Yuki's Web

Author: Masayuki (Yuki) Kawagishi

  • My current mobile devices

    I bought Blackberry Curve 9300 in the middle of June for my main mobile phone I’m using daily and switched an account from b-mobile into NTT DoCoMo again by the Mobile Number Portability service. The b-mobile SIM card was what I got together with an iPhone 4 Hong Kong version. Still, the iPhone 4 was not so good for a telephone because its voice quality was not satisfactory and the manoeuvre was a little bit complicating. It’s just for web browsing, taking pictures and motion videos, playing games, and other utilities, not for talking. I think the best device for voice calls is that of Nokia, but Nokia doesn’t sell any mobile phones in Japan any longer. Out of the phones available in Japan, Blackberry is for me. That’s why I’ve got Blackberry again.

    Another reason why I chose Blackberry again is that it has a real QWERTY keyboard on the device, not displayed on the screen. You can type the keyboard to enter text, and doing this is much easier than touching the virtual keyboard on the screen. So I’m gonna use it for text messaging and email writing besides talking on it. Text messaging will be much more convenient because sending SMS to other carriers will be available next Wednesday.

    Although the iPhone is not so good for a telephone, it’s best for a camera and a communicator with plenty of applications. I’ve got a Softbank SIM card too, so I still use iPhone4 used so far on the main basis with the Softbank SIM card inserted in it.

    Now I’ve got three mobile phones carried with me —- Blackberry Curve 9300, iPhone 4, and a mobile phone, my employer, tells me to keep. Next, I want to have some tablets like iPad or Galaxy Tab 😉

  • Japan’s mobile environment today

    Sorry for not updating the blog for a long time. These days I’m hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, rather than writing blog entries. Please visit my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/masayuki.kawagishi or follow @_Yuki_K_ on Twitter 😉

    I see that the world of mobile phones is rapidly changing for years. Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers, is disappearing, and Apple is expanding the market with the iPhone, its flagship mobile phones with a music player, games, and other applications all-in-one. Following apple, various mobile phone manufacturers, from Samsung to small makers in China, are releasing smartphones with the Android operating system developed by Google.

    In Japan, I think that mobile phones are rapidly “globalised” in recent years. A few years ago all you could see here was the “Galapagos” handphones sold only within Japan and unavailable once you brought them out of Japan. But recently on the train or the streets, you see the same devices as those seen in the rest of the world — iPhones, Android smartphones, and even Blackberry phones (scarce though).

    More than that, this month I had good news showing Japan’s globalisation of the mobile phone environment. News says that from 13 July this year you can send text messages (SMS) to the mobile phones of the different carriers from yours. That is normal in the rest of the world, but that isn’t here in Japan — if you have a mobile phone sold by NTT DoCoMo, you can send SMS only to NTT DoCoMo users, not to au, Softbank, or any other carrier’s users. As the SMS gateways are closed to different carriers, you can rarely see here such services as balance enquiry, network configurations, service registrations, and purchasing something by sending text messages to service providers as you can see in Singapore, Hong Kong or some European countries. The opening of the SMS gateways will probably enable you to have such services even in Japan soon.

    Japan and the countries other than Japan don’t stand in the opposite. Japan is an extension of other countries, and any country is an extension of Japan. Anything available in the world must be available in Japan too.

  • I’ve got a car again / またクルマ買っちゃいました

    I’ve got a car again / またクルマ買っちゃいました

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    I’ve made up my mind to have my own car again. Two years and nine months have passed since I parted with the last car in May 2008 and then moved to a house much closer to central Tokyo after I did it. The place where I currently live is so convenient that you can live without owning any car. Nevertheless, without a car, it’s difficult to go on a slight outing late at night, to buy bulky goods from Costco, or to drive a car aggressively to get rid of your stress! 🙂 To do them you can hire a car at the nearest rental car shop, but it’s less convenient than having a car you can do as you like. That’s why I’ve decided to get my own car even if it’s much more costly.

    To find an appropriate car, I checked Yahoo! Japan, Goo-net, or other websites listing up used cars and shops after I got a bonus last December. Of course, I had no choice to have a brand-new car. I wanted to have a small-sized, 5-speed stick shift car instead of a large automatic saloon because I wanted to do as Englishmen did (most of them drive stick shifts rather than automatics). I thought that manual transmissions were better for small cars giving more pleasure to drivers and that it would be the last chance for me to drive a stick shift as almost all cars to be released in future would, petrol or hybrid, have automatic or continuously variable transmissions.

    At the end of last December, I found a car that I felt to be nice at a small used car shop in suburban Tokyo. It was a 2002 Peugeot 307 Style (1600cc petrol), costing just 380,000 yen! I decided to buy it without hesitation.

