A new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll has Bush at 23%. Not that this is surprising–frankly, I have always been amazed that Bush did not drop into the teens or lower, but then I have almost always had this impression of the man. But I thought that 29% was a kind of barrier, save for minor fluctuations–that Bush would have to molest a child on national television to get that die-hard core following to start disapproving of him. So 23% is kind of surprising.

But what is more surprising is that it’s the Times/Bloomberg poll. If you look at the history of that poll, for the last year or more, you’ll see what surprises me: it has almost always been one that has Bush’s highest ratings. It’s an outlier, but like Rasmussen, it’s a high-end outlier. Only once in the past year did it have numbers that were not on the high end of all the other polls taken at the same time.

So for this poll to have Bush at 23% is pretty stunning. It could, however, be a blip, an anomaly, as most other polls have Bush hovering around 29%. But it’s pretty clear that this is not great news for John McCain.

Especially since the same poll puts Obama ahead of McCain by 12 points, 49% to 37%. Obama scored even better with Barr and Nader included, ahead of McCain by 15 points, 48% to 33%.

Another indication that this might not be an outlier: a recent Newsweek poll put Obama ahead by 15 points, and at the time, everyone thought the poll was crazy.

Now, not quite so much.

News of Spain:

Spanish consumers will from July 1 pay a special anti-piracy tax on all new gadgets capable of recording, copying or storing sound and images.

The tax, known as the “digital canon”, arrives 18 months after its scheduled date following sometimes-angry debate between collecting societies and gadget manufacturers.

This is nothing new, but is a reminder of how powerful the studios’ lobbies are. Think about it: everyone is charged an official tax to pay for crimes they don’t commit. Who else gets this kind of subsidy from the government? Shops and stores may raise their own prices to offset shoplifting, but do they ask the government to add a surcharge to sales tax which goes to “compensate” them? So why don’t the music labels simply do what the shops do, and raise the price of their products?

What’s worse, the “cost” of piracy is not measured and may not even be real; what this is may be little more than a private tax enforced by government fiat. Like oil refineries claiming that people are siphoning fuel from their tanks in a way they cannot measure or detect, so the government adds a tax to car purchases to compensate them.

Incredible, but it’s becoming a trend to have such “taxes” to benefit the “artists” for an imagined and undefined loss, charging consumers for a crime they may well not commit before they even have the means to commit this crime.

If such a tax is imposed on me, I will seriously consider seeing it as a license–prepaid–to pirate an amount of music equal to the tax charged. I will have paid for it, so I could consider it perfectly legal to get value for what I have been charged.

Here’s another scary story of malware destroying an innocent person’s life. The IT department for Massachusetts’ Department of Industrial Accidents did a negligent job of configuring a 53-year-old worker’s computer, leaving antivirus protection disabled, leaving his computer wide open to attack. The computer became riddled with trojans and viruses, causing all manner of porn to download onto the computer. The same IT workers noted that the computer had unusually high wireless traffic, causing them to inspect the computer, where they found loads of porn in the browser cache–including child porn. These same inept IT workers didn’t bother to make a quick check to see how the porn got there–they just assumed the user was a pervert, accused him, and promptly destroyed the man’s life. The man who used the computer was instantly fired, without being given a chance to do more than quickly protest his innocence before being thrown out of the building. He was immediately stripped of his last pay, his insurance, all his benefits. His wife was hospitalized for stress, and the couple now face horrendous insurance costs.

The prosecutors, apparently so lured by the prospect of jailing a child porn viewer (probably a career-boosting case), didn’t bother to look for alternate explanations; they just accused the man–a former firefighter with no criminal record–and plastered him with a reputation as a child pornographer. Never mind that a quick search would have unveiled the fact that no URL was entered before the computer accessed 40 sites in 60 seconds, one example of how malware was responsible for the porn. No matter that child porn was just part of the vast amount of bizarre porn found on the computer, indicating not a child porn user but instead a malware script randomly accessing porn sites.

