This is a test post from my cellphone, using wapblogger.
Off to see more snow
I’m off for the next few days of my ever-shortening winter vacation to see some snow, and eat as much sushi as I can consume (or afford). I’m going to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture, with a “stopover” in Matsumoto in Nagano-ken to see the world-renowned Japan Ukiyo-e Museum. (I say “stopover” because although it should be on my way back, because of geography I have to first take a train south to Nagoya and then a second train back up north to Matsumoto). The museum is based on the Sakai collection, believed to be the largest individual collection in the world, with over 100,000 ukiyo-e prints.
It’s my first travel experience alone in Japan, we’ll see how far my Japanese goes (or doesn’t go). Not really worried, Naoko is of course only a cellphone call or email away. Speaking of cellphones, I would love to post some real-time impressions to here via my phone a la my previous post but alas, I will have to content myself with internet cafes or the hotel’s business center if they have one, or I just may say screw it and you won’t hear from me for a while (no biggie as that’s been the SOP around here for awhile, no?).
Moblogging
I’ve been getting excited about various endeavours from Joi Ito and others in the “moblog” arena, that is blogging from mobile devices like cellphones. Joi and others put together a special New Year’s Eve moblog event which demonstrates some of the real-time capabilities of mobile blogging (and some of the inevitable problems as well that come from early-adopting).
I don’t have a camera-equipped cellphone, but I have found myself longing to publish entries to this blog from my phone via email for quite a while now, so I’ve been following recent happenings in the area. I actually use my cellphone primarily as a email device, and have built up quite a dexterous thumb in the process of typing out emails on the phone keypad that I might actually be part of what young Japanese call the oyayubizoku. (In point of fact, in the 7 months I’ve had the phone, I’ve probably made less than 20 phone calls on it. I hate talking on the phone, generally, and anyway, emailing costs only about 1 yen per email (less than a US penny)).
Joi has released a mail2entry script for coverting email to Movable Type entries, which looks simple enough but unfortunately is still a tad more complicated than I have the time for, but I’ve got to think a more end-user-friendly app (or explanation of Joi’s script) is around the corner (blogging tools Radio and Blogger already have this capability built in to their products).