location and putting on ramps. (A good strategy is to try to get him under the trucks tire...)

The physics modeling is superb, which is what makes this game so extraordinary.

It's a great party game to play with friends and see who gets the best score.

The predecessor of this game is called Stair Dismount. The objective is to push the same ragdoll down a stairway and to make him suffer as much as possible...

You can download both games here

Text to Speech Synthesizer

I just found a really fun Text to speech synthesizer, it works great!
It works with many languages and you can even try UK accent for English.

Includes all major languages (except swedish which is not a major language).

Try your favorite curse words with it!

























One of the best toys I've seen in awhile :)

EDIT: Seems you can only try it for a few times, after which you have to sign up for a free trial. I knew it was too good to be true :)
So pick your words well when you try.

Teach 'em Norwegians some statics

This just in from a colleague summer intern. Apparently these were taken in NORWAY. I don't have confirmation though.

This series of picture is now in use in Universities around the world. It's is a given as a reminder for students learning Statics as to why they are there sitting at the lecture :)

Winter Photo

IMG_0189
Originally uploaded by kasi_fin

Trying the post from Flickr function.

Lately I'm really into web technology.

Nokia must be right to change it's corporate model to an "Internet Company"
Internet is really starting to become something special.

始まったぞ～

ついにコーディングをし始めた。

1ヵ月半もかかった「ディサインフェイズ」が終わったみたい。



プログラミングってさー。
うまけ行けると楽しいけど、うまく行けないとマジ進めなくて、もうやりたくなくなる。
だからプログラミングは僕がしたい仕事じゃないと思う。少しならばいいけど、毎日ならば僕に合わない。

しかもプログラミングの得意な人はよくちょっと僕と変わった雰囲気があるんだねー。やっぱり脳味噌が違うように活用しているだろう。あとプログラミングの得意な人はよく体調がよくなさそう。今の社会ではみんな毎日パソコンの前で働いてるけど、プログラミングはやっぱり体に悪い影響を与える。

この世の中には僕に、プログラミングじゃない仕事あるかな？

やりたいものいっぱいあるけど。

Panorama (2)

Ok, my panorama's aren't perfect yet, but I also blame the hardware :)
Which brings to mind I've been wanting a nicer and more expensive camera lately, you know, one of those big black ones...

This one is from the Helsinki Harbor

Earthquakes

Earthquakes are scary, this happened just recently:

Japan earthquake kills three, injures hundreds

"Japan has tremors every five minutes"

A big earthquake will hit Tokyo sooner or later, it might be today or it might be 100 years later, but I sure hope I'm not there at the time.

Pictures

Panorama

Here is what happens when you try to take a panorama with poor planning.

Below: Bus station in Helsinki and a friends birthday

A Letter from Tokyo

So after being late as usual the International Office at Tokyo Institute of Technology graced me with a "Pre-departure orientation package"

Includes:
+Maps of Japan, Tokyo, Student Dormitories and Campuses (Wow they really like maps).
+A printed out webpage
+This years list of YSEP students (that I already got trough e-mail)
+Information about insurances
+Japanese study material that teaches Hiragana, Katakana and basic greetings
+NO Letter of Acceptance (that my uni's international office wants and I want so I can get 2000euros).

...So a bit of a disappointment, but now I know they send me stuff, since I'll be wanting the certificate of eligibility and the dang letter of acceptance.

RIP SLYME - NETTAIYA(熱帯夜)

I'm not a big fan or anything, but Rip Slyme's MC Ilmari is half-finnish, half-japanese. (Ilmari is Finnish name with a really old sound to it).　Gotta give some credit for that.

Rip Slyme is a bit hard to categorize, humor seems to be a big deal in their act, they don't take themselves too seriously, which is a plus here as the music itself juts wouldn't cut it.

They're somewhat of a hip-hop act or at least I guess they used to be, but I can't really categorize this by a genre, it's a mess.

This video though has some good humping and pumping, sweat and curvy shapes, it's like a meat factory at it's best, check it out.

And by the way, the name Nettaiya (熱帯夜) is a new word for me. "Nettai" means Tropic and "Ya" means night, so you could call it "Tropic Night", but the dictionary says it's: "A night when the temperature doesn't fall below 25C" :) See the vid and you'll find out why ;)

Windows Vista

So my new laptop that I bought in April shipped with Windows Vista.
After trying Vista for a day or two I came to the conclusion that it sucked.

I had serious problems with simple tasks like playing video files or listening to music with Windows Media Player. Although I did like the enhanced windows explorer and many other improvements. I wasn't really happy that I couldnt view a DVD with my new computer. So at that time it was back to XP (and that was a pain, finding all the drivers and shit, but it's a different story).

I've been happy with XP for the past months, but I had some spare time today and a recently bought external USB HD so I decided to re-install Vista to play with it a bit. I made a new partion for it, as I certainly wasnt ready to give up my XP yet. Partioning my HD and installing all went smoothly and now my computer can dual-boot XP and Vista (bit silly huh...).

So it seems vista has improved since I last tried it, Windows Media Played doesnt bring my laptop down with it's "visualizer" and I can even play movies....

The memory and CPU usage is still crazy though...even when idle. I do have a brand new processor and 1G of RAM, but only crappy integrated graphics, so that might be what's behind it all, since Vista is so Visual. (1G of RAM sounded like alot 4 years ago when I got my first computer, but come to think of it, it's probably the recommended minimum for Vista).


