Clicking randomly in a rare moment of boredom today I happened to notice that the blogroll was going a bit stale. The Osaka Life blog appears to have vanished into the ether, which is a pity as it was one of the few blogs by a Japanese person in English (and pretty good it was too). But to keep Japan's third largest city in the picture here's Once Upon a Time in Osaka, of particular interest to anyone learning Japanese.

Meanwhile Tokyo Cowgirl has also vanished, albeit probably temporarily (and probably involving the destruction of another innocent computer). However she now seems to be permanently in New York with no particular connection to Japan other than her ex-boyfriend still resident in Tokyo (if he is still ex, I can't keep up). If and when the blog comes back it's still excellent reading and an interesting perspective on the upper echelons of New York society, but I will have to nudge it into the "Other blogs" list.

To fill in the vacated space I've finally got round to adding Chris' English School, the blog of one of the most prolific post commenters in the English-speaking J-blogosphere, and a new one to me, Michael Flux's random ramblings and photos of Japan (found via A Misspent Life; though I can't tell whether he's actually in Japan at the moment).

"The Penguin" and "Roppongi" are not necessarily words you hear often in the same sentence, but as the unofficial backup concert photographer for these guys (i.e. the only person usually sober enough to hold and operate a camera) needs must be and last night I found myself at Club Edge, a live house location at the less disreputable end of Roppongi's main strip towards Azabu Juban.

Nice venue, though as it is on the second basement floor accessible (as far as I could see) through quite a narrow entrance way, the words "fire trap" spring to mind. More seriously, the bar ran out of beer at around 10pm, but not tequila, and as it has been more than a decade since The Penguin last had any involvement with this particular liquid, and The Penguin had evidently forgotten the hard-learned lesson of that era, i.e. the advisability of avoiding that devilish concoction at all costs.

The Penguin will not be going into details but would like to emphasise that the forehead injury was sustained as the result of a vicious and unprovoked attack by one of the walls in his apartment.

Apologies for the posting drought: The Penguin has been suffering frequent bouts of fun interrupted by sudden attacks of work. Or maybe it was the other way round. There was also a three-day weekend spent in horizontal mucus generation mode pretending not to be Mexican. The Penguin's memory is a bit hazy. Updates to follow.

Meanwhile, as The Penguin's loyal readership is clamouring for some sort of update, presumably any sort of update, here a verbatim extract (with names changed for Business Secrecy Reasons) from a recent work-related mail:

F will be acting as the go between for S. F do A also but the fulfilment and invoicing is done thru H. S will be invoiced by F, but fulfilled by H. So it will be H who will uploading S's orders.

Got that? (A, F and S are companies you have probably heard of). Took The Penguin a few minutes to visualise it himself,. Unfortunately this is not untypical for this line business (widget processing if you must know). The Penguin is trying to draw up a diagram of the whole convoluted supply chain but has run out of wall space.

...a great place to...

...hold a barbecue...

As someone whose job tangentially involves the area of data and computer security, I am very sensitive to dubious tricks of all kinds, especially involving personal information and money. We do live in an age where criminals are not afraid to contact victims and direct them via mobile telephone to transfer large sums of money into the criminal's account; or where suspicious individuals from sanitation-challenged countries promise you by email access to even larger sums of money in exchange for an up-front fee.

Thus, the other day I was sceptical to say the least to find an envelope addressed to myself personally saying I was entitled to claim a free 12,000 yen^[1]. All I had to do is provide copies of both sides of my alien registration card and my bank details, send them off in the envelope provided and the cash would be mine, no strings attached.

Oh yeah? Think I'm going to fall for that one? The fact that it was a professionally designed communication purporting to be from my local ward office^[2] only served to make me doubly suspicious.

I investigated the matter further and it appears that behind this scheme is a shady group with links to organized crime known known as the "LDP". Apparently - and this is a bizarre twist on the usual "advance fee fraud" style of scam - the money will actually be paid out. However - as they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch - the LDP will be wanting this money back at some undetermined point in time in the future of their choosing. No firm details have been established yet, but it looks like they'll be expecting recipients not only to repay the money as a sort of "tax", but no doubt also "interest" payments to cover their initial outlay, which will probably be enforced by "officials" within the so-called "bureaucracy" who are in league with the "LDP".

After much thought I have decided to see if I can't get the better of this deal. I will invest some of the money in a club. A club with a nail in it. After all, it certainly keeps the NHK man away. And if that doesn't work out, the remainder should cover the ferry fare to North Korea.

So long, Sir Clement, and thanks for all the laughs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8001383.stm

One thing is for sure: in Tokyo parking space is not only at a premium horizontally, but also vertically. This Mercedes owner no doubt takes very good care of his or her tyre pressure:

Seen in Shibuya.

It looks like Tesco is not the only global concern based in an English-speaking nation which can't list excellence in its native language amongst its core competencies.

Still, at least it's fairly easy to work out what the original Japanese version said.