Beard plucking = Sexual Harassment

Watch out, salarymen: the next time you ask that cute office lady to pluck your beard, you may be committing SEXUAL HARASSMENT!  The Scotsman has the story:

A JAPANESE man has been found guilty of sexual harassment for forcing a female work colleague to pluck his beard.

“Asking a female colleague to pluck your beard is totally inappropriate and illegal,” the judge said as he ordered the man and the government, as his employer, to pay a total of almost £2,700 in compensation.

The man – an employee in his thirties in an office affiliated with the labour ministry – had repeatedly asked the woman to pluck his beard, and she was finally forced to give in.

Media reports said the man had been warned previously for sexually harassing the woman, including sending her notes demanding she come on a company trip in her “best bathing suit”.

It’s a sad day for businessmen in Japan.  What’s next?  Will women expect equal pay for the same job?!

Japanese diplomat goes on a whale watching tour, gets heckled

What exactly was the Japanese ambassador to New Zealand thinking when he accepted an invitation from New Zealand’s Conservation Minister to go on a whale watching tour?  Here’s what happened:

New Zealand is one of Japan’s strongest critics on the whaling issue and the visit came a month after Japan led an international push to end a 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling.

About a dozen protesters waving flags and banners met the diplomats’ bus at the waterfront in Kaikoura.

The activists had also suspended an old freezer from a crane with “Whales don’t live in a freezer” written on it.

Reports said Saito looked embarrassed and uncomfortable at the attention, avoiding the media when the cruise ended and hurrying back onto the bus.

Earlier police were called when the bus was briefly stopped by black balaclava-wearing protesters when it arrived at a Maori meeting ground, Radio New Zealand reported.

A traditional Maori welcome was interrupted by activists shouting slogans through a megaphone from the roof of a neighbouring house.

Carter said the tour had been an opportunity to demonstrate the value of whale conservation.

“It may not make any difference at all but it’s a chance in a very practical way to show why New Zealanders feel so passionate about whales,” he told reporters.

An anti-whaling activist who took part in the protest also supported the visit.

“The more whale hunting nations that can see the benefits of whale watching instead of eating them, the better,” Brad Thorpe told Television New Zealand.

Did the ambassador not realize that it was a trap?

Apparently anti-whaling rage has been on the rise in NZ since a recent Australian report about Japanese whalers killing pregnant whales in an area considered a sanctuary.  An article over at CDNN manages to link Japanese whaling to the evil Japanese militarists and their World War II war crimes.  It is also the source of the ridiculous image I posted at the beginning of this article.  [Read it here.]

Clean rivers? I don’t think so.

Reported at Crisscross Japan News:

TOKYO — Rivers in Japan have been found to be contaminated with ingredients of antibiotics and medicines for humans and animals that flowed into them via sewage systems, raising concern that drug-resistant strains of bacteria might be produced, a recent scientific research shows.

Fantastic, I can’t wait until the new combination of  drug-resistant bacteria and Japanese doctors who refuse to prescribe adequate doses of anti-biotics wrecks havoc on my health.

Yet another Hard Gay video

Is the Hard Gay fad dead yet? Apparently he’s still popular on YouTube. An episode of Hard Gay’s adventurers (with English subtitles by Bakafish), is one of the most popular videos on the site today. It is divided into four parts:

• [Watch part 1 here.]
• [Watch Part II here.]
• [Watch Part III here.]
• [Watch Part IV here.]

So, where are all the views coming from? Nostalgic Japanese netizens, or English speakers who have just been introduced to the glory of Hard Gay?

Marxy takes a look at a Japanese nationalist bestseller

Over at Neomarxisme, Marxy has been examining the bestselling Japanese book 国家の品格 (Diginity of a Nation), written by right-wing mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara.  The book has sold over 2 million copies and explores the following issues:

* The illusion of capitalism’s triumph
* Pride in a civilization based on emotion
* The importance of Japanese and kanji over English
* Knowing the limits of logic
* The revival of bushido (samurai spirit)
* Why foreign aid is unneccesary
* Love of family, love of hometown, love of the fatherland, love of humanity
* Seeking out a “true elite” 

So far Marxy has written summaries of the first three chapters, and the bullshit seems to be heating up with each new chapter.  Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts from his posts:

• Freedom is nothing more than “fiction” created by the West. The ultimate freedom is the natural rights of Hobbes. Locke’s idea of “freedom as long as you do not infringe on other people’s freedom or rights” would excuse enjo kosai (schoolgirl prostitution). (He ends that section with this thought and no further explanation.)
  
• “Is democracy that great?” The big premise to “the sovereignty of the people” is that “the populace can make mature decisions.” If this was true, democracy would be the best. But in WWI, all the nations got hot and bothered and went to war. Same with WWII – democracy gave birth to Hitler. Rather than going off and doing things by himself, Hitler was able to successfully agitate the public, and used his support to pursue his plans.

  Japan was also a democracy – only seven years after the UK. WWII was “actually a war of democratic countries vs. democratic countries.”
  

Ah yes, World War II, the great war between democracies.  When the democracies of America and the UK teamed up with the democracy of the Soviet Union to defeat the democracies of Japan, Germany & Italy.

[Read Marxy's posts on 'Dignity of a Nation' from the beginning.]