Mark and Teru, it was great to meet up with you guys and down some Irish beer! Teru, thanks so much for coming all the way out from Mie! Drupalace, really glad we were able to hook up online.
A quick recap on last night for those who weren't able to make it:
We started off with a bit of an adventure. The pub didn't actually open until 6pm. (Again, sorry about that guys! I should have confirmed the opening time). So we hung out at a nearby pub until 6pm and then headed over to McLoughlin's. When we got there though, we discovered it was still closed. The owners were inside, but had decided not to open the pub as one of the taps (or something) exploded and there was liquid of some sort all over the kitchen. We ended up at another Irish pub nearby which worked out fine & they had live music as well.
Basically, we just spent the time chatting, getting to know each other, and sharing a bit about what we're doing with Drupal.
Teru was able to fill us in a bit on the Japanese translations of Drupal and share his thoughts on why Drupal does not currently have a strong presence in Japan.
There are currently two different Japanese translations of Drupal. If I remember correctly, they are:
Drupal is currently not well known in Japan, especially compared with Xoops (a competing CMS) and WordPress (the blogging tool).
Teru said the reason for this from what he can see is the lack of Japanese documentation and support as well as a dearth of Japanese-translated-modules.
This has the potential to change dramatically, however, with the introduction of Drupal 6, which brings some much needed localization and internationalization improvements that should make it much easier to translate Drupal core, 3rd party modules, and user content.
Here's a screencast I found by Greg Knaddison (greggles) that highlights the upcoming changes.
http://www.masteringdrupal.com/screencast/new-i18n-l10n-features-drupal-6
ok, i'm off for now