A kid was allowed to vote in Osaka yesterday:

The 11-year-old elementary school girl, who visited a poll station in Osaka’s Nishi-Yodogawa Ward with her father, voted for a party in a proportional representation bloc as well as a review of the Supreme Court justices, the election committee said.
Election staff believed the girl, who is relatively [...]

Ken Tanaka recently came back to the motherland for a visit, and he discovered the joys of Tokyo Teleportation.

Ken also got a YouTube gathering going while he was here. I attended and won a YouTube shirt. See if you can spot me in this vid; I’m the one that looks like he is recovering from [...]

A member of the parody glam metal band Steel Panther makes Morning Musume’s Koharu Kusumi feel uncomfortable:

The YouTube video is entitled “Kusumi Koharu Sexual Harassment case,” and a few comments have been left by angry fans who don’t like seeing their idol touched by some weirdo.
A bigger screen capture pics can be found here.
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Akihabara News [...]

While the rest of the LDP went down in flames last night, Junichiro Koizumi’s son Shinjiro managed to win his father’s seat:

Shinjiro Koizumi, 28, yesterday won his retiring father’s seat in Kanagawa prefecture southwest of Tokyo. He defeated Katsuhito Yokokume, 27, of the Democratic Party of Japan, which swept the ruling LDP out of government.
“I [...]

Kirsten Dunst was spotted in Tokyo recently, apparently dressed up silly for some sort of music video:

See more pics here. [Via 3Yen]

What do you think of her outfit?

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Meet Meru, a French bulldog in Hiroshima that loves slides:

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Judgment Day is finally upon us! As the election results come in tonight, be sure to check out TPR’s live video cast:
The webcast will include Garrett DeOrio, Christopher Gunson, Adam Richards, and Ken Worsley. The broadcast will start at 8:00 p.m., and will be viewable at Livestream:
www.livestream.com/tprjp
There’s no need to log in or create [...]

As this post is being written, NTV’s “24 Hour Television” charity telethon is about halfway finished. Throughout the program, appeals are made for viewers to donate money and　participate in volunteer activities.
Many of Japan’s most popular celebrities appear on the program, but, as a Nikkan Sunday article reveals, they are not volunteering their [...]

If yesterday’s model airplane isn’t your thing, you can go with another hobby being advertised on Japanese TV: model trains!

It makes an appeal to viewers who want to recreate the nostalgic scenery of their childhood days, something that was absent in the model airplane commercial. Just like the Zero, this is sold as weekly [...]

NTV’s “Zoom In Super” morning show takes on the “History Girl” (rekijo) boom that is hitting Japan (subbed in English):

The AFP has a good article up about this trend:
In testing times like these, “people tend to turn to strong symbolic figures on whom they can project their ideals,” said Hideki Nakagawa, a Nihon University sociology [...]

I just finished reading Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain and would like to recommend it. Here’s a short blurb:
One day in 1944, in the midst of World War II Japan, with people suffering and starving around him, Morie Sawataishi heard something troubling. The country people of Akita Prefecture were killing [...]

I thought TBS news had the coolest and most ridiculous graphics/music for its election coverage. I was wrong. Fuji TV has raised (or lowered?) the bar by adding Terminator music and the title JUDGMENT DAY to its election news:

Get ready, Japan: Skynet will be attacking us tomorrow! I hope everyone has [...]