The hapless 53-year-old was arrested and charged last August. His friends deserted him, his family mostly turned away. His wife, however, remained loyal to him, and hired the attorney who got a forensic expert to look at the computer. That expert found the machine crawling with malware–something the prosecutors would have found instantly had they bothered to make even a perfunctory forensic check. But as I said, the DA didn’t bother–he likely just smelled a juicy, easy victory that he could ride to public office, and jumped on it. Probably figured that it was the accused’s job to find any exculpatory evidence–or else he just didn’t care. Once the defendant’s expert found the malware, two experts hired by the DA confirmed the analysis and the case was dropped.

So, when his innocence was proven, did his old office hire him back? Not a chance. Despite the fact that it was the office’s responsibility for the computer that got him fired–they gave him an infected computer and then fired him for it–they “stand by” their decision. Not even any word that the IT department workers, who both misconfigured the computer and blamed the computer user for the porn, were punished in any way.

The DA in charge of the case, by the way, apparently did not have the least inclination to have a simple check performed on the computer, a check that would have revealed the problem–but this very same DA, in a case earlier this year, went to a great deal of trouble to perform an “extensive review of phone records, financial transactions, and other documents” in order to clear a corrupt Romney aide of the charge of impersonating a police officer, something the aide has a reputation for doing. An innocent man gets railroaded while a slimy political operative gets cleared? Sounds like a great DA’s office they have over there.

But the way the porn malware case was handled is nothing new; I reported four months ago about a case where a substitute teacher was convicted of exposing her students to porn, and faced a 40-year sentence–when it should have been clear that a malware attack was responsible. She has since been granted a new trial, but is still in danger of being convicted–the prosecutor there apparently still thinks she forced porn on her students.

In the more recent case, the man whose computer was bombarded told reporters that was had no idea what was happening because he was computer illiterate. But the IT workers who were responsible for the whole affair have no such excuse, neither do prosecutors, who had full access to technical experts. They were simply negligent–or worse.

From All about the iPhone in Japan:

This is just a rumour at this point, but on a keitai mailing list that I subscribe to, another member indicated that a relative working at a DoCoMo shop had heard the following news today:

> She was informed today by management that DoCoMo signed with Apple to
> provide the iPhone. Her initial impression was that it would be
> offered in the fall before the Christmas rush. BUT also felt there
> was too much secrecy and that perhaps DoCoMo is fighting to offer it
> on or near the July release as well.

Hopefully this will be substantiated by an announcement from DoCoMo before July 11.
If Softbank and DoCoMo both offer the iPhone in Japan, the customer is the winner (more competitive pricing).

– End of rumour alert.

A few hours ago, SoftBank released their official pricing schedule for the iPhone in Japan. Despite doing two checks on the sites this morning and early afternoon, as well as stopping by both of their east-side Ikebukuro shops while out shopping this afternoon, I just found out about it from Roy leaving a comment. Talk about your watched pot.

Anyway, the news seems to be good. First, the pricing of the phones: ¥69,120 ($640) for the 8GB model, and ¥80,640 ($750) for the 16GB model. Before you gag, those are pre-discounted prices. After discounts (subsidies) applied with a 2-year contract, the costs are ¥23,040 ($215) and ¥34,560 ($320)–which, by the way, are just a few hundred yen off from my blind prediction twelve days ago–not bad! I guessed based on roughly a 10% higher price than in the U.S., which was not too amazing a guess since this is normal for Apple products in Japan.

But the bigger news that was welcomed today concerned the price of the data plan. A “leaked” memo (now apparently shown up as fake) had the data plan being ¥6800 yen plus ¥1800 for email, for a total of ¥8600 for the month, not counting the monthly installment for the phone itself and the ¥980 “White Plan” account. That would have totaled a staggering ¥10,540–nearly $100 a month.

According to the official press release, it’ll be ¥980 for the White Plan, another ¥315 for the S-Basic service (which appears to cover all email, not just SoftBank’s internal email), and ¥5985 ($55) for the unlimited data plan, for a total of ¥7280 ($68), not counting the ¥960 or ¥1440 for the monthly installments for the iPhones themselves.

More/edits after dinner, Sachi just set the table!