    It took much time from the purchase to the pickup. In Japan, you must register a car you buy to the government before owning it, and before the registration, you must settle a parking space and have the garage certificate from the nearest police station. To have a garage, you must sign a contract with a local real estate company offering car parks in the area where you live. The trouble is that the real estate company and the police station open only on weekdays, so I had to take a day (or some hours) off to do those things.

    The average parking space rate in the area I live in was about 30,000 yen per month, but I found a car park renting a parking space for 26,500 yen per month.

    Anyway, all of the procedures to have the car had been done and I picked it up today.

    (more…)
  • Shanghai — the exciting city / 上海行ってきました

    Shanghai — the exciting city / 上海行ってきました

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    I returned from Shanghai Tuesday night. I couldn’t see so many things there because it was completely a business trip, not a private sightseeing trip, and I had a lot of work there. But I found out how exciting and mysterious that city was.

    I’ve updated a set of the trip on Flickr though I couldn’t take so many pictures.

    It was my first time to visit mainland China other than Hong Kong and Taiwan. In some points they were similar, but in other points, they weren’t. Oncoming cars in Shanghai didn’t stop even when we were crossing the street on a zebra crossing. In mainland China, cars have the right-of-way, so pedestrians have to give way to them when crossing the road, not to disturb the flow of traffic. When we caught a taxi cab, the driver honked at an old pedestrian pushing a cart and beginning crossing the road and ran into the crowd of pedestrians crossing the crosswalk. It was amazing.

    There were plenty of tall buildings in the Pudong area, and gorgeous floodlights illuminated all of them. I was surprised at those floodlights which were so showy that you couldn’t have seen in buildings in Japan.
    Foods tasted very good, and they were much cheaper than in Japan. It was amazing that even if I had eaten plenty of garlic and spicy Hunan foods for dinner, I didn’t upset my stomach and my mouth didn’t smell bad at all!
    Security measures seem to be more advanced than in Japan. Luggage scanning and body screening were mandatory at every metro station and most of the major building entrances. Officers did screening very roughly though.

    Anyway, Shanghai is very close to Japan, so I wish to revisit it in a warmer season. It was so snowy and chilly there that I couldn’t walk around the city very much.

    火曜の夜に戻ってきました。今回は観光旅行ではなく出張だったのであまり街をいろいろ見ることはできなかったですが、なかなか怪しくて面白いところでした。

    ということであんまり写真はないですが、Flickrに写真をアップしたのと、フォートラベルに旅行記を書きました。

    香港や台湾は以前行ったことがありますが、大陸は行ったことがありませんでした。似てるところもありますがそうでないところもありました。上海では歩行者が横断歩道を渡っていても横から車が突進してきます。大陸では車優先で、歩行者が横断歩道にいようが車は減速すらせず、歩行者のほうが車の流れを見て渡らなければならないようです。タクシーに乗ったときも、運ちゃんは道を横断しようと荷車を押していたおばあちゃんに激しくクラクションを鳴らしてどかせ、横断歩道を渡っている歩行者の集団に突進していってました。

    浦東地区は高層ビルがいっぱいで、どれもド派手なライトアップ。日本じゃ見られないようなイルミネーションがいっぱいでした。
    食べ物は美味しくて、しかも日本よりずっと安い。辛い湖南料理にニンニクを大量に食べても、次の日腹を壊さずしかも口も臭くならなかったのはびっくりでした。

    セキュリティチェックは日本より進んでいるようで、地下鉄の駅の入口や大きなビルの入口には手荷物検査とボディチェックがありました。ただボディチェックはかなりおざなりにやってましたが。

    ともあれ、上海は日本から近いし、もうちょっと暖かくなったらまた行ってみたいです。今回はちょっと寒すぎて歩き回れませんでした。。。

  • Going to Shanghai / 上海行ってきます

    Going to Shanghai / 上海行ってきます

    I’m going to Shanghai for a 100% business trip this time. It snowed very much near Narita Airport when I was coming in the Limousine Bus, but it’s fine now.
    今から上海に行きます。今回は完全に仕事の出張です。成田に来るときは大雪でしたが今は晴れています。
    Gate 38

    I wonder if I will be able to use the Internet in China because I hear Twitter and Facebook are all blocked there…
    さて中国でマトモにネットができるかどうか疑問です。TwitterもFacebookもブロックされてると聞いてるので。。。。

  • Happy New Year 2011 / ２０１１年明けましておめでとうございます

    LONG LIVE HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR AND THE IMPERIAL FAMILY. GOD BLESS OUR NATION AND OUR PEOPLE. MAY THIS YEAR BE HAPPY TO US. THANK YOU.

    ２０１１年（平成２３年。皇紀２６７１年）明けましておめでとうございます。
    皇室の弥栄、国運の隆昌、国民の安寧を祈念いたします。
    本年もよろしくお願い申し上げます。

  • Keywords of the year 2010 / ２０１０年のキーワード

    Shinkansen Shin-Kobe station

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    The last day of 2010 has come! On the last day of each year I used to list up keywords representing the most impressive things I did or experienced within that year.

