Archive for February, 2009

The tape that beat Japan’s fingerprint scanning machines

TBS News gives us a look at the tape that several South Koreans supposedly used to fool the fingerprint scanning machines at Japanese immigration checkpoints:

Brokers sold them for high prices, but it only cost about 68 yen and a day of work to create the silicon fingerprint tape. South Korean police are in the process of investigating the scheme and finding out who was behind it.
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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Yoshimi Watanabe’s LOL videos

Politician Yoshimi Watanabe (formerly of the LDP) has been uploading a lot of news clips to his YouTube channel recently, the most popular being footage making fun of ex-Finance Minister Nakagawa’s drunk press conference. Looking at the tags he (or one of his staff) had entered for one of the videos, I noticed there were some English keywords:

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Underwear thief arrested in Utsunomiya

The most popular news video on Yahoo! Japan this morning was about a 43-year-old underwear thief arrested in Tochigi Prefecture:

When questioned by the police, the man admitted his crime and said that he did it because he can feel at ease when surrounded by underwear.

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Chimpanzee cartoon makes the Japanese TV news

The story of the controversy over a political cartoon that some believe depicts Obama as a chimpanzee being gunned down by the police has been featured on several Japanese TV news broadcasts. Here’s a short clip from NTV:

Update: Here is how FTV covered it.

The news anchors note it as a surprising example of how racism continues in America, even after the historic election of Barack Obama.

It’s kind of odd that the Japanese media picked up this story from the international press, but pretty much missed CNN/Guardian reports about a “racist” Japanese commercial being pulled from the airways last year for a similar offense.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Taro Aso facing plenty of hurdles (literally)

Hats off to the staff at FTV news who decided that just talking about the hurdles Prime Minister Taro Aso must overcome was not enough. They actually had to make some friggin’ hurdles and jump a Taro Aso doll over them:

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More drunken episodes from the life of Shoichi Nakagawa

Mainichi finds more stories of Shoichi Nakagawa‘s alcohol-fueled antics:

In 2006, when Nakagawa was head of the LDP’s Policy Research Council, he was late for a meeting between the secretaries general of the ruling parties, the Policy Research Council chiefs and the Diet affairs chiefs. He was in an inebriated state, and walked drunkenly, nearly bumping into a pillar of the Tokyo hotel where the meeting was held.

In September 2004, when Nakagawa held the post of minister of economy, trade and industry, he held a farewell news conference in line with the Cabinet reshuffle under the administration of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and then left the ministry and was drinking at another location. However, he was reappointed, and in a flurry he headed back to the prime minister’s office, participating in his first Cabinet meeting drunk.

Nakagawa had also been spotted in an inebriated state in his home prefecture of Hokkaido. During the House of Representatives election in June 2000, Nakagawa swayed back and forward as he shouted out cheers to celebrate being elected for a sixth term when he turned up at his election campaign office in the Hokkaido city of Obihiro. When he painted in the eye of a daruma doll — a ritual often performed by election winners — he put too much ink on the brush and ended up giving the doll black tears, flustering those around him.

In a separate party of supporters that was held in the Hokkaido town of Honbetsu in June 2005, several officials said that Nakagawa appeared drunk in front of about 2,000 supporters. He slurred his speech and finished his greeting in a few minutes. He ended by being criticized by a local official, who told him he should give a proper greeting.

A news clip posted on Yoshimi Watanabe‘s YouTube channel also mentions Nakagawa acting drunk at a reception for visiting royals, as well as a time when he drunkenly declared himself “global defense minister.”

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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