2009 26
“Hacking” Hokkaido in Japan
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Nina and I have been to Japan many times. But always to Tokyo, which we love. But on this trip we had a special situation going on. We are working on a significant project related to Fon in Japan, one of these complex deals that takes many people and significant time to pull off. And while my work was done by Monday I felt that it was wiser to “stick around” Tokyo in case something went wrong and my presence was needed again. But Fon has a very able management team that is in Japan as well so I also knew that it was possible that I would not be needed anymore. And that´s when the idea came about to stay in Japan but not in Tokyo. We chose to come to the Northern Island of Hokkaido following the recommendations of Joichi Ito and Joshua Ramo, two dear friends one who is Japanese and the other who knows Japan very well. The objective coming here was both to have fun and to be within an hour of flying time to Tokyo if we need to go back. But what we thought would be an easy driving around to get to know Japan turned out to be quite complex. Over the last two days we found out that Japan is really very inaccessible to foreigners. As we go around Hokkaido we feel that traveling Japan is like “hacking Japan”, hacking in the sense of building a “code” that helps you accomplish a task, but also hacking in the sense that it is very difficult to travel around Japan.
I don´t speak Swedish but I can rent a car and drive around Sweden, or Holland, or many countries in Europe whose language I don´t speak. But renting a car and driving around Hokkaido is something else. Almost everything here is in Japanese and very few people speak English. So here is our little story since we left Tokyo.
We were able to check in at Haneda airport and most procedures were normal but on the plane announcements were in Japanese only. Interestingly we were the only non Japanese on the plane and fortunately we liked the Japanese food they served as that was the only choice. No cutlery, no western food. I don´t know if you know this but the Japanese food that the Japanese normally eat has very little to do with the typical sushi restaurant that you are familiar with and probably love. The Japanese food that the Japanese eat is heavy on pickles and fish with very strong flavors. But the Japanese being Japanese, meaning extremely kind and considerate, as the stewardess spotted us she would stand by us and translate the announcements for us, and as she saw how I stared at the Japanese dessert in desperation she showed up with some cookies (I love most Japanese food but invariably dislike their desserts).
When we landed we went to rent a car at Nippon Rent a car and that was extremely complicated. It´s not that it would be extremely complicated if we had understood Japanese but as it was, we had a very hard time. There was nobody at the Nippon booth but they had a phone. I picked it up and the person on the other side of the phone did not understand me until I switched to what I discovered is the English that the Japanese understand which is basically me imitating their accent while trying to keep a straight face. I know this sounds absurd but in order to speak Japanese with the Japanese person you have to speak like they do, for example adding non existent vowels here and there, rolling the r´s in a peculiar way, changing the intonation to theirs, and only then do you begin to communicate with most Japanese. Because it´s not that the Japanese know no English, it´s that they never had a chance to practice it and mostly learned it from a Japanese person who spoke it like they do. So the lady on the phone who could not tell I was Martin Varsavsky on a first try, realized that I was Maritini Varisaviski on a second try. When she tried to explain to me how to get the bus to their car rental lot I struggled and as a result we lost a quarter of an hour until we were rescued by another kind Japanese person who saw my Japanese written leaflet and took us there. And once we got there, what was worse is that they would not rent me nor Nina a car without an International Driver´s license. The rules were incomprehensible. With a US license you need an International Driver´s License given by the AAA. With a German license you need to go to a public translator in Japan and get the German translated but surprisingly you don´t need an International Driver´s License. As you can expect we did not have any of those. But I had once asked for an International Driver´s License and managed to have it faxed from Spain. Even though it was expired, by 11pm the Nippon Rent a Car employees took pity on us and gave us the Toyota.
But our troubles did not end there. The car had a GPS as we wanted but the GPS was only in Japanese. In Japan btw even Windows comes only in Japanese. But we got over that one as well and by showing the map we managed to get somebody to program the GPS for us. In all these things I must say that the Japanese combine the inaccessibility of visiting their country with an unparalleled kindness that almost always gets you ou whatever mess you are in. Still it is tough.
