Fixing japanese font rendering in android jelly bean 4.1 (docomo galaxy nexus SC-04D)

A couple weeks ago Docomo/Samsung finally pushed the OTA upgrade to jelly bean 4.1.1. It's been a great improvement, but one thing you may immediately noticed was the japanese font rendering looked ugly. This happened if your locale (settings|language) was set to english (or anything non japanese). Here's a screenshot comparing the rendering in english locale versus in japanese locale (or previous android version in any locale).



Side-by-side comparison of Nikkei website (on the left is in English locale, on the right is in Japanese locale)

Things got worse when the font size was blown up. Here's how AnkiDroid looked like.


Side-by-side comparison of AnkiDroid (on the left is in English locale, on the right is in Japanese locale)

To fix this, you'll need to have your phone rooted and do the following:

• Create a file named fallback_fonts.xml with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!--
    Vendor-provided fallback fonts

    This file can be edited to add references to fonts that are not installed or referenced in the
    default system. The file should then be placed in /vendor/etc/fallback_fonts.xml.
    See /system/etc/system_fonts.xml and /system/etc/fallback_fonts.xml for more information
    and to understand the order in which the default system fonts are loaded and structured for
    lookup.
-->

<familyset>
    <family order="0">
        <fileset>
            <file>MTLmr3m.ttf</file>
        </fileset>
    </family>
</familyset>

• Copy this fallback_fonts.xml file to the sdcard. You can either simply copy it by connecting your phone to your PC or use adb: adb push fallback_fonts.xml /sdcard/fallback_fonts.xml
• Put the file above in /system/vendor/etc, make sure you don't have the file above yet:
adb shell
• su
• mount -o remount,rw /system
• ls /system/vendor/etc # Make sure you don't have fallback_fonts.xml
• cp /sdcard/fallback_fonts.xml /system/vendor/etc
• rm /sdcard/fallback_fonts.xml
• mount -o remount,ro /system
• reboot
• Lo and behold, I got back my motoya font.

There are other ways to fix this too, if you know what's going on behind the scenes. Basically when you set your phone to english locale, android consults /system/etc/fallback_fonts.xml to find out which font it should render CJK characters in. When you set your locale to japanese, it'll look at /system/etc/fallback_fonts-ja.xml. If you compare these two files, you'll notice that in fallback_fonts-ja.xml, MTLm3rm.ttf is listed before DroidSansFallback.ttf. But in fallback_fonts.xml, MTLm3rm.ttf is listed after DroidSansFallback.ttf. DroidSansFallback.ttf has better support for all CJK character sets, however I think MTLm3rm.ttf (Motoya) has better japanese glyph (more cursive & gothic). So you can also just change /system/etc/fallback_fonts.xml and have MTLm3rm.ttf listed before DroidSansFallback.ttf.

Airport di Tokyo dan transportnya

Di Tokyo, ada 2 airport: Narita dan Haneda. Haneda cuma melayani domestic saja (dan international ke Seoul katanya), jadi most likely, kita2 yang ke Tokyo akan lebih sering pakai Narita.

Narita ini jauh banget dari tengah kota, lebih dari 50 km. Ada banyak cara untuk ke turun ke kota, dari paling mahal sampai paling murah. Click sini untuk baca detil.

• Yang paling mahal naik taxi, bisa habis 20.000 yen tuh, highly not recommended! Bahkan untuk group ber-5 sekalipun.
  
• Yang lebih affordable pakai Limousine Bus atau Narita Express (train). Biaya kurang lebih sama sekitar 3.000 yen.
  
• Yang lebih murah lagi pakai Keisei Skyliner, biaya sekitar 1.900 yen.
  
