29th Bizen ware festival in 2011

Bizen city is well known for Bizen ware production.

Annualy, in autumn, Bizen ware festival has been held for years.

This year, it will be held on Saturday / Sunday 15-16 October 2011

around the JR Imbe station.

Three special boothes and pedestrian precincts will be

set in front of and around the JR Imbe station during the festival.

Many potteries open their open-air market stalls for selling Bizen ware　products

with 20% discount. Also, demonstration of potter's wheel will be performed.

The train route for JR Imbe station is shown in figure above.

To get to the JR Imbe station by train, it may be straightforward to get on a

train bound for Banshu-Ako at JR Okayama station. It takes about 40 minutes from JR Okayama station to JR Imbe station. (Although the trains bound for

Wake or Himeji go to the same direction, they don't arrive at JR Imbe station.)

The opening hour are 09:00-17:30 on 10/15 Saturday and 09:00-16:30

on 10/16 Sunday.

Youtube videos on the past Bizen ware festivals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm8Rprcalzk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnxVvYbK6O4

Dolls' festival season.

As I wrote in the article five months ago, early March is the dolls' festival season in Japan. This year, many local newspapers report that Hina-dolls have been displayed on the premises or outside the front of the stores since late February in various towns as done in the past. As for the Inland sea area, major sites and schedules are as follows.

Tatsuno-city (Hyogo prefecture)
Date:3/12-3/21
Time:10:00-16:00
Venue:70 local houses around the Tatsuno castle.

Shikoku Mura museum (Kagawa prefecture)
Date:2/5-3/21
Time:8:30-16:30
Venue:Folk dwellings located inside the Shikoku Mura museum.
The cost of admission to the Shikoku Mura museum is 800yen.

Utazu-cho (Kagawa prefecture)
Date:3/5-3/6
Time:9:00-17:00
Venue:100 local houses in Utazu-cho

Hiketa doll festival (Kagawa prefecture)
Date:2/27-3/3
Time:10:00-16:00
Past video found in Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7qEL1hBTMo

Tomo townscape dolls' festival (Hiroshima prefecture)
Date:2/17-3/13
Time:Depends on each event
Past video found in Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USMV1AdgtR8

Kurashiki Hina Meguri (Okayama prefecture)
Date:2/26-3/13
Time:9:00-17:00
Past video found in Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN9hTJWzPA

Takehara townscape Hina Meguri (Hiroshima prefecture)
Date:2/11-3/21
Time:Depends on each event

In Takehara, a live music performance of Japanese harp and bamboo flute is scheduled to be held during 13:00-15:00 on Sunday 6th March 2011 in Old Kasai House.The cost of admission to the venue is 100yen. No extra payment is required for listening to the music performance. TEL :(0846) 22-0214

Takehara is a town known as bamboo-town. If you have a chance to go there on the day, it might be enjoyable to listen to the bamboo flute sound in the bamboo-town.


Fig. Old Kasai House

Oyster season.

February is a month when local oysters festivals are held around the inland sea. Videos recorded on site in the past can be found on Youtube as follows.

Ako oysters festival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66rpuBJQs3U&feature=related

Miyajima oysters festival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JQpSUvojE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV_yUgX5P5Q&feature=related

Ohno oysters festival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Wt0zzciYM

Jigozen oysters charity bazaar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl3puzO_0v4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaat4KhXi6Q&feature=related

Aioi oysters festival
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPIiUUOPCnE

This year, 27th Miyajima oysters festival is scheduled to be held on 12th & 13th Feb. 2011. The stores open from AM 10:00 until sold out. This festival is held annually at this time of year when oysters become most delicious.

On the leaflets folded in the Newspaper

It's often said that subscribers of Japanese daily newspaper don't read its articles in detail but take a close look at folded leaflets which are delivered every morning with newspaper itself. These leaflets are referenced for making cheaper shopping plans. Taking the example where I live, more than 10 folded leaflets are delivered usually. Most of them are advertisements of local shop's bargain or grand opening sale. Though I haven't done exact measurement, these leaflets' advertisers' shops seem to be located within less than two hours driving distance. Perhaps, many local shop managers might suppose that residences of their target customers exist within such distance.
From advertisers' viewpoint, most part of the leaflets are not so effective for the customers who don't drive so often and use only nearby supermarket within walking distance. It's natural that they might also hope that ,if possible, shop advertisement could be delivered to the every drivers who drive and pass near their shops. But such advertising methods have never existed so far.

