Tokyo Diary # 5

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

It has been a long rather nice week (weather wise) in Tokyo. Someone hot ~ 26. Every afternoon it is time to watch Sumo 
(or at least video tape it). It grows on you.


Today we went to Shinjuku for some shopping. Boy is it crowded. Mostly young people in a great rush to get somewhere.


I spent time this week talking about Japan and itÕs corporate structure and how companies start. As far as I can tell 
it is very hard to start a new small company that requires venture money. Banks like safe bets and there is very small 
amounts of west coast type venture money available. Innovation must come from established firms and many of those firms 
are headed by people who ÒdonÕt get itÓ re the new age. Sometimes the Presidents use email etc. but not usually the VPs 
who run the show. In my view this coupled with the decline in the Japanese computing indutry bodes ill for the future 
of Japan. (next time I will chat re the software  business).


I spent a bit more time at the Akihabara trying to buy a cute small Casio electronic camera. 680 x 480 ish color  
storing about 24 pictures and mac and pc coupled. One store told us Casio has only delivered one per store and who 
knows when it will actually be available. For once Casio has made available the cables and software to connect the 
camera to the computers -- in fact stores have piles of those but no cameras. Real strange since I think such purchases 
are more impulse  and if you have to wait you are  less likely to buy. Price is 54,000 Yen for the camera and 10,000 
for the connection kit (street price).


The PC market in Japan by the way has been made cheap not only by us imports but due to the fact that the Aum cult has 
their people assembling Pcs from Taiwan sources. They have low labor costs in Aum and those machines are cheap and 
define the prices. In my view IBM has the nicest small subcompacts. 


For those of you who look forward to my eating comments, we had a very very nice Yakitori meal last night in a neat 
upscale place near us. We seem to be in the middle of the Tokyo Yuppie and embassy folk  so there is a wild mix of 
traditional and French places.


We have become Sorba fanatics as well as liking the fried cutlets.


My email is getting normalized so I will start catching up on past due mail/


Dave and GG