And even with the programmed GPS if you are British you are Ok but for the rest of us another challenge begins in Japan and that is to drive on the left side of the road, listening to a GPS that talks to you in Japanese, with a toll system where the letters ETC do not mean etcetera but the exact opposite and where the normal roads are very narrow by other standards (in general I must say Japan is a “tight” country, everything is smaller than you would expect).
So getting around in Japan renting a car is very complicated. But as we discovered today there is another barrier if you want to film your very own Japanese road movie and that is that when it gets to be time to sleep hotels are CRAZY expensive. First of all there are very few. You can see that Japan is not a country in which people drive around. Or at least not Hokkaido. But when you find them it is unbelievable what they charge. We found 3. One had no rooms, the other one was $900 per night and the one in which we are staying is $600 per night. And our room is smaller than that of the average US motel by the road. Yes that price includes dinner and breakfast but interestingly meals in Japan are not expensive. Last night we had an amazing Miso Ramen and gyoza dinner for only $25 for 2. Today we had great Italian lunch for $30 for 2. So what is expensive is to sleep in Japan not to eat in Japan. And maybe Japanese people can read some Japanese signs that say hotel only in Japanese and that cost less. But we did not see any buildings with cars outside that looked like hotels after driving for one hour in the Furano area except the three that I mentioned. We are staying at one called Orika. So with a rental car that costs $120 per day plus tolls that frequently cost $15 and hotels that cost over $500 per night is is hard to recommend to anyone to “drive and explore Japan” as nice as people are.
So by now you know that it is extremely complicated to drive around Japan, that driving is on the left, places are hard to find, GPSs talk to you in Japanese and only come in Japanese and so are most signs, that people however are incredibly nice in sharp contrast with say, the French, that food is outstanding and affordable, that rooms instead are insanely expensive and hard to come by, now what about sightseeing? Is Hokkaido worth the detour as the Guide Michelin likes to say? And that is what I am not sure of, I am sorry to say. Especially not considering that anyone who wants to visit Japan from most places in the world has to spend half a day on a plane and that when you drive around Japan you must do it at the slowest speeds on the planet. In all roads that we were on except the highways the maximum speed was frequently 40km (not miles km) per hour or sometimes 60km. When we could not take it anymore we went at 80km in a deserted, straight road only to find that the only people there were the police who jump out of a bush and stop you. Japan is probably the only country in the world in which when you exceed the speed limit they can stop you…by foot. Of course they were very nice and did not give us a fine. They just scared us a bit cause when they jumped out of the bush with their flags I thought they were simply…crazy people.
So here´s a collection of pictures that I took today. In these pictures you find the only two places that I found worth photographing, the abandoned gigantic Buddha with a still functioning elevator inside that I am still trying to find out what it was, and a random kids fair. The rest is not exciting. As far as nature is concerned USA, Argentina, Spain are much better. As far as architecture is concerned it is not only that anything that you may think of Japanese is lacking. Unfortunately is is also that whatever you consider poor taste in home design wherever you are from is unfortunately frequently present in the Japanese landscape. I can show you random pictures of average homes around Japan and you will go back home to wherever you are from, USA, Italy, Spain, even Germany and kiss your own home town. And on top of this the Japanese suffer from a landscape that in Europe I have only seen in Switzerland and that is that they try to put everything in the same place probably because they have no room, even in Hokkaido. Whatever is not mountains must house everything else. So it´s hard to see a landscape without a power line, a factory, or a green house. But what is worse is that even when they do have nature, like in this hotel where we are staying tonight they build a high rise building. You can see it in their website. What is the point of building a high rise building smack in the middle of a forest. And here is another one around 20km from here. You look at the picture and you think it´s in the middle of Tokyo and not in the middle of a forest. So all this may explain two things. Why there are no foreigners in Japan but also why it is practically impossible to go around Europe without seeing Japanese tourists. It is probably as hard for them to come to see us as it is for us to come and see them and yet they make the effort. But they make the effort to come because it´s worth it. For the same reason we eat Japanese food, because it´s probably the best in the world.
