It's a Trend!

I just saw today that the experimental post-Windows pipe-dream operating system in development at Microsoft Research is codenamed "midori", Japanese for "green" or "greenery". And the very same day, the Mozilla foundation announces an unstable alpha version of the next Firefox, codenamed "Shiretoko", the northernmost peninsula on Hokkaido in Japan.

And since two examples is more than enough statistical material to constitute a trend in the blog world (many real newspapers don't require even one), I hereby declare this to be the Year of Japanese Language Software Codenames. Remember, you heard it here first!