Archive for April, 2009

A wolf loves pork stop-motion animation

Takeuchi Taijin’s amazing stop-motion animation short “A wolf loves pork,” created with lots of photographs placed around his apartment:

At first I photographed stop motion　animation. And I displayed the photographs in my room and photographed it again.　Enjoy a connection with the world of the room and the world in the photograph.

[via Pink Tentacle]

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The most spoiled dog in Japan

Meet Merumo, Japan’s most spoiled dog:

Merumo, a 10-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is a top model for dog magazines in Japan. Since she is a model, she is given special treatment such as two expensive haircuts a month, but the pampering doesn’t end there. A reporter visits the apartment where Merumo lives to discover the following luxuries:

• The apartment has a special security system that won’t allow visitors to take the elevator to that floor without an invitation.
• Merumo doesn’t like being hot, so her owner bought marble flooring for the living room. (estimated cost: 3,000,000 yen)
• She drinks out of a silver Gucci dog bowl.
• When leaving the house, she can ride in a Luis Vitton carry bag (236,250 yen).
• When going for a walk, she can wear one of several brand name dog collars and leashes: Hermès (65,000 yen + 85,000 yen) or Gucci (69,300).
• Merumo’s owner rents another room in the apartment building just to store all of Mermo’s special clothing. Merumo has a fancy kimono (80,000 yen), 10 fur coats (one costs 180,000 yen), and a whole bunch of other stuff. (Total cost: about 3,000,000 yen)

In the next clip we get a look at the meals Merumo eats:

Mermo’s owners run a dance school and have no children. They just have Merumo and two cats, so they spoil them as if they were children.

Since Merumo is pretty old in dog years, her owner is determined to give her the finest foods. A typical meal consists of premium vegetables special ordered from a department store prepared alongside some expensive Matsusaka beef (2,500 yen for 100 grams). The humans of the house eat cheap vegetables and chicken from the local grocery store.

Merumo’s owner justifies the money she spends by comparing Merumo to a child. Many parents spends large sums of money to send their children to college, so why can’t she spend a similar amount buying dresses and fancy food for Merumo?

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Noriko Calderon’s parents leave Japan

Sarah and Arlan Calderon, illegal immigrants from the Philippines who had hoped the Japanese government would grand them residency visas because their daughter was born in Japan, left the country yesterday after losing their fight against a deportation order:

Meanwhile, Noriko, who has been entrusted to the care of Sarah’s younger sister, said that she is anxious about her life as a whole and school “because it is my first time living apart from my parents.”

“I won’t be able to eat the delicious food my mother cooks,” she said, adding that her parents are “irreplaceable.”

“But it’s not like we’re never going to see each other,” said the teenager, who recently became a second-year student at a junior high school in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture. “I hope I can show them (the next time we meet) that I do my best.”

Earlier in the day, relatives and Arlan’s colleagues gathered at the family’s home in Warabi to bid farewell to the couple.

“We will be waiting for you (to come back),” said construction worker Yasuhisa Nagashima, one of Arlan’s colleagues, adding that it would not be “goodbye.”

Arlan hugged each of his colleagues and thanked them for their kindness.

“Noriko is here, so I hope we can return to her side as soon as possible,” Arlan said, adding that he hoped the day would come when the family would “be able to live quietly together in Japan.”

A fund set up to help provide money for Noriko’s living and educational expenses has already raised 1.58 million yen.

Update: CNN’s Kyung Lah has filed a report about the story:

Noriko Calderon, wearing her school uniform, was being forced to make one of the most wrenching choices of her young life: To stay in the country of her birth rather than join her parents being deported to the Philippines.

The scene was the emotional climax to a story a decade and a half in the making — one that has tugged at heartstrings in Japan, but ultimately failed to sway to an unyielding bureaucracy that activists say violates human rights.

Seeing as the Japanese government didn’t immediately deport them in 2006 and let them remain in the country and plead their case until a special exception was made to permit Noriko to stay in Japan, I hardly see how it is fair to declare that the bureaucracy was “unyielding.” Lah also uses the headline “Schoolgirl told to choose: Country or parents,” when it is clearly Noriko’s parents who had to make the decision of whether to bring their child back to the Philippines.

[hat tip to Keeping Pace in Japan]

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Tokyo Bureau of Sewerage wastes 34 million yen replacing new badges

The Tokyo Bureau of Sewerage spent a huge amount of taxpayers’ money re-ordering official badges after accidentally ordering badges that didn’t comply with its design manual:

The new uniforms were ordered during the spring, after the design got a go-ahead from managers. However, it was noticed later that the uniforms’ silicone badges, which bear the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s gingko leaf crest and office name, also contained a small wavy blue line, designed to represent cleaning water. This was deemed a violation of the bureau’s basic design manual, and new badges were subsequently ordered at a total cost of 34 million yen.

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara blasted the bureau’s “moronic perfectionism,” saying that the two managers who approved the design in the first place had been reprimanded.

Moronic indeed.

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Samurai vs. Gun

Well the gun is filled with plastic bullets of a dubious, if impressive speed. Before that there is some vegetable torture. This is exactly why the gods invented swords.

[via Tokyomango]
Here is some more hot sword action from our archives.

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Contributor Bio: Claytonian studies the Nihongoes in Saitama and blogs about Japan, language, and news at The Hopeless Romantic.
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High Five Escalator in Japan

The Pirates of the Dotombori take Improv Everywhere’s high five escalator idea and try it in Osaka:

Few people reacted with the smiles you see in the America version, and some even looked away when they high fived Bill. Still, a few seemed to get a kick out of it…
[via JapanSoc]

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