Newsreel Japan videos

Between the United Newsreel Motion Pictures Google has put online, there are some interesting Japan related WWII videos, each around 10 minutes in length.

Free idfont downloads

Sweet and short: idfont offers a nice set of Japanese font downloads (so not just kana). Don't expect to find representations of all characters in there, but it's great if you're searching for a good looking font outside the Mincho/Gothic realm.

Asoboo, Chizumado, MixFeed and Checkpad

The "web x.0" wave (or whatever you wanna call it) has also reached Japan, leading to a couple of interesting social software experiments. A couple of sites that passed the radar and are worth a look:

• Asoboo: "Unlocking doors to people and places in your city." OK concept, but not too many users yet.
• Chizumado: reminds me of the earlier mentioned maplog, but for some reason, this is just better (not to say different). I especially like the way how you can include the map in a blog entry.
• MixFeed: allows you to, well, mix feeds. I know there are some similar, non-Japanese services, but none of them really works - MixFeed seems to do a better job (so far).
• Checkpad: for people who really need to have a Japanese version of Ta-da lists. No frills, just plain to-do list creating and sharing.

National Archives

Last week, Boing Boing linked to a set of Japanese WWII duck-and-cover-posters. Don't stop there though, as the National Archives website has interesting hi-res visual materials about other topics too. Start on the frontpage and browse around - there's plenty of great stuff to discover.

Mixi tools overview

For all Mixi fans out there, this 「mixi系ツールのまとめ　リンク集」 page is a nice list of links to all kinds of Mixi browsers and enhancements, including two Firefox extensions. Also be sure to check out the neat mixiGraph app (Win/Mac).

Midnight Eye

Apparently, this site has been around for a while -the copyright notice mentions 2001-, but to me, it's completely new: Midnight Eye, a Japanese cinema site with lots of reviews, interviews and special features. Worth checking out!

Browsing with Shiira

I am not a Mac user, but the Shiira browser seems like it's a sweet piece of software: it's made in Japan, uses Webkit (aka KHTML) as its rendering engine, has great looks, and sports an awesome icon.

Update: PingMag has a nice interview with the Shiira project's team leader, Kinoshita Makoto.

Flickr Zen: flowers in the snow