Remember our video post in December about the tanuki overpopulation problem on the tiny island of Chiburishima? Mainichi reports that residents will soon vote to decide the fate of the animals:

CHIBU, Shimane — A local government here will conduct a poll among residents on whether or not to expel raccoon dogs from the island [...]

Did one of your ancestors hold an administrative post in the government that ran your country over 60 years ago? Better hope you’re not living in South Korea:

South Korea has confiscated more property originally owned by collaborators with Japanese colonialism in the last century, a state agency said Friday.

The seven people included Lee Jeong-Ro, [...]

Somebody really liked boots:
A man arrested for stealing dozens of pairs of women’s boots has told investigators that he smelled them to imagine what the women who wore them looked like, police said.

Kazuhiro Watanabe, 33, from Okagaki, Fukuoka Prefecture, admitted to the allegations of theft during questioning. “I got excited when I smelled them and [...]

The investigation into pesticide-tainted frozen Chinese-made gyoza has yet to find a definite culprit, but the Chinese government seems sure that the poisoning took place in Japan:
The Chinese authorities, speaking on Thursday after a four-week investigation of the plant where the dumplings were made, gave their strongest statement yet that the manufacturer or Chinese individuals [...]

News from TokyoGraph:

Japan’s “neko boom” has reached new levels, as the country will soon see the 5-cat group MUSASHI’S release its first digital single. The cats have been signed with major talent agency Stardust Promotion to “sing” a cover of “Hotaru no Hikari,” a folk song set to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” that [...]

Japanese comedians impersonated Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama yesterday at the Tokyo premiere of the political thriller Vantage Point:

An improvement over the rubber gaijin nose crap, don’t you think?

A report from Fuji TV news about a Japanese woman who traveled to France to perform rakugo comedic storytelling in French:

The woman in the video is Masayo Kondo, the 53-year-old manager of a winery in Osaka. She studied French when she was a university student.
She translates the story for her performance into French with [...]

Blogger Max Hodges recently encountered Japanese police who were demanding identification from foreign-looking individuals passing through Ikebukuro Station:
I noticed these police in the station doing random checks of foreign looking people’s identification. I started shooting them, and they got pissed and told me that I couldn’t take pictures (”Shashin wa dame!”)
I held my ground, and [...]

The Westerner’s Fear of the Neonsign has an interesting post today about life as a foreigner in Japan, including a graph of the “Seven Stages of Gaijinhood:”

Read the story behind the graph.

If you can’t make citizens do it voluntarily, try making it a homework assignment for their kids:
Tokyo’s Koto Ward Government is set to require all elementary school fifth graders in the ward to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home as part of their summer vacation homework, officials said.
The ward will launch the [...]

Faked Tibetan antelope

A large version of the photo with flaws pointed out is here.
Ah the Chinese and their counterfeits. Here on the Probe, we’ve seen fake Disneylands and cardboard filled foodstuffs. But this time it is the media that has been caught red handed trying to make the state’s expensive and environmentally controversial [...]

The Japan Times has a very interesting article today telling the life story of haiku poet Tota Kaneko, who embraced pacifism after witnessing the horrors of war:

Kaneko, a graduate of the school of economics at the Imperial University of Tokyo, enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Navy. After he was sent to the front, he came [...]