I had to stop listening to the podcast for Meet the Press just now. Yes, some time ago, Barack Obama said that he would “aggressively pursue” talks with McCain to work out a system that was free of big money; the worst you could say is that he didn’t pursue it as aggressively as he suggested. That’s the worst you can honestly say about what he did. But his campaign financing is cleaner than McCain’s. Obama’s campaign is not riddled with lobbyists like McCain’s is. Obama has shut down federal lobbyists, PACs, and 527’s not only for his campaign but for his party as well, in a way that John McCain refuses to do. While he may have violated the letter of his pledge, he has more than upheld its spirit, and he has done nothing even remotely illegal–not even remotely reminiscent of corrupt.

On the other hand, as a matter of legal fact, John McCain is in direct violation of campaign finance law, on two counts. He took out a loan with public financing as collateral and then unilaterally pulled out of the system–both illegal acts. He. Broke. The. LAW. And with every dollar he spends, he continues to break the law.

And yet these yapping heads continue to rave on about how Obama is disgracing himself, and are not uttering a word about McCain’s continuing violation of the law. Instead they whine about how Obama is breaking an otherwise great system. A system that allows for millions in corporate, lobbyist, and special interest money to be spent on behalf of a candidate who is then beholden to them, spent in a way that allows them to do it anonymously and without accountability.

You want corruption? How’s this: The FEC, which is supposed to police campaign finance, has been hobbled because Bush wanted to nominate to the commission an absurdly partisan member, and the Republican Party has filibustered any other nominations until this partisan spoiler was approved; as a result, the FEC, without enough members to act, has been powerless to do anything.

Regardless of this, David Mason, the Republican chairman of the FEC, spoke out earlier this year, challenging McCain about both of his illegal acts–in essence announcing that McCain may not unilaterally withdraw from public financing and that his using public financing as collateral must be reviewed by the FEC. Now, that actually speaks well of the public financing system–that a Republican FEC chair takes his own party’s candidate to task.

However, Mason will never get that chance: Bush has fired him.

Now tell me about how public financing is not corrupt.

Obama is the clean one here. McCain is not only corrupt, he is literally and demonstrably criminal. That is not a partisan rant, not a legal theory–it is fact. So naturally, Obama is eviscerated in the media on campaign financing, while McCain is lauded.

People, I make a lot of satirical references to the “Liberal Media™” in this blog, but I mean this for real: the media is so biased in favor of McCain this election season that it is not even close to being funny. That this can happen–again–and not make a public stir is only evidence of how conventional wisdom is still dependent upon what the media is willing to accept. If the media doesn’t pick up on a story, it dies, and no amount of blogging can give it power.

In the meantime, McCain is pushing for further media consolidation, allowing fewer and fewer people to own more and more of the media–single ownership of television, radio, and newspapers in multiple markets.

Gee, I wonder why.

The right wing has been going full speed ahead in eviscerating Michelle Obama for saying that “for the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country.” She’s explained it many times, about how it was in the context of the country’s political process, and despite that and the qualifier “really” (which means she was proud, but not really proud), right-wingers have not let up, knowing a good smear when they see one–and the Liberal Media™ is all too happy to go along with it, replaying the video clip like she was Reverend Wright and going along with the whole attack as if it had substance.

But recently, it has been revealed that John McCain himself said essentially the same thing:

Not only has he said that he didn’t love his country (not a lack of pride, but worse, a lack of love, and not qualified by the word “really” but instead intensified by it–so it’s much worse than Obama’s statement), but he has repeated it, including recently during this campaign, for about the past decade at least. And there’s video of it on more than one occasion.

So, now that this cat is out of the bag, McCain (who is the candidate, after all, and not the candidate’s wife) will get the same notice in the media for this, right? No? Well, surely they can’t keep attacking Michelle Obama in light of this, right? They will? Hmm. Then, at least they’re going to usually show this when they continue to show the video of Michelle Obama, right?

