Archive for July, 2007

Japan News for July 30, 2007

Japan-related news links for today:

LDP Battered: Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has accepted his ruling Liberal Democratic Party has suffered “utter defeat” in polls for the upper house of parliament. [Link]

Low Turnout: Voter turnout in Sunday’s House of Councillors election is down over the last election across the country, according to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry. [Link]

Global Brands: Toyota moved up by one notch to sixth place and Nintendo advanced markedly to 44th from 51st in BusinessWeek’s annual ranking of the Best Global Brands for 2007. [Link]

New Design: East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) intends to develop a new bullet train with a top speed of 320 kilometers per hour for its Tohoku Shinkansen Line. [Link]

Dropping Paper: All Nippon Airways will stop issuing paper tickets for domestic flights by the end of the year, becoming the first domestic airline to shift to an all electronic ticketing system. [Link]

Coming Storm: A tropical storm was approaching the remote Japanese island chain of Ogasawara, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southeast of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Sunday. [Link]

Smashing: A vandal has smashed a window of a local government building in one of the towns worst hit by the Niigata Prefecture earthquake. [Link]

Fly Panda: Japan’s second largest airline, All Nippon Airways (ANA) unveiled its “Fly Panda” plane at Narita International Airport on July 24th, 2007. [Link]

Know Your Doraemon: A Chinese legal newspaper on Wednesday carried an article and pictures showing how to differentiate between fake and genuine cuddly toys of popular Japanese cartoon character Doraemon. [Link]

Aussie TV Copies Japanese Human Tetris

It would seem that the creators of the Australian TV show Big Brother 3 are fans of the “human tetris” YouTube clips from Japan’s Tunnels No Minnasan no Okage Deshita, because they’ve produced a crude copy of it:

I’m guessing that they paid for the rights to remake this skit?

Is There A Massive Network Of Secret Tunnels Under Tokyo?

A classic Japan Times article from 2003 is currently on the frontpage of reddit.com: journalist Shun Akiba, who has written a book suggesting that there could be a secret city beneath Tokyo. Since it’s a pretty interesting story that we’ve never blogged about on Japan Probe, I thought I’d share it for those of you who missed it back when the Japan Times posted it:

Shun is on some kind of invisible blacklist. His book “Teito Tokyo Kakusareta Chikamono Himitsu” (“Imperial City Tokyo: Secret of a Hidden Underground Network”), published by Yosensha in late 2002, is already in its fifth edition. Yet Shun has found it impossible to get the media to take serious note, write reviews or offer interviews.

This is very strange because he has a great story — evidence of a network of tunnels and possibly an underground city beneath Tokyo that the public is totally unaware of. “Why am I ignored? Can I be on to something, and there is a conspiracy to silence me? I believe so.”

[...]

What changed his life was finding an old map in a secondhand bookstore. Comparing it to a contemporary map, he found significant variations. “Close to the Diet in Nagata-cho, current maps show two subways crossing. In the old map, they are parallel.”

The journalist in him taking over, he sought out construction records. When responses proved defensive and noncooperative — “lips zipped tight” — he set out to prove that the two subway tunnels could not cross: “Engineering cannot lie.”

This inconsistency is just the first of seven riddles that he investigates in his book. The second reveals a secret underground complex between Kokkai-gijidomae and the prime minister’s residence. A prewar map (riddle No. 3) shows the Diet in a huge empty space surrounded by paddy fields: “What was the military covering up?” New maps (No. 4) are full of inconsistencies: “People are still trying to hide things.”

The postwar General Headquarters (No. 5) was a most mysterious place. Eidan’s records of the construction of the Hibiya Line (No. 6) are hazy to say the least. As for the “new” O-Edo Line (No. 7), “that existed already.” Which begs the question, where did all the money go allocated for the tunneling?

The bulk of Shun’s book covers the development of the subway system and questions the many inconsistencies between maps of the past and present — even those that were contemporaneous. “Even allowing for errors, there are too many oddities.”

Shun claims to have uncovered a secret code that links a complex network of tunnels unknown to the general public. “Every city with a historic subterranean transport system has secrets,” he says. “In London, for example, some lines are near the surface and others very deep, for no obvious reason.”

