Archive for July, 2008

Police arrest illegal porn dealers

The Japanese press is reporting it as the largest seizure of illegal porn ever:

Police arrested 53-year-old Takahiro Oyama and 10 others for the attempted distribution of nearly 133,000 pornographic DVDs and videocassettes, a police official said.

Oyama told police he made 1.56 billion yen (14.4 million dollars) in five years of selling sex tapes through the Internet and via mail order, according to public broadcaster N-H-K.

Police said they were investigating whether Oyama and his colleagues had any links to gangs.

Some 5,000 of the confiscated DVDs have been classified as child pornography.

Takeru Kobayashi defeats Joey Chestnut

Chestnut may be the world’s greatest hot dog eater, but he can’t beat Kobayashi in a satay eating contest:

The 60kg Japanese downed 5.4kg of satay – which works out to 385 sticks of satay – in 12 minutes, winning the showdown against 102kg American Joey Chestnut, 24, who swallowed 4.1kg of the meat in the same time.

It was sweet revenge for Mr Kobayashi, who lost to his keen rival in a competition in New York on July 5.

Then, the two eating champs were tied after 10 minutes and 59 hot dogs; but Mr Chestnut won the tie-breaker.

Mr Kobayashi leaves for his home in Tokyo tomorrow with a crystal trophy worth $3,000. He plans to return next year for the same contest.

Referring to the earlier match in New York, he said he had lost by a small margin, and that he had been determined to win by a big margin this time.

CNN/Time Warner obsessed with minor trends in Japanese adult film industry

Apparently last month’s special report in Time Magazine wasn’t enough, so Time Warner had its news network do some extra reporting on elderly porn in Japan:

Looking for more quality journalism? Why not check out the Sydney Morning Herald’s blog post about the man-whores of Tokyo?

How Keirin became an Olympic sport

The BBC has obtained documents that suggest Japanese cycling event organizers paid millions of dollars to the Union Cycliste Iternationale (UCI) in the 1990′s, ultimately achieving the aim of having a Japanese cycling sport called keirin included in the Olympic games:

For years there have been rumours in cycling that the Japanese gave money to the UCI in return for its promotion of keirin as an Olympic event.

According to one member of the UCI at the time, the Japanese donated a “big envelope” in return for access.

Denmark’s Henrik Elmgreen was also a member cycling’s governing body at the time.

“We must admit that when they came it was because the Japanese were very influential in the UCI and they offered a lot of money in order to promote this discipline.

“You can to a certain extent say they bought their way in but on the other hand it is a spectacular discipline.

“Everybody knew the Japanese were supporting the world cup series and were supporting everything and I think everybody realised that they weren’t doing it for nothing.

“They wanted something in return and everybody knew what they got in return.”

Keirin is one of several racing sports that that people can gamble on legally in Japan. According to the BBC, the industry makes tens of millions of dollars in gambling revenue every year.

Video: Japanese cat door

A couple clips showing a cat door in a Japanese house:

[via Zaeega]

The Big Mac Index – 2008

The Economist has released this interesting graph showing how the price of Big Mac hamburgers at McDonald’s restaurants around the world compare to how much the burger costs in the United States:

Many of the currencies in the Fed’s major-currency index, including the euro, the British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian dollar, are overvalued and trading higher than last year’s burger benchmark. Only the Japanese yen could be considered a snip. The dollar still buys a lot of burger in the rest of Asia too.

But are the burgers at McDonald’s in Japan actually cheaper? If one compares the U.S. dollar menu to the Japanese 100 yen menu, the biggest burger on the dollar menu is the double cheeseburger, while 100 yen menu customers are limited to a hamburger or a mcpork burger. However, McDonald’s USA is considering price changes that could make its dollar menu closer to the 100 yen menu.