Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Australia

One of the lads just sent this announcement through:

Kea JAPAN is honored to host an event with Brian Martin, Chairman of Japan New Zealand Business Council

This is a great chance for you to:

+ network with a business leader and innovator
+ learn how Brian worked to turn around Levis and Triumph
+ interested in doing business in New Zealand

WHEN:
Wednesday May 19th, 6pm to 9pm [ doors open at 5:50pm ]

COST:
2,500yen pre-paid or 3,000yen at the door

WHERE:
Club 57, B1F Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 4-2-35
Tel: 03-5775-7857 www.fiftyseven.co.jp

FORMAT:
standing buffet dinner with 1 glass of wine included

REGISTRATION:
Attendance at this event is limited to 150 places. Please register your
interest by sending an e-mail to judith at keanewzealand.com by May 14th.
Payments to be made by Monday May 17th by paypal.
All details will be provided on registration.
Any enquiries call Mark 080-3386-7558 or e-mail judith at keanewzealand.com
www.keanewzealand.com

Don’t go to Roppongi too often even though it is just up the hill – but will have to check this one out.

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Good news for our cricket team as Paddy Foleys registered their first victory of the season over the Predators.

Here is a little snippet from the second innings:

The next man in was one of their chief protagonists and Goldie noticing the lack of helmet promptly put a man close in at leg slip, sure enough a bit of chin music followed and the batsman was looking rather uncomfortable out in the middle. He did manage to stick around for a few overs but never looked like troubling the scorers eventually out bowled by John for a duck. The next pair put on 18 runs before Goldie picked up the next one caught behind. Goldie claimed the 4th as well LBW and we had them on the ropes at 4-30 but with opener Graeme still in and looking dangerous we new the job wasn’t done yet.

You can read the rest of Jeff’s elegant prose here: Match report: vs. Predators, Game 1 Japan Cricket League Division One, 25 April 2010. You can also navigate your way around the site to find out how you too can have a hit out.

I didn’t make it to the game – have been a bit busy with work as per usual. Will have to get out for a hit and add to my momentous tally of about 20 runs in Japan – not bad for 10 years!

Also, had a link from long white cloud meets rising sun : Tokyo Anime Center… and Volunteering in Japan. Looks like there is a new kiwi blogging in Japan. Looking forward to some entertaining tales there. You can check him out here: long white cloud meets rising sun.

Finally – Golden week is almost upon us. Time I think to finally build my first Linux distribution!

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I hold chopsticks in a different way, and can even catch food in mid-air with them. One day I should learn how to hold them “normally.”

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Yesterday we went up to Ueno Park to help serve food for homeless people. Served just over 600 meals as part of a group of Cisco volunteers helping out with the Second Harvest project. It was my second time to volunteer – my first late last year when I helped wash up the pots and pans. Took me back to my days as a dish pig at espresso 124. Good memories, again in the rain!

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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The December issue of the Denphone Digest is up and can be read here: http://www.denphone.com/denphone-digest-december-2009. This issue features an interview with Lookmedia‘s Mark Long, as well as a short write up of our first trade show, and new phone from Polycom.

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.

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The following came in a spam email today, so I thought I would plagiarize it as it makes a nice poem. After searching I found that it is originally from a 19th century book – Carnac’s Folly, Volume 3 by Gilbert Parker (Wikipedia enlightens: Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker, 1st Baronet PC (November 23, 1862 – September 6, 1932), known as Gilbert Parker, Canadian novelist and British politician, was born at Camden East, Addington, Ontario, the son of Captain J. Parker, R.A.). Amusing to think that a long lost Canadian novelist should be the source of spam.

The Gift of Reading

With his own face,
as it had been in his youth,
though his mother’s look
was also there-transforming,
illumining.

He had a pang as he saw the two
at the close of his meeting filtering
out into the great retort of the
world.

Then it was that he had the impulse
to go to the woman’s home,
express his sorrow,
and in some small sense
wipe out his wrong by
offering her marriage.

He had not gone.

He knew of Carnac’s success in
the world of Art; and how
he had alienated his reputed father
by an independence revolting
to a slave of convention.

He had even bought, not
from Carnac, but from a dealer,
two of Carnac’s pictures and a statue of
a riverman. Somehow the years
had had their way with him.

He had at long last realized that material things
were not the great things of life,
and that imagination, however productive,
should be guided by
uprightness of soul.

One thing was sure, the boy had never
been told who his father was. That Barouche knew.
He had the useful gift of reading
the minds of people in their faces.
From Carnac’s face, from Carnac’s
mother’s face, had come to him the real story.

He knew.

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We currently have an interesting couch surfer staying with – this time from Germany. He is travelling around the world in 80 days. staying as he goes with different couch surfers. And back home, a group of hip hop artists made a track about him. Funky!

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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We are hearing suspicious rumours of a great debut novel set in Tokyo by Canadian Jocelyn Allen:

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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Issue 8 of the Denphone Digest is now available online – check it out here: http://www.denphone.com/denphone-digest-november-2009.

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.

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Chooch pointed this video out last night while she was reading the Flying Spaghetti Monster channel on Mixi.

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

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