Month: February 2010

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There Goes Advanced PHS (XGP)

As previously reported, Israeli Startup Altair Semiconductors was supposed to Supply chips to Willcom’s XGP network .

XGP was never a world-wide standard, but Willcom’s attempt to keep PHS alive. It now looks like XGP (or Advanced PHS) will not be deployed.

Willcom announced today their plan to file for bankruptcy  (See Japan Times and NYT for more details) after a steady decline of their customer base.

I don’t know what kind of commitments Altair Semi received from Willcom, but I certainly hope their WiMAX and LTE business will be more successful.

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JLPT Level 2

I failed JLPT Level 2 test.

Now, it may seem something that one would not want to share on a blog or brag about. But, the thing is, I DID NOT STUDY AT ALL for the test. In the 9 months since I arrived to Japan I attended maybe 20 hours of formal Japanese lessons.

Considering the above, the results I got are quite impressive.

Kanji/Vocabulary – 38/100

Reading/Grammar – 80/200-  Very surprising, considering I couldn’t really read the text

I am mostly proud of Listening test results:  64/100

JLPT L2 result - Fail

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Snow in Kawasaki, Feb 2010

As I was parking the car last night, the rain turned into sleet, which later that night turned to Snow.

Obviously, I went out early in the morning to take photos.  Here they are:

In one of the photos you can see Mejiro (bird) on a tree