2009 24
How do the Japanese do it?
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A few days ago I wrote a post in which I commented that we had taken out my kids from Spanish schools in Spain because the Spaniards are unnecessarily tough on children. As an example I mentioned that in many Spanish cools kids don´t have a choice of food and they are forced to eat whatever food there is. I also commented that the “colleja” an unusual Spanish spanking that involves hitting a kid on the back of his head is still considered acceptable by most Spanish parents as a way to “teach kids a lesson”. But at the same time in my post I recognized that Spaniards, as adults are by far the most organized and ethical people in the Latin world. This includes not only all Latam but also Portugal, Italy and France. I am not saying that Spaniards are a global model but they are more likely to treat you well, less likely to rip you off, than other Latins. They may not be the brightest, something that I attribute to an education that focuses more on memorization than on reasoning, but they are the best behaved and ethical. So the question here is: does being tough with kids pays off in terms of ending up with better behaved adults? My hope is that the answer is no because I don´t endorse some of the practices of the Spaniards vis a vis children. I would like to believe that a system like the American, that relies more in self discipline and rewards, is better.
Now enter Japan in this equation. I include Japan for a personal reason, this is where I landed a few hours ago and where I frequently come for work. And Japan is the most educated society in the world. People here are incredibly polite, incredibly efficient, incredibly professional, almost devoted to doing the right thing. So the question is: How do the Japanese do it? Or in other words, how do they turn their children into adults who are patient, polite, hard working, honest, highly ethical and even quite creative. Are they tough on their kids? Are they extremely demanding? Do they use physical punishment? Do they force kids to eat the food they don´t like as the Spaniards do? If European education is more about treating kids as little grown ups gone astray and American education more about self discipline and rewards, where do the Japanese stand?
Frankly I don´t know the answers but here at the Ritz Carlton, as we have breakfast with Nina, I have been observing young children and they seem to be as well educated as their parents…already. So whatever they do must this great education must start at a very young age.
2009 31
WiFi Flowers at the Flatiron Building
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In this video I show a fantastic experiment called the WiFi Flowers. They are metal structures resembling flowers that have solar panels attached to them that generate electricity so people who sit around them can have both free internet access and electricity.
Disclosure, I shot the video but did not test how well the flowers functioned.
2009 31
Facebook Cemetery and Shoveitall
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In this video, shot a little while ago at Serafina´s, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, Tom and I compete for “the stupid idea of the meal.” I present the Facebook Cemetery, which would be a Cemetery in Facebook where all of those who die are virtually buried and their money is distributed through their Facebook Will to their Facebook friends. Tom then replies with Shoveitall, a new revolutionary product that would fit into your throat and accelerate meals to accomodate to the perils of American life on the fast lane.
Video was shot in a Nokia E71. Shooting videos and taking pictures is the only thing that a Nokia E71 does better than an iPhone or a Blackberry.
2009 31
Testing Gadgets in USA during July 09
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During the month of July, spent traveling around USA all the way from Miami to Hawaii passing by California, Idaho and New York, whenever I could, I took time to test wireless gadgets. Here are some random observations:
-The new iPhone software update makes it impossible to use pre-paid ATT data packages on iPhones. This is silly because on unlocked iPhones you can use the data packages of, say, T Mobile. So why would ATT want to drive its customers to their competitors?
Peek
-I loved the Peek. It is like the poor man´s Blackberry. Of course a Blackberry is much better. But Blackberry service is at least three times as expensive. The Peek costs $20 and the unlimited email monthly charge is $15 and no contracts. The negative though is no Facebook, no Twitter, no web browsing, no attachments. But the Peek is the perfect alternative to foreigners who don´t want to be ripped off with roaming charges when they come to the States or for Americans who just want email for work. And while you can´t Tweet or Facebook, you do get the email notifications.
