Global Briefing

By Daren Fonda and Victoria Rainert/New York

The Superhero As Bank Auditor

American executives seeking insight into Japanese business culture should pick up a comic book. The thick volumes of cartoons called manga are highly popular among the office-worker class known as salarymen. While manga have long dealt with crime and romance, one of the best-selling topics now is business.

The Salaryman Kintaro series features a former gang leader who takes a desk job, pummels evil rivals, talks trash to his elders and scores with the ladies. Another popular series, Division Chief Kosaku Shima, is more realistic. It follows the evolution of a junior manager into a savvy world beater, as he confronts cost-cutting pressures and political corruption. Similarly, the hero of Shuhei Nozaki: Bank Auditor roots out venality at Blue Sky Bank with his superpower--a keen eye for bad loans.

Keiichi Makino, a manga expert at Kyoto Seika University, praises the comics' "complex story lines, characters, sophisticated dialogue and drawings. The amount of information is astonishing." In the U.S., Japanese bookstores such as Kinokuniya in New York City carry a bilingual version of Division Chief Kosaku Shima. A book about the comics, with samples, is called Bringing Home the Sushi, available at Amazon.com

ONLINE OFFICE POOLS

U.S. sports fans working abroad have found a new way to connect with colleagues Stateside: through online office betting pools. An estimated 3 million people worldwide entered online pools for last month's NCAA basketball tournament, says the sports gaming site Sandbox.com Dozens of sites offer private-pool areas for everything from hockey to rotisserie baseball. No one knows how many fans living abroad participate, but anecdotal evidence suggests plenty do, with many workers keeping in touch through pools that go back years. "I get e-mails from people overseas who carry on friendships through our site," says Colin Briosi, who runs the Officepools.com website out of Vancouver, Canada. "Some of these people communicate more through pools than through e-mail."

MaxiMuscle

Feel cramped in your SUV? Relief is at hand in the eight-ton, 9-ft.-tall MaxiMog Global Expedition Vehicle, designed by Bran Ferren, and now featured in the high-tech "Workspheres" exhibit at New York City's Museum of Modern Art. Crafted of stainless steel on a modified Mercedes-Benz Unimog truck chassis, the MaxiMog has a 360-h.p. engine. The vehicle is street-legal in the U.S. and Europe, yet it can ford a 6-ft.-deep stream and climb a 45[degree] slope. For a mere $500,000 to $800,000, you can order a customized Maximog from Unicat Fahrzuegbau www.unicat.net www.maximog.com in Hambrucken, Germany.

TECH GLOSSARY

WHY TREES? It's no coincidence that several prominent tech companies have named themselves for trees. The image of strength, shelter and growth helps temper the synthetic, volatile reality of computer chips and fiber optics, says David Placek, the head of Lexicon Branding, a corporate-naming agency in Sausalito, Calif. Of course, some trees weather storms better than others. Here is a guide to the tech jungle, with analysis by Placek:

CYPRESS SEMICONDUCTOR makes chips for mobile phones; telecom equipment; Internet hardware. "Cypress has the most high-tech sound with 'cy.' A tree known for its longevity."

JUNIPER NETWORKS makes high-speed routers and Internet traffic-management software. "Has a wonderful rhythm with a combination of hard and soft sounds. Strong, approachable."

SYCAMORE NETWORKS makes optical networking gear and Internet traffic-management software. "Though it grows in both Europe and the U.S., it is not very familiar to consumers."

MAPLE OPTICAL SYSTEMS makes optical networking gear. Its name "offers the least power or energy. One thinks of maple syrup: slow moving."

OAK TECHNOLOGY makes chips and software for office equipment; printers; and scanning devices. "A simple, everyday tree; universal symbol of strength; less provocative than a Cypress or Sycamore."

PALM makes handheld computers and communications devices. Though Palm is named after a hand rather than a tree, Placek still likes the arboreal association: "A dramatic tree, resilient, capable of withstanding extreme temperatures, wind, lack of water--all good qualities for an emerging company."

Polar Warming's Good News?

The English merchant Robert Thorne first proposed the idea in 1527: sail from Western Europe across the top of the continent to the Far East. This northern passage would be far quicker than the one then used, around the southern tip of Africa. But few sailors dared risk the Arctic Ocean's freezing temperatures, ice-clogged seas and blinding fog. Now, though, Thorne's idea is being taken more seriously, owing to global warming. The sea ice along the northern coast of Siberia is retreating, and last year a team of international scientists reported that ice-free routes have emerged during summer months. Within 20 years, the passage is expected to be passable without an icebreaker escort. This northern route would cut the distance from Hamburg to Yokohama to 6,920 nautical miles, as compared with 11,430 through the Suez Canal. That could lead to more efficient shipping of all sorts of cargo between Europe and Asia--especially oil and other mineral wealth from Siberia.

Current route: 11,430 nautical mi. Arctic route: 6,920 nautical mi.

Source: U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory

Ban the Martini?

The French may produce some of the world's best wine, and they may drink more per capita than almost anyone else, but advertising any image of alcohol is heavily restricted. And the French ad police don't care if you're hawking something as sobering as customer-relationship-management software. The U.S. software firm Blue Martini, based in San Mateo, Calif., was hoping to run print ads in France featuring its signature azure cocktail and a tag line that read, "This martini won't go to your head." But, after reviewing the tough 1991 ad law, the company's lawyers put their campaign back in the bottle.

--By Daren Fonda and Victoria Rainert/New York

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