Okay, that whole line of questioning is fake. Of course they’re not going to make a big deal of McCain’s repeated statement, of course they’re going to continue attacking Obama over her statement, and of course McCain’s clip won’t get shown everywhere when they mention Obama’s statement. I made it clear above, didn’t I? This is, after all, the Liberal Media™! I mean, get real!

To ask for them to be balanced about this would be like asking them to make even the smallest note that McCain has been in direct violation of campaign finance laws for months now, in light of the fact that they are going incredibly negative over Obama’s legal declining of public financing. And why on Earth would the Liberal Media™ expose the clear criminal wrongdoing of a Republican candidate when there’s so much brouhaha to be made over a perfectly legal and reasonable move by the Democratic candidate?

They’re not called the “Liberal” Media™ for nothing, after all!

Somewhere, there’s a guy with the handle “vanderleun” who is either severely peeved, is the single most embarrassed person on the planet this week, or is both. On June 16th, there was a discussion thread in the comments section of a blog titled “Lawyers, Gun$ and Money,” a liberal political blog. The post itself poked fun at a blog post by a liberal-turned neocon commenting on Michelle Obama, the mythical “whitey” tape, and the Obamas’ supposed intentions. The “Lawyers” writer gave a subjective summarization of the neocon’s blog post, called it a “shorter” version of the post, and put it in blockquotes. In the comments section, “vanderleun” gave a stilted criticism:

As a participant in the thread that follows the link to neoneocon, I should like to point out that the quote you excerpted

does not exist

in neoneocon’s post. Nor does it exist in the comments.

The post’s writer then explained what “shorter” means, and vanderleun came back with:

I am aware of all internet traditions and also of literary conventions in which placing something in quotes or in a blockquote means that your are quoting that person.

But here you are not.

And thus began a flash in the pan. Commenters at the blog loved the “I am aware of all Internet traditions.” One commenter decided to fuse memes and so made up one of those cat-with-bad-spelling photos, riffing on the “Internet traditions” concept. Others saw it, and very soon popular blogs started reporting on it. From there, it took off to monumental proportions, until everyone in sight was making up the “Internet Traditions” images (my own contribution to the meme is seen at top). A blog started which collects and displays the various take-offs, and–of course–someone started selling T-shirts. All this after just a few days.

This is an excellent demonstration of the dynamics and effects of social networking, where an offhand comment can explode into an international riot within mere hours.

And it goes to show that when you post something on the Internet, no matter how innocuous or obscure you believe your writing is, you have to be very careful of what you say, but even more cautious of where and to whom you say it.

If you live in the Tokyo area or will be around next month–specifically July 23rd–then drop by my school, Lakeland College Japan, for a special event. We’ve started a lecture series at the college, and after two successes, we’re gearing up for a third which should be special. Mr. Tadamasa Iwai, 88, a former Tokkou-tai officer, will be speaking. The Tokkou were Japan’s suicide bombers during World War II.

Most Americans–and Japanese, for that matter–only know about kamikaze pilots, but there were more than just that kind of suicide soldier. The Japanese navy used suicide bombers in various ways. One was to use a mini-submersible, packed with high explosives, with a human being acting like a living guidance system in what was essentially a large, manned torpedo. Another was to outfit a diver with a pack full of explosives, place him underwater for hours on end, and when an enemy ship sailed past, have him explode himself against the ship’s hull. Illustrations of each:

Mr. Iwai and his younger brother were both swept up in the wartime fervor of the time, and in that fervor compromised their personal principles and ideals, and became officers in the Tokkou-tai. There, they help persuade other young men to join, compromising their own principles, and leading many to their deaths. After the war, both came to seriously regret their actions.

But what affected them more than one might have superficially thought was 9/11, watching those planes fly into the Twin Towers. One can only imagine how the Iwai brothers felt to see not only the action taken by those pilots, so dramatically public, so similar to those they themselves advocated more than half a century earlier–but just as destructive, the public reaction after the attacks, leading to a fearful and patriotic fervor so much like the one they were drawn into so many years before.

