If only Prime Minister Taro Aso were as awesome in real life as he is in this Evangelion-style video [skip to the 2-minute mark for cool AT field action]:

[via Zaeega/SWFblog]
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Concerned about surveillance cameras invading your privacy? Don’t worry, some friendly people are helping make sure you’ll hardly even notice the cameras spying on you. Here are two examples from Japan:
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1. Daruma-san is watching you.

The city of Takasaki in Gunma Prefecture, hometown of the Daruma doll, has found a way of combining [...]

Television viewers looking to be disgusted must have really been satisfied with last week’s episode of Akuma no Keiyaku (Devil’s Contract).
On that particular episode, they made comedian Naomi Watanabe, who is famous for her “ Japanese Beyonce” act, sign a contract promising to fatten herself up by 10 kilograms [22 pounds] in [...]

A set of weird and amusing Nanyo commercials that urge views to “do it with a machine” instead of using human labor:

[via Zaeega]
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Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Meet Yamamotoyama, a Japanese sumo wrestler weighing in at 252 kilograms who is about to join the top division of the sport:
At least 100 kilograms heavier than the average juryo weight of 149 kilograms, and the tallest in the division at 191 centimeters, Yamamotoyama gained experience in amateur sumo’s top ranks at high school and [...]

The Wall Street Journal reports on how corporate executives at Japanese companies with seniority-based promotion make far less than those at U.S. and European corporations with performance-based systems:

The gap is huge, as Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group can attest. Japan’s biggest bank by market capitalization, paid a total of $8.1 million for 14 top executives in [...]

The Ministry of Justice has declared that the biometric fingerprint scanning systems it installed in airports last year have successfully prevented 846 would-be illegal immigrants from entering Japan:
The ministry, which released a report on the system’s first year results on Friday, added that the number of visa overstayers is down 35 percent, compared to the [...]

A TBS news clip about an illegally immigrant from Indonesia arrested in Nagano prefecture:

Two Japanese men who helped the Indonesian man fraudulently apply for/renew a passport under a Japanese name have also been arrested. The Indonesian man had been fraudulently using a Japanese passport to enter and leave the country since 1999, and since [...]

Japan has had some foreign lawyers in the past (about 140), but until now all of them have held permanent residency. The Asahi reported yesterday that British citizen Peter Tam and South Korean citizen Park Han Young will become the first foreigners without permanent residency to undergo legal training in Japan.
Peter Tam, who first [...]

Prime Minister Taro Aso’s latest gaffe probably won’t make many elderly voters happy:
“They’re hobbling around and constantly going to the doctor,” Prime Minister Taro Aso was quoted as saying in a transcript of a Nov. 20 meeting of ministers on economic policies.
Aso also said the elderly should be faulted for not exercising enough.
“I am paying [...]

UPDATE: Noriko has been granted special residency.
An update on the case of Noriko Calderon, a girl born in Japan who was facing deportation because her parents are illegal immigrants (video from TBS):

Japanese immigration authorities have decided that they need more time to consider the Calderon family’s situation, so their permission to stay in Japan has [...]

Former sumo wrestler Wakanoho (Aleksandrovich Gagloev) has admitted that the allegations he made about match rigging were untrue:

He says he made the whole thing up because a person claiming to be friend of a stablemaster told him that speaking out about match rigging would help his chances of being unbanned by the Japan Sumo Association. [...]