Japan

Nikon Imaging Japan is releasing a robust and water-shedding high-end camera bag – the “Shooting Master Shoulder Bag L” on June 27. Its material is the same as that used in a bulletproof vest. Inside of this camera bag, there is enough room for a digital single-lens reflex camera with a standard lens, a few interchangeable lenses, and a speed light, all carried together. And although it holds a lot of things together, the shape is narrow-designed so that the camera bag looks very stylish. When it starts raining, you can take out a rain cover that is built into the bottom pocket and put it on the camera bag. Estimate price: ¥40,950 Size: (Outer size) W520 x H280 x D240mm, (Inner size) W420 x H250 x D180mm Weight: 2,600g Accessories: Name tag with the “Nikon” logo on, rain cover, large-sized shoulder pad

…and I survived my first big gaming convention. I have some takeaways to reflect on, for example how the “anime” stuff is like out there in the non-anime con context, and how con culture is different between different groups, and all that stuff. But I liked my first Origins, mainly because I hung out with some old school gamers and they are a good group to hang with. I found this little rage-induced spiel from Astronerdboy’s site appropriate as a typical example of a bad DMCA takedown. People generally gets irked. Even I felt irked. [Tho probably not as irked as when Google Adsense decided that my site violated their age rating policy and still spams me with their promos.] My problem with Asteronerdboy’s takedown rant is that while this is part of the work that Japan has to do in order to resolve some of the problems I’ve been complaining about, namely, srsly guys, let’s do SEO in English please, ANB doesn’t seem to understand how copyright works (eg, every time that green header loads up I kind of roll my eyes), although that is also very common among most people who gets a takedown. Ah well. Where there’s mass DMCA takedowns, there’s chillingeffects.org. === Paranda and cowboybibimbap are both in Japan doing their respective wota things. Good time to track what’s going down! Feel chasers gonna chase feels. === I’m helping Wah to run a panel at Otakon. It’s about nerd spots in Tokyo. I will have prizes to give away at some point. The panel is called Otaku Hotspots in Tokyo and it might be a veiled advertisement for A-Button and Garten, who knows. Talking about it also makes me want to go see ZUN at AWA. It also makes me miss this brewpub IPA I had last weekend in Columbus. And this other IPA…hybrid that I had in Columbus. Or this coffee-based stout I had in Columbus. Some good stuff there. Otakon also has listed their fan panel winners er I mean panelists. Take a look. Given that Otakon this year will be nuts schedule-wise, I hope I get the first-thing-Friday spot. Let’s see how it works out. Anime Expo’s schedule, in comparison, feels a lot easier to plot. The big things I want to check out are all going to not conflict, not counting autographs. So we’ll see.

The first images of the facelifted 2014 Suzuki Swift have been leaked onto the brand’s official Belgium website. Revealing only subtle changes, the refreshed Suzuki Swift has a new sharper front bumper, a lightly revised front grille, and a reshaped rear bumper with a narrower number plate housing. The addition of LED daytime running lights mounted low in the front bumper, semi-framing the fog lights, is the most obvious difference between the new small hatch and the current third-generation model first seen in 2010. CarAdvice has contacted Suzuki Australia for a comment on the leaked images. The Suzuki Swift was upgraded locally only two months ago, as Australian vehicles switched their production source from Japan to Thailand. Click the Photos tab for more images. The post 2014 Suzuki Swift: first images leaked appeared first on CarAdvice.

Jitters over a possible change in U.S. stimulus efforts by the Federal Reserve helped pull share prices mostly lower in early Asian trading Tuesday. Asia's biggest benchmark, Japan's Nikkei stock average, shed early gains to fall 0.6% in choppy trading, to 12,956.78. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped 0.7% to…

Tuukka Rask shut out the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals on Monday night and got enough help from the Bruins' offense to do it without another exhausting overtime. After playing four extra periods in the first two games, the Bruins made an early night of…

The crowdsourced radiation monitoring project Safecast, which was launched in the weeks after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, has reached a big milestone: they have collected and published over 10,000,000 individual data points.

Belt-tightening in Japan's diplomatic service is cutting the quality of canapes on offer abroad, the foreign ministry has said, leading to fears Tokyo is losing the battle of the buffets to Beijing. Diplomats in Tokyo say China appears to be ramping up its spending on its missions while Japanese diplomats…

Police said Monday they have arrested a 64-year-old woman in connection with the murder of her 59-year-old partner in Seki, Gifu Prefecture. According to police, Osamu Yamamura was found stabbed to death at his home last Saturday after his partner, Hideko Nagamine, called police to report the incident. Police said…

Youths clashed with police in central Rio Monday as more than 200,000 people marched in major Brazilian cities to protest the billions of dollars spent on the Confederations Cup and higher public transport costs. The nationwide demonstrations, the most extensive since the unrest began 10 days ago, were relatively peaceful.…

A Chinese supercomputer – the Tianhe-2 – has leapt to the top of the latest Top 500 List, which tracks the fastest supercomputers in the world. The Tianhe-2 (or “Milky Way-2″), which became fully operational two years ahead of schedule, clocks in at an astounding 33.86 petaflops per second. A petaflop is one trillion calculations. The Tianhe-2 is over 20 billion times as fast as the first supercomputer ever built, the CDC 6600, which was created in 1964 Tianhe-2 is nearly twice as fast as the Titan, a Cray XK7 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennesee. The Titan, which has enjoyed the top spot on the list for some time, now moves into second place. The third place computer, dubbed Sequoia, is installed in at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and runs at 17.17 petaflops per second. In fourth place is Fujitsu’s K Computer, which runs at 10.59 petaflops per second and can be found at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. The Tianhe-2 has 3.12 million processor cores. It was designed and built by the National University of Defense Technology, which is run by the Chinese government. Now that it is online, the computer is reportedly bound for the National Supercomputer Center, which is in Guangzhou in the Guandong province. The Top 500 list is, as the name suggests, a list of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers on the planet. The list is compiled twice a year by Professor Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim in Germany, Professor Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennesee, Knoxville, and Erich Stromaier and Horst Simon of the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory. As with previous lists, the United States dominates the field in terms of the sheer number of systems. There are 252 American supercomputers on the list, up from 250 on the previous list. China has 66 systems on the list (down from 72), and Japan has 30 (down from 32). The UK has 29 systems on the list, France has 23, and Germany has 19. The remaining 81 systems are scattered in countries throughout Europe and Asia.