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Ramsay Ramblings 4/21/2008

April 21st, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

Is the weekend over already? Time seems to be flying these days. We are well into spring and the suzumushi (bell crickets) are piercing my brain with their high pitched singing. It must be time for some more Ramsay Ramblings!
5 yen a bag, or take a box for free!
Today, my mother-in-law came by for a [...]

Posted in Miscellaneous | 16 Comments »

Yahoo Comparison Exposes Quirky Japanese Culture

January 9th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

submit_url = ‘http://www.longcountdown.com/2008/01/09/yahoo-comparison-exposes-quirky-japanese-culture/’;On January 1st 2008, Yahoo! Japan officially unveiled their redesigned web portal. Despite Yahoo’s popularity among the Japanese (over 60% share of the search engine market), we’ve had to wait this long for them to come up with a flashy web 2.0 style homepage.
Pushing slow adopters to increase their screen resolution
With so [...]

Posted in Japan | 10 Comments »

ECO - Japan’s New Buzzword?

January 4th, 2008 by Nick Ramsay

submit_url = ‘http://www.longcountdown.com/2008/01/04/eco-japans-new-buzzword/’;There was a ridiculously long documentary on Japanese TV tonight about Al Gore’s new cause, global warming. I sat through the first three hours; watched ants eating houses, deer ravaging Hokkaido, watermelons growing in November, hybrid iguanas and evil konbini bentos (those CO2 polluting lunch boxes sold at convenience stores).
While I much preferred [...]

Posted in Japan | 4 Comments »

Self-Service Supermarket Checkouts in Japan

December 22nd, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

England has always seemed to be quite advanced when it comes to supermarket technology. They had long, spacious, barcode-reading checkouts when I was 17 and worked in the frozen section of Waitrose. It wasn’t many years later before they introduced hand-held, customer-carried barcode readers so shoppers could check prices for themselves. People buying less then ten items have been [...]

Posted in Technology | 4 Comments »

AEON Kakamigahara Shopping Center

September 4th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Mami still hasn’t been to the new shopping center that opened recently in Kakamigahara. Saying that, she hasn’t been out much at all since the baby was born. I, on the other hand, get to drive past the AEON shopping mall on my way to and from work everyday, so I had the pleasure of [...]

Posted in Family | 1 Comment »

Baby Department Store

January 29th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

Across from where they are building the new shopping center is a four-storey department store for baby stuff. Although I’ve passed it everyday on the way to work for the past two years, I never realized just how great it was! I was kicking myself after spending loads on teaching toys at Toys-R-Us, when I [...]

Posted in Family | No Comments »

Aeon Jusco in Kakamigahara, Gifu!

January 28th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

I’m really excited about the new shopping center they’re building on the other side of town. One thing I love about Japan is the convenience of everything, and when it comes to shopping, you can’t beat a shopping center. In all honesty, there’s nothing particularly different between modern shopping malls in Japan and the ones [...]

Posted in Japan | 6 Comments »

Supermarket Demons

January 25th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

The other day, Mami and I stopped off at our local supermarket to get some bread for my toasted sandwich maker, but ended up buying a whole trolley load of stuff. Fortunately, Japanese trolleys, or shopping carts if you prefer, are tiny.

Anyway, stuck on the shelves were dozens of little red demons, called “Oni”. Apparently, [...]

Posted in Japan | No Comments »

No bread for my sandwich maker!

January 5th, 2007 by Nick Ramsay

While I got Mami a nice dressing table for Christmas, she bought me a toasted sandwich maker! We called them breville makers when I was a kid, and I used to love them so this was one of the best presents I could have asked for. Most of my Christmas meals were toasted sandwiches with [...]