Comme ça du Japon

I read a quite disturbing article in a business magazine. It was one of those 豆知識 (MameChiShiki) “pea + knowledge” short pieces : an attention grabber title, a dense explication with lots of numbers but no conclusion let alone a discussion. Well, for an article written on a 豆 (Mame) “pea” you really can’t expect anything more than that, don’t you think ?

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First, thanks for your patience ! The long period of non-blogging has ended. I have got a great news to share. If everything goes right, this adventure will continue ! My doctor course is about to end but my job research went well. I will have to leave 仙台 (SenDai) for 幕張 (MakuHari) “Makuhari” (between Chiba, Disneyland and Tôkyô) for a position as a Research and Development engineer. However, during my blogging break I have noticed that I was spending quite a lot of time to manage the comments from the spammers and what not. Up until now it was not a big problem because my blog is mostly custom made so I did not have problems with run-of-the-mill scripts targetting well known blog platforms. But recently I am literally getting “spam 津波 (TsuNami)“. This blog was built around a very simple script to synchronise post made on my Sony clié. At first I had to hotsync the device to post. Then I built an system based on FTP uploads, comments, rss, spam detection and so on. However, the workflow was not great. I had to write the posts on my japanese clié with HTML entitites for the accents. Then convert the encoding from Shift-JIS to UTF-8 on the clié, ftp the files, hit the browser to refresh the blog, check for mistakes, go back to the device, repost…

Let’s face it I will have less and less time very soon. I don’t have the time to program a simple way to manage the comments. I used to edit the files (I am not using database) directly !

I made my decision. I will switch to a different blog platform. This should give me more time to focus on the content. However, it takes time to install a new system. As it is the holydays season (at least in France) I think that this is the best time to do it.

I am thinking about using WordPress. The blog has to handle many languages. It seems that polyglot is the right plugin for the task. Let me know what you are expecting from the new design.

I am looking for some help so if you know WordPress please contact me. I want to keep all my articles and comments but I might do that later and just launch the new site.

A ranking of the most wanted companies by future japanese graduates is published by several organisations. Remember that academic and financial years start in April in Japan. The results below are from one of these studies and it was made by 日本経済新聞社 (NiHonKeiZaiShinBunSha) “the japanese economy journal publisher (aka Nikkei Business)” between october and december 2005. About 4600 students were asked their 就職希望 (ShûShoku KiBô) “job wishes”.

Travelling, kimi wo….

At the top 3 of the general ranking, you can find サントリー (SaNToRi-) “Suntory” (mostly known for their beverage), 全日本空輸 (Zen NipPon KuYû) “All nippon airways” and トヨタ自動車 (JiDôSha) “Toyota Automobiles”. There is no change for the two first places. Toyota has won one place compared to last year’s ranking. Another interesting fact is that JTB and 日本航空 (NiHonKôKû) “Japan Airlines (JAL)” have fallen down to the fifth and eight places. For JAL, it is certainly a consequence to the recent numerous troubles that shaked the whole company : lots of technical problems on the airplanes and some tension inside the company.

Great jump for some financial institutions

This is clearly a sign that Japan’s financial fiasco is a thing of the past. Groups like 三菱東京UFJ銀行 (MitsuBishi TôKô UFJ GinKô) “The Tôkyô UFJ-Mitsubishi Bank” or みずほフィナンシャルグループ (MiZuHo FiNaNShaRu GuRu-Pu) “Mizuho financial” made an impressive jump from ranks 23rd and 28th to ranks 7th and 8th.

Ranking by graduate school students only

If we only consider the answers of 大学院生 (DaiGakuInSei) “graduate school students”, the ranking is a little bit different with トヨタ (ToYoTa) “Toyota”, 日立製作所 (HiTachi SeiSaku Jo) “Hitachi manufacturing”, 松下電器産業 (MatsuShita DenKi SanGyô) “Matsushita (Panasonic) electric appliances industries”, サントリー (SaNToRi-) “Suntory” and キヤノン (KyaNoN) “Canon” in the top 5.

For which reason ?

To the question “Explain the main reason that motivated your decision”, the principal answer was 仕事がおもしろそう (ShiGoto Ga OMoShiRoSô) “the job seems interesting”. The other main reasons were : 大規模 (DaiKiBo) “large scale”, 一流 (IchiRyû) “first-rate” and 信頼 (ShinRai) “trust”.

Sony recently made a surprising announcement. Sorry, this has nothing to do with the improbable release of the playstation 3 for this spring. It concerns employments at Sony. They announced that the recruitment will be doubled for 2007 which might make you 歯ぎしり (HaGiShiRi) “gnash your teeth” given last year’s massive layoffs.

This is indeed very different from the restructuration plan that Sony had to roll out during 2005. The layoff were at lower levels and the future employments will be for technical departments. The employees will have to focus on the new 中核製品 (ChûKaku SeiHin) “core products” : プラズマテレビ (PuRaZuMa TeReBi) “plasma televisions”, 液晶テレビ (EkiShô) “liquid crystal televisions” (Bravia) and digital camera (Cybershot).

For 2007, Sony said they were going to hire about 400 people. That’s about two times more than the last years. They also said that employments previsions for 2006 will be raised up to reach 350 persons. Other big companies in Japan are likely to take the same decisions.