Additionally, the two were angered by the efforts of many Japanese right-wingers who romanticized the roles of Tokkou soldiers, using them as icons to encourage new generations of young Japanese to surrender their own personal principles and become weapons for the state. One manga artist named Yoshinori Kobayashi, for example, has created comics using images of the kamikaze as a way of today promoting “an altruistic spirit of selflessness” among Japanese youth, the kind that led to so much tragedy in wartime Japan.

In 2002, they published a book called “Tokkou,” subtitled (my rough translation) “The Story of Brothers Who Went from Students to Suicide Weapons.” Their primary mission is to speak to as many young people as will listen, and tell them the truth about what things were like, about what was done, and what it meant on a human level. To warn them not to allow themselves to be drawn into the same mistakes.

Frankly, this is a message that all too many Americans should hear. Not that we’re training suicide bombers–but that we are, instead, training our young men to become things just as bad, or worse, for the same reasons. One thought of what has happened at Guantanamo or at Abu Ghraib should be enough to drive that point home. Americans so driven by fear, so intimidated by the national fervor in a time of war, that we believe that almost anything is acceptable–from disassembling our Constitutional rights, to renouncing the Geneva Conventions, repealing Habeas Corpus, starting wars based on thin tissues of lies, and even torturing and killing people under the official banner of national security. Making the same mistakes all over again, allowing our own ideals, principles, and good judgment be compromised in the name of patriotism, security, and war.

So, if you’re in central Tokyo–that’s 7:00 pm, Wednesday, July 23, in the Shinjuku area–mark it down on your calendar. Here’s a link to the PDF file we have for the event, which includes a map to the lecture’s venue. The same information will be available on the lecture series’ web site as well (it hasn’t been updated yet). You should plan on coming 15 to 20 minutes early–I expect it’ll be SRO, so you’ll want to get there in time to grab a seat.

This is an event you won’t want to miss.

He beat McCain to getting out ads for the general election. This is a good one, too–a 60-second ad which is positive and highly appealing to a very broad base.

My only nitpick would be with the hard transitions in the photo montages–it would have been much nicer if all of them were cross-fades. Still, the ad rocks. It starts airing tomorrow in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

The Obama campaign came out publicly and announced what we all knew was inevitable–that the campaign would forego public financing, the first major-party campaign in more than a generation to do so.

This only makes good, hard sense for the Obama campaign; they would have been stupid not to. Opting for public financing would not have made his campaign cleaner–it only would have hobbled his ability to raise money which is more honest than most of the lobbyist cash McCain self-righteously spends. Naturally, the McCain campaign and the GOP wasted zero time in falling all over this, blasting Obama for reneging on his promise to “aggressively pursue negotiations” with McCain on public financing. But as flip-flops go, this is an above-board one: in principle, Obama was pledging to take a clean route to campaign finance–and if anything, the route he has now chosen is even cleaner than the one he had pledged to take before. One has no doubts whatsoever that if it were McCain, he would have jumped at this too–except that McCain can’t raise the small, personal donations like Obama can.

Obama did a good job of neutralizing the worst that McCain and the GOP will try to smear him with: the idea that not opting for public financing is somehow corrupting. Obama pointed out that the public financing system is corrupt in itself: “the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” he announced in a statement today. Obama complained that McCain had already started to spend private funds, that his campaign is fueled by PACs funded by lobbyists, and that Republican 527 groups have already started to spend the huge sums of private cash that will support McCain from outside the public financing system.

Obama didn’t even mention specifically (and don’t count on the press doing it themselves) that McCain had already violated FEC regulations by withdrawing from public financing himself after having used public funds as collateral for a loan, not to mention that he needed FEC approval to pull out in the first place; McCain is already gaming the system with every dollar he spends from now up to the GOP convention.

Nor did Obama point out that McCain’s campaign is swarming with lobbyists, that despite the senator’s claim to being a finance-reform champion, he has been in bed with the corrupt money system in D.C. since he first entered Congress, and has only gotten better at maintaining appearances and polishing his reputation while still wallowing in dirty money.

But one can safely assume that all of this is what Obama meant when he said McCain was a master at gaming the system.

