Can’t believe I forgot to post this earlier, but I wrote an article for the Japan Times last week about Sharp’s Galapagos tablet, a pad device aimed straight at the Japanese market. Sharp claims otherwise, but “Galapagos” has become a term to define the uniqueness and weakness of the Japanese mobile phone market, which created some of the most advanced and esoteric phones on the market, in a sealed environment where innovation was allowed to flourish but never interact with the outside world.

With the onset of the iPhone, that market is crumbling. I personally see many, many iPhones everywhere in Tokyo, and that has to strike fear into the heart of every Japanese cell provider (other than Softbank, presumably making a killing by offering the iPhone exclusively in Japan.)

So I don’t hold out much hope for this Sharp tablet. They may know something I don’t, but I can’t see a device like this competing in any way with the iPad.

One of the best (ok only) things about Japanese TV is the ads. This particular bit of genius from Softbank is certifiable gold. Who can resist a grumpy dog that barks orders and calls his son-in-law to be (?) a pussy?

Mel gives a quick tour of our rather small room at the Kurumi Mansion. 

More need for English = more work options for me.

Nerdy stuff about Japan’s walled-off social networks and how Twitter and other North American companies are making headway into the Japanese market. 

Our temporary home in the burbs for two weeks until we head to Japan. Note the computators everywhere.

According to an article in the Independent, maybe. Recent losses posted by economic powerhouses like Sony and Panasonic bring the point home. And Apple is upending practically all of the rules with products like the iPhone (which isn’t popular in Japan, but changed the landscape everywhere else.), and many of Japan’s neighbours are catching up with better and cheaper hardware.

With the economic crisis hitting Japan at an even more torrid pace than the rest of the world, many former high flyers are now moving into “net rooms,” which are essentially closets with an internet connection so you can look for a job. And when you think about it, what more do you need? What you might want is another story, but if things get worse here, we might see more net rooms in North America.

Japan, it has been noted time and again, is a weird place. One of the stranger aspects of their culture is the quasi-legitimacy of the organized crime organization known as the Yakuza. Reporter Jake Adelstein, who was the first gaijin to work at the Yomuiri Shinbun‘s Japanese edition, covered the Yakuza for more than a decade and is now under constant threat from the shadowy villains of Japan’s underworld. But that hasn’t stopped him from telling the Washington Post about the unique relationship between the Yakuza and the Japanese government, or how deep into Japanese society the mob’s tendrils go.

Joi Ito, who was recently named as the head of Creative Commons and with whom I once had the pleasure of drinking a few beers with, recently explained from Cannes how the world of Creative Commons and the traditional media are at odds, and how “big media” misses the point that user generated content is all about authenticity and connections between people. Watch his impromptu talk below: