Archive for March, 2009

Secret Ocean on the Japan Probe Indies Close-up…

Hey, I am just enjoying this duo so much that I thought I’d put together another video of their stuff.

I’ll try to get an English translation of the lyrics up asap, but if some other student of Japanese is bored and wants to do it, message me. I should probably be spending less time making videos and translating lyrics and more doing stuff like, umm, playing with my kids…
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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

News flash: Obese people shouldn’t try to run marathons

Comedian Kunihiro Matsumura had a heart attack and collapsed while trying to run in the Tokyo Marathon last week. The Japan Times reports that his obesity was probably a factor:

But carrying 101 kg on his 165 cm frame was too much for the 41-year-old, who suffered a heart attack around the 14.7 km point on the 42.195 km course. He briefly passed out but is on the mend, his agent reported Thursday night.

Dr. Itsuki Yuzawa, a specialist in sports medicine at Terada Hospital in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, warns overweight people to slim down before joining the jogging boom.

“In general, the obese, especially those over 100 kg, are highly likely to suffer hypertension and sclerosis, which makes it easy to have a heart attack.”

Another disadvantage for the obese is that they require more blood than normal in their muscles because their bodies are so big, he 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)

Bataan survivor art

The Alamogordo Daily News reports that the artwork of Ben Steele, an American soldier who survived the Bataan death march, will be put on display at a museum in New Mexico:

During his captivity, Steele managed to sketch scenes of the ordeal on scraps of paper when his Japanese guards weren’t looking. The scenes depicted the horrors of the march, guards bayoneting soldiers who fell out unable to continue because of starvation and disease. They showed the squalid living conditions where the march survivors were interred before they were transferred to Japanese transport ships bound for slave labor camps in Manchuria, Korea and Japan.

Steele’s sketches were lost while another soldier was carrying them for safe keeping and the ship he was in was sunk. When Steele somehow managed to survive the trip to Japan and the years of slave labor in a coal mine there, he came home to the United States and set to work recreating his sketches from memory as a tribute to his fellow soldiers who suffered and those who died during that dark period in American history.

More information on Ben Steele and his artwork can be found at this site. He’s also written a book about his POW experience.

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

Jero performs at DC Cherry Blossom Festival

Jero gave an enka performance at the Washington DC Cherry Blossom Festival last week, and the Washington Post has run an article about him:

Jero moved to Japan to teach English after graduating from college in 2003, sang enka on the side and eventually got noticed by a record label. He said his first release, “Umiyuki,” in 2008 rocketed to No. 4 on the pop chart in a week — the best performance ever for a debut enka song.

Enka singers, female and male, often perform wearing traditional kimonos. They don’t usually wear fur-trimmed North Face parkas, which is part of Jero’s allure.

But he said it is not a gimmick.

“I’ve lived in Pittsburgh till I was 21,” he said. “The kimono was not a part of who I was, and I never actually wanted to wear one. I didn’t want to be someone else when I went on stage. I wanted to be who I was. . . . I wanted to be me. I wanted to be true to myself.

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

Air safety board questions the English ability of China Southern Airlines pilots

Related video clip: English is important.
A Japanese air safety board investigating a 2007 incident in which a China Southern Airlines plane that entered a runway without permission has determined that the poor English ability of the Chinese pilot and copilot were the cause of the mistake:

In its report, the Japan Transport Safety Board of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said of the incident at Chubu Centrair International Airport in Aichi Prefecture that the pilot and the copilot had either misunderstood or failed to catch the instructions.

However, China Southern officials rejected the assertion, according to the report.

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

Inside a Japanese garbage house

Comedian Yoshio Kojima uses his celebrity charm to get permission to film inside a gomi yashiki (“garbage mansion”):

Kojima is greeted with a truly horrid sight. Garbage is everywhere, making it very hard to walk through the rooms. Some of the filth is old food that has long since rotted. The old woman who owns the house doesn’t seem to realize just how terrible it smells.

After finding out that she would like to eat yakiniku, Kojima is able to convince her that the big piles of trash make it impossible to hold a barbeque on her property, so she allows him to clean up the outside of her house.

Kojima assembles a team of not-so-popular comedians who are willing to spend a day sifting through garbage and they begin the task of cleaning up the woman’s driveway and lawn. As their cleaning progresses, the woman tries to stop them from throwing away some bags of obviously rotten food. Despite the random appearance of her garbage piles, she seems to remember exactly where she put everything, and she wants to save certain things.

During a bento break, the woman tells Kojima about her past. Apparently she was once married to a rich man and had a maid that did all her cleaning. However, her husband died when she was only 31-years-old, leaving her without enough money to keep the maid. Her life became very lonely, and sometime after that she began to surround herself with trash.

When they return to work, she becomes more cooperative in allowing them to throw away stuff. The team of comedians completes the clean-up – taking 5 hours to fill three two-tun trucks with garbage. Kojima holds the barbecue he promised and the old woman is happy (at least until Kojima and the TV cameras leave).

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