There have been proposals that nobody be granted any kind of ordinary visa
unless they pass a test showing that they can read hiragana. I say
"ordinary" because one of the few 24-hour-turnaround work visas you can get
is expedited by the U.S. military, for its on-base employees. I can't
imagine the U.S. army forcing anybody, enlisted or civilian, through a
kana-cram course, just to please Japanese immigration. (Note: the routine
90-day permission to stay is not a visa, and try getting a keitai with that
status anyway.)
I was reminded of this proposal when Juergen mentioned that he saw "eigo" in
hiragana rather than the far-more-common kanji compound for "eigo".
Interesting. Ominous.
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Juergen Specht" <js@nooper.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 7:41 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) The fall and rise of the English i-mode menu
>
> Guys,
>
> yesterday we met with a well informed list member
> for coffee and he showed me that DoCoMo decided
> to rename the link in the official i-mode menu from
> "English" to "Eigo Menu"...unfortunately written in
> Hiragana.
>
> This just approved my theory that not more than 50 English
> speaking people use this anyway and all of them are list
> members of Keitai-L :)
>
> Today I checked again and DoCoMo could imagine that
> a link to the English menu makes more sense if the
> native language for English is used and they changed
> it back into "English".
>
> Anybody has an idea how long they had this in Japanese
> on their menu?
>
> Juergen
> --
> Juergen Specht CTO, Nooper.com - Mobile Services Inc. Tokyo, Japan
> i-mode/FOMA consulting, development, testing: http://nooper.co.jp/
>
>
> This mail was sent to address leap@gol.com
> Need archives? How to unsubscribe? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/
>
>
Received on Mon Jan 28 14:17:50 2002