A Japanese National Treasure Vanishes Forever!

After almost 30 years in business the famed Pig and Whistle chain of English Pubs will close its doors for the last time on 18th July 2008.

Mori San, the owner of the Pig & Whistle group, embarked on this adventurous concept some 30 years ago when there were far less foreigners in Japan than there are today.

Almost every foreigner (known as gaijin by the Japanese - meaning “alien” no less!) who has lived in, or visited Japan would have sooner or later paid a visit to the Pig & Whistle in one of its former three branches - Umeda, Shinsaibashi and Kyoto.

It came as great sadness to the gaijin community five years ago when the Umeda Pig closed its doors.  Mori San is far too much a gentleman to discuss the reasons but convention wisdom has it that the landlords became too greedy and as anyone who has run a pub knows the margins are slim.  Is this the case with the tremendously popular Shinsaibashi Pig?

The gaijin community of Osaka received the news with shock and horror.  One such patron and long time resident of Osaka is exhorting fellow Whistlers to attend the last supper at the Shinsaibashi Pig on Mido Suji Dori on closing night.  Absent aficionados have asked to be remembered and pass on their best wishes to Mori San.

The Pig & Whistle group of English Pubs was not just a place to have a cold beer on a humid Osaka evening, it was one of the few places in Japan where Japanese students of the English language (Eigo Bandits) could practice their new found language; a place where East met West; a place where love was found and sometimes lost; and a place where important information was traded such as the next “trivia night” venue (usually the Pig or its close rival Murphy’s Irish Pub also in Shinsaibashi.

From all of us Mori San, thank you for the memories.  You will live forever in our hearts and mind.

Singapore has long been one of the world’s great places for restaurants and bars so they are not difficult to find. But seeking somewhere special and memorable is not often that easy. Take a taxi down to Clarke’s Quay and you might never need to search for great restaurants, wine bars, pubs and gift shops ever again.

One of the delights of dining out in Singapore is the climate. The rainy season has its moments but generally the showers pass by early evening and there is nothing better than sitting on the banks of the river watching the world go by as you wile away the hours quaffing your favourite bevy.

One fine establishment not to be missed is The Bungy Bar which is right next to the GMAX Reverse Bungy but make sure you have a ride on the Bungy before you imbibe. For the smokers there’s a fantastic riverside deck where you have no need to be hassled while you enjoy a cigarette.

The Bungy Bar provides a large range of spirits, mixers, alchopop and beers from around the world. Additionally you can partake of their fine bar food as you enjoy the Singapore nightlife and decide in which club to finish of the perfect night.

Let us know what you thought by sending a comment to our blog.

Thirsty Swagman, an Australian company based in Perth is attracting international travellers to join Europe’s longest pub crawl during the 2008 Oktoberfest. The booze extravaganza will last 11 nights across several European countries - hangovers permitting.

Parties and pubs may make for common bedfellows, but when Australia’s Thirsty Swagman touring company www.WorldsBiggestPubCrawl.com) plans a European pub crawl, they shake things up a bit.
This year, during Oktoberfest, Thirsty Swagman will be offering an “adventure drinking” excursion for party-hungry travellers with Europe’s longest pub crawl. he multi-country pub crawl will kick off in the beer tents of Oktoberfest 2008. Revellers will enjoy an 11-night party across Europe visiting Munich, Maria Alm in Austria, Prague, and Dusseldorf (home of the world’s longest bar).
“This concept of combining international travel with pub crawling has never been offered before,” said Kenneth Hart, founder of Thirsty Swagman Pty Ltd. “This is a unique way to ee some interesting places in Europe while having fun and meeting real locals at every destination.”
The record-breaking alternative travel outing has been dubbed the “Euro Hard ‘n’ Fast” tour. But there is a limit … the adventure drinking tour is accepting only 24 people, and is a practical travel option for either solo travellers or even a small group of friends.
“Every place we visit is unique,” says Karen Logan, Media and Online Manager at Thirsty Swagman. “For example, in Dusseldorf visitors can drink at more than 350 pubs and bars ithin a single city block. We’ll be taking our tour group there on Germany’s re-unification ay when they can meet a lot of locals and other travellers, as over 100,000 people can
pack those pubs that night.”
The tour includes all transport from Munich to the end of the trip, 3-star accommodation (which is about the European equivalent of 4-star in Australia) - twin-share (including breakfast), entry to beer tents, pubs and bars with discount drinks available at some, video production, t-shirts and a bi-lingual (speaks English and drunk) party/tour guide.
The company has set the price for this tour at$2,990 per person.

The company was launched in April 2007 in order to offer an alternative to the usual monument and cathedral sight seeing type tours. All trips are purely pub and bar based and usually takes in the local night life in the various countries.

