ROBOTS DREAMS - Blogger
Thursday, February 28, 2002
Hitachi Heads for a $3.6 billion dollar loss-
It's the first day of the last month of the fiscal year for Japanese companies, and the cat is starting to poke it's head out of the bag. Hitachi announced yesterday that they expect their losses for the fiscal year to be double what they had previously predicted. According to an article on the Financial Times website (url below), they are now expecting the loss to hit $3.6 billion. They have increased their job reduction goal from 16,350 to 20,930 world wide, and will be getting out of unprofitable businesses. They are also targeting major reduction in procurement costs, which will serve to push the problem on to their current suppliers. We can expect that many of the Hitachi suppliers will see their business yanked and moved to China. A logical move, but one that will only make the economic situation in Japan even more intractable.
You have to wonder if the publically traded companies like Hitachi are coming forward with bad news of this magnitude, what lies behind the curtain? The companies that don't have the same global visibility may have deeper, darker secrets waiting to be exposed come the next share holder meetings in a few months.
FT.com | News and Analysis | World Article
Mind Blogging-
Here's how I tried to explain Blogging to a friend of mine:
- Paper is to word processor, as
Grid paper and calculator is to spreadsheet, as
Printed brochure is to webpage, as
Manuscript is to M/S Word document, as
Stamp and letter is to e-mail, as
Journal is to Blog.....
The ways that this can be applied is mind boggling. It's much more that just keeping a journal. It can be the back end of your home page. Who has time to keep their home page up to date? Certainly not me. God knows I've tried several times. With Blogs, I can just jot a note anytime I'm on line - with my computer or any one else's that can connect to the Blog host site via browser. One click and my note gets formatted and posted on my website. No pain, no strain. Immediate (sometimes too immediate) idea capture. You can make them public or private. You can share them with a close group of associates so that everyone in the group can post. You can set up different ones to track different topics. The list goes on and on.
One feature that I really like is that you can setup a url link capture. Suppose you are surfing a particular webpage and see something you want to share with the world (or just capture in your own very private, personal journal along with a note or two about why it is so interesting for you.) Click the 'blog this' link on your browser and it automatically captures the url link and opens a window for you to record your thoughts. Click 'post' and it automatically updates your Blog....
Really cool. Really, really cool....
I have a bad habit of surfing around the net, seeing things of interest, then forgetting where they were. Now I'm setting up Blogs for each topic of interest - like stock investment opportunities, technology trends, etc. When I surf something that fits in one of those categories rather than bookmark it and forget why I was interested in it, I blog it, add a notation, and post. Later I have a complete reverse chronological journal of my travels.... It's fantastic for some of the projects I do at work (and in my personal life as well, of course!)
Kind of Mind-Blogging when you think of it.... !:')
Apples and Oranges... and Body Count Statistics-
The official Japanese unemployment rate fell to 5.3% in January, a .2% improvement. On the surface that sounds encouraging. After all it's pretty close to the same as the US unemployment rate, right?
What isn't obvious from the statistics is that the counting method is significantly different between the US and Japan. If they were measured the same way the actual Japanese unemployment rate would be around 2% higher.
As if that wasn't bad enough, job age discrimination in Japan is still prevalent here. Most of the ads for position explicity state the age range for employment (along with whether the position is male or female.) If you are over 45 the picking are extremely thin. And, of course, as companies here downsize, the first employees they cast adrift are the higher seniority, long term employees - those least likely to have the career skills to cope.
According to a white paper published last year by one of the Japanese government ministries, six months after losing their jobs around half of the people are still unemployed. At the twelve month mark the figure is still over 40% unemployed. In the US the six month figure is under 10% and under 5% at twelve months. Quite a gap. One that's going to take a lot of time and work to close.....
Japan Today Japan News - News - Unemployment rate falls to 5.3% in Jan - Japan's Leading International News Network
Going in Style-
I think it was just a few days ago when I made the Blog entry about heated toilet seats and how useful they are here in Tokyo during the winter. Now Matsushita has announced a $3,000 toilet seat that has both a heater for winter and an air conditioner for summer. Somehow I don't think I'll run right out to buy one....
