Archive for January, 2009

Live-action Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

The winning act from last night’s Kinchan no Kasoh Taisho was a Ponyo dance performance by a group of sixteen elementary school 5th graders:

Kunikazu Katsumata’s Ponyo-related act was not as successful:

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Gaijin Street Sumo

Dave Eastgate vs Scott Gregory do some “Gaijin Street Sumo” in Osaka:

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Michael Phelps to promote Japanese cars in China

American swimmer Michael Phelps is going to China to sell Japanese cars:

Winner of a record eight gold medals at the Games, Phelps has signed a seven-figure sponsorship deal to become the brand spokesman for Mazda in China, DMG Entertainment announced Sunday. The group, a division of Dynamic Marketing Group, signed the deal for Mazda, saying it is the biggest sponsorship agreement for a western personality in China.

“The people of China have been very supportive of me and my efforts to help promote swimming,” Phelps said in a statement. “I am excited to begin 2009 with my first return trip to Beijing since the Games.”

Phelps will endorse the new Mazda 6 model vehicle in a series of advertising campaigns that include television commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, outdoor poster advertising and personal appearances.

No word yet on if any other car companies are planning to use this guy in some Chinese ads.

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200,000 tires abandoned in Saitama

Authorities in Saitama Prefecture have begun the clean up of a pile of 200,000 old tires:

28 years ago, a transport company in Kurihashi began dumping old tires in a wooded area, hoping to eventually recycle them. The company went out of business 7 years ago, leaving behind about 200,000 tires at the dump site. Residents had filed many complaints about the tires, so the Saitama prefectural government has finally taken action and begun to clean up the site. It is hoped that they will have all the tires trucked away to recycling plants by the first week of March.
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Fake Japanese food products rampant in Taiwan

The Yomiuri reports that food falsely labeled as Japanese is being sold all over Taiwan:

At a vegetable and fruit market, pears believed to be South Korean in origin were wrapped with a paper printed as “Products of Hita, Oita Prefecture.” Carrots and onions produced in China were sold as Japanese products, contained in cardboard boxes with the printed trademarks and logos of “Hokuren” and “JA Kitamirai,” both of which are names of agricultural cooperatives in Hokkaido.

“Since the melamine cases [in Chinese food products] came to light, labeling foods as ‘Chinese products’ has had a negative impact on sales,” a Thomson examiner quoted a person in charge of sales at one of the Taiwanese markets as saying.

A Taipei department store also sold mackerel without permission using the trademark Seki no Sensaba, which is used by a producer of Oita Prefecture.

Frozen scallops were also found in a package claiming its contents were “Products of Hokkaido, the Sea of Okhotsk.”

Japanese producers confirmed that both the mackerel and scallops in question were not of Japanese origin.

There also were cases in which consumers were led to misunderstand the origin of products. Milk was sold in a plastic bottle labeled “Hokkaido” on the front, but also “Made in Taiwan” in small letters on the bottom. Pork was sold as “Matsuzaka pork,” which obviously derived from the top Japanese “Matsuzaka beef” brand.

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Jams.tv lifting content from popular Japan websites without permission

Shane of Nihon Sun has written to let us know that quite a few Japan bloggers are angry about a site that is lifting content from the feeds of several popular blogs (including this site) without crediting the original authors with links or seeking their permission. Here are just a few of the sites that are having their content used:
Japan Soc – http://en-web.jams.tv/japansoc/
Tokyo Mango – http://en-web.jams.tv/tokyomango/
Jean Snow – http://en-web.jams.tv/jeansnow/
Yonasu – http://en-web.jams.tv/yonasu/
Rocking in Hakata – http://en-web.jams.tv/rockinginhakata/
Neil Duckett – http://en-web.jams.tv/neilduckett/
Japan Newbie – http://en-web.jams.tv/japannewbie/

There are thousands of spam blogs on the net that automatically lift content from the feeds of other blogs, and normally this kind of thing could not be a very big deal. However, Jams.tv appears to be a legitimate corporation based in Australia, and their site is running quite a few direct advertisements from well-known companies (Kinokuniya, HIS, etc.). It is hard to believe that an a corporate website would be engaging in the type of feed scraping generally associated with shady spam sites.

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