Japanese whalers throw bleeding chunks of blubber at animal rights activists?
I haven’t seen any photos or video of it, but an AP report contains a claim from Sea Shepherd:
A group of radical anti-whaling activists said they were pelted with bloody chunks of whale meat and blubber after their boat collided Friday with a Japanese whaling vessel in a dramatic Antarctic Ocean clash Japan condemned as “unforgivable.”
As neat as it might be to imagine Japanese whalers actually using such a twisted and bizarre method of defense, Sea Shepherd’s animal rights activists have been known to exaggerate or even lie.
Meanwhile, the Japanese are claiming that Sea Shepherd deliberately rammed one of its whaling ships. This video of the incident in question makes a strong case on their behalf:
Update: Sea Shepherd has ended this year’s attacks, but they claim they’ll be back next year with a better and faster ship.
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Categories: Anti-Japan, Japanese Food
Heart Mark Cat
Zoro, cat in Japan with a heart-shaped white mark on his fur:
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Categories: Animal Videos
Unexploded American bomb disrupts flights at Miyazaki airport
Miyazaki Airport had to delay or cancel some flights today to allow a GSDF team to remove a World War II era American bomb that had been discovered nearby:
The airport imposed flight restrictions because the west end of the airport was within a radius of 400 meters of the disposal site, an area designated for evacuation.
Around 1,700 people were evacuated from the area while GSDF personnel removed the detonator from the 250-kilogram dud found at a construction site in Miyazaki City.
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Categories: General Japan
Love Hotels: An Inside Look at Japan’s Sexual Playgrounds
Interested in learning something about Japanese love hotels? Ed Jacob’s new book Love Hotels: An Inside Look at Japan’s Sexual Playgrounds
As one would expect from it’s title, this book explains Japan’s love hotels to an English speaking audience. The first portion of the book contains a interesting history of the sex industry. One eventually finds oneself in the Post-War period, when the birth of the love hotel was born. It turns out that the operators of such hotels used a variety of names before the term “love hotel” became popular (quotation from the introduction of the “Origin” section):
The oldest name, moteru, dates back to the 1950s and comes from the English “motel.” When Japanese people hear this word, rather than imagining family road trips during the summer vacation, they think of sex, because when the motor hotel came to Japan, it was used exclusively by couples looking for a place to spend some intimate time together.
When motels moved into the downtown areas, they needed a new name, and came to be known as abecu hoteru, which comes from the French word “avec” and means “with.” People who use this term are showing their age, though, because that‘s how love hotels were referred to in the 1960s and early 1970s.
The word “rabu hoteru” dates back to the early 1970s, and the name came about quite by accident. Apparently, it originated in Osaka, where there was a popular hotel called the “Hotel Love.” It had a neon sign, and the name circled around and around, so confused patrons often referred to it as the Love Hotel‘ because that was how they had seen it on the sign. Love hotel is still the most popular term, but more often than not, it gets shortened to ”rabuho.‟
Later portions of the book go into detail about the inner workings of the love hotel industry, including some interviews with operators of love hotels. It also contains reviews of individual love hotels found in Tokyo and Osaka, with helpful guide information provided for those who want to know how one goes about staying at a love hotel. And, of course, there are lots of sleazy love hotel-related stories and translations of diary notebook entries written at love hotels.
This book is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.jp. For sample pages, check out the book’s official website.
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Categories: Books
Rally calls for the return of four Russian-held islands
A Reuters news video about this year’s “Northern Territories Day” rally, which called for Japan to get back the islands Russia seized in 1945:
Prime Minister Taro Aso was on hand to give a speech saying he’d do his best to convince Russia to return the territory:
“Russia is an important neighbor for building peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region,” Aso said. “And in order to raise our relations with Russia to a higher dimension, it is essential to reach a final solution to the issue of the Northern Territories, which is the biggest pending issue.”
Aso also reassured the public that the government is continuing negotiations with Russia “with firm determination” to resolve the sovereignty dispute and work toward concluding a peace treaty.
“In order to bring progress to the bilateral negotiations, it is important for the government and the people to unite their efforts to resolve this issue,” the prime minister said.
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Categories: Politics
Ex-director accuses Mitsui of discriminating against non-Asian employees
A group led by a former American employee of Mitsui is seeking to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of non-Asian employees of the company that feel they are victims of discrimination:
Andrew Van Etten, a former senior director at Mitsui USA, claims widespread discrimination at the Tokyo-based company, according to a complaint filed Feb. 5 in federal court in Manhattan. Van Etten said in the complaint that he was fired because of issues related to his expenses that “no Japanese/Asian” employee at the U.S. unit “has ever been reprimanded for.”
Mitsui’s “violations are systemic in nature,” Van Etten, 46, said in his complaint. They’re done “with the purpose of denying promotional and management opportunities, equal compensation, and equal terms and conditions of employment to qualified non-Japanese/non-Asians,” he said.
Mitsui, like other Japanese companies, regularly sends employees from Japan to work a few years at its overseas offices. Van Etten is claiming that the company unfairly favors its “rotational staff” of Japanese workers. The lawsuit will also contain an accusation about Mitsui reserving its top posts for Japanese and Asian employees.
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Categories: Discrimination