-T-Mobile has an amazing Blackberry offer that gives you free global roaming for $70 per month. This offer is not available from European operators, so getting a US T Mobile Blackberry is great for global travelers. But they’ll kill you with the voice calls both in USA and abroad, so forget about using it as a phone. But considering that Vodafone charges me $14 for every day I use my European Blackberry in the USA and T Mobile charges me nothing when I use their Blackberry in Europe, Asia and Latam, it is clear which one is the better deal.
-I tried a new phone from Kyocera that Virgin Mobile sells for only $90 but was not impressed with either with the phone or the service. The service has something absolutely annoying; their data package does not include email and they charge you 10c to send or receive an email as if it was SMS (the rip off champion of the wireless industry). The service itself, which goes over the Sprint network failed most of my tests and the coverage was awful. And the phone has the most primitive interface. If you buy it you will experience a serious case of iPhone nostalgia.
MIFI
-I was fascinated by the MIFI. Saw it with Verizon and Sprint but did not buy one cause it is super expensive. The Fonera can do what the MIFI does but the MIFI beats the Fonera because of its simplicity and size. Of course there are tons of things that the Fonera does including creating a global shared WiFi network and uploading and downloading pictures, videos, films, games on its own from the Internet that the MIFI does not do but if converting 3G to WiFi is all you want it pains me to say as CEO of Fon that it is better to get a MIFI.
-ATT has the best pre-paid service in America. It is great because it combines pre-paid data, with free calls to any ATT number with a $1 a day 10c plan that is perfect for visitors and occasional phone users. T Mobile has the same but the coverage is worst and there are less T Mobile users. Did not test Verizon.
– It is amazing how many subsidized, no contract prepaid phones you can buy for nothing in USA. Obviously the carriers believe what Fon wrongly believed at one point, that if you give hardware for free, or close to free, you will make money with the service. Maybe. But in the meantime as a visitor you can try tons of gagdets and buy them at prices which are clearly lower than their manufacturing costs. Nina, now my wife, kept laughing at the amount of $15 to $100 wireless gadgets that I accumulated during the month of July. The Samsung A177 is a good example.
-I bought a MacBook Pro 15 inches and while it´s much more expensive than a PC with similar characteristics it is by far the best Mac I have ever had. 500GB hard drive, 2.8Ghz processor, 4GB of Ram and a few compromises with the non Apple world such as an SD RAM card reader. I still believe that Jobs should make a deal with HP, Dell and others and license OS X in order to avoid becoming too boring. I can imagine Putin entering an Apple shop and thinking, “one phone, one laptop, one desktop, this is how the Soviet Union should have worked out”.
-I had the perfect plan to avoid roaming charges. I gave Nina our Blackberry and tried to survive for a month using the iPhone and the Nokia E71 with a $20 prepaid data plan from ATT. I suffered a SERIOUS case of Blackberry envy and frequently ended up asking her for the Berry. Why? Well first I made the mistake to upgrade the iPhone to the latest software and that killed my ability to use it with prepaid ATT data. Secondly I tried and just HATED the Nokia E71. And interestingly I did have a chance to meet with Nokia´s CEO during this month and tell him this in the nicest language I could find. The Nokia E71 is a PAINFUL product that tries to do everything and does everything BADLY. As you see I am getting excited here using capitals, and all but it hurts me to see the number one European tech company producing a product like a Nokia E71 that won´t do IMAP email well (the email client doesn´t download emails till you go one by one), their push email stopped working and I could not fix it, writing in the crammed keyboard is worse than the iPhone – now improved with landscape mode, the music app is non intuitive, my conclusion with Nokia is that either they completely revamp Symbian or they die. In the meantime, during July, I saw my Nokia shares go down in an up market which made me realize that traders who buy Nokias agree.
Sanyo Xacti HD Camcorder
-I love my Sanyo Xacti Full HD camera. At $349, it´s the best of its kind. The quality is superb and it is so easy to use. I don´t understand why America is in love with the Flip Camera. Yes, it´s simple, but you can´t compare a video done with the Xacti with a video done with the Flip Camera whose quality resembles that of the high end mobile phones.
