Photographs from a small group of islands
“Although blogs have grown into a presence in Japan that cannot be ignored, there is also a flood of irresponsible information being transmitted through the abuse of the anonymity of blogs.†

Yoshihiro Oto, an associate professor of media studies at Sophia University, on the potentially misleading nature of blogging.
A point that this young, rich and breathtakingly handsome blogger writing from his penthouse suite in Tokyo totally disagrees with.
“We are strongly pushing for the iPod tax.â€
Taizo Shinya, spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of Japan, which supports a copyright law revision to charge royalties on digital music players.
Not content with already fleecing music buyers with ludicrously high prices, Japanese recording companies are now after even more easy money. This time from anybody who has the temerity to buy a digital music player. The appropriately named ‘iPod tax’ being touted as somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of a portable player’s retail price.
Now admittedly the illegal downloading of music is still rife, but when you look at the prices of CDs in Japan, it’s hardly surprising. Take this early release from singing sensation Ayumi Hamasaki.
Nice cover and all that, but LOVEppears retails at a staggering 3,392 yen (almost 17 pound). A figure that could — generously, looking at many other CDs — be described as an averagely priced album. And when you consider that Apple’s iTunes Music Store is already a success in Japan — recently racking up a whopping 1 million sales in its first four days — the record industry’s greed appears to know no bounds. Or feel any shame for that matter.
BitTorrent beckons…
After putting off updating this site’s software again and again — and then some if the truth be known — I finally took the plunge yesterday. And despite my fears of a data loss disaster, everything went smoothly — very smoothly. So much so in fact, that confidence buoyed, I foolishly decided to plough on and alter the site’s appearance too.
Needless to say, the process took far longer and was infinitely more frustrating than the upgrade. Plus, after hours of tweaking a pre-made template, the new look is disappointingly similar to the old one.
Still, despite the similarities, there shall be no more tweaking for now — I’ve simply run out of curses. As far as I’m aware, everything is running ok, but if you find any problems just let me know please. Providing the comments are working of course…
Thanks.
The recent arrest of a woman and her internet hired hitman has highlighted the influence the web is having on real-life crime in Japan. The female in question having allegedly hired someone to kill her boyfriend’s wife; the ‘service’ being found on a website under the innocuous sounding “troubles in daily life†heading.
The same site apparently offers a whole host of similar services, from “strategic advice†for a modest 10,000 yen (50 pound), to “carrying out a purpose on behalf of a client†for a rather more pricey 100,000 yen.
Not that it’s the only place of its kind on the web, as in April this year, a man from Nagoya was stabbed to death at home; the killer found by the victim’s wife through an internet dating service. And even though the murderer presumably had other things on his mind when he claimed, “I’ll do anything you wantâ€, he remained true to his word — dutifully carrying out his date’s wishes.
Similarly, a man from Shiga Prefecture was arrested two years ago on suspicion of murder; hired online by a man in Tokyo. Plus there’s the case of a company president employing a boy to kill him so that his beneficiary would receive money from his insurance policy. And if such crimes aren’t disturbing enough, a female student recently asked a man she met on a website to find people who were planning on committing suicide to kill her.
Grim stuff indeed, and behaviour that makes the practice of trawling the web for hours on end in search of pornography seem altogether respectable — quaint even.
Not that the FBI would agree.
As Tokyo Times has been down for most of the day, I’d like to express my apologies to those of you that tried to come here but couldn’t.
It turns out that a power outage in Los Angeles (where I now know this site’s data lives) caused problems with servers and other things I don’t understand. But everything seems to be back to normal now, so until something else unexpected happens thousands of miles away from where I live; it should be business as usual.
The global village eh? Not all it’s cracked up to be…