    The keywords of 2001 are moving house in Tokyo, the change of office and Toyota Soarer I bought as my own car. The keywords of 2002 are the United States, which I visited for the first time and the first foreign place I’d ever visited. The keywords of 2003 are aeroplanes and musical, both of which I became deeply interested in in that year.

    Those of 2004: Japanese literature because I was attracted by two female novelists who were the youngest ones that won the Akutagawa Prize, a blog that I began writing under the influence of them, Asia (Singapore and Hong Kong) I happened to visit, and GSM mobile phones I came across there.

    The keywords of 2005 are darts I began playing, GSM/WCDMA mobiles because they began distribution in Japan and I owned Nokia’s handphones, and the second visit to Hong Kong in November.

    2006’s keywords are US stocks and mutual funds that I began buying that year.

    In 2007 I did the replacement of my own car, Toyota Soarer with Honda Accord in May, and a trip to Hawaii in July.

    The keywords of 2008 are England (in which I became interested because of Kaoru Mori’s manga Emma) and Fukagawa (the area I moved to in summer).

    The keywords of 2009 are the change of office and MacBook Pro. That year was of little fun for me.

    In 2010, I’ve decided that the keywords of the year are trips to Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia; iPhone and credit cards. I visited Taiwan in January, Singapore and Malaysia in September. I bought iPhone3GS and iPhone4 as mobile phones and communication/entertainment devices. As for credit cards, I began being a cardholder of American Express and one other in July.

    This year is a little happier for me than the previous years. I was able to travel abroad twice this year and really enjoyed each trip. Other than that my experience of this year was all work and no play, though.

    Anyway, I hope the year 2011 be much better, much happier, and much more fruitful, with new experiences and new people. Thank you.

    今年もいよいよ最後の日が来ました。毎年最後の日にはその年のキーワードを挙げてその年を振り返るのですが、

    ２００１年　都内一人暮らし、職場の異動、ソアラ
    ２００２年　アメリカ
    ２００３年　飛行機、ミュージカル
    ２００４年　ブログ（文芸業界）、アジア（シンガポール、香港）、ＧＳＭ携帯電話
    ２００５年　ダーツ、ＧＳＭ／ＷＣＤＭＡ携帯電話、香港再訪
    ２００６年　アメリカ株・ミューチャルファンド
    ２００７年　クルマの買い替え、ハワイ旅行
    ２００８年　イギリス、深川
    ２００９年　職場異動、ＭａｃＢｏｏｋ　Ｐｒｏ購入、青春１８きっぷ
    ２０１０年のキーワードとしては、「台湾・シンガポール・マレーシア」、「ｉＰｈｏｎｅ」、「クレジットカード」としたいと思います。３番目の「クレジットカード」は、今年ＡＭＥＸゴールドカードやら他にもカード作ったので。

    今年はそれまでの数年よりは少しは良い年になったと思います。久しく行ってなかった海外旅行も今年は２度もできました。それ以外は仕事ばっかりで味気ない年ではありましたが；

    ともあれ、２０１１年はもっと良くなって、出会いの多い実りのある年になるように祈りたいと思います。

  • 有馬記念２０１０

    今年の有馬記念は、１着が「１　ヴィクトワールピサ」２着が「７　ブエナビスタ」でした。

    私は普段は競馬はやらないんですが、毎年暮れの「有馬記念」だけは必ずやることにしています。毎回１００００円を投資し、勝てば来年は良い年になる、と勝手に信じています。

    毎年１００００円はすっからかんになり、それとともに次の年はあんまり良い年にならずに終わってしまうんですが、去年の有馬記念では生まれて初めて「勝ち」ました。とはいっても戻って来たのは５０００円余りだったので、投資額１００００円からみれば損してることには変わりありませんが、今年はいままでの年よりかは少しはましな年になったんじゃないかな〜と思います。

    そんなこんなで今年は何を買ったかというと・・・
    馬連
    １−７
    ５−７
    ７−１０
    ７−１４
    ７−１５
    １０−１４
    １−１４
    枠連
    １−４
    １−７

    そして、単勝として「１５　レッドディザイア」を買ってみました。「レッド」という単語に、今年のキーワードである中国を想起させるものがあったので、ひょっとしたら入るかも、と思って；

    これらをそれぞれ１０００円ずつ、計１００００円投資しました。

    で、結果は、馬連「１−７」と枠連「１−４」が当たってました！　配当金はそれぞれ５５０円と４８０円なので、それぞれ１０００円ずつ買ってますから戻ってくるのは都合１０３００円！！！

    たった３００円ではありますが、初めて投資額を上回る戻りが出た年でした。
    ということで、来年はきっと今までよりはるかにいい年になるんじゃないかと信じてます。。。

  • I’ve got an iPhone4! / ｉＰｈｏｎｅ４ゲットしました！

    iPhone4_bmobile.jpg
    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    It’s a little bit late, though.

