Let us now praise the praiseworthy

Over Néojaponisme, W. David Marx has done great service to the non-Japanese-reading public by translating an essay by Ikeda Nobuo on the ideology of blogging and user lists in Japan. It is an excellent companion piece to Adam Richards' white hot fury at Blaine Harden's borderline cretinous Washington Post article on blogging in Japan. Marx also has a wonderful article on the "Real Clothes" movement in the November edition of J@pan.Inc.

While we are on the subject of praise, I congratulate Martin Fackler at The New York Times for his article on rural-urban disparities . If he can just keep up the momentum, some of us might even forgive him for the wearable Coke machine article.

Okumura Jun over at GlobalTalk 21 continues in his gloriously cantakerous contrarianism, putting up numbers to show that this fall's chaotic extraordinary Diet session cannot be dismissed as a total waste of time.

Though I meet up with Bank of Japan Governor Fukui Toshihiko every few years and have a great deal of sympathy for his predicament, I also can laugh every time Cassandra goes over the top at his expense. I also appreciate Cassandra's analytical irritability (look in comments for the skinning of the much-ballyhooed investment schemes of Steel Partners).

I spend almost no time wondering whether or not tokyology and callygraphykid are one and the same person. I am just waiting for a new installment of hearbreakingly dry satire.

Of course, if Janne Morén would stop wasting his time engineering incredible bipedal robots, he could offer more level-headed commentary on Japanese issues (Can we get this series #1, #2, #3 tidied up, translated and published in The Asahi Shimbun, please?) making the world a better place.

And of course, praise for Mr. Tobias Harris even though (especially because?) some weeks I cannot agree with a single damn thing he posts.