New old book site
Nihon no Furuhonya ("Used Bookstores of Japan"), the giant search engine run by the Japanese Association of Dealers in Old Books, has been given a facelift. It looks great, even if it did come at the cost of everyone's watchlists. (They let us download them in CSV format beforehand, but I bet a lot of people didn't notice the warning and are quite unhappy right now.)
Things were a bit dicey for a few hours on Monday, but I didn't mind because thanks to those problems I discovered their wonderfully human Twitter account, @koshojp. "I don't know anything about the site update, to be honest," (わたしもリニューアルについては、正直さっぱりわからぬといっていいくらい) they admitted just before noon. A few hours later, it was "I- I can't connect to the site..." (さ、サイトに接続できない…). All hashtagged!
I found this completely charming in a way that a slick, polished "social media strategy" could never be, although admittedly I might have felt differently if I were a book dealer whose livelihood was being affected.