Japan News for January 25, 2007

Some Japan-related links for this morning:

• The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake based on a faulty assumption, Japan’s defense minister said Wednesday in a rare criticism from Washington’s closest Asian ally. [Link]
• Mainichi Shinbun has a story discussing Mt. Fuji’s placement on the provisional list of Japan’s prospective cultural sites to be nominated for inclusion on the World Heritage list. [Link]
• The same man who is behind legal proceedings to provisionally seize the assets of 2ch founder Hiroyuki as well as force him into bankruptcy for failure to cooperate with a court decision is now apparently filing to force a mysterious “company X” into third party bankruptcy as well over the matter. This Company X, based in Sapporo, is reportedly the true operator of 2ch and the one actually in charge of deleting inappropriate posts etc. [Link]
• In a related story, few Japanese net users care about 2ch, according to a recent poll. [Link]
• The Japanese government will dispatch up to nine Self-Defense Forces members to Nepal as part of an international peacekeeping operation, the first such deployment under the newly upgraded Defense Ministry. [Link]
• Nearly half of the participants in the latest Triangle Business Journal poll say they think Japan produces the best-engineered automobiles in the world. [Link]
• A 34-year-old Japanese student is in custody in Melbourne, accused of taking photographs of women in the shower at a backpackers hostel. Takuya Muto, of Sydney, is also alleged to have taken photos up a woman’s skirt at the Australian Open Tennis Tournament. [Link]
• The Associated Press reports on the popularity of Spongebob Squarepants in Japan. [Link]
• Debito is once again selling “JAPANESE ONLY” t-shirts. [Link]
Afternoon update:
• A Japan Times article states that the advisory panel on educational reform’s first report to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is facing criticism because its proposals are flawed and represent a double standard and won’t be backed by teachers. [Link]
• The BBC has published a similar article on the education reform panel’s findings, with the headline “Japan schools to rethink beating.” [Link]
• The bodies of two Japanese climbers who fell to their deaths on New Zealand’s Mt Cook last night have been recovered by a rescue team today. [Link]
• Nearly 99,000 parents of elementary and junior high school children across the country failed to pay approximately 2.2 billion yen for school lunches for their children in fiscal 2005, government officials said. [Link]
• A lethal level of gas was found leaking from a gas pipe again on Wednesday in Hokkaido, where three people died after inhaling gas that had leaked late last week, a local gas supplier said. [Link]
• Nearly 80 percent of Japanese voters feel a sense of patriotism, while about 85 percent say there is “a need to reflect” upon Japan’s past colonial rule and wartime aggression, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed. [Link]