The Obama campaign has independently rejected money from federally registered lobbies and from PACs, and the DNC has now followed suit. Despite what the McCain campaign and the GOP might claim, Obama’s money–the vast majority from small donations from ordinary people–is far, far cleaner than the cash McCain is spending.

The blog “iPhone in Japan” released these images today:

· · ·

These images are reduced; right-click on each one and select “Open image in new tab.” I can’t imagine that this is a fake; I would only have to find out if it weren’t already released to the public instead of being “leaked” material.

Basically, it’s an informational pamphlet for SoftBank staff to explain the iPhone to customers. I don’t know if this means they’ll be getting in display models, though I can check that out. I’ll drop by the Ikebukuro store on my way in to work and see if they have these sheets and/or display phones.

There’s not too much to glean from it. It shows that SoftBank will have Visual Voicemail–that was not a guarantee, some countries’ carriers don’t support it, or so I’d heard. Nice to know we’ll be getting it. But other than that, it just seems like a straightforward informational blurb with information gathered from Apple and other sources.

It is funny, though, that on page three they show an illustration of the iPhone to show how one uses it–and the iPhone shown is a pre-3G model.

That’s the problem for McCain in doing all those town halls: people remember what he said.

Polling trends; Obama is blue:

Pennsylvania:

Ohio:

Florida:

And hey, look at Virginia:

While McCain has Texas strongly, Obama has California, New York, and Illinois just as strongly. Meanwhile, the two are neck-and-neck in Michigan, Missouri–and even Alaska, which is a fairly conservative state. Heck, Obama is even creeping up on McCain in Arizona.

And we’re off and running….

Top headline today:

Bush Says Dems to Blame for High Gas Prices

Do I even need to explain how utterly stupid this claim is? I could spend an hour explaining in gory detail how the basic points in Bush’s argument are so asinine as to be mind-boggling. Instead I shall simply snort in derision and move on.

The reason for the title of this article is to demonstrate how a rather impressive (or pathetic depending on your point of view) statistic, namely that I’ve blogged every day for almost the past 5 years, can be made to sound negative. I do this to demonstrate how the news article titled “Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy ‘iPhone’” is similarly misleading. Here’s how they present the data:

According to a survey by iSHARE, 91.0% of Japanese mobile phone users are not planning to purchase Apple Inc’s “iPhone” mobile phone.

This research was conducted in the wake of the announcement by SoftBank Mobile Corp that it will release the iPhone in Japan (See related article). Targeting Internet users aged primarily 20 to 49, iSHARE asked questions about their intention to purchase an iPhone, as well as other questions and received 402 responses over the Internet.

The survey had been conducted from June 5 to 6, 2008, before pricing for an iPhone handset was announced. Of carriers that the respondents were subscribing to, NTT DoCoMo accounted for 39.8%, followed by au at 26.9%, SoftBank Mobile at 22.9% and the other carriers including Emobile and Willcom at 6.5%.

Asked if they have a plan to purchase an iPhone, 36 respondents (8.9%) said “I am planning to purchase one.” Nearly half of these 36 respondents were SoftBank Mobile users, iSHARE said.

They then make a big deal about how most respondents see a non-removable battery as an issue, though they don’t say if that’s a deal-breaker. But the real misdirection is in the distinct impression they give of most Japanese not wanting to get an iPhone.

If the report is true, that means the iPhone is set to capture almost 10% of the Japanese cell phone market right off the bat–in a country where the iPhone is probably still a largely unknown product. Since half the users are already SoftBank clients, that means 4.5% of Japanese cell phone users would jump to SoftBank from other carriers, increasing SoftBank’s market share from 23% to 27 or 28% within a short span of time. Word of mouth and people seeing others using the iPhone would only increase sales.

That’s hardly negative news.

However, I somehow doubt the veracity of the study; I don’t think the iPhone will sell to millions of Japanese cell phone users right away (though that would be cool). The study doesn’t seem very scientific, had a fairly small sample size, was not universal (it ignored teenagers and those 50 and over), and took place only a day after SoftBank announced they would sell the iPhone, at a time when no pricing plans or tech specs–or even official word that such a device even existed–were available.

