Yakuza, the Kindle, and the UK
Not that this post attempts to establish any link between the three, I should note.
First, Jake Adelstein (author of “Tokyo Vice”, which you should read now) has an interesting piece up about so-called “yakuza fan magazines”. I’d wondered about this term in the book, since it’s not as if there are magazines called “Wow Yakuza Are Way Cool” lying around the place; turns out that in fact the publications in question are masquerading as low-level weekly tabloid mags. Worth a read.
Second, I have done as big an about-face as a DPJ politician faced with mild opposition to his policies, and bought a Kindle. Main reasons are a $20 price cut, a sudden jump in the availability of books I was interested in, and (all right, I’m backdating this one) the fact that it is, if anything, easier to read in bed than a book and includes things like the ability to easily search words in a dictionary, add notes and bookmarks, and (while it’s still too expensive and I haven’t decided whether to go ahead after the free trial) the ability to get the FT delivered every morning for much less than a third of what the print edition costs in Japan. My thumbnail review is that the Kindle’s screen is as easy to read as print media and that I’m looking forward to loading it with stuff and taking it on a trip to the UK shortly.
Third, the UK’s ability to operate service industries (isn’t this supposed to be what it does best, now that its industry and stuff is all long-since buggered?) is woeful, awful, shameful. It took me four days to book a rental car, partly because the rep on the other end alleged that the email with my address in it, resent four times, never showed up; I had to point out that they’d added a collection charge despite my specifying a return to one of their offices; and the booking confirmation they sent me was like some shitty unformatted telex printout from the dark ages of fuck-knows-when. And this from a firm that claims it’s providing a premium service. If you want to be regarded as premium, give your customers confidence. I was left wondering whether they’d actually got my order right and whether I’d actually have a car waiting for me to pick up.
