As Mutant Frog reports, Park Chong Ju, a zainichi Korean reporter for the Mainichi Shinbun, is under attack for apparently insulting the Japanese royal family:
Park was rude when questioning the necessity of spending millions of dollars to bring the emperor to the prefecture when govt finances are in trouble. He not only failed to use [...]

It’s been a while since a perverted update, so here’s a new one: The ever popular “put a remote control vibrator in a girl’s underwear” and go to a public place video, carefully edited out of a Japanese adult film to make it almost work safe…

Today is Halloween, so here are some pictures of Halloween ghost tree crafts constructed by a class of 6th graders I taught on Friday. Don’t be surprised to see popular characters such as Kewpie and Spoo in the mix:

News for October 31, 2006:
-The government has announced that high school students who were not taught the required classes for graduation must take extra classes before March if they wish to graduate. One high school principal in Ibaraki prefecture hung himself after it was revealed that his school was not teaching the required classes. [...]

Every year around Halloween, a huge group of people (most of them foreigners) gather in costume and take advantage of the lax enforcement of rules on Japanese trains by having a rowdy Halloween party on a single train of Tokyo’s Yamanote loop. This year the event started around 9PM on October 28, and as [...]

Over the weekend, Japanese figure skater Nobunari Oda won the men’s gold medal at the Skate America competition. While most of the Japanese media focuses on Oda’s lineage, I have yet to see an English language news source that makes mention of it. Nobunari Oda is the 17th generation direct descendant of Nobunaga [...]

This latest commercial from Softbank, featuring Cameron Diaz, might be partially responsible for Softbanks massive surge in popularity:

Or maybe it’s their much better 予想GUY commercials and the recent introduction of phone number portability between carriers?

Some cool links to check out today:
-Josh has alerted me to the presence of the website for Gwen Stefani’s Japan-related clothing label, Harajuku Lovers. Am I the only person annoyed by Gwen Stefani’s shitty Japanophilia and regular use of badly pronounced Japanese?
-Despite the fact that 900 African Americans fought in the battle of Iwo [...]

An 19th century Japanese artist’s hilarious depiction of what kind of child is produced when races mix:

Click for the whole fantastic image.

The link was sent to me by Edward Campbell, who asked the following question:
Hi, I came across this humorous 19th century painting depicting a dancing child born to a Japanese woman and a Western [...]

It looks like the Japanese coast guard managed to drive away the Chinese ultranationalists who were planning to sail to the disputed Senkaku Islands. Their weapon of choice appears to have been a big squirt gun:

A boat carrying protesters from Hong Kong tried to approach Japanese-held islets Friday morning in the East China Sea [...]

Today I am going to share a video with you! It’s from Japanese YouTube user yuu2403:

What did you think?

Top: Real, Bottom: Fake
How can you spot a spot an unlicensed pokemon product? This Japanese site has a guide on how to spot fakes, as well as a set of fake pokemon galleries: 1 2 3 4