Archive for July, 2009

Decline in Japanese tourists visiting Italy

The Asahi Shimbun recently had an article up about the dropping number of Japanese tourists visiting Italy:

About 10 years ago, there were roughly 2 million Japanese tourists visiting Italy each year. That number has since dropped to about 1 million tourists a year. This year’s peak tourist season saw half as many Japanese tourists as last year, and the expensive Euro and fears over swine flu cited as major reasons for the drop. Italy’s level of service, which is low by Japanese standards, is also provided as one of the the decline.

—

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

Japanese news show uses toys to reenact crime

A FTV morning news show reenacts a crime that took place in Niigata Prefecture:

A criminal fleeing from police tried to make a getaway in a construction tractor. Cop cars chased him as he sped down a road at 15 km/h (9.3 mph), occasionally backing up when he put the tractor in reverse to scare them away. Cops cornered him in a field about 1 kilometer from the starting point of the chase, where he proceeded to swing around the shovel of the vehicle, knocking over a tree and digging up some dirt. His menacing actions kept police at bay for about 40 minutes. The stand-off ended when one officer charged the vehicle and smashed its windows with a club.

—

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

Japanese kids go shopping

On Monday night, NTV aired a special episode of “Hajimete no otsukai” (“First errand”), an adorable show that sends small children on errands. The kids are usually younger than 5-years-old, so few even notice that there are cameras watching them from across the street or sometimes from even a few feet away.

Here’s a partially subtitled segment showing two cute little kids, Masaki (5 years and 2 months) and his little sister Saika (2 years and 10 months), as they go on a journey to buy ingredients for their mom’s beef stew:

part 1

part 2

As Japan is a lot safer than other countries, it seems okay for such small children to go out on their own (with a tv show staff watching over them from a distance). They readily speak with shopkeepers and elderly people they meet, and even accept food from strangers. There is always a lot of crying, but usually the kids manage to fulfill their missions.

—

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

Children Full of Life

A great documentary about school life in Japan [found via Reddit]:

“In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates.”

—

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

Japanese scientists create wingless ladybug

Scientists at Nagoya University have created a ladybug without wings (pictured above on the left):

While ladybird beetles have been employed as eco-friendly pest killers both at home and abroad, how to keep them in field crops without flying away has been a major challenge.

The team led by Teruyuki Niimi, associate professor at Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, identified a master gene for wing development, and used the RNA interference technique to disrupt the gene’s function, according to the journal.

Niimi said the new technique is unlikely to affect the ecosystem as it differs from genetic modification and that the ladybirds’ offspring will be born with wings just like normal ones.

The scientists are now working on a method to mass produce the ladybugs.

—

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

Japanese Harry Potter fangirl interviews Emma Watson

Since so many of you are enjoying the Harry Potter and the Japanese fangirl post, here’s a clip of Kana’s interview with Emma Watson (which didn’t make the cut for the original post, since it wasn’t crazy enough):

—

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