For more information about Thirsty Swagman www.WorldsBiggestPubCrawl.com

Avata-xing for Members (from our Osaka correspondent)

Imagine your Avatar in a virtual world looking pretty much like you and not some Frankenstein weirdo. You walk down a street which looks familiar and as you go you pass ordinary looking people walking normally and not staggering as though they have some problem with their glutes. You stroll into a shop you have visited many times in the real world. A life like shop assistant approaches you and helps you with your selection. You actually talk to the sales assistant with your real voice and she responds with hers. No longer does your crash dummy stand their wiggling their fingers emulating the keying of their message which appears on your screen some minutes after you have made your request. You are measured up - with your actual real life measurements - and you pay for your new jeans and sneakers with your real credit card and a few days later the real items land on your doorstep.

Before you go home to your virtual home (which is not packed with old newspapers and rubbish you forgot to put out for the sodai gomi (the big rubbish collection in Japan) - it’s spotlessly clean with no dirty dishes or cups in the sink awaiting your attention - unless you masochistic tendencies materialise in your Avatar) you pop into Life Supermarket and do your weekly grocery shopping which like the clothes will be delivered to your real world address.

It sounds too good to be true but a Japanese company has developed “real” virtual world technology and have based their virtual world on 23 real Japanese cities. Xing will only be available to residents of Japan and foreigners or aliens as non-Japanese are known - will have to provide proof of residency before being asked to part with around US$3,500 for the privilege of being a part of Xing world. For your hard earned dollars you will receive an annual income approximating 10% of your membership fee but there’s more. Each member is entitled to introduce new members and the introducer is entitled to receive a portion of not only their membership fee but a slice of every membership fee introduced by them and so ad infinitum. Members will be able to purchase real property for a price and set up real businesses.

Provided the owners of Xing bring it all together and they have a large enough spending base of members it is not beyond the realms of reason to expect that Mega Stores such as Sogo and Daimaru will want to purchase the virtual buildings they occupy now in the real world and carry on business as usual. Their staff costs will be amazingly low and as good or services will be delivered to the purchasers in the future and in the real world their inventory problems are eased considerably.

Until the Xing world is populated with thousands of members and businesses it would probably resemble a city forced to evacuate after a major crisis. Where do the cities end though. Will there be a gigantic unscalable wall at the sea in Yokohama or just out of Bentencho. Will the boundary of Osaka be defined as the Osaka Loop which encircles the city and over the railway line a rolling impassable fog? As extra sources of revenue Xing have created a food or fuel system for the Avatars because naturally without sustenance not only will the Avatar come to the sticky end so too will the investors.

Hop in quick and buy up a McDonald’s franchise or two, and while you are at it three or four Yoshinoyas and of course you wouldn’t make any money in the evening without an Isakaya. Will Xing world have car dealerships where your Avatar can test drive the latest Ferrari to its hearts content and having reported back to you on the excellent your Avatar purchases one for you with your credit card and arranges deliver to you at your real door step … but have you got your shakoshomei - your parking permit or is that the job of your Avatar.

Will there be a friendly Koban (police box) on every major street corner with friendly police Avatars helping not only Japanese but aliens by providing directions and explanations of the rules of residing in Xing World.

The questions is how many people would be prepared to part with US$3,500 for the chance of living a life in a virtual world and the outside chance of making a living from it. Linden’s 2nd Life allows members in without costs and they are provided with the means to create a basic avatar albeit robotic in movement - hey its free.

Like all Multi Level Marketing schemes the people at the top will make money but how far the revenue trickles down the online will remain to be seen. For those willing to take the punt they may be able to actually talk to themselves by means of paying for a hologram device which the promoters claim will generate holograms from Xing world of a far superior quality than the holograms generated by Star Wars many years ago.

What do you think? Have you been exposed to Xing? Have your say through our Blog.

Nestled in the Futatabi Hills over looking the beautiful city of Kobe resides the Kobe Club. The Kobe Club is a private membership club serving Kansai’s international community. Local Japanese taxi drivers still know it by original name “gaijin curubu” or Foreigners Club.

The Club features manicured gardens around its half Olympic pool in which members can relax with their family whilst being served food and beverage by the well trained and first class staff.

The main restaurant serves an elegant combination of western dishes together with a fine selection of local fare. The wine list is one the somellier Jimmy is very proud of boasting fine wines from the best regions of France, South Africa, Australia and Chile.

The club offers a well equipped gymnasium and a squash court and after the exercise is done a quenching ale at the well stocked bar overlooking the city of Kobe.

The Club also has a ballroom for those very special functions and private meeting rooms when business needs to be conducted in peace and quiet.Please explore the Kobe Club through the website and contact us if you require additional information. If you are moving to the Kansai or are new to the area, our Club is an excellent place to start making friends and acquaintances and can indeed turn into a ‘home away from home’.

