Police have arrested a man in Nagasaki for developing a robotic Digg arm that enabled him to digg 2000+ stories per day by automating movement of the mouse and keyboard.

Illegal Robotic Digger Arrested! - video powered by Metacafe

Perhaps he was arrested for not doing something more useful with his Digg arm, like clicking repeatedly on his own google ads or something. Speaking of which, get your robotic arms digging my site already - don’t make me go mainstream just to get more readers!

In the spirit of Lifehacker and JapanProbe’s book recommendation posts today, I’ve decided to do my own list of recommended books on the darker side of Japan. Enjoy!

Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan” (Alex Kerr)

From a long time foreigner who despite his harsh criticisms continues to live and work in Japan, Dogs and Demons takes a careful and factual look at some of the less talked about seedier aspects of Japanese culture and history. There are no rose tinted spectacles here, but don’t be mistaken - Alex Kerr certainly doesn’t hate Japan. When I first came to Japan, I was recommended this book but given implicit instructions not to read it until I felt like going home. Of course, I ignored the warning, and in many ways I owe the inspiration for this site to this very book. A must read. Readers in Japan can purchase this book on the Amazon Japan site here.

“Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter” (Shoko Tendo)

A little light(er) reading from an ex-Yakuza daughter. Though the writing style is a little basic, the stunningly beautiful Shoko tells her story of growing up with, and eventually into the Yakuza - the drugs, the money, her crazed drunken father, and eventually the debts piling up and being ruined. Certainly an intriguing read for anyone with an interesting in gangster culture. Amazon Japan link here.

“Making Out in Japanese Phrase Book, Revised Edition” (Todd Geers, Erika Geers)

Ahh, this one really came in handy when my Japanese totally sucked. With this book, you can chat up the girl, find out if she has boyfriend, talk sweet nothings, and know the bed language you’ll need later - like how to say “could you give me a blowjob?” (fera shite kureru?). Absolute fucking essential when you first come to Japan, or indeed if you ever plan to. Isn’t there a famous saying, “when in Japan, be sure to fuck the natives“? Yes, yes I’m sure there is. Readers in Japan struggling to get laid can get the book here.

“Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook” (Izumi Evers, Patrick Macias)

My final recommendation for today is Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno, essentially a bible of current and past fashion trends in Japan and how they are all related. Pretty short, but some good photos and a nice little introduction on what to expect before you go galavanting around Tokyo’s cosplay and fashion areas of Harajuku and Akihabara. (Japanese Amazon link).

…And this time it’s serious - by which I mean it may actually affect me!

OCN/NTT Communications (read, my ISP) have announced a new daily *upstream* limit of 30gb in order to curb the heavy usage of a few p2p users - like myself, I guess. There are no current plans for a download limit, however they will send warnings to users found to be sharing files via the popular Japanese p2p application Winny .

Now 30gb may not seem like much to you, but when you have genuinely fast internet like myself…

30 gb uploaded is nothing, as you can see. Curious that my upload is actually faster than my download speed, though. According to speedtest.net, my internet is faster than 99% of everyone else who has taken the test, and is well above the Japanese national average of about 4 mb/sec.
Assuming my torrent seeds (for legal material, of course) were all running at maximum throughput, Azureus would rape 30gb in about 16 minutes. Yes, 16 fucking minutes. This could be a problem 128 minutes. Still a problem, despite my dodgy calculations.

For anyone else worried or affected by this fascistic limit, I did some calculations to figure out what the global upload speed limit should be set to so as to ensure the 30gb limit is never exceeded:

• Assuming you will be using your net for other things too like online gaming and such, let’s say a daily limit of 24 gb. That gives us a nice round figure of 1gb/hour to work with.
• 1,000 mb / 60 minutes works out at around 16.666 mb / minute.
• 16,666 kb / 60 seconds gives a final speed of 277 kb/s maximum. All decent torrent clients like Azureus and uTorrent allow you to set global speed limits.

So there you have it - set your upload limit to 270 kb and you should be safe. You might also want to turn on forced encryption and disallow torrent connections to unencrypted peers. This will make perfectly sure that your ISP has no idea what you’re actually transferring, even with deep packet inspection. I also highly suggest running PeerGuardian, which updates daily with lists of banned IPs, like anti p2p companies injecting torrents with corrupted data to fuck up your downloads, as well as various evil and / or governmental organizations that will harvest your IP address if they find you sharing and then proceed to sue your ass. You have been warned.

How fast is your internet? Does your ISP inflict insufferable limits? Answers in the comments, please!

Hot Cool Pics reports on a strange phenomenon sweeping across Los Angeles … Hadaka Sushi! That means naked, by the way.

In true American spirit, I wish to file a lawsuit against this shitty restaurant, for neither is she naked, nor is that sushi. Semi-naked fruit-salad bar would be more appropriate, you deceitful bastards.

Here’s a longer 10 minute video (in Japanese) that explains in more detail what happened. The 3D rendered truck driving through the street is kind of cute, even.

Speaking of videos, the interview with a host has been recorded, and edited, and I’m currently wrestling with my Macbook Pro to get the damn thing rendered. May result in buying a new hard disk and doing a fresh install of Leopard and Final Cut at the weekend, which I’m not really looking forward to.