A translated clip from a Korean TV show of Japanese and Korean masters of the art of rolling around steel drums face off against each other on a TV show (Korea in blue helmet, Japan in white helmet):

For more barrel rolling feats, check out our March 2008 post about another Japanese master.
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Akihabara News – Gadgetry [...]

Hiroshi Nohara, the Japanese man who became a minor celebrity in Mexico after spending months living inside a Mexico City airport terminal, has disappeared:
Authorities searched the terminal for Hiroshi Nohara on Monday but he was nowhere to be found, said an airport official who was not allowed to be quoted by name.
The daily Reforma newspaper [...]

The Sankei Shimbun has reported that the three photos have been removed from exhibits the Nanjing Massacre museum in China. According to the Sankei, the photos removed had been inaccurately presented as depictions of events related to Japanese war crimes in Nanjing. They included:

A photo of victims from a bandit attack in Korea, [...]

In case you ever wondered about how Bobby Ologun treats his children, here’s a video from a Japanese TV show:

Although it’s hard to take anything he says seriously, he acts like he is a strict father preparing his children for their future careers as professional athletes. When interviewed separately, the kids don’t quite agree [...]

The bizarre sight of a tree growing out of the side of a building in Kyoto:

The tree in question happens to be a specially-designated holy tree that is said to have protected buildings around it from damage during the 1788 Great Fire of Tenmei that destroyed a large sections of Kyoto. When the building [...]

South Korea will be the newest country to institute a fingerprinting system similar to those found in the United States and Japan:
The Ministry of Justice said Saturday that it will propose to revise the Immigration Law so that all foreign nationals, either for short-term stay or long-term, are obliged to provide their biometric information to [...]

Japanese police shot a man yesterday who was robbing a convenience store in Hokkaido:

Two Afghan men had entered the store and brandished knives while apparently trying to rob the store (the report says they were speaking Farsi). One of the convenience store workers pushed an emergency button, and police soon showed up. [...]

Video of a huge bowling alley in Japan:

The bowling alley shown in the video is Inazawa Grand Bowling in Aichi prefecture, and it has 116 bowling lanes. Some other place probably more lanes on multiple floors, but this place holds the single floor record for Japan.
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dannychoo.com – [...]

Months after a Japanese man was freed by his captors in Iran, it has come to light that the Japanese government paid a sizable amount of ransom money to secure his freedom:
Japan paid money equivalent of about 200 million yen to resolve the kidnapping of a Japanese national in Iran, a government source said Monday.
The [...]

Mainichi reports about a new website that uses Google Maps to track the locations of cool and unique manhole covers in Japan:

Contributors can add photos of manhole covers directly from their mobile phones, along with global positioning system (GPS) data to mark its location on the map. While the site features pictures primarily of manhole [...]

A Reuters video report about the radical animal rights activist group Sea Shepherd attacking Japanese whaling vessels:

In some of their most recent attacks, they brought their ship dangerously close to a Japanese ship and threw bottles of butyric acid onto its deck.
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Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
Kirainet.com – [...]

Petty Officers 1st Class Henry Caballero, left, and James Brice rescued a Japanese man who fell onto the train tracks at Shinagawa station in Tokyo:
“He walked off the platform like he saw an invisible step,” said Brice, of Rogersville, Tenn. “He hit the rails and it sounded like something was broken.”
Caballero checked for the next [...]