Second Harvest:

What is Second Harvest Japan?

More than 650,000 people in Japan lack “food security”, the access to safe, nutritious food through socially acceptable channels.

At the same time, more than 6,000 metric tons of food is thrown away in Tokyo every day. If we can prevent this wastage and distribute a very small portion of this 6,000,000 kg, hundred-thousands of people may have secure access to food.

Second Harvest Japan does not pay for “new food” because there is already an ample amount wasted for us to draw from. Second Harvest Japan (2HJ) collects food that would otherwise go to waste from food manufacturers, farmers, and individuals, and distributes them to people in need such as children in orphanages, battered women and their children in shelters, and the homeless in Japan. 2HJ is the nation’s first food bank.

Working with the business community

Second Harvest Japan is a registered Not-For-Profit company in Japan (“tokutei hieiri katsudo houjin”). However, we are an alternative way for food companies to offload excess stock as well.

Food banking is an alternative to dumping food products that are still safe for human consumption. Stores, food manufacturers and importers all face conflicts of having food that must be disposed of because it cannot be sold. Food banking helps these companies save money along with making a positive impact to the community.

In Japan, the cost to dispose food is 100 Yen per kilogram. Second Harvest Japan will pick up nutritious food for free, saving time and labor.

Second Harvest Japan also ensures that all food will be handled in a safe and professional manner which includes safe storage, transport, proper cooking and consumption methods, and assurance that the food will never end up back in the marketplace.

Second Harvest is a very professional organization who make a difference on the ground here in Japan. If you want to help out you can contact them via the Second Harvest website.

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Lookmedia is an interesting company, offering some “out of the box” advertising solutions in Japan. Here is a picture of some of their walkers.

And here is a short extract from the interview:

Simon: One thing I am always curious about when thinking about advertising and marketing, is how to judge the effectiveness of campaigns. Could you tell us about the metrics of your campaigns? How do they work out for the client?

Mark: Metrics are hard, but I can tell you one about a couple of campaigns we did where we saw very satisfying results. We were contracted by Nagoya City to help raise participation in the Nagoya local government election. We had to compete with numerous different companies to get the contract but we won the contract especially because of our mobility.

Over the last 10 years there has been a large decline in voting in Nagoya especially among young people. So we pitched the idea of targeting universities, shopping areas and train stations to directly focus on younger voters. For 10 days leading up to the election we had 8 walkers out from 7am to 9pm at different times of the day at specific locations – for example, the train stations early in the morning, at the universities during lunch time and then at shopping malls in the evenings so that we could best target these younger voters. This campaign was probably the most successful we have taken part in with a significant change in the turnout of voters.

Another job we did in Nagoya also had very positive results. NTT Flets TV do a campaign every March to increase sign ups for their service. We had 26 boards out for 4 days and the campaign doubled the number of sign ups. Now, it was part of a larger campaign, so we can’t say we were solely responsible for that. But we do get repeat customers, and if our campaigns weren’t working we wouldn’t get those repeats. So our customers are satisfied.

Other Random Posts from Blizzardboy. Enjoy:)

• New Single
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• Jobs in Japan

He has a blog here, if you read German and want to check it out: http://www.stern.de/blog/94_extreme-couch-hopper.

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• Sayonara
• Shamaim – Israeli Restaurant in Tokyo
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Canadian literature (or CanLit, as some insist) has gradually become a genre of its own- one of books that are bleak, desperate, *meaningful*, and above all, dull.

New DIY publisher The Workhorsery aims to do something about that by releasing You and The Pirates, Jocelyne Allens’ superfun debut novel.

The book dares to star you (a snarky prairie-girl expat) in its second-person wackjob tale of terrorists, cats and pirates in modern-day Tokyo. Check it out!

Free chapter (PDF)

We look forward to reading that!

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This issue features a really promising Japanese start-up – Inferret – who are doing some really interesting work in the field of natural language recognition for both text and spoken language. And we introduce a great little hotel IP phone made by Japanese manufacturer Nakayo (pictured above). While a lot of people still have a negative image of VoIP (due to cheap calling networks) this phone has top-notch sound quality and is a wonderful device. There is also a howto I wrote explaining how to get twitter feeds to display on Polycom phones (although it will also work on Cisco IP phones with a bit of tinkering).

Also, I should mention that we will be exhibiting at our first tradeshow –

Denphone to exhibit at Call Center/CRM Demo & Conference Tokyo

Denphone is proud to announce that they will be exhibiting at this years Call Center/CRM Demo & Conference Tokyo to be held November 12th and 13th at Sunshine City in Ikebukero.

The Call Center/CRM Demo & Conference Tokyo is Japan’s leading tradeshow for Call Center and CRM solutions with vendors exhibiting a wide range of hardware, software and services for the call center and customer center industries.

Denphone will be focusing their SIP and IAX2 trunking solutions, as well as managed voice services. This is a good chance to meet up with a representative from Denphone to find out how telephony related technology is moving forward and what new solutions there are now available to both reduce your company’s expenditure while increasing employee effectiveness.

Denphone will be giving away 2 IP phones to people who visit their booth – so visit us to be in to win!

The event will be held at Sunshine City Ikebukuro: (http://www.sunshinecity.co.jp/ (Japanese language only).)

For more information (Japanese only) please see http://www.callcenter-japan.com/.

Look forward to seeing you there, and I hope you enjoy Denphone’s magazine.

Other Random Posts from Blizzardboy. Enjoy:)

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Now I am not a big Sumo fan, but I thought this was pretty cool!

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Originally I was just planning to come for one year – I did a couple of papers on Asian Politics at university and I came to Japan because I was curious to see what life here was really like. Just studying something at university doesn’t really give one much of an impression of what things are really like on the ground.

I never really experienced culture shock here – I think because I had prepared myself for living in Japan by not preparing myself, so there wasn’t much that I was expecting. Before I came I had an image of the hi-tech Japan – the Japan of Sony and Panasonic mixed up with an image of traditional Japan – the world of samurai and ninja’s and gracious manners. What I found was a country that was both at the same time as being neither. In many ways the people of Japan are a lot like New Zealanders – a little shy at first but strong friends in the end.

Some of the highlights:

Meeting Chooch
Visiting Tokyo’s Islands
Snowboarding in Hokkaido
Using the Seishin-18kippu to travel to Wakayama and Hiroshima
Climbing Japan’s lowest natural mountain
Seeing my students from 10 years ago at their Coming of Age Ceremony
Passing the 2kyu Japanese Language Test
Swimming in Aomori
Little boat rides
Shinjuku at night

and many many more.

Oh and this is the 500th post for Blizzardboy!

Think I might have a beer and enjoy the view of Mt Fuji…

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Sometimes living away from one’s original country, one misses important news. Chris Knox certainly played a big part of my life when I was growing up back in Christchurch. More than anything I love the way he has his own unique style. Playing his casio keyboard on top of an ironing board. Some very wonderful evenings. I remember him at one of the events at Canterbury University thanking the maths club for coming along (well they all had numbers on the back of their jerseys!).

Here is Not Given Lightly. Have always had a soft spot for that song. Reminds of someone who once had dreads.

Get well soon!

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This rocks. Truly wicked!

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Found this video of boarding in New Zealand. It will blow your mind!

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