Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan is the blog of Simon Gibson, a New Zealander living in Tokyo, Japan. Focused on New Zealand, Japan, web design and other shiny things.
Surfing Al Gore’s interwebs and came across the following interesting Japan related news stories.
From the British Times website: Ochone! Japanese whisky is voted the best in world. I find that a bit hard to believe, but then I have never really been a big fan of whiskey. I remember on the ferry to China that a couple of Japanese backpackers, long-haired and already a little smelly had a large bottle of Nikka whiskey which they were sharing. Very kind of them. Anyway the Californian photographer who had the bed next to mine had a few too many and ended up passing out on the ferry’s helipad. It was a little disturbing when the ships stewards carried him in around 3 am. He wasn’t in good shape, but luckily he kept it all down.
Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has been defeated in a key by-election, dealing a fresh blow to the leadership of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
LDP candidate Shigetaro Yamamoto was easily defeated in the vote in Yamaguchi prefecture.
Senior opposition MP Kenji Yamaoka told Japanese media the result was “the beginning of the end of LDP rule”.
Hopefully this will mean a return to a Japan lead by people with interesting haircuts.
Japan detects bird flu in four wild swans from Reuters. I think I can discern the beginning of a newly revised Tchaikovsky ballet in this story. The swans were discovered near Lake Towadako which is in Akita, closish to where I used to live. Quite sad really.
With food prices increasingly global, particularly as a result of increases in American ethanol production targets, Japan is seeing the first price rises for many years across a broad range of products, including bread, beer, noodles and other staples.
I doubt we are going to see a corresponding increase in pay for foreigners working here in Japan in the near future though.
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Found this site: Japankeibai.com whilst surfing the intrawebs today. The website has a good number of foreclosed property listings, mostly in Tokyo as well as in Osaka and other parts of Japan. Still not quite sure how the service works, but the properties seem to be very cheap. I know a number of foreigners here in Japan who bought property here during Japan’s bubble period, and who paid some very high prices for those properties, and as a result are still paying off home loans from that period. Today things are a bit easier, and if these properties are as cheap as they appear to be then there are some really good deals on the japankeibai.com site.
As a little aside, when we were in Akita late last year we saw some properties being advertised for sale there. The cheapest houses were 1,200,000 yen - and that is for a house! In the middle of nowhere, and pretty run down, but insanely cheap! More normal and livable house started at around 3 times that.
Here is a list of the latest properties listed on the Japan Keibai website:
News is going around the Japanese blogosphere, and has been on Yahoo.co.jp, that Japanese supermarket chain Hanamasa will close 47 stores throughout Japan by the 12th of February. The company has 102 stores, mostly in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area.
The major reason for the closures cited by Hanamasa President Mr. Onno is the perceived safety risks associated with the chains predominantly Chinese sourced products. Increased transport costs have also been given as a reason for the closures. Although not mentioned, the gradually rising costs of products from China, coupled with the weak yen must also have been factors in the decision.
Hanamasa was a supermarket we used quite frequently, and its closure will be a loss for our area, as the remainder of supermarkets in the Azabujuban area tend to cater to the more wealthier ends of the market. I don’t mind buying products from brands such as Hanamasa when all that differs from comparable products is the packaging.
The president of Hanamasa also stated that this wasn’t related to the food poisoning caused by imported gyouza, how ever that incident would have reinforced the necessity for the closures.
In some ways this is a promising sign for the Japanese economy - the current distrust of Chinese products should see more consumers purchasing locally produced products and thus infusing local markets with higher cash inputs. This coupled with rising prices in many product lines should also see improvements in profit margins for Japanese producers in the mid-term which in turn will have more of a stimulating effect on the economy than Japan’s low interest rate mania has proved to.
Nova is Japan’s largest private English school company with hundreds of branches throughout Japan. This makes it both the target of a great deal of criticism, mostly earned, as well as a useful barometer for the current situation regarding language teaching in Japan.
Hit by scandals repeatedly, Nova has recently been punished by the Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for dubious business practices which involved misleading advertising and unfair treatment of their customers.
In a Mainichi article today they are criticized for this, as well as for the way that instead of focusing on improving the English ability of their customers (which surely should be their core business goal) they have focused on expansion at the expense of all else, with understandable resulting cash flow problems. The article - Business pundit: ‘Blame it on the boss of NOVA’ is well worth a read.
Found this site: 
News is going around the 