    I had used Nokia N82 with Softbank Mobile’s SIM card as a main mobile phone so far. I had told my friends the phone number of it. But it had been kind of inconvenient because it had had narrower signal reception areas than the mobiles of NTT DoCoMo so if you had gone underground or deep into a big building you couldn’t have had it communicated. More than that, (it’s the situation peculiar to Japan, though) you can send SMS only to the mobiles of the same carrier as yours. Most of my friends had NTT DoCoMo mobile phones, so I’d wanted to change the carrier of my handphone into NTT DoCoMo.

    NTT DoCoMo had released Samsung’s Galaxy S handphones in November, and they had been lovely for me, but they had been in such a short supply in those days that I couldn’t have got any. I’d given up waiting for one.

    At that time, Japan Communications had begun releasing b-mobile’s micro-SIM cards together with unlocked iPhone4 imported from Hong Kong. JC had been selling the imported iPhone4 to its customers on hire purchase. JC was providing mobile phone service using NTT DoCoMo’s network, so if you had a mobile with b-mobile’s SIM card installed you could use it in almost the same manner as NTT DoCoMo, including sending and receiving SMS to and from NTT DoCoMo’s phones.

    That’s why I purchased b-mobile’s micro-SIM card called “b-micro talkingSIM” and iPhone4. Before the purchase, I had cancelled the contract with Softbank Mobile and had the phone number used in it reassigned to the new micro SIM card so that I could use the same phone number as that I had told my friends.

    ちょっと遅い気もしないでもないですが……。

    電話番号を人に教えているメインの音声回線としてＮｏｋｉａ　Ｎ８２にソフトバンクのＳＩＭを入れて使ってたんですが、ソフトバンクはなにぶんエリアが狭くて、地下やビルの奥などでは電波が届かないことがままありました。それに、（日本特有の事情として）異キャリアにＳＭＳが送れないというのがあり、周りにドコモユーザーが多い中、ソフトバンクだと不便を感じることがあったので、ドコモに変えたいという思いがありました。ドコモは１１月にサムソンのＧａｌａｘｙＳをリリースしたのでぜひ欲しかったんですが、なにぶん品薄で手に入らず……あきらめることにしました。

    ちょうどそのころ、日本通信がｂ−ｍｏｂｉｌｅのマイクロＳＩＭカードと香港版ＳＩＭロックフリーｉＰｈｏｎｅ４をセットで分割で売り出すプランを始めたというのを知り、これは渡りに船だとばかり、これでｉＰｈｏｎｅ４をゲットしちゃおうと思った次第です。ｂ−ｍｏｂｉｌｅならドコモのＭＶＮＯなのでドコモ携帯にＳＭＳが送れますから。

    てことで、「ｂ−ｍｉｃｒｏ　ｔａｌｋｉｎｇＳＩＭ」というｂ−ｍｏｂｉｌｅのマイクロＳＩＭカードとｉＰｈｏｎｅ４を買っちゃいました。買う前にＭＮＰでソフトバンクを解約し、こっちに電話番号を移し替えました。

    bmobile.jpg
    ｂ−ｍｏｂｉｌｅのＳＩＭカードは完全にドコモのそれでした。ただｂ−ｍｏｂｉｌｅ独自のＡＰＮ、ユーザー名、パスワードを手動で入れることになっており、さらにドコモが提供していないテザリング用の設定項目までついてました。

    マイクロＳＩＭカードを切り取り、ｉＰｈｏｎｅ４のトレーに乗せて本体に挿入し、ｉＴｕｎｅｓの動いているＭａｃＢｏｏｋＰｒｏとつないで電源を入れると……

    iPhone4_activated.jpg
    数分して無事にアクティベートされました。アプリもｉＴｕｎｅｓからダウンロードできましたし、連絡先やメールアカウントなどのデータもちゃんとシンクされています。もちろんドコモ携帯へのＳＭＳ送受信もバッチリです。

    Q-SIM.jpg
    おまけ：Ｑ−ＳＩＭ　Ｄｕａｌ　ＳＩＭ　Ｃａｒｄ。マイクロＳＩＭカードと普通のＳＩＭカードを１本の薄いケーブルでつなぎ、２つのＳＩＭカードを１台のｉＰｈｏｎｅ４で使えるスグレモノです。ケーブルの一端をマイクロＳＩＭカードとトレイではさみ、それを本体に差し込み、他方の端に別のＳＩＭカードを入れて本体の背中側へ折り曲げ本体をケースに入れると、別々のキャリアの携帯番号が１台で使えるようになります。ＳＩＭカードの自動切り換えも可能です。