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The world is talking, are you listening?

Japanese blogger id:eliya, who is doing economics research abroad, writes that he is often asked by colleagues why Japanese work so hard [ja]. Referring to economics professor Masami Nomura's book, “Employment Instability” (雇用不安) [ja], he explains that Japanese work hard basically because the penalty for being fired from your job is very high: Japanese corporations, for example, are unlikely to hire a worker who has already been fired from another job mid-career.

Motohiko Tokuriki at Tokuriki.com posts a long discussion [ja] of the recent PayPerPost incident at Google Japan. Tokuriki writes that while he does not agree with the PayPerPost approach, there is nonetheless a distinction to be made between the PayPerPost strategy in which funding is openly acknowledged, and the strategy in which it is not; this case came to light precisely because it was mentioned in posts that the bloggers in question were participating in a CyberBuzz campaign.

Blogger Hiromitsu Takagi posts a transcript [ja] of a recent open meeting [ja] organized by the Tokyo metropolitan government about Google's Street View service, introduced in major Japanese cities last summer. Google was invited to the meeting and reportedly told that, in future cases, the company should give advance notification [ja] before photographing neighbourhoods. Renewed demands to outright stop the service altogether have been mounted in recent months by citizen groups, lawyers, professors and journalists.

Commenters at Japan's popular bulletin board service 2channel are responding to the story [ja] of a Japanese girl (ID tomochan) who, reportedly through the “enjoy JAPAN (KOREA) translation service” run by Korean search portal Naver, became close friends with a Korean guy. Naver plans to end the service on February 20th, meaning that tomochan and her would-be boyfriend will no longer be able to communicate [ja]. An early commenter responds, “I guess these Japanese girls who discover that Korean guys are better looking lose their interest in Japanese guys.” [Original article at Naver (in Korean).]