Sitting on the Ginza subway from Suehirocho to Kanda, he says, you can see many mysterious tunnels leading off from the main track. “No such routes are shown on maps.” Traveling from Kasumigaseki to Kokkai-gijidomae, there is a line off to the left that is not shown on any map. Nor is it indicated in subway construction records.

At Tameike-sanno on the Ginza Line, the first basement level is closed off, for official use only. “Go to the toilet on B2 and there is a door to B1, but locked.”

Also he investigates three large buildings in Hibiya that share an enormous underground car park. “This space was there before the buildings were independently constructed. What was it for?”

As for the Diet Library, this runs to eight floors underground, all closed to the public. A magazine that asks repeatedly to look around is always denied access.

“Subway officials treat me as if I’m a drunk or a madman,” Shun notes with a wry smile. “Tokyo is said to have 12 subways and 250 km of tunneling. I’d say that last figure is closer to 2,000 km. It’s clear to me that the tunnels for the Namboku, Hanzomon and O-Edo lines existed before decisions were made to turn them into public subways.”

Is the Japanese government covering up the truth, or is this guy crazy?

Japanese Commercial: “SHUT THE F-CK UP!”

Let this commercial for a new Richard Gere movie, which aired on TV last night during the Japan/Korea soccer match, be a reminder to you all that swearing in English is A-OK on Japanese TV:

Ah, how refreshing it is to unexpectedly hear somebody say STFU during a commercial break!

Today Is Election Day

Voters are going to the polls today, so let’s watch this commercial for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that aired on TV last night:

After watching Prime Minister Shinzo Abe give a pretty un-charismatic performance in that “we promise we’ll fix our massive pension f^ck-up” commercial, it’s not very hard to see why the LDP is expected to take a pretty big hit in today’s election…

Japan News for July 29, 2007

Japan-related news links for today:

Today Is Election Day: Japan’s ruling and opposition parties wrapped up campaigning yesterday for one of the most hotly contested parliamentary elections in years with virtually the same message to the voters — their opponent can’t be trusted to run the government. [Link]

Bad Sign: Embattled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party appears to have fallen further behind the Democratic Party of Japan in wooing nonaffiliated voters before Sunday’s Upper House election and is also losing women’s support. [Link]

Please Don’t Vote, We’re Trying To Save Money: Citing previous voter turnouts that have failed to reach 60 percent, election commissions in Tokyo and in Osaka, Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures have printed 5 to 15 percent fewer ballots than the actual number of eligible voters in their areas. [Link]

Don’t Come To School Sick: Two hundred and sixty-three schools have been temporarily closed across Japan since April after a measles outbreak, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said. [Link]

Defense Contract Battle: Yamada Corp., a trading firm specializing in defense contracts, and its splinter company Nihon Mirise Corp. have been fighting over the commercial rights on engines to be installed on the Air Self-Defense Force’s next-generation transport airplane, whose introduction the Defense Ministry plans to postpone. [Link]

Damn Trees: Around 23,000 households and businesses in extensive areas of western Gunma Prefecture, including the hot spa town of Kusatsu, suffered a blackout Saturday after a tree fell onto a power cable. [Link]

Russian Rails: Kintetsu World Express Inc. signed a sales agency pact Thursday with a subsidiary of Russian Railways to provide a comprehensive container transport service to major cities throughout western Russia. [Link]

Suicidal Carjacker: Prosecutors in Kyoto have demanded that a man be sentenced to 30 years in jail after he carjacked a woman and intentionally crashed her vehicle in an attempt at suicide, resulting in her death. [Link]

Artificial Womb: Scientists in Japan have created a “womb” for incubating artificially fertilized eggs in their earliest days, helping them grow nearly as fast as they would in the uterus. [Link]

Expensive Glasses: An online auction of John Lennon’s sunglasses frames, which he gave to his Japanese translator at the end of the Beatles’ controversial concerts in Tokyo, is attracting great interest, and organizers hope they fetch as much as $ 2 million. [Link]

Cash Trash: A bag containing 3 million yen has been found in amongst items collected by a recycling company in Hyogo Prefecture. [Link]

Lucky Apartment: A total of 1.3 million yen has been found stuffed into the mailboxes at a Tokyo apartment complex. [Link]