And then...what happens.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly and I was starting to get some Add-ons for my firefox and boom, without a warning. I get a crash, like someone had just detonated a bomb inside that baby.

EDIT:

I take my words back, Vista still can't play movie files (.avi Xvid) decently, hard to say if the problem is with my hardware or with vista, but it really is unforgivable, since my hardware came bundled with Vista.

So be it either Fujitsu-Siemens or Windows whose fault this is, it's really pathetic a modern computer that can't play video files without choking (even mobile phones can do it these days). I ca'nt believe microsoft has shipped a new OS that doesn't even perform as well as the previous one. Well thank god I have XP. I will keep vista on a seperate partition for playing with. A service pack will also apparently be released soon, so maybe then...

遥か昔。。。

Heheh, 48KB of RAM, (for reference my current computer boasts some 1000MB of RAM :)

なによりも怪しい！

More here

Akihabara dancing Storm Trooper

これ一体なんだろう。。

A Star Wars Storm Trooper takes on some dancing at Akihabara and inside trains.
Again the Japanese pedestrians are so used to these, that they can walk by totally ignorant.

Google Maps becoming scarier

It seems Google Maps has changed a bit just recently. You can now search addresses in very high detail (after all we are talking about the whole world here), it even worked on totally countryside Finnish roads. As well as addresses in Tokyo. Try it, it's scary how effective it is.

Just write an address (if a result doesn't come up, try to write the street name only) and see Google Maps zoom to your rooftops...

(btw, apparently this feature now also works on Google Earth).


There is also another amazing feature that let's you zoom all the way up to street level, and see a 3D view. As far as I know it's only available for San Francisco, California, USA at the moment. Try it out here!

Choose "Street View" and follow the instructions, check out the Golden Gate bridge for an example.

Wish they'll make this feature for Tokyo. Sounds impossible though, with all the small streets and huge amount of people around, during any time of day.

Ah and since I mentioned Tokyo, here is a link to a site that let's you view Shinjuku, Shibuya or Ginza in 3D!

Japanese women face an "invicible roof"

Below I posted an article from a respected Finnish news source telling about the problem of Japanese women not being able to go higher in the corporate world.

Of all managers in Japan only 10% are women, the number for USA is 43% and for Germany, Australia the number is 37%

Luckily the new prime minister Abe has promoted companies to hire more women and to give them better chances for advancing.

My own opinions on this matter:
The problems are many, one thing that wasn't mentioned in the article is that Japanese women probably do not want to work after getting a family (not a scientific result, but personal experience from talking to Japanese women who have just started working). Then there is the context of the language. Japanese language dictates a whole way of speaking for women that differs from men. Basically in official situations (like at the workplace) women are expected to be speak in a polite manner. This creates a paradox for the lady leader. Well on the other hand I'm sure there is some way of speaking Japanese for an assertive lady leader (e.g. speak like a mother). これしなさい！いいわね!

The article says that the reason for women not working in Japan is the "Japanese culture where women traditionally take care of the home and children". However this has been the case for all cultures hasn't it. Also in Finland or the USA some decades ago. So the problem is to figure out how to make the change made in Europe and the Americas. How did the situation change here by the way?

Active feminist movement? Perhaps the core of the problem is that a big amount of Japanese women want to get married and stop working after turning 30?

As I believe there are some Finnish readers for this blog, the article is pasted below :)

from http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/ulkomaat/id64111.html

Japanilaisnaiset törmäävät työelämän lasikattoon

Julkaistu 04.07.2007, klo 11.35 (päivitetty 04.07.2007, klo 12.25)

Kuva: AP Graphics Bank Japanissa lasikatto on edelleen varsin matalalla, kun naiset pyrkivät johtotehtäviin työelämässä. Japanilaisnaisia on muihin teollisuusmaihin verrattuna esimerkiksi yritysjohtajina tai politiikassa suhteellisen vähän. Naisjohtajia on Japanissa kymmenen prosenttia, kun esimerkiksi Yhdysvalloissa heitä on 43 prosenttia ja Saksassa ja Australiassa 37 prosenttia työvoimasta. Tiedot keräsi Kansainvälinen Työjärjestö ILO. Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin naisten osuutta työelämässä kahdessatoista maassa. Japanissa esimerkiksi naisjuristeja on vähän, vain kymmenen prosenttia. Ruotsissa naisia on juristeista lähes puolet. Naisten asemaan työelämässä vaikuttaa japanilainen kulttuuri, jossa naiset ovat perinteisesti hoitaneet lapsia ja kotia. Muutos on sukupuolten tasa-arvoa koskevan raportin mukaan ollut Japanissa muihin maihin verrattuna hidasta. Monet naiset luopuvat urastaan päivähoitovaikeuksien, pitkien työpäivien ja perheen tai työnantajan nuivan suhtautumisen takia. Työssä olevat naiset tekevät myös miehiä useammin osa-aikatöitä. Pääministeri Shinzo Abe on kannustanut yrityksiä palkkaamaan naisia ja parantamaan päivähoitojärjestelmää. Myös gender-tutkija, professori Takashi Kashima Jissenin Naisten yliopistolta arvioi naisten kohtaavan edelleen suuria vaikeuksia työmarkkinoilla. Professori Kashiman mukaan naiset rohkaistuisivat jatkamaan urallaan, jos yhteiskunta tarjoaisi nykyistä parempia mahdollisuuksia jakaa aika työn ja ja perheen välillä. AP