Easter Sunday

It was great to have Ber, Abbey and Tait with us for this Easter Sunday. After a wonderful Easter service, we had a delicious Easter dinner. Here we all are in the courtyard of our apartment.





After dinner and an exotic performance, we all took the train from our station Yoyogi Uehara to the famous Harajuku area to check out the local talent. We found the Tokyo Rockabilly Club in all their glory, and even got a picture in front of one of their vintage automobiles.



Here is a video of the Tokyo Rockabilly Club in action, but be warned, this is not for the aesthetically sensetive palate...


Last, but not least, we snapped a quick photo with this little beauty...Erika called her "Little Bo Peep"...she is part of a growing subculture in Japan known as "costume play." Btw, that is the NTT DoCoMo building in the background.

Ber in Tokyo

My Sister Amber and her two oldest - Abbey and Tait are here for Spring Break. The cherry blossoms are just beginning to bloom and we are going to have a fantastic week! Check here for daily updates!

Here is the airport welcoming committee - we wanted to show them a true fashion-conscious greeting, since, after all, we DO LIVE IN TOKYO.

Amber didn't seem at all suprised to see her brother and his children in such unusual garb...here is video from the actual arrival at Tokyo Narita Airport.




The welcome committee already got Ber and company drinking one of our favorite Japan beverages - c1000 - these are one of the simple pleasures of living in Japan...

Web 2.0 Thoughts

Recently, a friend of mine who is starting a company in Shanghai he calls Bomeiti sent me the executive summary of his new venture, which referred frequently to the Web 2.0 user and how traditional or "Web 1.0" advertisers are facing increasing challenges in reaching the Web 2.0 audience.

As I have been reading more about Web 2.0, I believe it has profound meaning for the potential of a new kind of digitial network marketing model – the concepts are just too relevant for it not to, given some of the Web 2.0 fundamentals...

- architecture of participation
- built in ethic of cooperation
- embrace the power of the web to harness collective intelligence
- science of user engagement
- radical trust
- with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow
- viral marketing
- network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era

Web 2.0 is widely defined and there are many theories. I found the O'Reilly article very informative. I also like this video - a whimsical, yet engaging presentation on Web 2.0.

Sir Ken Robinson

So last week I attended a lecture, or rather, a presentation in Tokyo on presentation design and delivery. The presentator was Garr Reynolds - I had heard him lecture several years ago on the same topic, but in the meantime, he has written a book titled "Presentation Zen"

Anyway, during the lecture he showed an excerpt from a video by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity. I went to http://www.ted.com/ to view the video in its entirety, and found it to be quite amazing and inspiring - here is is, so take 20 minutes and have a look.

Mt. Fuji with Russ

There is a famous saying in Japan that goes something like this: "If you have never climbed Mt. Fuji you are a fool; if you have climbed it more than once, you are a bigger fool. In 2003, Russell and I set out to avoid him being called a fool and to make me a bigger fool.

Russell and I made it to one of the final "stations" on the mountain that day. Fuji is a deceptively difficult climb with a relentless angle of ascent and absolutely no terrain variation or cover to speak of. Check out Russ on the descent and note the grade of the mountain...