Was it unreasonable for the police to arrest Tsuyoshi Kusanagi for public indecency?
One journalist thinks so:
Shuntaro Torigoe, a former editor-in-chief of the Sunday Mainichi weekly magazine, said it was “unreasonable” of the police to arrest the 34-year-old member of the SMAP all-boy group for “public indecency for being naked in a deserted park at 3 a.m.”
When a drunken person is making a lot of noise, police usually offer protection to that person, he said, adding that the police arrested Kusanagi simply because he is a celebrity and that they probably suspected he might have been under the influence of narcotics.
“But this is wrong,” Torigoe said. “It’s pathetic when I see the mass media making such a brouhaha based on a misjudgment by the police” and corporations scrambling to cancel commercials featuring him, he said.
The Akasaka Police Station, which arrested Kusanagki and searched his home, said it continued to receive nonstop telephone calls from his fans, mostly women, in protest at the police actions.
A senior officer at the station said they arrested Kusanagi on the spot “because stripping naked was a clear-cut criminal act. It was not an act that left any room for doubt,” he said.
The decision to arrest Kusanagi was:
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Categories: Celebrity News
Indonesian nurses working hard in Japan
FTV news filmed a report checking up on the Indonesian nurses who arrived in Japan last summer to work in a special program:
The Indonesians spent their first 6 months in Japan studying the language, and they’re now working as nurses at hospitals and care facilities.
They seem to be working very hard and their patients are happy, but the nurses still have to overcome a huge obstacle: passing a Japanese nursing certification exam. Although the one woman in the report is a qualified nurse in Indonesia and has 13 years of working experience, it may be very difficult for her to pass an exam written in Japanese. The nurses are studying hard, taking the notes on the meaning of kanji and Japanese phrases in their exam prep books, but when they take the test they will only have about 1 or 2 minutes to answer each of the 300 questions. When the nurses had their first chance to take the test in February, they were only able to answer 50 of the questions correctly. It seems that the Indonesian nurses’ ability to read and understand kanji will be the deciding factor.
Hospitals that are employing the nurses believe that the current system, which will force nurses to leave Japan if they can’t pass the test within three years, needs to be changed. They worry that the test using kanji may be too difficult, and that they will lose many talented nurses.
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan
Sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana
世界の一つだけの花
Just one flower… is all it would have taken…
Quick, someone draw a better picture and make a t-shirt…
Contributor Bio: JJ, shockingly, teaches English, but would prefer to do other things (shockingly). So he writes songs or comedy or the occasional theological treatise. Sometimes he tries to combine all of them. This is most easily observed at www.youtube.com/fatblueman.
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Categories: General Japan
Uniqlo opens megastore in Shinjuku
Uniqlo opened a gigantic flagship store in Shinjuku yesterday:
Open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., the new five-story, 1,900-square-meter store is connected to Shinjuku Station, and is Uniqlo’s new bastion in the intensifying retail war in the district. Department stores in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s largest shopping districts, are also rushing to remodel themselves.
Hundreds of people lined up to enter the store.
Some photos of the grand opening can be found at Stranger in a Strange Land.
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Categories: General Japan
Video: Spartan vs. Ninja
A TV show uses some fancy-looking measurements to determine which of the two great warrior types would win in single combat:
Who do you think would win in an actual fight?
Update: The video is down, but the episode is available here.
[hat tip to John L.]
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Categories: General Japan
Trailer: The Harimaya Bridge
The trailer for “The Harimaya Bridge,” a movie by director Aaron Woolfolk that was filmed in Japan and has a cast of Japanese and Americans (including Danny Glover):
The story concerns an American man who must travel to rural Japan after his estranged son dies there in a traffic accident. While there, he discovers some secrets his son left behind.
[via FG]
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan