A cool short film featured on BoingBoing TV:

On a day off in Tokyo I visited a small shantytown in Shibuya I had seen from a train the day before, tucked away in a kids playground. My translator Nick Stone and myself introduced ourselves to a friendly group of people and negotiated permission to pry into [...]

An amusing display of nationalism (via Ampontan):

With nationalism at a fever pitch in the country, O2 Resort, a golf course in Taebaek, Gangwon, put a Korean flag in the Dokdo part of a Korean Peninsula-shaped bunker at its 18th hole, and is using it as promotion.
In other islet dispute news, a revision made last week [...]

Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan, has written an editorial in the Japan Times reminding everyone that “Japan scores very low on nationalism.” Here is an excerpt comparing Japan to its nationalistic neighbors:
… In autocratic China, nationalism is an indirect way to oppose the ruling party. [...]

A Japanese chocolate commercial that won the bronze award of TV ad section at Cannes Film Festival:

[via Watashi to Tokyo]

The 2008 World Cosplay summit will be taking place this weekend in Nagoya, and senior vice foreign minister Itsunori Onodera (pictured above) has been meeting with cosplayers to promote the event:
The sixth-annual World Cos-Play Summit in Nagoya, central Japan, is expected to draw 28 contestants from 13 countries, including China, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Singapore, South [...]

The Japanese government has announced it will pay 690 million dollars in fuel subsidies to fishermen, but it seems that national defense is less of a priority:
The Maritime Self-Defense Force’s annual naval maneuvers, the largest navy drill that involves about 90 warships and 170 jets, has never been canceled since it started in 1954, even [...]

A historical wooden statue held by a temple in Shizuoka Prefecture seems to have been stolen and replaced with a cheap fake:
Local police began investigating the case on suspicion of theft since the lock of a side entrance to the temple was found damaged.
A multi-armed statue of the Goddess of Kannon, or “Senju Kannon” in [...]

A Reuters report about a belly button festival in Gunma Prefecture:

Children and adults, many of them sporting painted stomachs, took part at the annual Belly Button Festival in Shibukawa, north of Tokyo, where dancing in the streets is compulsory.
“The belly button is traditionally believed to be located in the middle of the body and the [...]

From cherry blossoms to samurai to housing, the Japanese sure have a thing for the short lived, and especially for 限定商品 (gentei syouhin) — seasonal, regional or limited edition products. Restaurant menus and convenience store goods often reflect the tastes of the times, and offerings may range from the more mundane, like oysters as [...]

Fuji TV recently did a special report on French artist Luc Grateau, who paints portraits of people on old Paris metro tickets:

Grateau started his project in 2004, and has since painted mini portraits of over 1,000 metro passengers. The Fuji TV report shows Grateau painting two individuals on a train, as well as the [...]

The other night, a TV show tracked down the descendants of famous figures in Japanese history. Here’s a video of Commodore Perry’s descendant:

The man in the video is Dr. Frederic Hone Nichols, the third great-grandson of Commodore Perry. Nichols displays the original print of the famous photograph of the Commodore that can be [...]

The Yomiuri reports that Japanese cinema complexes are attempting to win back movie fans who have been choosing to watch rented movies on wide-screen TVs instead of going watching films in theaters.
Some of the new things theaters are trying out:

digital projectors to provide enhanced colors and images
cutting-edge audio technology and devices, including large speakers that [...]