News for November 13, 2006
This morning’s Japan-related news links:
-Watanabe Ken reflects on working under Clint Eastwood during the filming of “Letters from Iwo Jima,” and the grandson of the man he plays talks about his hopes for the new film.
-Losing your cellphone can be very scary, reports the Japan Times.
-Almost 60 percent of Okinawans oppose a plan to relocate the operations of a U.S. Marine Corps airstrip to a more remote part of the island, while some want its complete removal.
-The principal of an elementary school where bullies extorted 100,000 yen from a 5th grade girl has commited suicide. I guess he thought long and hard, and decided that killing himself was the best way to stop bullying at his school?
-More bullying news: A junior high schooler jumped to her death yesterday and it is believed she may have been bullied.
-Lock up your kids: Michael Jackson will be celebrating X-mas in Tokyo!
-Fights and foreigners at the PS3 launch! [Hat tip to why no]
-The Nippon Ham Fighters have defeated Taiwan’s top baseball team to become Asia’s champions.
-Japan’s last manned lighthouse has switched over to automation. 
-The JET Program has been around for 20 years: is it time to put it out of its misery?
Your noon time news update:
-A South Korean commission has cleared 83 of the 143 Koreans convicted as war criminals at the end of WW2. For those of you who don’t know, thousands of Koreans served in the Japanese armed forces in WW2, and some of them were tried as war criminals. The Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under the Japanese Imperialism, as its name suggests, determined that the 83 of the Korean war criminals were in fact not criminals, but victims of Japanese imperialism. The South Korean government continues to regard Japanese soldiers, many of whom were subjected to the same indoctrination and served in the same units as the Korean “victims,” as unforgivable war criminals. [Props to the Marmot for this fantastic piece of hypocracy.]
-The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story on the wonderful thing that is Japanese Curry.
-The Israeli ship officer whose cargo ship rammed a Japanese fishing boat and killed seven people has been sentenced to 6 months of volunteer work at a hospital.
-North Korea’s youth soccer team defeated Japan at the AFC Youth Championship yesterday. Take that, democracy!
-The Democratic Party of Japan plans may boycott a diet session if the ruling block tries to pass a new education reform law that makes “instilling patriotism” a new educational goal.
-Mutant Frog recalls the time Aum tried to assassinate Sokka Gakkai’s leader.
-A Korean news agency has reported that a bill calling on Japan to offer apologies and compensation to comfort women, which was shot down by the US Congress earlier this year, will probably get another chance under the Democrat-led congress.
