Archive for November, 2007

Breaking News: Beautiful Women More Attractive Than Ugly Women

Which of these women women do you find more attractive?

A Japanese TV show recently conducted a series of experiments in which men were placed in mundane situations involving the two women above (the prettier girl is on the right, for those of you who are blind) and would have to make a choice between them.

In the first experiment, a group of randomly selected men were told to go into a cafe and buy one of the products sold there. Thinking they were taking part in some sort of product marketing research, then men bought drinks. The interior of the cafe had been rigged so that the only open seats were those between the pretty girl and the not pretty girl. Who would they rather sit next to?

Result: Of the 50 men, 36 picked the seat next to the pretty girl, while 14 picked the seat next to the not pretty girl. One guy picked the seat next to the not pretty girl so he could get a better view of the pretty girl.

For the second experiment, men were given 1000 yen and told to buy something in a convenience store. In actuality, the test was to see if they would rather pay for their purchases at the register manned by the pretty girl:

Result: The program claimed men preferred the pretty girl, but it did not reveal the actual numbers.

For the third experiment, the women were positioned along a street and would ask male pedestrians for directions. Which girl would they be more polite to?

Result: Once again it is claimed that men gave better reactions to the pretty girl, but the numerical result was not disclosed.

Japanese Professional Eater Snack Foods

Frito Lay has just released special snacks endorsed by two of Japan’s most famous eaters:

The Food Stadium snacks will come in the two varieties: Giant Shirota’s burnt rice soy sauce-flavored snacks, and Tomoko Miyake’s sukiyaki-flavored snacks

[via EatFeats]

Printable Tract Against Fingerprinting System

Re-entry Japan, the blog dedicated to protesting Japan’s new immigration system, has created a 1-page tract explaining some of the positions against fingerprinting foreigners:

The tract, which is written in Japanese, French, and English, can be downloaded from their site. They encourage visitors to print it out and have included suggestions on how to distribute it. (Link updated on November 29, 2007 to reflect a newer version of the sheet)

Japan Airlines Invades Privacy of its Employees

200 employees of Japan Airlines are suing the company after it was discovered that JAL and its union had been secretly creating files full of personal information about 9800 of its employees. The two pictures below show some of the 158 types of data the files contained.

A few examples of entries included in the files:

• “Single Mother”
• “Zainichi Korean”
• “Breast Cancer”
• “Member of Sokka Gakkai Religion”
• “Divorced”
• “Father was a teacher”
• “Stupid”

As one would rightly expect, the employees are demanding monetary compensation from JAL for this outrage.

Update: Japan Times ran an English language story about this in today’s edition. It has a bit more information in it, but few details, since it looks to be a bland translation of reports that didn’t include actual examples of what items were on the list.

Really Big Fish

What do you do when you catch a 208 kilogram giant grouper? Cut it up and eat it, as this Japanese news report shows:

The man cutting it up says he believes it would be large enough to provide nabe pot stew meat for 600 people. The creature looks a bit gross, and I can’t say I agree with the woman who told the cameras, “it looks scary but I want to try it.”

Japanese TV News Report on Whaling

The election of a new Australian Prime Minister who speaks Mandarin and is prepared to damage his nation’s alliance with Japan over the whaling issue isn’t exactly great news for the Japanese government. When Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura was asked about the whaling issue following the Australian election news, he gave a pretty strained answer:

The above soundbite was all that made today’s afternoon news broadcast here, but Reuters reports that he made a few more statements:

“Whales are a problem,” Machimura told reporters. “We conduct research whaling and we can’t just stop this all of a sudden.”

Japan’s whaling fleet set out for the Antarctic Ocean just over a week ago despite renewed outcries from several countries, sparked by its plan to target humpback whales, a perennial favourite among whale-watchers.

Japan, which says whaling is a cherished cultural tradition, abandoned commercial whaling in accordance with an international moratorium in 1986, but began what it calls a scientific research whaling programme the following year.

Machimura acknowledged the angry response from Australia.

“Humpback whales are very popular in Australia. I have heard that to catch and kill a humpback whale is a very emotional thing,” he said. “We have discussed this within the government, but for the moment we are continuing as planned.” Machimura said Japan congratulated the new Australian government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a former diplomat fluent in Mandarin, and expected close ties to continue.

“Japan has maintained very good relations with Australia for a long time. We are strategic partners,” Machimura said.

Machimura might desire continued good relations with Australia, but the ruling party in that country has a very strong anti-whaling policy, having called in the past for legal action against Japanese whalers who had conducted hunts in Australia’s Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. Prior to the election they had even vowed to use Australian naval forces to “monitor” Japanese whalers in the Antarctic.

Anyway, here’s part of a report on whaling that aired this evening on TBS (which was actually the first time I’ve ever caught some news coverage of significant length about the whaling issue on Japanese TV):

The clip starts with a reminder of the recent history of whaling in Japan, with whale meat becoming a “national food” of the postwar decades (partially due to American encouragement). It mentions the eventual ban on commercial whaling and the birth of Japan’s “research” whaling program, fully recognizing that most of the whale meat harvested in such hunts is consumed as food, and even giving air time to an expert who points out that the “research” justification is a joke. We are also shown children eating whale meat as part of their school lunches, with some positive reviews of its flavor.

The report addresses foreign opposition to Japan’s whaling, noting that Australians and other westerners cannot understand Japan’s cultural practice of eating whale meat. A few Japanese people interviewed on the street also don’t seem to understand the appeal of whale meat, saying that they don’t really like it. At the end of the report, the two news anchors ponder the cultural differences between Australia and Japan and providing a little more background on the “difficult” issue.