Update: I should have guessed: most of the media coverage which picked up on the useless iSHARE survey is blindly picking up on the negative headline, running with the “most Japanese couldn’t care less about the iPhone” angle. Ignoring the fact that 1% market penetration would be seen as a success, ignoring the fact that the survey was taken days before the iPhone 3G was even announced, ignoring the fact that the survey itself was unscientific–in short, the survey was useless, but even if you thought it held meaning, then the meaning was in fact great news for Apple.

Morons. But at least one reporter understood what the basic numbers would mean, even if he didn’t understand the concept of “20- to 49-year-olds.”

For a conformist society, Japan can be surprisingly lax about gender roles at times. Yes, there are men traditionally playing women in Kabuki, and there are those popular stage shows where women play men. And some of the manga are pretty flexible with gender, at least in appearances. Generally, homosexuality, bisexuality, and other non-standard gender roles are not really universally accepted here, but neither is there the visceral and even violent reaction that you might see in the U.S. or elsewhere. There seems to be an indifference, a live-and-let-live attitude, even if the let-live part is mostly tolerated if it remains more muted than otherwise.

Tonight, on one of Sachi’s variety shows, they had a story of a boy who identified more with girls since a very early age, and took on the role of female more and more as he grew to maturity. In his college years, he eventually took a leave of absence and underwent a sex change operation overseas. Returning to Japan, she became legally female–something the law has allowed for here since the late 90’s. This story may have come up due to a recent change in that law: previously, one could not change gender if one had children; the revised law allows it if the children are fully grown.

What struck me was how the story was told: very tastefully, fully sympathetically, and with not a small amount of genuine emotion. It was a wonderful piece of television, making you understand this person’s identity, her pain in trying all her life to fit in, and working through the difficulties in dealing with her family as well as society at large. They didn’t handle it clumsily or nervously, there was no poking fun or making jokes; the story was played out with dignity and respect, even tenderly. At the end, the young woman was revealed to be in the audience, and spoke some with the hosts.

And I reflected that I had never seen something like this on American TV–telling the story of a transgender individual with such empathy that the viewer could, if not identify with her, then surely could come to understand and fully accept this person. I especially could not see it hitting national television, as non-fiction, in light of a liberal shift in such laws.

I don’t know, maybe American television has done this and I simply never heard of it, but under today’s political and social conditions in the U.S., I cannot imagine it playing there. But if it did, despite the strong objections of the fundies and the others whose unconditional love is sharply conditional, I think there would be far more sympathy and acceptance of those with a different sexual orientation–and the fact that some of these people are finally enjoying the right to marry would be more of an occasion of joy than one of controversy.

Biting political ad:

Sachi and I visited Subir (the wedding hall people who will be handling our wedding) to help develop the details of the affair. One thing they told me which kind of surprised me was that not only did they have an Internet connection in the hall, but they could allow to direct control over the hall’s projector and screen from the bride & groom’s dais table. I can have my Mac sitting there, and can control the show on my own–start the videos, engage the Skype calls, even control the music when I am not otherwise occupied. Pretty cool. Sachi was amused–she understands my inner geekness.

But something that surprised me more was a really great wedding gift system, different from what I thought was usual. In Japan, the married couple don’t receive gifts from the guests–they give gifts to the guests. The guests instead offer money–from maybe ¥10,000 ~ 20,000 for the acquaintances and friends to maybe ¥50,000 for the company bigwigs. The bride and groom supply everyone with a small set of presents. In my experience, this has always been in the form of a goodie bag–everyone finds it on or next to their seat, or is handed one as they leave; each bag has the same contents, which usually must be generalized in order to appeal to a broad range of tastes. Usually it’s stuff like cookies and cakes, or maybe the odd nicknack–a coffee mug or letter opener or the like.

But the system shown to us by Subir is far better. Instead of a goodie bag, everyone at the wedding gets a small photo album. The photo album is temporarily filled with a small catalog of gifts, almost like a wedding registry in reverse. Once home, the wedding guest decides which gift they’d like and orders it, then gets it by delivery. Then the guest can discard the contents of the album and use it as their own photo album; the married couple might even send everyone a starter set of photos taken at the wedding.