-As I get more and more into photography I decided not to take sides, clearly an expensive proposition and double up going BOTH for Nikon and Canon. So now I have a Nikon D90 with a Sigma 18 200 and a fixed 85mm 1.4 and a Canon 5D with a Canon 12 200 zoom and a fixed 85mm 1.2. The verdict is not out yet but I have a strong sense that other than in convenience and weight, (Canon equipment is bigger and heavier), Canon will win. Here is my first Canon test.
-Gmail finally made it possible to to send email from Gmail with YOUR email address. This helps the Android phone. Yes, I have been testing that one as well. The HTC Magic. The integration with Google is phenomenal. But it is lacking in iTunes. That´s where the iPhone beats all. In entertainment. Google has to learn how to make people smile, to appeal to their hearts, not just their brains.
-A trend that keeps growing in America is people who watch TV with their laptops connected over wifi or with their smartphones, or with their game consoles and both watch TV and play games, Facebook, IM, etc. The USA already had the lead on how many hours people spent in front of a screen, a time that in Asia, Europe and other places people spend with other people. But now, the USA will have the lead on time spent watching more than one screen at a time. Not sure it´s a great record to have.
2009 31
Jack Hidary´s Cash for Clunkers: $1bn only lasts a week.
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Yesterday I spent half a day at Jack Hidary´s office in Midtown Manhattan. While the visit was mainly focused on Global Solar Center, his new company, I happened to be there when Jack got the news that the Cash for Clunkers Bill that he had sponsored in Congress through his not for profit called Smart Transportation had reached its 3 months goals to give out $1bn in incentives to buy more fuel efficient cars in only one week. Jack Hidary himself tells the story in an article in the Huffington Post this morning . The Cash for Clunkers story is a remarkable example of what a motivated and well connected citizen can do to promote change in America in an area where USA is the world´s laggard. It is also a story of an administration, the Obama administration, and a Congress, that is willing to listen to the best ideas of their citizens, especially when proven elsewhere in the world. This is a welcome change after the Bush Administration who took pride in its go at it alone global policies. In Jack´s case we are talking about a simple idea, already used in Germany, of giving a cash incentive to people to trade in their old, highly inefficient cars for new cars with much better MPG standards. According to Jack, there were many people in government who thought that the program would not be very successful, that the cash incentives were small and that as usual the government was going to be a poor communicator of its strategy. But what Jack successfully argued to politicians and turned out to be true is that if you leave it to car dealers, the cash for clunkers story would be told by the most powerful advertising machine in USA. And that´s what happened. Until yesterday you could not turn the TV in the States without watching some ad of some car dealer offering you the cash for clunkers program. That is how the $1bn that the government had allocated between this week and November ran out in a week. It is also worth noting that the old cars are not being sent to LDC as it usually happens with the export of used cars. They are being recycled into more efficient cars. Now the challenge is that tons of people were left out of the program. Will the American government be able to shut down a program that so efficiently allocates funds to reduce oil consumption and helps the car industry? My bet is that somehow more money will be found for it.
Now what is Jack´s next challenge? To convince Americans to save energy in another major way: installing solar panels in their homes. For that purpose he created Global Solar Center. Global Solar Center is as he puts it the “Salesforce.com of the solar energy industry”. After spending time with Saleforce founder Marc Benioff in Hawaii last week I can say that Jack is on to something there. What Salesforce.com did to provide an online alternative to Oracle and SAP software package products Jack may do for the Solar Energy Industry. The Solar Energy industry suffers from a chicken and egg problem. How do you communicate to the American people that there are billions of dollars of government incentives available for them to generate their own electricity when installation benefits vary so widely among home owners? Jack´s answer is the creation of an online tool that is available for everyone on the internet and gives home owners a free and quick answer, something that until now required visits from solar panel installers and studies that could cost in the thousands. This tool, which was recently launched, combines the power of many mapping and photographic databases coming from Google (maps) and Bing (pictures), with precise information of USA´s solar footprint to give solar panel installers and the average citizen a quick answer as to how much it would cost to install solar in her/his home, what programs are available to subsidize the installation and the return on investment. While his results have not yet been as impressive as Cash for Clunkers, probably because solar panel dealers are poorly organized and have not managed to communicate the government incentives available to them as well as the car dealer industry, Jack has managed to generate $6 million worth of orders obtaining a 3% commission on each one in a few weeks. So as opposed to his efforts in Smart Transportation an NGO Global Solar Center is a for profit company and may actually be one of those rare companies that both do good and make money.
