As it seems, Japan is going to encourage foreign workers to stay in Japan long-term. As said earlier, foreigners with good knowledge in the Japanese language are from now on getting favorable treatment in visa applications. This time it's better than that, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) wants to set up an immigration agency to help foreign workers, this includes providing language lessons for those who need it. They're also going to renew the current training programmes so that employers can't use that as an excuse for paying unfairly low wages.
We might see more news like this in the coming years since Japan's birthrate is still dropping. Japan has the lowest ratio of children to the general population in the world with 13.5%, next is Germany and Italy with 14.1%. So if Japan doesn't manage to increase it's birthrate, Japan lies in the hands of foreign workers. However, Japan is not planning to allow a mass-scale immigration since that would most definitely lead to lower wages for Japanese workers and a higher crime rate. That's a fact, take a look at my country (Sweden) for an example.
This is good news anyway, as long as they keep rejecting the idea of allowing a mass-scale immigration, Japan lies in the hands of the right foreigners. Meaning foreigners who actually have a good reason for coming to Japan.
Read the whole article from AFP
Japan Lies in the Hands of Immigrants
Image Hosting & Updates
I haven't posted in a while, I haven't had anything interesting to write about lately. I do have some interesting subjects I'm going to write about sooner or later, I also have some unpublished content that I'm not completely satisfied with, but I might publish it sometime. I want to encourage everyone to use a feed reader, since you don't have to visit my site all the time to see if I've updated or not using that. It saves you a lot of time!
Lately I've been trying out some new image hosting websites. I've been using Photobucket and ImageShack for quite some time, but I'm not really satisfied with them because of their limitations on file sizes and/or image resolutions. So I've been trying out Flickr and Picasa, which also have their limitations on certain things. Flickr is a good image host, but what I don't like about it is that you can't have more than 3 sets unless you pay a yearly fee of ~$25, you also need to pay that if you want to upload and share bigger photos. So Flickr is not good enough for me, which is why I've also tried Google's Picasa. I like Picasa, I can have just as many albums as I want and I can upload files as big as 20 Mb. However, Picasa also has it's downsides, for example linking to photos and tagging photos is a real pain. To link to a photo you can choose between using a direct link or a HTML link, but what I miss is a BBCode link for forums. Tagging photos is really time consuming since you have to tag your photos one by one, I at least haven't found a way to tag more than one photo at once. I also just have 1 GB free storage on Picasa while I have 6.54 GB on Gmail, which is kind of strange, it should be the other way around. However, I think I'll continue to use Picasa for a while, I'm a fan of Google so I guess I'll learn to love it, just like I did with everything else.
Yesterday I got an email from a man called Andrew (also known as Cruxay) about a link exchange. This led to a new partnership which I'm looking forward to continue working on in the future. Feel free to take a look around on his new blog about Japan in general, it's new but if you're interested in dramas, the otaku culture and reading about various places in Japan you should definitely pay a visit.
If you're interested in exchanging links or if you have anything else on your mind, feel free to contact me.
Good Language Skills Finally Pays Off
According to yesterday's announcement by the Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, foreigners with good knowledge in the Japanese language will be getting favorable treatment in Visa applications. This will make it easier for foreigners to apply for a longer-term visa, without any unfavorable treatment to foreigners with poor Japanese language skills.
This has been posted on several sites, but I want to make sure that no one miss this article, since it's very good news for people interested in Japan.
Quoted from The Japan Times Online:
Looking to encourage Japanese language learning among foreigners, the government is set to submit a bill to the Diet next year designed to make it easier for those who demonstrate a certain level of language proficiency to get visas of up to five years, a government study group said Thursday in an interim report.
The current maximum limit is three years.
The government plans to submit a bill to revise the immigration system to an ordinary Diet session that convenes in January.
"(Foreign Minister Masahiko) Komura underscored that having a reasonable level of Japanese proficiency is vital for foreign nationals seeking long-term residency permits to adapt to Japanese society and lead a sound communal life in Japan," a statement issued Thursday by the Foreign Ministry read.
Komura first floated the idea in January this year, sparking widespread concern among foreigners that the government may be tightening visa control over foreigners who do not speak the Japanese language.
But both Komura and other Foreign Ministry officials emphasized that the revision would only give more visa opportunities to foreigners with Japanese language skills who would, without the new system, find it difficult to acquire a longer-term visa.
"Even without any Japanese skills, there would be no trouble (applying for) the current three-year visa status," Komura told reporters.
"This would go in the direction of deregulating visa status, not strengthening it," he said.
Neither the level of language skill required nor how it would be tested have been determined yet.
The language test would not be compulsory, a ministry official in charge of the visa issue told a media briefing the same day.
