Archive for August, 2006

Things I learned from last night’s Trivia program

Sorry for today’s downtime. Here’s another update: Things I Learned from last night’s Trivia program.

Q: How much does it cost to take a taxi from Tokyo to the northernmost point of Hokkaido?

A: 461,570 yen (About 4000 US Dollars)

Q: What to goes prefer to eat: paper or grass?

A: Most goats prefer grass. Who would have thought?

Q: How much weight does it take to break one of of those metal bars that Japanese school children use for gymnastics/playing?

A: 795 Kilograms.

And finally: The narrator for next episode previews on the old anime ‘Fist of the Northstar’ becomes increasingly crazy with each episode. At the end of the first episode he is calmly announcing what will happen next. In the second to last episode, he is screaming like a mad man.

How do you sleep at night? On top of hundreds of used panties, of course.

Oh Crisscross News, thank you so much for a story about everybody’s favorite Japan-related topic, panty theft:

YOKOHAMA — Kanagawa prefectural police on Wednesday re-arrested a 46-year-old man on charges of stealing women’s underwear, local media reported Thursday. The man, identified as Kazuo Miyake, was arrested earlier this month for trespassing. When police searched his home in Kanazawa Ward, they confiscated about 2,500 items of women’s underwear.

“I have never been able to speak to women, so collecting their underwear gave me pleasure,” Miyake was quoted as saying. Police said that he had placed the panties underneath his futon and was sleeping on them. Miyake has admitted to stealing underwear for the past 10 years, police said. He was apprehended while he was going through the washing machine in an apartment near his home late at night on Aug 1, police said.

Accompanying the story was the above image, which brings to mind the image of police men carefully lining up 2500 items of women’s underwear along the floor of a room to create a wonderful media photo-op. It must be a common practice in such cases, since the previous story about an underwear thief in Nagoya had a similar image attached. In other countries the police line up bags of cocaine, assault rifles and grenades. In Japan, there’s panties.

Japanese news report on Korean bus violence

Here’s a recent Japanese news report about violence on Korean buses:

A brief summary: A few days ago a man got onto a bus in South Korea and sat behind the driver. He started rummaging through his bag and commented that his money was missing. He proceeded to accuse the bus driver, and kicked and punched the driver. At the end of the clip, footage of similar attacks on bus drivers is shown and it is noted that some Korean buses are now putting protective glass barriers around the driver’s seat to prevent future occurances of this problem.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a Japanese news report about the topic of Korean bus violence. Perhaps this is some form of anti-Korean bias in the media, or maybe this is actually a big problem in Korea? The addition of protective barriers on buses seems to suggest that the latter might be true.

Update: The Party Pooper has posted links to other videos of violence on Korean buses.

What Japanese women want: Korean men?

The Washington Post brings us this serious and hard-hitting piece of journalism:

TOKYO — Thin and gorgeous in a slinky black dress, Mikimoto pearls and a low-slung diamond Tiffany pendant, 26-year-old Kazumi Yoshimura already has looks, cash and accessories. There’s only one more thing this single Japanese woman says she needs to find eternal bliss — a Korean man.

She may just have to take a number and get in line. In recent years, the wild success of male celebrities from South Korea — sensitive men but totally ripped — has redefined what Asian women want, from Bangkok to Beijing, from Taipei to Tokyo. Gone are the martial arts movie heroes and the stereotypical macho men of mainstream Asian television. Today, South Korea’s trend-setting screen stars and singers dictate everything from what hair gels people use in Vietnam to what jeans are bought in China.

Yet for thousands of smitten Japanese women like Yoshimura, collecting the odd poster or DVD is no longer enough. They’ve set their sights far higher — settling for nothing less than a real Seoulmate.

The lovelorn Yoshimura signed up last year with Rakuen Korea, a Japanese-Korean matchmaking service, to find her own Korean bachelor. And she is hardly alone. More than 6,400 female clients have signed up with the company, which says its popularity has skyrocketed since 2004, when “Winter Sonata” became the first of many hot Korean television dramas to hit Japan. Even in Shinjuku ni-chome, Tokyo’s biggest gay district, niche bars with names such as Seoul Man have sprouted like sprigs of ginseng in a Pusan autumn.

“South Koreans are so sweet and romantic — not at all like Japanese guys, who never say ‘I love you,’ ” Yoshimura said as she waited for her blind date, a single Korean man, in the 50th-floor bar of a chic Tokyo skyscraper. A telephone operator who lives with her parents in Hiroshima, she has spent thousands of dollars on her quest for a Korean husband, flying to Seoul 10 times in the past two years and bullet-training to Tokyo for seven blind dates with Korean men.