At the same time the President of Matsushita is desparately trying to convince investors, especially overseas investors, that Matsushita is parring down and focusing it's businesses. I have to guess that the strategy group at Matsushita sees luxury toilet seats as real core competency where they can dominate the market....
Japan Today Japan News - New Products - Toilet with air conditioner - Japan's Leading International News Network
Any Time, Any Place
Sharp just came out with a new pocketsize 'AV' player - kind of like a video walkman. You can connect it to your TV, record the latest Ally episode, then watch it later on the train, on the beach, or at your desk during lunch time. Hopefully not in traffic.....
Japan Today Japan News - New Products - Portable AV player - Japan's Leading International News Network
Structural Problems in the Land of Wa-
For those of you that still believe that Japanese can not express themselves and effectively communicate their opinions in English, please take a moment to read Toyoo Gyohten's recent essay on the need to solve Japan's structural problems instead of depreciating the yen. Gyohten, the current President of the Institute for International Monetary Affairs, can out write, out think, and out debate in English most native speakers. More importantly, Gyohten is not alone. There are other Japanese like him that are perfectly capable of operating globally. You may not agree with his opinions. That's fine. He would be more than happy to debate them with you.... !:')
GLOCOM Platform - Position Papers - Caution for Yen Depreciation: Structural Problems to be Solved First
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
Cliff's Notes-
There really was a 'Cliff'! I don't know how many times Cliff's Notes saved my life during high school and college. Those great books with the yellow and black stripped format that you can spot half way across the room. It turns out that Cliff's Notes is now a division of 'Hungry Minds'. How's that for an interesting company name? I love it.
And Cliff's Notes has modified their business model to serve the needs of students that are burning the midnight oil. Now you can surf over to their website, select the Cliff's Note you desparately need at 2:30 am in the morning, buy it and immediately download it over the internet. No more waiting for Barnes & Noble to open in the morning..... Of course you still have to fix your own coffee.....
CliffsNotes.com: About CliffsNotes
To eBay or not to eBay-
Funny. Funny-strange that is. On the one hand eBay is quietly shrinking away in the night from the Japanese market while at the same time they investing USD$9.5 millionto buy NeoCom Technology, Taiwan's first internet auction player. Make sense? Perhaps. After all Taiwan does have 23 million people while Japan only has half the population of the US.... And the Taiwanese economy is doing well while Japan is on the brink of possible disaster. About 25% of the Taiwanese are already "online". How about Japan? Well the percentage of people using PC's to surf the internet is already pretty high and growing rapidly (it will skyrocket as people learn how to use it to hunt for new jobs and re-educate themselves.) But, more importantly than PC access is the huge number of Japanese accessing the internet through their cellphones using i-Mode (DoCoMo) and other services.
Of course the eBay strategists may be thinking that no one in Japan will have any money to spend as the economy breaks new deflationary ground. Perhaps. But deflationary times are usually the most fertile for the growth of discount shops, swap meets, cheap volume restaurants, and (psst) on line auctions.....
FT.com | News and Analysis | Business in Brief Article
Strange Days-
Well, you can tell that the end of the Japanese fiscal year (end of March) is rapidly upon us. As the deadline approaches there are more and more bizzare, panic moves going on. Kind of like college students pulling overnighters to cram for tomorrows exam, many Japanese companies are scrambling to sell assets and restructure before the final bell rings come March 31st.
Now a Japanese 'Kimono Billionaire', Genshiro Kawamoto, is trying to evict over 400 tenants from his properties in the Sacramento, California area. Kamamoto says that he needs to sell the property out from under the tenants to capture tremendous investment opportunities.... Could be, or perhaps he needs the cash to prop up the business in Japan.... Of course the Sacramento courts are giving the tenants a reprieve - probably for 120 days or so. If it turns out that the money was critical to save the Japan business, then the tenants might end up being able to buy the property for a song.... It will be interesting to watch the unfolding of this particular kimono....
Japan Today Japan News - News - Court halts Japanese billionaire's U.S. evictions - Japan's Leading International News Network
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Different Market, Different Strokes for Different Folks-
It appears that eBay is pulling out of Japan. With only 25,000 items listed I can understand why people are not attracted to the site. The leader, Yahoo, charges for listings and still manages to completely dominate the market. eBay, the dominant player outside of Japan, has definitely fallen on it's sword in this market. Why? I'm not sure, but I'm determined to find out. It must be a classic case study.....