According to ministry officials, the new system is aimed at encouraging non-Japanese to learn Japanese, particularly descendants of Japanese immigrants from South America, many of whom fail to master the language.
The new language-skill-based visas would benefit people in certain occupations such as interpreter, translator and flight attendant, the official added.
This is great news and it is nothing but fair. People with little knowledge in the Japanese language might argue against this, but in my opinion it's better to give those who actually make an effort a better chance. It's also good to know that you have the possibility to make a difference. Now I don't speak Japanese but unlike some people, I don't call this discrimination, that's just ridiculous. However, I will be studying Japanese starting from September 1, if my university application is accepted that is, if not I'll be self studying even more. Just knowing this makes me want to work harder.
Kudos to the Foreign Ministry of Japan!
ELLEGARDEN to Discontinue
Today ELLEGARDEN's leader Shinichi Ubukata announced that ELLEGARDEN is going to discontinue. The reason for this seems to be because of different opinions among the members regarding the motivation of making a new album.
Quoted from ELLEGARDEN's official site:
ELLEGARDEN has been in the process of creating a new album since last year, however, during the band's activities, there arose a difference in opinion regarding the motivation for creating a new album.This is really sad news to me, since I've been waiting for a new album for quite some time now. Hopefully this isn't the end of ELLEGARDEN, as it seems it's just a break, even though it sounds like it could be a long one. I was hoping that they would tour the US once more and was actually hoping for a world tour, but I guess I'll just have to wait. I hope they'll make the best out of the remaining months and release a DVD of the tour, seeing the last show will be so sad.
We no longer feel we are able to create an album that we would be satisfied with, and after much discussion we arrived at the conclusion to end the creation of the album and suspend the band's activities indefinitely.
All previously decided shows (including shows not yet announced) up until early September 2008 will still be performed.
We want to thank everyone who has supported ELLEGARDEN from the bottom of our hearts.
In order to once again create new music as ELLEGARDEN, each of us wants to work on our own personal growth and development.
Thank you for everything.
ELLEGARDEN, Leader: Shinichi Ubukata
Writing in a Distraction Free Environment
Who or what is your worst enemy when it comes to blogging or writing in general? Two of my worst enemies are my instant messenger and my feed reader. These two makes me lose my concentration at least a couple of times every time I'm writing something, wether it's on my blog or in class. Every time someone interesting logs in on MSN or whichever instant messaging service I might be using at the moment, I'll take a break from writing. The same goes for the feed reader, when something interesting pops up, I want to read it right away. And that's why it can take me several hours to write a very short entry.
The simple solution to this problem is an application called WriteRoom. Simply put, WriteRoom is a word processor in a full-screen environment which keeps you away from all distractions you usually have to fight with when writing on your computer. It's looks are simple, by default you're in a black room with a little green ticking bar that just wants you to get started. It reminds me of the good old DOS times, but the green text with the retro font makes you feel like one of those hackers from the not so cool hacker movies. However, WriteRoom is fully customizable, you can keep using the green-on-black, or you can change the colors, fonts and page layout to your liking. I myself don't think that the green-on-black with the retro font is suited for the stuff I write about, and it feels weird to write in an environment like that. So I've customized my WriteRoom to use an orange color with a smoother font that is easy on the eyes (Arial, 12pt with anti-aliasing). You can use a white background, or you can even write in a BSOD environment if you like. But to me, black is the best color since it's not too bright, which is good because you don't want your eyes to be all tired when you're trying to focus.
WriteRoom has all the essential features you can possibly need, it won't generate table of contents or headers and it won't put borders around your documents, it's just you and your plain text in an environment that keeps you focused on your task. Style your document afterwards and keep your focus on what's actually important, this application will help you do it. When blogging you usually write in the web-based word processor that the blogging service provides for you, it lets you add images, lists, links and everything you might need for styling your text. The problems with those web-based word processors are that they have too many features keeping you out of focus. For example when referring to someone else's blog post you'll want to add that URL right away, so you leave your word processor to go and find the URL. Another example is adding images, you'll add them when you get to the point where they should be in the text, it might be before you actually start writing, in the end or in the middle of everything. Do it afterwards! All these features keeps you out of focus, you don't have to upload that image right away, you don't need it to be able to continue on your post. With WriteRoom you don't have to think about anything but the text that you're writing, WriteRoom will by default auto save your document every 5 seconds and it'll keep you on track by showing the word count when moving your cursor to the lower left corner.
