Archive for June, 2007

Special Effects Sumo Video IV

Japanese YouTuber okonono has produced the 4th clip in his amazing “the real SUMO fighting” series. You can see it at the end of this video, which combines videos 1 through 4 for maximum effect:

Classic Japanese Science Fiction: Ultra Q

A cool little teaser for the 1966 Japanese Science Fiction/Horror/Monster TV series Ultra Q:

Those of you who are interested in this classic series might want to check out an English-dubbed version of the its third episode, which was made in a failed attempt to convince English-speaking countries to pick up the show. [ Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]

[via Zaeega]

Xenophobic Residents Pressure Realtor Into Not Selling Land To A Foreigner, Face No Punishment

An outrageous story of unpunished discrimination from the Asahi Shinbun:

FUKUROI, Shizuoka Prefecture– Fearful that they would be inviting crime to their neighborhood, residents blocked an attempt by a Japanese-Brazilian man to buy land on which to build a house.

[...]

The third-generation Japanese-Brazilian had planned to build a detached house on the plot in the Nagamizo district of Fukuroi.

But before he could sign the contract, a group of local residents who are members of the Nagamizo community association raised objections to the purchase after they learned from the realtor that the buyer was of Brazilian ancestry.

The group, which at the time comprised 12 households, notified the real estate company of its intention to stop the man from moving in, the sources said.

One resident, citing a perception that Brazilians are prone to committing crimes, said, “I feared that something might happen.” The woman alluded to a number of reports about Brazilians fleeing Japan to avoid prosecution for crimes committed in Japan.

[...]

In the end, the Japanese-Brazilian was unable to buy the land because the realtor failed to fulfill its obligation to act as an intermediary. The man took his case to the Fukuroi branch of the Shizuoka Legal Affairs Bureau in May last year, contending that a “violation of human rights” had occurred.

The bureau agreed with the man after studying the case and talked to the community association group and the president of the real estate company about ending local opposition to the man’s quest to build a home. The meeting took place some time before June 6 this year, the sources said.

The Shizuoka Legal Affairs Bureau official said that even if the residents and the realtor had committed what the bureau deemed to be a violation of human rights, there were no provisions to punish the parties.

Do you think the situation would have been different if Japan actually had a law banning racial discrimination?

Japanese Women Who Were Beautiful 50 Years Ago

Here’s an interesting clip from a Japanese TV show in which a panel of celebrities are shown pictures of people currently in their 70′s and 80′s and try to guess which one of them was the most beautiful in their youth. In this particular one, they take a look at four women:

While it’s cool to see how these people looked 50 years ago, it’s somewhat sad for people to gawk at how age has taken its told on their good looks, isn’t it?

Kim Jong-Il No Longer Supports The Government Of North Korea

An interesting story from Bloomberg News about the zainichi North Korean community in Japan:

Kim is a 66-year-old businessman who owns a shoe factory in Kobe, Japan. In 1997, he resolved to switch his citizenship to South Korea from North Korea after deciding that “I could no longer support a government that allowed children to starve to death.”

Since then, thousands of North Korean residents in Japan have made the same decision. And that is bad news for the other Kim Jong Il — the one, no relation to the businessman, who has ruled North Korea since 1994.

For the last four decades, Japan’s North Korean residents have sent billions of yen in money and goods back home to their relatives and the Pyongyang regime. As more and more of them switch their allegiance to South Korea, they are choking off the flow of resources to an isolated and impoverished country already coping with trade sanctions.

While there is no way of knowing exactly how much they have sent, Katsumi Sato, director of the Modern Korea Institute in Tokyo, estimated that in the early 1990s, the annual total was some 60 billion yen ($600 million) in money and supplies.

“The cash and goods sent from Japan in the late 1980s were bigger than their national budget,” Sato said. “It was North Korea’s lifeline.”

And that lifeline is being cut by sanctions, as well as the following:

The flow of North Koreans changing citizenship shows no sign of abating. In Tokyo alone, residents have been switching at a rate of roughly 100 a month since 2006, according to statistics from the South Korean consulate in Tokyo. In February 2007, the latest month available, 120 switched.

Sounds like terrible news for the other Kim Jong-Il.

[via FG]

Amazing Water Skiing Japanese Monkeys

Here’s an American news report from 1997 about some trained monkeys in Ushibori, Japan that have been trained to water ski:

[From Yin Yang Report]