Archive for February, 2009

Beating up the god of poverty

Reuters reports on a shrine in central Japan that lets visitors attack the “god of poverty”:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Safely transporting European paintings in Japan

Starting tomorrow, several masterpieces of the Louvre’s collection will be put on display in a special exhibition at the National Museum of Western Art.

The task of transporting and safely setting up the paintings for display in Japan fell to the elite fine art transport division of Nippon Express. Here’s a news clip of them in action:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

North Korean restaurant no longer profitable

Ever since a North Korean government restaurant opened in Bangkok two years ago, the Japanese press have been regularly visiting the place with hidden cameras to catch a glimpse of its dinnertime performances. However, it has now been discovered that the restaurant recently went out of business:

Most of its business had come from South Korean tourists, but the weakening of the won and the decline in tourism to Thailand due to the airport protests seem to have dealt a death blow to the restaurant. Attempts to contact North Korea-run restaurants in Cambodia and Vietnam failed, suggesting that those restaurants may have also gone under. It has also been said that a similar North Korean restaurant in China has suffered a big drop in business.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Number of crimes committed by foreigners in Japan fell in 2008

For the third straight year:

The number of crimes committed by foreign visitors in Japan fell in 2008 for the third consecutive year to 31,280, down 12.6 percent from the previous year, the National Police Agency said Thursday.

The number of foreign criminals, excluding permanent residents, also dropped in 2008 for a third straight year to 13,872, down 12.8 percent, it said.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Japanese firefighters cut down tree to rescue stranded cat

When one thinks of firefighters rescuing cats that get stuck in trees, one usually imagines that they would make use of their extra-tall ladders. That was not the case in Okinawa yesterday, where firefighters were summoned to rescue a cat that had been stranded at the top of a 15-meter tree for four days.

The firefighters first attached ropes to the tree and tugged them back and forth to shake the cat out of the tree. When this failed, they whipped out a chainsaw and cut down the tree:

The top of the tree came tumbling down with the poor cat still clinging to its branches. But don’t worry, children, the cat was “safe” (and has since been hospitalized for a broken leg).

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Court rules against families who wanted relatives’ names removed from Yasukuni

The Osaka District Court rejected a lawsuit today from a group seeking the removal of their relatives’ names from the list of war dead enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine.

The AFP’s article about the case contained a headline implying that the court ruled that the names must stay on the list, a choice of words that implies the court had expressed a favorable view towards the Yasukuni enshrinement. For some reason, it does not contain any information about why the court ruled the way it did. Quite a bad article.

Kyodo News actually reported the reasons the judge gave when announcing the decision:

In Thursday’s decision, Muraoka brushed aside the plaintiffs’ argument that Yasukuni Shrine has infringed upon their human rights to respect their loved ones and cherish memories of them by unilaterally enshrining them collectively without the relatives’ consent, saying such rights are out of the range of legal protection.

In the suit, the plaintiffs pursued the Japanese government’s responsibility for the collective enshrinement, saying it helped Yasukuni Shrine over many years by providing information on the war dead.

But the judge rejected the claim, saying it is up to the shrine’s discretion based on its religious principles to decide who it would enshrine.

So there you have it: the court has not ruled that the names must stay (that is something for the shrine to ultimately decide), but rather that it doesn’t see anything illegal about the religious practice and thus does not have the authority to stop it.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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