• Yang lebih super murah lagi pakai Keisei Limited Express, biaya sekitar 1.000 yen. Yang ini, seat-nya tidak bisa di-reserve. Jadi ada kemungkinan bakal berdiri sepanjang perjalanan. Kalau waktu jam-jam commute, bisa super-padat! Jadi kalau bawa barang-barang banyak, lebih baik pakai yang Skyliner. Oh ya platformnya sama loh dengan Keisei Skyliner, jadi hati-hati keliru naik kereta. Di board-nya ada petunjuknya ini kereta apa. Bentuk keretanya juga lain kok. Kalau ragu-ragu intip saja dulu, kalau kursinya seperti di pesawat menghadap depan semua, itu Skyliner. Kalau kursinya di samping dan banyak gantungan untuk pegangan waktu berdiri, itu Limited Express. Di Skyliner ada kondekturnya yang ngecek, kalau salah beli tiket, kita bisa bayar kekurangannya langsung.

Kalau bawa barang banyak, yang paling ok mungkin naik Limousine Bus, karena terminalnya dia di Tokyo ada banyak sekali, jadi bisa cari yang terdekat dengan tujuan akhir kita lalu naik taxi dari sana. Cara beli gampang saja kok, waktu kita keluar di arrival hall, sudah ada counter-nya jelas banget, lalu tinggal kasi tau mau ke mana, nanti dia bisa bantu cari terminal terdekatnya. Kalau mau naik Keisei Skyliner atau Narita Express, juga bisa beli di sini. Untuk Keisei Limited Express, mungkin bisa juga beli di sini, tapi yg pasti bisa juga beli di mesin yang ada di dekat pintu masuk platformnya. Ikuti saja petunjuk untuk turun ke "Keisei Line".

Oh ya ada alternatif lain kalau malas angkat-angkat koper, di airport ada banyak counter untuk pengiriman bagasi (baggage delivery service), biaya sekitar 2.000 yen per koper kalau saya tidak salah.

Terakhir, denger2 ada bis gratis-an loh! Click sini untuk baca lebih lanjut.

Yokoso (welcome) to Japan.

PS. Imigrasi di Jepang tidak seperti di Australia atau Amerika. Cukup bebas, boleh bawa krupuk, makanan, bumbu-bumbu, dll. Bahkan kayaknya jarang sekali mereka minta kita buka-buka koper.

PPS. Di Jepang, HP-nya pake 3G. Jadi kalo Telkomsel atau XL yang 3G kayaknya bisa juga roaming di sini lewat Softbank (dulunya Vodaphone). Atau alternatif lainnya, bisa juga sewa HP di airport.

Psalm 19:1

Psalm 19:1 - The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Hold your breath! This pictures (The Size of Our World) makes us re-think of that particular verse and being grateful for what He's done for us. Each of us doesn't even make it into a single pixel in the first picture. Simply fantastic!

Apparently, Job mentioned Arcturus twice in 9:9 and 38:32.

Some fascinating stats taken from Wikipedia:
My body diameter is far less than 1 meter (0.001 km) :).
Earth's mean diameter is 12,745 km.
Sun's mean diameter is 1,4 million km (109x earth's).
Betelgeuse's diameter is assumed to be somewhere between 800 million - 1 trillion km (571 - 714x sun's).
Antares's diameter is assumed to be 924 million km (660x sun's).

Thank You Lord Jesus

Dear all and friends,

Wanna share a very happy news.

Also check out "See more photos" for more shameless pictures of me: 37, 132-136, 146-149. You can find my wife in #132 and #136.
Thank you for visiting. :-)
And thank you all so much for your pray and support. GBU all.

PS1. Guess what? May 5th was exactly my birthday, hence my utmost gratitude to Lord Jesus for this greatest birthday present in my life. His blessing for us has been unspeakable and I'm out of words to describe this.

PS2. I'd better preserve this before it disappears from TC's front page :-).PS3. I've always loved this kind of picture. Mind you that this was taken by an amateur photographer :-). TC's version will be better. Now have fun identifying each, some prominent people are missing though :-(.

Day 07: Wednesday, 8 March 2006: Macquarie University

We went to Kam Fook at the Chatswood suburb to have Yum Cha for breakfast. The waiters walked all around the restaurant pushing Dim Sum carts. If you like the food, you just take it. Despite the many foods that we took, I find it relatively cheap, a bargain indeed. Oh, and the food was really great.