First the news: Hawaii is so big that you can spend the whole day going on a road trip and do half the island. Then the confusion: watch this senseless video.
Nina and I got married for the simple reason that after being together over 2 years we love each other more than ever.
But we got married in Hawaii, a place that is so far away from our home in Madrid, thanks to the help of friends who we would like to thank after last night´s wonderful ceremony: Michael Dell and Marc and Lynne Benioff.
We would like to thank Michael for suggesting a few weeks ago in Sun Valley, that we change our original plans of getting married in NYC for a wedding at the most beautiful hotel in the world, the Four Seasons Hualalai. We would like to thank Michael and his incredibly attentive staff who helped us put the wedding together, with very little notice and yet paying attention to every detail. They are not only great, they are sensitive something that is not common in hotel staff. At the Hualalai we would especially like to thank Scott Cairns, Patrick Fitzgerald and KJ Rhee. I would like to thank Jim Major for lending me his bike 🙂
But concerning the wedding itself the ceremony would not have been the same without Marc and Lynne. Not only were they kind enough to be our witnesses but they hosted the most amazing dinner of our lives together last night at the Kukio.
In short thanks to Michael and his team and Marc and Lynne, a wedding that was going to be basically about a couple eloping and getting married at the beach, turned out to be just perfect. Unexpectedly all the key elements of a wedding were there one after the other. The photographer (the pictures below are mine although his are coming soon), the music during dinner, the Hawaiian symbolism during the ceremony. Marc and Lynne paid attention to every detail and made the event wonderfully complete.
We would also like to thank Keoni Atkinson, the officiant who married us in the Hawaiian tradition and who exceeded anything we could have imagined about making our wedding by the ocean special. Keoni understood us very well after an afternoon meeting and was able to summarize a great deal about how Nina and I feel about each other.
As we spend our last two nights here, now married, we remember last night´s ceremony with a great deal of love for all of those who made it happen.
Mahalo.
2009 22
Wedding Announcement!
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Nina Wiegand and Martin Varsavsky are getting married today at the Four Seasons in Hualalai. The ceremony will be Hawaiian style and will take place at 6pm Hawaiian time. Friends and family, no reason to dismay at this surprise wedding here alone so far away from you. There will be a weekend long celebration to be held in Miami starting Friday Oct 23rd in South Beach. In the meantime we would like to extend special thanks to Michael and Marc for helping make this wonderful event happen.
Here´s the announcement video. You can also watch it in HD.
2009 21
If you have never been to Hawaii…
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You will not imagine it like this.
Or at least Nina and I did not. If you live in Europe like we do. And you are used to vacation in the Atlantic as we are, then Hawaii is kind of like Tenerife meets Jamaica..but better. But that may be a meaningless description for you. And we don´t really know all of Hawaii. We know The Big Island, also known as Hawaii, but not all the other islands that are jointly known as Hawaii. And we only know the North of the Big Island. But just the North is three distinct landscapes. A volcanic desert on the North West, grasslands in the North, tropical forest in the North East. In a very small area you go from sea level to 4200m. This island is a lot of landscapes and climates put together. Sometimes it even snows at the top of the volcano and we are at 8 degrees from the Equator. The Big Island is not huge but it is big as they say. Probably somewhere between Majorca and Sardinia in size. But it is empty by European standards. Very little development. Huge open areas. Vast views. I kind of had the wrong idea that Hawaii was touristy like say Florida. It is not.
If you can make it, it´s worth the 12 hour jet lag from Europe. I will add more pictures and videos.
I would like to thank a very special person who hosted us today but he has asked us not to blog about him and we will respect that. It´s a pity though because he is one rare combination of wit and kindness.