So far, though, she hasn’t found the one she’s looking for.

“Maybe I’m living in a fantasy world,” she said, pouting her blood-red lips. “Maybe I’m looking for the TV stars I can’t really have. But we are all allowed a dream, aren’t we?”

Some of you are probably gagging at what you’ve just read, but don’t worry, non-Korean guys. The article goes on to acknowledge that male heroes in Korean dramas are perfect men that don’t actually exist in the real world. That won’t stop girls like Yoshimura from continuing their search for a perfect Korean man.

Filming the Beach

Some girls might be creeped out by a guy walking behind them with a video camera on the beach. When the cameraman sneaks up on these girls and says “Excuse me? You’re beautiful!”, the girls seem to like it:

Innovative nampa technique, or a way to creep out the ladies?

“Model Mothers” feed lolicon hunger by exploiting their daughters

Back when I posted about the Koda Kumi Erotic/Cute childrens’ dance competition, which featured elementary school aged girls girating their hips in clothing fit for hookers, I got a lot of comments from people who accused me of unfairly judging Japan’s culture and applying western morals to it. Well, all you cultural/moral relativists out there can suck it: Mainichi’s WaiWai is running a column that claims many Japanese are disturbed by such pedo-tastic displays. Here’s an excerpt:

“We’ve always had loads of kids looking to become celebrities, but the photos they send in to us have become more and more risque. Sometimes, you’ll get photos of a kid dressed in a tiny, ultra-low cut tank top and micro-miniskirt, standing there spreading her legs wide. You have to ask yourself: ‘Is this really an elementary school girl?” an employee of a major talent agency tells Josei Seven.

“Seeing these little girls wearing fashions clearly designed for women in their late teens or 20s and their faces caked with make-up can be pretty overwhelming.”

Parents have mixed feelings about the trend.

“I’ve got a girl in junior high who tells me ‘these fashions are the in thing’ and ‘everybody’s wearing them.’ I don’t want to come down on her too hard, because if she’s too different from the other kids around her, it could make life real tough for her,” one 40-year-old mother says.

Another sees no problem in dressing young girls as though they were streetwalkers.

“What’s wrong with fashion that exposes a lot of skin?” a 36-year-old mom asks. “If the kids like it, let ‘em wear it. I think it’s kinda cute.”

Yumiko Mizuno is one mother who has no qualms about letting her daughters bare it all if that means a one-way ticket down easy street. Mizuno is paying particular attention to her 11-year-old daughter who’s keen on getting into showbiz.

“If we got an offer for her to do a swimsuit photo shoot, of course I’d snap it up right away. With glee,” Mizuno tells Josei Seven. “Nude shots and adult movies are out, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with swimsuit shots where she puts on sexy poses. The kids may be a bit embarrassed, but they’ve got to learn that this is their opening to the big time.”

Writer Yuki Ishikawa says moms keen to flog off their young daughters for fame at any price have adopted a too cynical view of life.

“A lot of housewives’ satisfaction with life depends more on their husbands than on themselves. How they fare in life depends on how their hubbies go. They want to make their daughters into women who are going to be alluring for good men,” Ishikawa says.

It’s this same allure that has others worried, particularly because of the recent spate of violent crimes against children, particularly little girls.

Stage mom Mizuno, though, says such fears are unfounded.

“Even if some guy gives a girl a lecherous look, the kids know enough to just ignore him and walk away. It’s all right,” she says.

Others aren’t so sure. In the meantime, the trend continues.

“It’s become something of an issue within the business. Once upon a time, parents used to forbid their kids from being in swimsuit shots or photo shoots. Now, we get parents telling us their kids are willing to do anything, even swimsuit shots,” the talent agency employee says. “We even get some parents who tell us that if we really want them to, they’ll make their kids take everything off. We don’t want to have to deal with that sort of thing.”

But one mom says it’s worth it to do whatever it takes if fame and fortune await.

“Frankly speaking, I’d feel pretty good about myself, too, if my daughter becomes famous,” she says. “And if she becomes a top pin-up model, then things become easier on the financial front, too.”

Just as in the case of the Koda Kumi dance contest, this seems to be a case of Mothers pushing their children to sexualize themselves so they can become famous by exploiting the lolicon market. Pretty disgusting.