FCCJ: The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan blogs

Web site problems

martyn_williams — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:04:18 +0900

Apologies to those of you who attempted to access the FCCJ Web site this morning (Oct. 11) and found an "account suspended" notice.

Yes, we had paid the bill! The mix-up came when Japan Inc. Magazine sent out an email newsletter that was identified by the SpamCop service as spam. The email included a link to the FCCJ Web site because an event mentioned was taking place at the club.

SpamCop contacted our Web site hosting service because we were listed in the mail and the hosting service suspended our account.

TAC reciprocal deal

martyn_williams — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:19:15 +0900

As many of you know, the Tokyo American Club approached the FCCJ about signing a reciprocal agreement for the period while its new headquarters is under construction.

A great deal of time was spent by the club in reviewing the proposal, getting feedback and ensuring all would be well with the deal. It was approved at the most recent General Membership Meeting.

However, TAC informed us today:

Death of Kenji Nagai in Myanmar

martyn_williams — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:30:04 +0900

The following statement was just issued and a letter based on the statement has been sent to the Myanmar embassy in Tokyo.

FCCJ STATEMENT

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) deplores the killing in Yangon of Kenji Nagai, a journalist with Tokyo's APF News, and condemns the use of violence by Myanmar security forces.

The FCCJ urges the authorities to respect the human rights of journalists in the country and their right to report.

New TVs in the reception

martyn_williams — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 21:22:45 +0900

Next time you walk into the club you might notice something different. We've replaced the three aging TVs in reception with new flat-panel TVs.

They not only look nicer but now they all match! The previous three didn't match and one of them (the one on the left showing BBC World) was broken so didn't work half the time.

We're also renewing the TV stations on the sets. BBC World continues but NHK's BS1 will be replaced with NNN News 24. BS1 shows so much non-news coverage that we thought a Japanese 24-hour cable news channel was better.

Scholarship success!

martyn_williams — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:58:03 +0900

The sums are still being done by the large steam-powered calculating machine in the Denki Building basement but our provisional estimates put the amount of money raised at Friday night's scholarship fundraiser at between 400,000 and 500,000 yen!!!

It was a great night of food, drink, music and of course our fabulous door prizes. My thanks again to all involved: the attendees, the sponsors, the club staff and scholarship committee members.

The blog is not dead

martyn_williams — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:24:05 +0900

Despite rumors to the contrary, this president's blog is not dead! I admit things have been a bit quiet over the last couple of weeks but that's just been because of work pressure.

So, to kick things off here's something to watch. A crew from Tokyo MX followed me around on Monday and this is the result. Enjoy!

Smoking in the main bar

martyn_williams — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:41:02 +0900

Ever since the smoking area in the main bar was shifted from the front of the bar to the end we've had complaints. People object to the "best seats" in the main bar being taken up by smokers and also question the idea of putting the smoking section near to a food preparation area.

The previous board moved the smoking section down to the end of the bar because of complaints that it was at the front. Non-smokers didn't like walking through smoke to get to their tables, was the most common comment.

Diving markets: event Monday!

martyn_williams — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 18:48:27 +0900

On Friday, as the Tokyo market was sinking and the Nikkei 225 dropped 874 points we put together the following event.

Thanks especially to Anthony Rowley for pulling this all together. It's Monday morning at 11:30!

Global equity and currency markets are crashing. Come to the Club Monday to hear leading financial analysts, Mark Cutis, chief investment officer at Shinsei Bank, Tohru Sasaki, chief foreign exchange strategist at JPMorgan Chase Bank, Jesper Koll, president and CEO of Tantallon Research Japan and Rei Masunaga, former Director General in the Foreign Department of the BOJ.

Improving FCCJ electronic communications

martyn_williams — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:11:21 +0900

The following message was posted as a comment to a previous blog entry but I'd like to highlight it here and start a discussion on some of the issues raised. Please have a read through and add a comment.

I suspect every professional member of the FCCJ is impacted by online technologies, but it is always surprising to me how many Japanese organizations like the FCCJ seem mired in the 1970s technology of postal mail, telephone and fax, all bound together by duplicative, inefficient labor.

New breakfast service

martyn_williams — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:23:29 +0900

You've probably already seen the email but we're expanding our rather limited morning coffee service to a full breakfast. The current service hasn't been wildly successful and we're not sure if that's due to its limited nature or because the FCCJ just isn't the type of place where people want to eat breakfast.

With an expanded breakfast service we should soon be able to determine this and decide just what works well in the morning.