Japanese Problem Solving
USA Today reports that Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People
Watanabe says he wrote the book in response to a national drumbeat of Japanese criticism about its education system that emphasizes rote memorization. Other Japanese books about problem solving had been written for the business market, but Watanabe made it simple for middle-schoolers. That simplicity struck a chord with business.
Watanabe went to school in Japan until the eighth grade before moving to Greenwich, Conn. He went on to an economics degree at Yale, a Harvard MBA and a job as a McKinsey consultant. He says U.S. schools don’t focus on memorization and are much better at teaching critical thinking but still fall short in the discipline of problem solving.
*Note: He is not the famous Ken Watanabe who starred in “The Last Samurai” and “Batman Begins.” The Japanese version of the book lists his full name as Kensuke Watanabe.
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Categories: Books
Mushroom Brush
A video clip of mushrooms growing on a bath scrubbing brush in Yamagata Prefecture:
An expert who examined images of the mushrooms has concluded that they are of the nameko variety. Upon finding this out, the owner of the brush decided to eat the mushrooms, but his family prevented him from doing so.
The mushrooms fell off the brush a few days after the filming of the TV segment. Apparently the old man is now revering them as a semi-holy object.
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Lawson to buy am/pm
Lawson, Japan’s second-biggest convenience store chain, has announced that it will acquire am/pm for a price of 15 billion yen:
According to the Tokyo area stats in the NTV news clip embedded above, adding am/pm’s 573 stores to 1,222 Lawson stores would create a chain of 1,795 stores – outnumbering 7-11′s 1,602 total Tokyo area stores.
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Categories: General Japan
Obama Chopsticks
It is being reported that Taro Aso gave Barack Obama a pair of chopsticks crafted in the town of Obama:
The chopsticks were some of the gifts that Aso and Obama exchanged on the occasion of their first meeting at the White House. Aso also presented the U.S. president, who plays basketball well, a uniform with “OBAMA” on the back and the number 44 as he is the 44th president of the United States.
Aso presented Michelle, the first lady, with a board game featuring “sudoku,” which is one of her hobbies.
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Categories: General Japan
Chinese apple juice sold as Aomori apple juice
Yet another scandal involving a Japanese company that labeled imported food as domestic:
Two former presidents of an apple processing firm were arrested Tuesday for allegedly labeling apple juice concentrate made mainly from Chinese apples as coming from Aomori.
Takao Sasaki, 61, and Junichi Osanai, 71, are suspected of defrauding a Tokyo food company out of some ¥50 million from February 2006 to January 2007 by selling its product made with imported juice concentrate under false pretenses.
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Categories: Japanese Food
Mega Sing-Along in Tokyo
An NDTV video report about a group of 5,000 singers performing Ode to Joy from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony:
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Categories: General Japan