To enable Australians to check on family and friends in Japan following last week’s earthquake/tsunami disaster, Telstra will not charge for calls to Japan made using its mobile and landline networks. The fee-free period (which also covers text messages) runs from 6:00am on Friday 11 March through until the same time on Friday March 25, with calls to Japanese numbers billed as zero cost. Handy to know if you’re trying to get in touch or stay in touch.
I don’t kid myself that four days spent in Tokyo, staying in Western-oriented hotels and with someone around to translate most of the time, is going to lead to in-depth insight into Japanese culture and work approaches. Nonetheless, there were a few self-evident lessons about the future of technology. Click after the jump for some quick ideas to help you approach organising from a different angle. (Photograph of votive prayers at the Meiji Shrine, which might put your to-do list into perspective.)
Editor: Meet io9 contributor Lisa Katayama. When she’s not blogging about robots and futurism, she’s spreading the word about how to GTD in the most unexpected ways. Here’s a sampling of a few clever tricks you’ll find in her new book, Urawaza. When it comes to life and getting things done, we like to do things a little differently in Japan. When I break a glass in the kitchen, I don’t use my vacuum cleaner to clean it up; I use a slice of bread. When my socks become dirt-stained from running in a muddy ravine, I don’t pour bleach on them; I stuff them with marbles. And to save space and money, I have never bought a document shredder. I just stuff incriminating documents in a stocking and toss them in the washing machine.
