Simon Willison’s Weblog

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3 items tagged “japan”

2018

Big tech warns of ’Japan’s millennium bug’ ahead of Akihito’s abdication (via) Emperor Akihito’s abdication in April 2019 triggers a new era, and the Japanese calendar counts years from the coronation of the current emperor. The era hasn’t changed since 1989 and a great deal of software is unable to handle a change. To make things more complicated... the name of the new era will be announced in late February, but it needs to be represented in unicode as a single new character... and the next version of Unicode (v12) is due out in early March. There may have to be a Unicode 12.1 released shortly afterwards that includes the new codepoint. # 28th July 2018, 2:04 pm

2017

The Booming Japanese Rent-a-Friend Business. “In Japan, you can pay an actor to impersonate your relative, spouse, coworker, or any kind of acquaintance.”. Surprisingly poignant interview with a man who runs a company that employs 800 professional actors for almost any conceivable situation. # 9th November 2017, 3:28 pm

2013

What are the best ramen places in London?

The big four are Bone Daddies, Tonkotsu, Shoryu and Ittenbari, all in or around Soho. You can find them all on my foursquare list here: Ramen in London

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