Coming back to the USA there are some serious cultural differences between the USA and Japan. Some are arguably good. People in the USA are generally more individual. I think that's good.

On the other hand, something I really hate about the USA (and many other western countries) is there is this attitude that I can only some up as "It's fun to laugh at other's expense" or maybe "It feels good to piss on other people".

Simple examples are vandalism. Why do people key cars? Keying someones car, taking your keys and scratching the paint on their car has no point whatsoever. Most people don't key the car of someone they know, they just pick some random car and scratch it. Why? What is it about our culture that compels people to do that?

I know I'm going to get flamed but damit, I don't get the love for gmail.

I've been using the new Yahoo for a year or so now and I didn't see the point to gmail but........gmail has one thing which it does that Yahoo currently doesn't AKAIK. Gmail has the option to correctly send Japanese mail in a Japanese encoding (ISO−2022−JP) instead of Unicode (UTF−8).

This means to many Japanese friends, if I send Japanese email from Yahoo they get garbage were as if I do it from gmail it works.

So,........yesterday I tried switching to Gmail and so far.....YUCK!!!!

Just some random thoughts here but I was visiting the USA early last month and I noticed some issues with the places I stayed. Maybe because I've been reading so many software design articles they stuck out as poor design.

This is just a rant but damit, why are the prices for notebooks so varied?

I've been wanting a notebook computer lately and have been looking and it's so frustrating because there are so many tradeoffs. Go for lightweight and then settle for a small screen? Go for cheap and therefore no power? Decide I just want to browse the net and read email and therefore don't need the graphic speed or decide I might want to program at a cafe and therefore need the graphic acceleration. And so it goes back and forth, back and forth.

in Japanese only

Google maps seems pretty cool. Certainly the interface is interesting. Not everything is perfect but dragging the map around is nicer than clicking "scroll left" like most map systems.

On top of that, it has an API letting you easily integrate it into your website which is a great idea. Unfortunately though, in acutally use here in Japan it sucks.

For example, lets say you wanted to go to a some restaurant, you type in the address in Google and this comes up.

I know Google seems to be everyone's favorite company especially with their supposed "do no evil" written into their mission statement and yet they seem to be doing the exact same things that when Microsoft does them are considered evil.

I watched a BBC Documentary, Century of the Self It certainly brought up tons of interesting things. The series talks about the development of modern PR up to and including it's influence into politics in the 90s. Just A couple of highlights that stood out for me.

I was talking to my Japanese teacher this morning about the idea that eventually cell phones will go flat rate. The idea being that a modern cell phone is basically a computer connected wirelessly to the net. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to browse the net, use skype for unlimited phone calls, download music, tv movies, etc, all for a flat fee. The only thing preventing this from happening currently is the cell phone companies themselves.

While it is in their individual interest to keep fees high, all it will take is one competitor to start the flat fee service and users will start switching in droves forcing the other companies to follow suit.

I don't know what it's like for women but I imagine it's not nearly as bad. For some reason, men are assholes when it comes to using a public restroom. Go into any men's public restroom and the odds that the toilet seat is covered in pee are probably greater than 50%