Word: yamada
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Some people get revelations in the shower. Others solve puzzles in their dreams. Yousuke Yamada, a lead engineer for the Japanese office-equipment and camera maker Ricoh Co. Ltd., gets his best ideas on Tokyo commuter trains. "I cannot create an idea at my desk," he says. "I like to walk around a crowded train, where nobody disturbs...
Over the past three years, while his fellow commuters jostled for space or scanned the morning paper, Yamada, 55, devoted his four-hour daily commute to a higher cause--dreaming up the next great consumer gadget. In 1997 Ricoh president Masamitsu Sakurai commissioned Yamada to create a device that would help catapult his company, which had built its fortunes on heavy office machines, into the forefront of digital technology. The trouble was, Sakurai didn't really know what he wanted. "The idea was to develop a product that uses all our senses," says Yamada. "There was no paper, no specifications...
After reviewing the most promising new technologies--and meditating endlessly on the train--Yamada felt he was prepared to design a digital camera like no other. The fruit of his cogitations is about the size of a videocassette and weighs in at just over a pound. But the genius of the RDC-i700 camera is revealed as its top flips up to display a bright, 3.5-in. touch-sensitive screen--a window on the World Wide Web that surfs the Internet, records voice memos, accepts scribbled notes and drawings in 16 different colors and receives and sends e-mail...
...lives in Nagoya, Japan's fourth largest city, working with just one coach, Machiko Yamada, and even living with her since Ito's parents separated 11 years ago. Albertville will be the culmination of 17 years' work for both women, and they are planning a program with somewhat more focus on artistry. It is unlikely, though, that they will try to imitate the lithe and pretty Yamaguchi. Says Yamada: "I always stress with Midori that this is a sport...
...Like Yamada, many Japanese are belatedly discovering the joys -- and difficulties -- of relaxing. They still work among the longest hours in the industrialized world -- an average of 65 days a year more than Germans, and 25 more than Americans -- and take an average of only 8.2 days of paid vacation per year, but corporations as well as the state are urging them to take more time off. "The government doesn't want people to burn out," says Hidehiko Sekizawa, executive director of the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, a Tokyo think tank...