News for November 10, 2006
A few quick Japan-related news links for today:
-A second anonymous student has sent a letter stating that she was a victim of bullying and plans to commit suicide on November 11th. The letters have put considerable pressure on education officials, but if tomorrow passes and no students are found dead, future suicide announcement letters might not get so much media attention.
-The Royal Mail’s new series of Christmas stamps, created by Japanese artist Tatsuro Kiuchi, don’t feature jesus, but they do have one with Santa taking a dump down the chimney.
-A Japanese scientist has invented water-powered batteries.
-An 85 year-old man with dementia decided to take a drive down the expressway, in the wrong direction, and slammed head-on into a dump truck. Yeah, he’s dead now.
-Mutantfrog’s Adamu is offended by YouTube videos of underage bikini model Saaya Irie, and wants them removed for violating U.S. law (and for being generally pedo).
-The Japanese police have begun to crack down on illegal air guns!
-Over at Swifty: Justin has written a very long examination of the Yukio Mishima’s short fiction.
-N-H-K will begin more coverage of the North Korea abductee issue. Why? Because the government ordered them to.
-Newsflash: Japanese people don’t wear seatbelts when sitting in the back seat of cars. This is probably the first shocking thing about Japan that many foreign exchange students discover when they go for a ride with their new host family; I know it was mine.