You can try WriteRoom for 30 days, which I'm currently doing. When your 30 days are over you'll have to buy it for $24.95, which is a good price for such a great program. I'm 100% sure that I'll buy WriteRoom when my trial period is over. WriteRoom is a Mac program and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. However, there is a Windows version available called Dark Room which is (correct me if I'm wrong) freeware. I haven't had the time to try Dark Room yet though, so I don't know how good it is compared to WriteRoom, but I bet it's just as good.
For more information and to download these programs, visit WriteRoom or Dark Room. If there's a Linux version of this available, please let me know.
Turtles, what's the dealio?
As you can see I've made some changes to the header, mostly because it was outdated (it contained some information that wasn't correct anymore). So why turtles? Well, some of you probably didn't know this but kame (as in my blog's name) is the Japanese word for turtle. Of course there's a story about this word and why it's a part of this blog's name, and that is the story I'm going to tell you now!
When I was young (I'm still young, but with that I mean really young) my parents and I adopted three turtles. These turtles were my first pets ever and I loved them very much, until it started to smell that is (which was like 2 weeks later). So we got rid of them and then I got two sand rats instead, but that's a whole other story. So my first encounter with turtles wasn't that good but a couple of years later when I started watching anime, the turtles slowly started to come back to me. Turtles are quite common in various animes and in Japanese culture in general, so I couldn't really escape them. However, my opinion on turtles really changed after this. But this of course isn't the only reason why I chose to use kame as a part of my blog's name. Just to make this clear, kame is just a part of the blog's name while my nickname is Sano (but you might know me as Sanokame from other places since Sano usually is unavailable, I also tend to use kame as a surname).
The real reason why kame came to be a part of my blog's name is because of a girl, A girl whose name is Eri Kamei. This girl is a member of one of Japan's most famous all-girl J-pop groups and is also in my top 5 list of female celebrities. Since turtle (kame) is part of her name, this is a subject that is quite often mentioned wherever she might be at the moment. And that is the main reason why I chose to use this word.
That's the whole story of my relation to turtles and why it's a part of me and this blog. Why I decided to add the turtles now was because I thought the header was too simple and it didn't make this blog unique at all.
Just in case you don't know Eri Kamei I'll post a couple of pictures of her from her latest photo book. You can also read about her here.
Widjedal, Racki, Bergerhoff house in Stockholm, Sweden
One of my dreams has always been to be able to live in a nice modern styled house, preferably somewhere in Japan. But then when I saw this I realize that I don't have to move to find architecture like this, but I'd still rather live in Japan of course. This house is located in the archipelago of islands in Stockholm, a place where I certainly do not want to live since I'm not a boat person nor do I like the attitude of rich people around there (especially when it comes to the kids, ugh). But then again, some rich kids are not going to keep me from living where I want to live when I finally find my (affordable) house of my dreams.
Photos by Åke E:son Lindman, and thanks to Dave over at the CONTEMPORIST for letting me know about this great piece of... wood.
Feed aggregators
As I've mentioned before, I started using Google Reader a couple of days ago. I haven't really been a fan of aggregators or using feeds at all until I started using Google Reader. This tool really keeps everything organized and simple. I love how you can see all items in a list view, and sharing items like I'm doing in the far right sidebar is very nice. The problem is that having everything so well organized like this saves me time, time that I currently don't know what to do with. Of course this is just because I'm new to it, I'll find something to do with the spare time, hopefully. Google Reader also provides stats (or trends as they call it) like how many feeds you've subscribed to, how many items you've read from specific feeds, which feeds that are most frequently updated, top lists etc.
Google Reader can be found here. If you're interested you might want to pay a visit to the official Google Reader blog too. Besides Google Reader I also use these tools from Google:
- Google mail (Gmail)
- Google Analytics
- Blogger
- iGoogle
- Google AdSense
So are you using a feed aggregator already, if so, which one are you using? If not, are you going to start using one now? I'm interested in knowing, leave a comment and let me know what you think.
Feed ya later!
Yurika Ohyama and Erika Toda Interview
Migimaru over at Tokyograph has translated Livedoor's two-part interview with Yurika Ohyama and Erika Toda. The two have been working together in 2 of the 3 latest Yurika singles, Sayonara and Haruiro. I had fun reading the interview, I'm a fan of Erika but I haven't heard anything from Yurika until today. But I must say that I really like these 2 songs so I'll be looking into her songs from now on. Of course I have no complaints on Erika, solid acting, she's just perfect.
Don't forget to check out the image gallery from the interview for some Erika goodness!
Condoms in Just Your Size
I really wonder who would buy the slim package, that'd be kinda embarrassing, haha. I bet guys buy the red package just because it says ULTRA LARGE.
Oh and by the way, multi-sexy idol Asuka Sawamoto got arrested for flashing.