Cherry Blossom , or Sakura as it is known in Japan, which occurs throughout the country in Spring, is a time when the Japanese can shrug off the greyness and chill of winter and let their hair down. As the cherry tree flowers bloom in radiant shades of pink spreading gradually from the west to the east, evidence of the arrival of the new season’s pink colours can also be seen on the faces of Japanese overindulging in the numerous parties in parklands and on river banks throughout the nation. The unofficial national flower which has carried the nation to war years gone by, is soon to enjoy another accolade. A number of seeds from the cherry tree will be blasted into space to be housed at the International Space Station which is orbiting Earth. The Space Station will remain home to the seeds for six months during which time scientists will observe of microgravity may or may not affect them. There are cherry trees in Japan designated as “national treasures” and one in particular in the northern town of Miharu attracts some 300,000 viewers during the three weeks of its bloom. The duty of collecting seeds for the space mission will fall on the primary school students in Miharu who will collect 200 of the fallen seeds. Once the seeds are returned they will be certified and put on display or sold in order to attract interest to the town.

The online music video revolution is here

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We’ve all been there. Sitting in front of the computer, eagerly awaiting the playback of the latest music track. And then it happens… a pixellated, grainy video pops onto the screen, reducing your favourite artist to a mass of colourful, blurry squares.

But those days of disappointment are over, with the launch of movideo.com – Australia’s premier online destination for high quality music videos. No more pixellation, no more grainy images, just clean, high quality videos with rich audio from your favourite artists – FREE!

“It’s simple really,” says CEO of mcm entertainment, Tony McGinn. “Convergence is not coming…it’s here! The broadband pipe is now being fed into the plasma screen and surround sound system in home and office entertainment facilities. Today’s broadband internet consumers are a savvy audience and they expect the very best in their entertainment experience, particularly when its on their new wide screen TV.”

“The latest Nielsen poll shows the average amount of time people spend on the Internet has outstripped the amount of time spent watching television, with most people spending time on content driven sites, particularly in the music and entertainment arena. Therefore whatever we deliver needs to be something special and movideo.com is special and very simple.”

movideo.com offers a near DVD-quality visual experience with incredibly crisp and full range audio. There is a fast growing array of artists and genres to choose from, including Classic Rock, Blues n Roots, Brit Pop, Club, Hip-Hop, R&B, Heavy Metal and Country, all of which can be played through your quality home media centre or simply on your PC.

You can search for your favourite track by song name or artist, but what if you’re not sure what you feel like listening to? Then let the Mood and Theme playlists do the thinking for you.

“Whatever mood you’re in, whatever you want to listen to, we’ve got you covered,” says McGinn. “You’ll only hear and see the best on movideo.com and we’re growing the library of music as fast as our label partners can deliver us the high end quality video files we need to fuel movideo.com. There are over 2,500 tracks there now and we expect that to be doubled by the end of the year.”

This exciting new online music entertainment service is supplied free to the consumer by mcm on an advertiser funded basis. Users receive an equally high quality video advertisement (limited to 15 secs or less) after every third video streamed. “There are no ad breaks as such, just solus advertisements, limited in length” says mcm entertainment’s National Sales Director, Simon Joyce. “As the numbers grow, we are hopeful that our advertisers will make purpose produced ads for the experience. When the site is not in full screen mode, banner ads are also possible with the usual click through ability.”

With the cost of LCD and Plasma flat-screen TV’s dropping daily, sophisticated audio systems providing amazing sound clarity in home and ISP’s plugging in increasingly high speed internet access at increasing competitive prices, a site like movideo is set to build a loyal following of users who want quality music entertainment on tap via the internet.

But don’t just take our word for it. Log onto www.movideo.com , enlarge the player on your screen, plug in your external speakers and TURN IT UP to see and hear for yourself what all the fuss is about!

Experience a revolution in the way you watch music online – get onto movideo.com

- ENDS -

Constructed by the Linden family in the USA some 10 years ago 2nd Life was designed ostensibly as a money making machine by providing a virtual world through which members’ avatars could do everything their owners could not in the real world.

Until USA authorities banned Internet gambling which included online wagering through virtual gaming rooms within 2nd Life, there were great profits to be made. Gambling revenues fuelled virtual house, land and commercial establishment sales paid for with $Linden Dollars obtained by earning them within the virtual world or by real world credit card.

Without gambling to fuel the growth there remains an environment where members can create an avatar in their own liking or otherwise. Males can create female avatars and vice versa and experience life through the eyes of the opposite gender. By purchasing peripherals such as genitalia, breasts and exotic or erotic clothing the avatars find it much easier to entice others to engage in virtual orgies.

The peripherals, known inside Second Life as “Prims” are made for Second Life by Eros LLC of Tampa, Florida and are so realistic and popular that the first case of cloning the technology for re-sale was heard last year by a US Federal Judge who ruled against a 19 year old youth who received a slap on the wrist after an admission of wrongdoing.

Second Life can be downloaded at www.secondlife.com. Visit our Blog and let us know of your Second Life experiences.