The combination of proper size Tablet-PC, data communication network, car navigation soft and Google map seems to become an embryonic test stage toward realizing such method.

The ultimate goal may be that.
1. At first, the owner of local shop-A register as a member of G-Shopwindows. G-Shopwindow means Geotagged-Shopwindows.
2. G-Shopwindows have another Google-maps synchronizing with original Google Maps.
3. A staff of a local shop-A make original illustration and voice announce by using the UI of G-Shopwindows and designate the target grid-POSTs on the map of G-Shopwindows.
4. G-Shopwindows send the assigned directory names of the shop-A to the original Google Maps' grid Post.
5. The car navigation software on the Tablet-PC call the Google maps, accesses the nearest grid-POST and transfer the deposited address and directory names to the Tablet-PC.
6. Internet Browser window is opened automatically and access to the designated directory. The graphic & announcement are broadcast inside the cars passing near target grid-POST.

Forefeeling the pradigmatic change in the drive-through system

Below is a cutout from Google search-results display.











As for Japanese sites, only 5 search-results exist now.
But, I guess this segment will bustle up in future.
Technically, the collaboration between each third party's car-navigation soft and Bing (or Google) Maps might be the key point.
Socially, the drive-through system will have to face a drastic change.

Word group theory (3) . The existence of unnamed things and their illustrations.

The other day, the sales termination of the cassette type walkman which has been produced since 1979 was announced. If I have to take up one remembrance about cassette type walkman, troubles around the tape tangling come up first. And its memory comes with the scene of putting a pencil into the hole of cassette and rotating the cassette around the pencil to reel the extracted tape line.

When I reminisced about such a reeling action this time, I noticed that the action would soon be forgotten by our history soon or later with the extinction of audio cassette tapes. To confirm today's situation, I did Google-search about it in Japanese and noticed that the action seems to have never been named at least in Japanese. If unnamed, the future generation can't know it's existence. We should not expect the future people to input words in a row like 'cassette tape, pencil, rotate, reel' as I put into search dialog box in Japanese.

After thinking about this matter, I generalized it as follows and it led me to a conclusion that a simple illustration would help search engine to improve usability for searching unnamed things.

Conclusion 1. Search-target objects can be classified into two states. A)Named things. B) Unnamed things.

Conclusion 2. For unnamed objects, the search engine had better give an engine-internal name provisionally to each unnamed object. However, their internal names should not appear on customer's search screen.

Conclusion 3. If the combination of 'cassette tape, pencil, rotate' is input by any customer, an illustration depicting a cassette tape rotating around pencil should appear on the search screen with the message 'Do you want to know about this action?"
















Simple illustration might help us to find unnamed things smoothly.

A possibility of a combination-locked storage pocket embedded under car surface.

When I need to have my car repaired, I usually drive to an auto-repair shop, leave my car and ask the staffs if they can deliver my car to my parking space after fixation. In many cases, the detail shop agrees to my request and a delivery staff drives my car and park it in my parking lot on the ending day of fixation. On handing over of car key, I usually ask the staff in charge of delivery to throw it into my mailbox on the front door. But such an exchange may be possible under the condition that the distance between the parking space and my front door is not so far. If my parking space were distant from my front door, I would feel sorry for the detail shop's staff for spending important time on moving from parking space to the door.

In general, parking lots tend to be located remote from the car owner's residence especially in urban area, I guess. Considering such situation, I think the combination-locked storage pocket embedded under car surface is required. The store staff can leave the keys, envelope containing receipt or small change, if the car owner give him a unique key number in advance by phone.

As for me, I will use it for keeping a spare key when I have to carry too much luggage and have no confidence in not missing my key while walking around after getting out of my car.