In my capacity as an invited expert to the world wide web consortium (with specialisation in internationalisation, I had some involvement in the creation of the specifications of, “Requirements for Japanese Text Layout” a technical document amounting to around 174 pages in the English edition and almost 200 pages in Japanese. This is now a definitive guide for Japanese text layout, both on the web and in paper form. It was formally published on 4th June 2009. Unfortunately, I didn’t contribute enough to get editorial credit

As Richard Ishida said,

This document describes requirements for Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. For non-Japanese speakers it provides access for the first time to a wealth of detailed and authoritative information about Japanese typesetting. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051 and was written by key contributors to that standard. However, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051.

I have been very please to see that Dr Thomas McAuley,  Academic Tutor for Sheffield University’s Japanese Distance Learning,   has started a blog tying together threads from his Japanese experiences. The blog is for eltnews.com, a Japanese web site for English Teachers in Japan, but is publicly available.

Dr Thomas McAuley no longer lives in Japan but has been teaching Japanese language and studies for more than fifteen years.

I wish his blog well and will follow it closely.

Apparently Japanese telecoms companies are trying to convince the world that written Japanese does not already have enough characters.

These additional characters are used to depict emotions and other symbols in a similar manner to SMS emoticons.

Rather than being combinations of characters, such a , which is entered as a : followed by a ) ,  to represent a smiley in the Latin character sets, there is a movement to create a whole range of  new symbols, into Unicode, which include colour and animation.

At present, they are exchanged in SMS messages by using privately agreed character codes, but there is pressure to add these new emoji ideographs into the Unicode specification.

Some of the key problems that adding Emoji to the Unicode standards would present include:

1. Adding shapes to Unicode, which has carefully remianed indepentant of how glyphs are drawn
2. Adding colour requirements to Unicode, which again has had no logical need to specify colours for characters
3. Adding the concept of animation definitions to characters, which is well outside the range of a character set definition

At the recent W3C Technical plenary in Cannes, I was discussing issues of literal translation. A Japanese delegate came up with a phrase that was new to me. “緑の黒髪 （みどりのくろいかみ）” The phrase literally means green/black hair, but has an idiomatic meaning that the hair is very dark and lustrous.

On 24^th September 2007, a W3C CSS working group created wiki to explain how CSS can or plans to accomplish each of the requirements in a Japanese layout Task Force document and to highlights areas where CSS does not handle the requirements.

In today’s Asahi Shimbun, there is a article bemoaning the rise in petrol prices in Japan. It explains that due to the weak Yen and rising crude oil prices, “regular gasoline now costs 137 yen per liter“. At current exchange rates, this is equivalent to approximately 57p per litre in Britain.

Currently, in Britain, petrol costs around 92p per litre, more than 1.5 times that in Japan. It seems that despite significant rises in petrol costs, the Japanese still get it much cheaper.

As was noted in the article, there is the weak Yen to be considered. So this doesn’t take into account how much this is in real terms to a normal consumer. To take this into account, we should adjust the figures for the average national wage:

Country	Average Wage in 2006 £	Source
Japan	17,000	Japan Times Feb 2007
UK	23,244	National Statistics online

Using these figures as a basis, we can see that with a year’s wages, an average Japanese wage earner could still buy approximately 29,824 litres of fuel while a British person could buy only 25,265 litres of petrol for the same year’s work.

This shows that, despite a weak Yen and a rise crude oil prices, in terms of average wages, petrol in Britain is still 18% more expensive than in Japan.

The 69 year old American folk singer, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary went to Japan to sing “Song for Megumi” in an effort to raise the profile of many Japanese who were abducted by North Korea.
Megumi Yokota was only 13 when she was abducted in 1977, and her parents have fought for her return ever since.
Paul says that he was inspired to write the song after seeing a documentary about Megumi’s abduction called “The Megumi Yokota Story”.
Paul will be releasing the “Song for Megumi” on 21st February 2007. He performed the song publicly in Tokyo on 18th February 2007.
Peter, Paul and Mary are of course famous for “Puff the Magic Dragon“.

Mr Abe has just been elected as the new leader of the Japanese ruling partyy the LDP.

He is said to have the full support of his right wing predecessor, Mr Koizuimi.

Many commentators consider that he is right wing, like the former prime minister, but some sources suggest that he may have a softer approach to politics and have more resoect for the rest of the international community.

More information available form the BBC

For the first time in 6 years, Japan has raised its bank base rate from 0% to 0.25%. More details