Ever wanted to wrap yourself in a magical cloak and become invisible just like Harry Potter? Well, if you live in Japan then just go along to the University of Tokyo and ask Professor Susumu Tachi if you can borrow his optical camouflage jacket. It uses a camera on the back to display an image of whatever it sees on the front of the jacket, rendered with tiny reflectors. The effect makes the wearer appear transparent (sort of, if you're looking from the right direction).
Alternatively you can do what I did and move to London — people here look right through you whatever you're wearing. ;-)
The Economist reports on why the lights (and air conditioning) are going out in Tokyo this summer, and why this is just the beginning.
It's 150 years since the Black Ships entered Edo Bay and 66 years since the Rape of Nanking. This piece reflects on how far Japan has come since 1853 and how much it has contributed to the world (despite its well-documented shortcomings). Meanwhile, this news demonstrates (if it still needed demonstrating) that some of the old guard in Japan still live on a slightly different planet to the rest of us when it comes to describing Japan's activities abroad in the 1930s.
Oh dear, the uncouth practice of hair-pulling has found its way into the etiquette-encrusted, piously reticent world of sumo. Something like this could only have come from a foreigner (in this case a Mongolian). He's already a yokozuna (the highest rank) so the sumo godfathers can't delay his promotion. I wonder if they'll punish him further or just try to forget the whole sorry incident.
Nature reports that animal-rights groups in Japan (are there an animal-rights groups in Japan?) have found their western counterparts too aggressive.
"Given then Japanese character, radical acitvity would only alienate people," said a member of the Tokyo-based Animal Rights Center.
Why the reference here to "Japanese character"? Animal-rights loonies take note: exactly the same is true in the West.
At last, one of least understood aspects of Japan for visitors to that ancient land gets explained in words and pictures.
I must say, despite having lived there for many years (and in all other senses having become fully integrated into Japanese society), I still have some questions about what's supposed to happen to your trousers when you're using those squat-down types. I notice that they've carefully edited that bit out of the tutorial. Damn.
This week's issue of The Economist includes three stories about Japan's trade in ideas with the rest of the world:
Customers at Japanese newsagents are using cameras in their mobile phones to make copies of magazine pages without paying. The BBC and Slashdot report. Given that one of the main points of taking these snaps is to share them with friends, it sounds to me like this might is a great viral marketing tool. Publishing companies should end up selling more, not fewer, magazines as a result.
OK, when I suggested that Beckham tours are among the strangest things that the Japanese do in relation to this man, I was lying.
Yes, David is in Japan, probably the only country where he's more popular than in Britain. These people even organise Beckham tours to the UK to see his old school and stuff. And they could see my old school for half the price.
The McKinsey Quarterly's interview with Tesco deputy chairman David Reid is particularly interesting given the recent news of their purchase of a convenience store chain in Japan. Speaking (presumably) before this information became public, he admitted:
Wal-Mart's decision to buy into an existing retailer would, I think, be our model. Opening hypermarkets from scratch in Japan, as Carrefour has bravely done, puts a huge strain on any P&L account.
He also has some really interesting things to say about their (profitable and popular) foray into online retailing:
Since demand was low, albeit rising, the decision not to invest millions of pounds in building new warehouses but to use existing stores and get staff to pick orders from the shelves turned out to be excellent. It's satisfying to prove all the experts wrong! We restricted capital to the minimum. Instead of spending lots of it, we put a lot of effort into getting the system and processes right: how to manage vehicle loading, for example. You can't be sending out half-empty vehicles if you want any financial returns. But this is exactly what some supermarkets ended up doing - and taking hours to make trips to and from the warehouse. Most of them have had to stop. The degree to which we came under attack for choosing this model rather than the classic warehouse one was incredible. The criticism from some analysts was almost vitriolic. They couldn't understand how we could be so stupid.
And about data mining:
It's very easy to malign loyalty cards. People are always rubbishing them because of the expense. But if you took our loyalty cards away from us, it would be like flying blind... One of the criticisms of loyalty cards is that you get all this data, but you don't know what to do with it all and end up drowning in it. Initially we weren't sure what to do with it. So as with other things, we had to learn. The skill is to know what you want to get out of the system. What you can't have is barrel loads of paper every day saying, "This is every transaction of every customer." We value data-mining skills so strongly that the company we engaged to do the analytical work is now a subsidiary of Tesco.
Geek maven Tim Bray likes Spirited Away (that's Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi if you're Japanese). It was, of course, the winner of this year's Oscar for an animated feature film.