Japan Today Japan News - News - eBay to quit Japan - Japan's Leading International News Network
Monday, February 25, 2002
First the Stadium, Then the Country-
I thought it was some what amusing, and perhaps tacky, a few years ago when 3Com paid a bundle for the naming rights to a major sports stadium. Apparently others didn't think it was a joke because soon company logos were popping up on sports venues all over the place. I should have realized that it would catch on since mini-billboards featuring company logos proclaiming that this stretch of clean highway is brought to you by Brand X have become commonplace. Now Japan seems to want to raise the stakes in this bizzare game and is linking the fortunes or misfortunes of their economy to the dominant cellphone company - DoCoMo.
No lesser personage than Diet member Hiroyuki Arai (he just happens by coincidence to be the director of the Diet's telecom policy-making committee) was quoted in the February 22nd issue of TIME magazine:
- "Our mobile-phone technology is ahead of the rest of the
world for now. DoCoMo is our flag bearer. If the company
takes its time getting into the global arena, we will
lose our lead to American or other foreign companies.
Without that kind of commitment from Japanese companies,
our economy will never recover."
I'll have to check the next time I travel out to Narita and see if they have erected a giant DoCoMo sign over the terminal building. !:')
The GodFather Goes To Japan
Out of the pages of a novel: A few weeks ago NHK (the Japanese version of public television - kind of) ran a GodFather movie revival. It was great to watch again, and I remember thinking how nothing like that could happen here in 'safe' Tokyo. Then I opened my paper (browser screen actually) this morning to read "Gunman Kills Ganster in Tokyo Hospital Bed." It turns out that the leader of a local gang was hospitalized in the hospital ICU. The gunman, wearing black clothing (sounds like a ninja to me) broke the ICU window, leaned in, and fired four shots killing the leader in his hospital bed. Even though there were numerous patients, doctors and nurses around at the time, no one else was injured. To make it even more like the movie, there were two police officers guarding the ICU corridor door at the time....
You can check out the full story at:
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=2&id=202976
Personally, I can hardly wait until it comes out on DVD...!:')
Small World
The world is getting smaller and smaller. I just bought some expansion memory for my Sony notebook. Not so unusual - except this particular notebook takes Sony proprietary memory, and was only made in limited numbers. After several trips to different computer shops and checks on the various Sony internet sites, it looked like I was out of luck. What to do? Finally I checked eBay! As it turns out a fellow in the UK (Wales to be exact) was auctioning off exactly the memory modules I needed. I put in a bid and after a few days I won! So here I am, an American, living in Japan, buying memory for my Japanese laptop via eBay from a fellow of Pakistani heritage living in Wales.... Small world....
Point of View
Funny how you change perspective after living in a country for a while. I never realized how useful those heated toilet seats are until I lived in a Japanese house for the winter....
Mobility
Solving one of the 'mobile' problems: I've been frustrated for quite a while because I have multiple PCs that I use regularly. Each of them (three to be more precise) has it's software setup to access my e-mail accounts. As you can easily imagine I would often find that an e-mail that I needed urgently at work was on my home office system... or vice versa. Well, last weekend I took a short train ride into Akihabara - the electronics district of Tokyo and solved my problem.
I bought a PC card implementation of a 5 Gigabyte hard disk! It's amazing. It comes in a small plastic carrying case and plugs directly into the PC Card slot in your PC. It looks just like a regular hard disk to your system - which is exactly what it is. Toshiba has done a fantastic job with this one. It took me about an hour to rearrange my files and links, but now I have all three systems setup to put my e-mail and other work files onto the PC card. All I have to do is to remember to unplug it and carry it with me. Now my challenge is to write some simple backup routines just in case something goes astray.....
Crawling before you walk-
Well, I guess I don't have to put the time in - the system does it automatically for me. I guess it will take some time to get used to.
First Post-
Monday afternoon (17:17 JST): Across the bay the lights in the Tokyo skyline are just starting to twinkle into existence. The sky is gray - the typical gun metal depressing sky we get this time of year. The sun is just setting to the West. On a really clear day you can see Mount Fuji. Today, unfortunately, isn't one of those days.