This strikes me as a great idea; usually the wedding goodie bags are nice, but relatively useless; the gifts are so generalized as to lose their appeal. Apparently this system has only taken off in the past few years.

Funny side point: the company that makes the album is named “My Precious.” Apparently they never read The Lord of the Rings. Or maybe they did but didn’t really get it.

Next task: write up, print out, and send out the wedding invitations. We’ve already bought the cards, that was the easy part. We also have to… well, almost everything. A long list. One day at a time.

A couple of pretty bad pieces of news reportedly just leaked out about the iPhone in Japan: it could cost as much as ¥10,800 ($99) per month for the full plan–not counting many of the calls dialed. A 300-minute plan costs an additional $75. Presumably you could still get 40-yen-per-minute calls without the extra plan.

What Japan Thinks published a supposedly leaked pricing plan. According to the document, the 8GB phone costs ¥61,920 ($575), but is discounted (only when certain plans are bought?–it’s unclear) down to ¥19,200 ($180) over a 2-year period, or about ¥800 ($7.50) per month. That’s just for the phone; reasonable.

Then you are able to sign up for the “White Plan,”“ for ¥980 ($9.10) a month, which gives you unlimited free calls to family members, unlimited free calls to SoftBank clients until 9pm, and all other calls are ¥42 ($.39) per minute. I could live with that–I only make about a half dozen phone calls a month to people other than Sachi, and some of them might be SoftBank users. Under this plan, my phone bill might be only a few hundred yen (a few dollars) a month.

But then there’s data–they really sock you for the data plans. For email–Mobile Me and Yahoo only (I don’t use Yahoo, nor will I)–you get unlimited mail for ¥1800 ($17) per month. I would sign up for Mobile Me, and all other email I could forward to my Mobile Me account. But still, $17 just for email.

Then comes the data plan: ¥6800 ($63) for the unlimited data plan. Ouch. I mean, ouch. Maybe that’s a standard fee in Japan, I don’t know–all I know is that I don’t think I could possibly justify that. Fortunately, the iPhone switches to WiFi automatically whenever a network is detected. I have WiFi at home, and I have my old Airport Express base station, which I could easily set up at work. That would cover my data usage most of the time; I would then, presumably, just use only as much data as I absolutely had to, at what I think is ¥76 ($.70) per minute. It would have to be commando raid stuff. But this would normally be how I use my phone–mostly at home and in the office. I don’t think I could justify $63 a month for the odd impulse browsing while I was walking around town. Pricey.

In short, SoftBank’s data plan would break my bank, so I’d have to simply give up on that one. That is, of course, presuming the memo is for real. I have the distinct feeling that SoftBank is intentionally leaking this to gauge reaction. Hopefully there will be widespread dissatisfaction and they will lower the actual offered rates. But, like I said, I have no idea what data plans usually are in Japan, so this might actually be more or less standard. I’m just used to my basic ¥2000/mo call plan with minutes at ¥10 per; keitai rates have always seemed pricey to me. But if I want the iPhone, I may have to get used to them, and/or certain limitations.

Worse news still: only the 8GB model will be released on July 11; the 16GB model–which I have been waiting all this time for–won’t come out for another 2-3 weeks after that. Yargh. However, Sachi and I both planned to go SoftBank upon the iPhone release, and she’s going there less for the iPhone than simply because we can be on the same plan. So maybe she would be willing to let me steal hog monopolize borrow her phone for the first few weeks–a substantial thing for me, much less so for her.

Of course, (a) the memo could be fake, and/or (b) I could be reading the plans wrong. Is the data plan–apparently specially created for the iPhone–a flat rate, or does it build up with use? If it builds up to a ceiling of ¥6800, then what’s the floor, how many free minutes, and how much do you pay per packet/minute within the plan? And what about GPS? Is GPS counted as data? Or is that free?

Anyone who knows more than I do (i.e., anyone in Japan with a keitai) please set me straight….