Quoting ArsTechnica:

Here is the data that Sony is sure has been compromised if you have a PlayStation Network Account:

Your name
Your address (city, state, and zip)
Country
E-mail address
Birthday
PSN password and login name

“​…although Sony is still unsure about whether your credit card data is safe.”

If they got the credit cards as well, Sony is in for a world of hurt.

They use bigger fonts.

Seriously. If you compare a naughty novel (of the sort I’ve been collecting covers from…) to a regular novel with the same page size, the one with larger kanji is the one full of hardcore sex scenes. Light novels, mysteries, literature, food guides, science fiction, etc: small font, variable amount of furigana. Porn: 20% larger font, very little furigana.

…has a romanizing button.

Remind me not to order anything else until things stabilize enough over there for shipping costs to come back down. Ow, my aching wallet.

Also, WTF with the limited edition of the Dream Morning Musume album? It was never up for pre-order, and on release day, by the time I finished getting through the checkout process, it was out of stock and only available through Marketplace dealers who won’t ship to me.

[Update: my order was split into two shipments, with 6 items coming from Osaka and the other 24 from Tokyo. They managed to reach Hong Kong two minutes apart, departing four hours later for San Francisco. I figure I’ll see them Tuesday morning. Annoyingly, the limited-edition DoriMusu album is once again in stock and orderable, grrr. I didn’t want to risk it suddenly disappearing again, so I quickly finished the order and had it sent alone. Ouch.

I understand that you can’t treat limited-edition items as normal back-orders, but they frequently don’t even handle pre-orders well. My suspicion is that the problem is a flaky distribution chain that isn’t reliably delivering the quantity that Amazon orders, and not just for limited editions. Note that this is not a “big quake” issue. I’ve been seeing it for quite a while, so I think Japan’s well-padded and obsolete distribution system is reacting badly to Amazon’s success, and this is similar to the legal obstacles that keep them from offering deeper discounts.]

[4/25 3pm update: DHL delivered them today. So while the price was painful, the service was excellent.]

…as if thousands of J-Pop idols suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly looking for new careers.

That is, it appears that Girls’ Generation is once again making the local talent look like badly-dressed backup dancers. Hasn’t Japan suffered enough recently?

Okina Kamino, the author of the Asobi ni Iku Yo! novels, has released the full text of his first novel online. It apparently has mechs and magic in an Okinawan setting, as well as an earlier version of the character Ichika who crossed over into AsoIku. I don’t know if it’s any good, but a non-DRMed ebook is a lot easier to work with for someone whose Japanese is not fluent, and this one is just clean HTML (er, make that “slightly crufty HTML”) with furigana.

[note that when I say “his”, I’m relying on Wikipedia’s gender identification. “Okina Kamino” is a pseudonym, and while Okina is usually a feminine name, in this case it’s written in katakana, and the author is apparently the only native Okinawan light novelist.]

While I’m linking, the illustrator for the AsoIku novels posted some character portraits on his blog, including a school-swimsuit shot of the captain and doctor in which they shatter the Rushuna barrier (amusing, but not as pleasing to the eye as the Chaika/Melwin picture).

[Update: I sanitized the HTML so I could preserve the supplied furigana when importing into my scripts, and was a bit surprised not to find anyone named “Ichika” anywhere in the book. Searching for cat ears located the character, but she must be called something else.]

In order, I’d say they’re thinking:

• Yuko: On your knees, slave!
• Kaori: Let's see... yup, still got it.
• Natsumi: The Bambi look gets them every time.
• Mari: I'm the only one who doesn't actually need this gig.
• Kei: Pardon me while I set fire to your pants.
• Rika: I will kill you slowly.
• Yossi: I will eat the body when she's done.
• Makoto: ...and this is why I need a new photobook!
• Miki: I am not a frumpy old housewife, you're just trying to make me cry.
• Satan: Wow, this Ritalin stuff is great!

Their claimed excuse is that it’s cheaper to photoshop the meat out of stock photos than to hire professional food photographers, which is likely true, but also quite irrelevant. I think they’d be much better off if they simply admitted that they had to resort to fraud to make vegan recipes look appetizing.

The outrage from their duped customers is predictable, and hilarious.