Archive for July, 2009

Bear swims out to island for seagull feast

Fishermen in Iwate Prefecture have made an odd discovery: a bear hanging out on a tiny island!

The bear is believed to have crossed several hundred meters of water so that he can feast on the sea birds that nest on the island. A fisherman says he’s seen the bear on the island several times in the past, and an expert explains this by commenting on how bears are quite capable of memorizing good hunting spots.
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Japanese police think they can use paintball guns to stop criminals

Cops in Shizuoka Prefecture show the press their new “color ball” launchers, which shoot non-lethal paintballs at criminals:

The paint is supposed to be hard to remove, making it easy for other cops and the general public to identify criminals fleeing a crime scene.

It has a laser pointer to help with aiming, but as the video clip shows, the police officers still need to spend some time at the shooting rage. Somehow a slow-moving motorbike evades their aim, and a parked car is hit instead.

Update: Gizmodo has picked up this story, and one of their readers has provided some very insightful commentary.

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Protest march against comfort women exhibit for junior high schoolers

The conservative Tokyo citizens’ group Shuken Kaifuku wo Mezasu Kai (The Society to Seek Restoration of Sovereignty) seems to be appealing to an international audience by including some English descriptions a video of a protest they recently held:

Their small protest march is aimed at school officials who are responsible for an exhibit meant to teach junior high school students about the comfort women issue (presumably in a manner that conservatives do not find honest or agreeable):

Anti-Japanese groups have been spreading outrageous lies that Japanese Army kidnapped 200,000 Korean women. Mitaka city (TOKYO) doesn’t understand the meaning of “education of children” at all. Mitaka city is going to help anti-Japanese groups which try desperately to give school children false information. So-called “wartime comfort women issue” can be restated as “prostitution issue”. It is outrageous that Mitaka city provides a place to teach school children the meaning of prostitution.

The Mitaka city employees do not seem intimidated by the protest, and a few of them head to the gate of their building and try to answer the shouts the Shuken Kaifuku wo Mezasu Kai members. In parts two and three of the video, which don’t seem to have English translations yet, they sit down and meet with city representatives who try to answer their complaints.

If there are indeed factual problems with the content being taught to school kids in Mitaka, this group isn’t doing a good job of adding information in English about them. The YouTube video has no link to outside information, and their homepage doesn’t have an English section. Without supporting English language explanations to back up their claims, their appeal to an international audience is pointless.

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Related link: A quick googling of the Society to Seek Restoration of Sovereignty reveals that they have also been active in opposing laws against domestic violence:

“Instances of ‘violence’ that aren’t serious in nature, but basic and isolated, are natural among married couples,” the authors wrote. “The idea of ‘eliminating spousal violence’ is a display of radical feminism.”

Good luck on getting international support on that issue…

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Why Japanese (and not Koreans) won 2 Nobel prizes for literature

A South Korean teacher explains why no Koreans have won a Nobel prize for literature:

His statement of “fact”: Korean is superior to all other languages. Japan, a culturally inferior nation, has won two Nobel prizes for literature because Japanese is a crude language that is so simple to translate into English. Korean, on the other hand, is harder to translate into other languages because it is so damn exquisite and beautiful.

[hat tip to Mulboyne]

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Related story: VANK, South Korea’s leading ultra-nationalist organization, giving away laptop computers to foreign bloggers who write positive things about Korea. Maybe some of you out there can borrow this guy’s idea about the superiority of Korean and get a chance at some prizes…

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July 22nd total solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Japan

A total solar eclipse will take place on July 22nd, and it will be somewhat visible in certain areas of Japan. The above map from the Yomiuri tells us how much of the eclipse will be visible from Japan’s major cities. Folks in Okinawa should get a pretty nice view.

The dark blue line indicates the part of the earth where there should be total darkness. Only a few small Japanese islands fall within that zone, and most of which are accessible to tourists. Find out about them here (in English!).

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Dried aliens in Japan

A fish shop on Oharai-machi street near the entrance of the Ise Shrine in Mie Prefecture has some dried aliens on display:

According to the shop’s owner, they are dried yellow guitar fish and he’s put them on special display because they look like aliens. They are not for sale. He says they look like something out of a American movie, and although somebody in the video says it looks like the shark for “Jaws,” they look a lot more like the aliens from Independence Day.

For another nice photo of the alien fish, check out this post over at Pink Tentacle.

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