Osaka governor not falling for the swine flu panic
As panic spreads about the H1N1 flu outbreak in Kansai, Osaka governor Toru Hashimoto has kept calm and requested that the central government let him switch from a hypersensitive reaction to the flu to something slightly more sane:
“The measures we have taken have assumed a high virulence akin to avian flu, but the swine flu virus appears to be less virulent,” Hashimoto said. “At some point, we must shift our line of action to something appropriate for seasonal influenza.”
According to the Japanese government’s pandemic flu action plan, in the second phase, or “early stage of domestic outbreak,” patients must be hospitalized at designated medical facilities. Osaka, however, has approved patients to recuperate at home, depending on their condition — the first prefecture to take such measures, according to prefectural officials.
Hats off to Mr. Hashimoto for talking some sense!
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Categories: General Japan
Muscle March
A fantastically strange-looking game coming out this month for the Wii [via Jean Snow]:
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Seaman discovers dead sperm whale
From the English translation of the Yomiuri:
NAGOYA–A dead sperm whale was found floating in Nagoya Port by a seaman Sunday morning, police said.
The 24-year-old seaman, who was working at the port, found the whale carcass floating about 150 meters north of the port at about 8:20 a.m.
It is not the same sperm whale mentioned a few days ago on Japan Probe. That whale is still alive and was still hanging around in the shallow waters of Wakayama Prefecture as of this morning.
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Unimpressive Japanese commercials?
The Yomiuri reports that about 60% of commercials that air on Japanese TV are unimpressive:
The CM Research Center survey targeted 3,000 men and women aged between 6 and 89 living in the Kanto area. They were asked to write down a maximum of five TV commercials they liked or were impressed by every month.
According to the results, no respondents mentioned 10,147 ads for 777 companies out of 2,019 companies that aired TV commercials. Among those ads that went unmentioned, three companies spent as much as 300 million yen each to create and air commercials meant to publicize one product, while one company aired a commercial 905 times in a year.
Not every commercial can make it into a top 5 ranking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those commercials are not working. The commercial embedded in this post probably wouldn’t even make it into my top 10 ranking of commercials airing on Japanese TV right now, but it has aired so many times that its song got stuck in my head – eventually convincing me to try their product (it’s actually pretty good).
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Categories: Japanese TV
Masks selling out in Japan
A news photo pretty much sums up how things are in Osaka/Kobe:
The number of confirmed H1N1 flu cases in the Kansai area had reached 90 at the time of this posting and was expected to rise as test results were still not in for many other suspected cases. Quite a lot of the confirmed cases have been high school students.
TV news programs and friends in Kansai report that a great many people in Kobe and Osaka wearing surgical masks to protect themselves from the flu. The flu is still being treated like the the ultra-deadly virus it is not, and the authorities still insist on encouraging people to wear masks. Hopefully those people will also remember to wash their hands.
As one might expect, worried people have bought every last mask on sale at many drug stores in the region:
As you can see from the above video clip, Kobe’s Chinatown -which is usually crowded on weekends- was like a ghost town.
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Categories: General Japan
Yukio Hatoyama’s DPJ
Leadership of Japan’s main opposition party has shifted from the corruption-tainted Ichiro Ozawa to Yukio Hatoyama, Ozawa’s blue-blooded lieutenant.
Blogger MTC harsh assessment of the upcoming Japanese election:
The next election of the House of Representatives, a crucial one for the future of Japan, will be fought out in the main between two parties of largely similar policy programs. One of the parties is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister, and the other is led by an immensely wealthy grandson of a former conservative party prime minister. One of these princelings ‘s tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues, while the other’s tongue frequently gets tied in knots when he is trying to explain himself and the corruption of his colleagues.
The Economist also has a column up expressing a similar view. Tobias Harris has not been quite as pessimistic, but he has expressed doubts about Hatoyama’s leadership ability and toughness.
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Categories: Politics