My Blog of Japan Japan!

iPhone Mobile Blogging

Testing mobile blogging. A new frontier.

iPhone Japan – Standing in Line

After hearing that Omotesando was closed down, I got up early and headed down to my local Softbank shop at 5:30 this morning. I needn’t have worried, cos there was noone there yet. At 6:00, the next iPhone fan arrived, an otaku kind of guy. At 7:00, a very genki oyaji came along, he was [...]

iPhone Japan Launch Details

A few details from a friend working in a Softbank shop..

Only 10 phones are going to be delivered. It’s a small shop, but that’s a very small number. The shipment will only arrive tomorrow.

Phone calls were coming in all day asking if they could reserve. The policy at the shop was no reservations, you have [...]

Best Place to Buy Keyboards in Tokyo

Here’s the best keyboard shop that I’ve found in Tokyo. It’s in Akihabara, about 5 minutes walk from the station, in a small alley. It’s called Cleverly and there are 3 separate stores. Only one of them does all keyboards, but they’re all close together, so just ask if you land in the wrong one. [...]

List of Bookshops in Tokyo

Here’s an excellent list of the major bookshops in Tokyo. It seems to be updated regularly (last update was a few days ago) and includes places that have closed as well as the ones that are still open.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/jp-tokyo.htm

List of Libraries in Tokyo

Here’s a great list of all the libraries in the Tokyo area. It’s all in Kanji, but you can run it through a translator to find the one you need. This is probably going to be my next project for scraping, translating and mapping.

http://www.reference-net.jp/lib_dir/13.html

Here’s a page with links to libraries throughout Japan, organised by prefecture.

Update: [...]

Searching for a Japanese Telephone Number

I got a call from an unknown number on my Keitai but didn’t answer it. It looked like a business number with repeating parts (043-224-1010) and I knew that it was in Chiba by the first 3 digits. Being paranoid, instead of calling it back I went and searched on the internet. It turns out [...]

JR Train Station Maps

Japan Rail has a great page with maps of many major stations. I didn’t like the way they pop out a new page for every one, so I wrote a quick parser to grab all the links. Here’s the pages for individual station maps. Most are in Tokyo, but a few are further away (eg [...]

How to buy Ghibli Museum Tickets in Japan

Going to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka is almost as difficult as getting into the Emperors palace. There’s no way to buy tickets at the door and even buying them in advance is tough. The easiest way to get them is to go to a Lawsons combini (at a quiet time) and ask the shopkeeper [...]

Pilot G2 Pen @ 168 yen

After reading lots of impassioned accounts of the slick writing and general goodness of the Pilot G2 gel ink pen, I was passing by the stationary shop at work and decided on impulse to pop in and see if they had any. I bought one for ¥168, looking forward to seeing how much those American [...]