The Two Sides of Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s Pizza has opened an English-language website that includes special pizza offers not available on the Japanese version of the site.

For example, by ordering through the Domino’s English website, you can get two large pizzas with one topping each for JPY 2999. That special offer is one of several offers exclusive to the English side.

Compare the English two-large-pizzas offer to the one large pizza for JPY 2520 offer on the Domino’s Japanese website. (A current Domino’s USA special is 3 large pizzas with 1 topping each for USD 23.31)

In addition, with the Japan Domino’s build-your-own pizza tool, you’ll be able to choose between four types of crust and 22 toppings. (Sorry, you won’t find squid listed on the English menu!)

Animation characters are also conspicuously missing from the English menu, which makes us wonder what they’re really up to. According to Scott K. Oelkers, President and CEO of Domino’s Pizza Japan, Inc., the English website was added in an effort to provide better services to their foreign community. Indeed.

As of 2005, 1,555,505 foreign residents permanently reside in Japan, and that doesn’t include the approximately 40,000 US military personnel stationed there. That adds up to a lot of foreign community to better service.

Domino’s has locations in 60 markets worldwide and 99 outlets in Japan. But in the areas where they offer online menus in both the native language and English, the offers and options tend to vary. Besides the fact that you won’t find squid on the English version of Domino’s Japan, you also won’t find the Mexicana – a pie topped with ground meat and jalapenos – on the English version of the Domino’s Mexico website.

But regardless of whether Domino’s’ motive for offering English-speaking residents a menu of their own was for the benefit of the consumer or simply a means to add more yen to their pockets, the site was needed, and most certainly welcomed.

(You need to log-in at the Domino’s Japan English website to see the special offers.) 
photos: Dominos delivery scooters

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A monkey that has been romping around parts of Tokyo since Aug. 6 could be the monkey that ran through Tokyo’s Shibuya station on Aug. 20, 2008.

On the morning of August 20, 2008, a macaque monkey scampered into Shibuya train station in Tokyo. Police armed with several meters of green netting and carrying hooped nets surrounded the macaque while it rested on an overhead timetable display. The monkey eluded capture and darted among commuters before escaping into the city. News video of the 2008 Shibuya monkey-chase was broadcast on TV worldwide and posted on TV and newspaper websites.

The first summer of 2010 monkey sightings occurred about 5:50 PM Aug. 4. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department says the monkey was discovered on the roof of a home next to a rice paddy in Nerima Ward. The same day, the monkey was seen in the same area jumping along electric power lines, scaling the walls of homes, eating some grapes in the garden of a house, and loitering in front of an elementary school.

The ape brushed a taxi that was driving down a road in Ikebukuro the morning of the Aug. 5. There were no injuries.

Also on Aug. 5, the macaque was seen in the vicinity of Ikebukuro station in the morning, and it was watched scampering on a road in Shinmachi, Itabashi Ward in the afternoon.

There is speculation this Japanese macaque is a wild macaque that lived in Chichibu and might have followed a river into the urban area.

On July 23, the Shibuya monkey posted a message on twitter: "so sweety! atsui! matted fur drippng pocari sweat 8:] see yu my go out awgust! annibersery! this !!! keyboard ! stikney!!!"

It is not known why the monkey appeared earlier than Aug. 20.

A sketch pad with a cover that looks like an Apple iPad is being sold by a company run by students at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture.

The "Padnote" is a pad of drawing paper. Each page has gridlines and a wide gray border.

Tokyu Hands department stores nationwide have been selling the pad of paper since June. The company that created the iPad-of-paper – Gocco – has sold 2,000 pads by the end of July. Major grocery stores have begun selling the Padnote.

Gocco also plans to release a memo pad that looks like an Apple iPhone.

The Padnote retails for JPY 735.