Hotchkiss

[Repost] You've never heard of mr. Eliphalet Hubbell Hotchkiss? He was an American business owner whose company started production of a paper stapler at the end of the nineteenth century, and exported a lot of them to the Japanese government. Which is why a word for "stapler" in Japanese is "ホチキス" (hochikisu). Which I found strange, started to look around and found this site on antique staplers. Which, if nothing else, it's a good place to get your fill of esoteric knowledge you can bore people to tears with.

Origins of Japan

I'm still trying to work through the mountain of pictures from Hokkaido, winnowing it down to something resembling manageable size. Meanwhile, a friend sent me a link to an article by Jared Diamond (of the "Guns, Germs and Steel" fame) from 1998 on the origins of the Japanese people. He doesn't have a particular historical or cultural axe to grind, so it's arguably more evenhanded and perhaps more reliable than you would find from a lot of Japanese or Korean sources. He's an engaging writer so it's a good read.