We circled around Chatswood, buying some very (too) sweet doughnuts. About 12.30PM we headed to the apartment of Dita's friend, Fany; whom we would go together with to their school, Macquarie University.

We spent almost 2 hours around the campus, visiting the library, the canteen, stores, etc. There were lots of messages posted on the wall about sharing an apartment, selling books, etc. One nice thing about these messages was the contact number was provided in easy to tear pieces. Nice idea.

At around 4PM, we were back at home. Dita arrived home at around 6PM. We then had dinner at nearby bar/tavern, the St. Leonards Tavern (???). The bar was equipped with a billiard table. I had steak (t-bone) for dinner. It was a pretty cheap steak, $7.

Day 06: Tuesday, 7 March 2006: P&O

Dita went to school again today (up to around 12.30PM) so we were again on our own way. Seriously, we felt like we'd explored all around Sydney and there were not much more to do/see. We started the day by walking around the TownHall, the Queen Victoria Building, and its surrounding neighborhood. Dita were supposed to join us for lunch after school, however something bad happened. She lost her cellphone at the toilet of her school. That explained why we hadn't been able to contact her in the last hour. Anyway we then decided to have our own lunch, a yummy fried noodle.

We then went to 160 Sussex Street, where P&O Ports office was located. This was just in front of Four Points Sheraton, where I had my interview. I should have been here last Friday to see Sean as he wanted me to pick up something for Wara. However I was wearing sandals that day, so I felt it was inappropriate to come there then. The P&O building was some gray colored building. I talked to the receptionist who informed me Sean was in New Zealand, but he'd prepared this envelope that I was supposed to pick up.

It was around 5PM when we got back home. Dita was at home. My wife cooked us bakmoy for dinner. Well, we had too many times going out for dinner already, so we preferred to just have dinner at home then. Dita showed us some minor blister that she got working at McDonald's. She wanted us to take pictures to be shown to her mom in Indonesia. We even took a video of her describing the blisters in detail.

Day 05: Monday, 6 March 2006: The Rocks and Sydney Tower

Dita had a school today up to 5PM, so we decided to walk on our way. This was the first time I had to go out bringing a map with me. Our first stop was The Rocks. We took a train to Wynyard, then to Circular Quay. The Rocks itself was said to be the oldest village in town. There wasn't really much to see here IMO. We ended up having lunch at the Pancake on the Rocks where we ordered Aussie Sunrise. The pancake was delicious, although IMO the one in IHOP (in US) was yummier. We then continued walking until we came beneath the harbor bridge. There was a tour here to climb and go to the topmost point of the bridge.

Our next stop would be the Sydney Tower. Since we had nothing to do, we decided to take a walk all along the George Street. It was quite a long walk, the day was really hot, so we made several stops during the way. On one interesting point, we came across a man who was selling a ballpoint to passing-by people in order to make a living. He was nicely dressed and didn't look like a beggar at all. We also stumbled upon some homeless people; some looked very young and good-looking, that if they had come to Indonesia, they might have been a famous and adored actor/celebrity.

We had to find our way to find the entrance to Sydney Tower. But looking at other high buildings around it (that seemed to block the view), we were rather skeptical to be able to really see anything when we went up there. Curiously, we found two kinds of entrance; the first one was to a 360 degree (floor revolving?) restaurant, which would be quite an awesome dining experience. The second one was to a viewing platform and OzTrek (a cinema). It was like A$23.5. There was other attraction for the adventurous, the SkyWalk, where you would go out to open-air, with proper safety of course.

While around the Sydney Tower, I found a novel book left on a seat. There was this label on the book: "I'm not lost, see www.bookcrossings.com" and some book ID. It was an interesting concept to share a book, where you released and registered a found book on the website and you could see who and where this book had traveled.

It was about 5PM when we got back to home. We then went out with Dita to had dinner. This time it was a Japanese restaurant, Koh-Ya Yakiniku. Meals were self-barbequed. We ordered a buffet and the food was really great, highly recommended. The ox tongue (my first time eating one) was so tasty that we ordered like 3 or 4 plates. This was my favorite meal during our stay in Sydney.