A New Dawn From Japan
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Dropping the dream-world view, "Japan! Culture and Hyperculture" focuses on the here and now.
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It&#39;s easy to be wowed by Japan&#39;s mobile communications infrastructure. &quot;Next-generation&quot; 3G coverage is now so ubiquitous that carriers have already stopped launching 2G phones; an impressive array of attractive handsets offer free digital TV; phones can be used to pay for goods and train rides, thanks to embedded contactless smart cards; and on the mobile information superhighway data whizzes along at 3.6Mbps. But watch out for the off-ramps.While Japan has led the world with many of the services offered to consumers, in some ways the mobile ecosystem here is downright backward as I found out last weekend when I tried to buy a new phone. A broken handset necessitated a new model and this is where my story begins.In Japan, phones are sold by carriers and not the phone makers. Companies like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and a few foreign vendors including Nokia, Samsung, and LG sell their phones in the thousands to carriers. This gives carriers the ability to pretty much dictate to the phone maker what software needs to be installed.This model is one of the reasons that mobile Internet services like I-mode took off here so quickly. There was no chicken-and-egg situation with phone makers and users waiting for each other to take the plunge. NTT DoCoMo decided I-mode would be in new phones and so it was.But this model has a downside. Phones are so tightly customized to each carrier that it&#39;s not practical to keep the same handset when switching carriers, and if you see a phone you like you can only buy it if it&#39;s offered by your carrier.Back to my story. The new phone was looking quite expensive so I decided to switch carriers and take advantage of a free phone on a competitor network. Japan launched number portability a year ago, so I could make the jump without losing my cell-phone number. I&#39;d still have the hassle of a new e-mail address, but it appeared a small price to pay.Before long I had a new phone in my hands, but my phone numbers remained locked in the old handset. The new carrier didn&#39;t have a cable to hook up to my old phone so they couldn&#39;t transfer the address book and it wasn&#39;t possible to beam it between the phones. While my old carrier was gung-ho on Bluetooth, my new carrier wasn&#39;t so enthusiastic, so the new phone had no support. Similarly, while the new phone offered infrared, the old phone didn&#39;t. Heavy customization strikes again.Back home I fired up my PC and managed to get my address book from the old phone into the computer. Getting it to the new phone via a memory card seemed like an easy task ... but no! The VCard file wasn&#39;t being properly read by the new phone. Carriers, it was explained to me when I called the help line, often used custom fields in their VCards so there were sometimes problems. So much for a common standard.I won&#39;t bore you with the technicalities of how I eventually got my address book into my new phone, but suffice to say this story has a happy ending. I&#39;m now back in cruise control, enjoying all the attractions the mobile superhighway has to offer.The number portability system that enabled me to keep my phone number is coincidentally one-year-old this week. About 3 percent of users in Japan -- roughly 3.7 million people -- have made use of the system during its first year -- far less than the industry predicted, or feared.One thing that&#39;s said to be stopping users from switching is the inability to keep their e-mail addresses. While carriers fussed over the details of keeping numbers, they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the need to carry e-mail addresses between carriers. In other countries this wouldn&#39;t be a big deal because most messaging is done via SMS, which relies on phone numbers, but in Japan the advanced stage of the market has again caused hassle for consumers.
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Japanâs ruling party was expected to push into law a bill to revive a naval mission to support U.S.-led forces.
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To keep the economy rolling, Japan's new leader must push ahead with reform
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Japan's recovery has been trundling along for more than five years, by some measures making it the longest, if not exactly most spectacular, period of continuous expansion since the war. But if you look at surveys asking ordinary Japanese people how they feel about their own circumstances, you would never guess it.
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Ichiro Suzuki's relentless assault on   Major League Baseball's (MLB) record books has given sport in   Japan a huge lift after a disappointing year.
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Japan has become one of five new members elected to the United Nations Security Council, even as it campaigns for a permanent seat on the powerful body.
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Six-party talks: Dead? Tensions around the Sea of Japan: Off the charts. And in Washington: What do we do now?
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The first batch of Japanese troops have returned home from Iraq after the nation ended its first deployment since World War II to a country where fighting is underway.
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The new Japanese spacecraft sent into orbit in September to study the Sun has returned its first scientific data.
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In Japan, where one fifth of the population is now over 65, a preview of a global future.
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Text of report in English by Japanese news agency Kyodo Tokyo, Feb.
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HELSINKI, Sep 21 (IPS) - It was a new kind of dawn for some children around  the world Tuesday.
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Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe,   laid out on Friday his vision of a "Beautiful Country" that can   be proud of its traditions and culture while also being   respected -- and loved -- by the world.
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Japan unveiled a revamped defense policy  on Friday that eases a decades-old ban on arms exports and, in  carefully couched words, suggests a shift from the purely  defensive posture in place since its defeat in World War II.
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Other nations could learn from Japan's well-established tsunami warning system, writes Jamie Miyazaki.
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Ichiro Suzuki's relentless assault on  Major League Baseball's (MLB) record books has given sport in  Japan a huge lift after a disappointing year.