Archive for August, 2009

Japanese TV show sends bus full of people into the sea

They just don’t make TV shows like they did back in 1992 (skip about 8 minutes into the clip for the actual lower of the bus into the water):

[From "Beat Takeshi's Owarai Ultra Quiz" via Zaeega]

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

Yukio Hatoyama’s crazy hair

Yukio Hatoyama, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, as he appeared on last night’s N-H-K news broadcast:

He might want to try wearing a hat on windy days…

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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SMAP supports Taro Aso & the LDP

Japanese pop group SMAP ran a newspaper advertisement this week trying to convince young voters to support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party:

The five-member all-male group, which has had a top-10 selling compact disc for 17 straight years with songs such as “Celery” and “Fly,” appeared in a four-page newspaper ad this week titled “How to Build a Happy Nation.”

“When the economy is good, prime ministers are popular, but in bad times, that popularity fades,” the band said in the ad, which was wrapped around the Wednesday morning edition of the Sankei newspaper. “Still, these are people whom we’ve elected, so let’s make some allowances and support them.”

There is some speculation that the ad doesn’t actually contain the opinions of the band members, and that it may have been written by their puppet masters at Johnny’s Entertainment.

[hat tip to FG]

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Build your own Mitsubishi Zero

A commercial that’s been airing on TV a lot lately:

It advertises a model of Japan’s most famous airplane, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. It is sold through an interesting method that spreads out the overall cost of the model airplane. Each week, a new set of parts is released and sold at bookstores across Japan. Each set costs about $15, but sometimes it takes as many as 100 sets to complete an entire model. A very cool hobby, if you have the time and money to make it work.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Eyebrow Cat

It seems that somebody saw the Japanese dog with eyebrows and submitted some photos to the same television show. Here’s a video of the little kitty in action:

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Anti-Japanese hatred grows after “The Cove” is shown in Australia

The Australian media is reporting that there has been an surge of hate directed at Japanese people in Broome Shire, a town that had a sister city agreement with the Taiji, a town in Wakayama prefecture. Anger at Japan forced the town to dissolve its sister city agreement and now graveyards are being targeted:

Councillors of Japanese heritage and others have been verbally attacked in the Western Australian town of Broome, over a dolphin cull which occurs each year in Taiji.

The dolphin slaughter, which is documented in a new movie, “The Cove,” has also led to an attack on an historic Japanese cemetery.

ABC News Australia reported that opponents of the cull hung pictures of dolphins in the cemetery.

The head of the local government has declared that the debate has degenerated into racism and that the people responsible for the graveyard attack were “absolute morons.” Hatred of Japan has also led Broome Shire to cancel part of its annual Japan-themed pearl festival.

It was recently announced that the Tokyo International Film Festival will not screen “The Cove.” The creators of the documentary have claimed it is because the film is critical of Japan. There has been no official announcement of the exact reason for the rejection. I wouldn’t be shocked if the film makers intentionally sabotaged their own submission: news about Japanese rejecting their movie is great PR for their film.

My views on “The Cove” have not changed much since I wrote about it back in 2008. I haven’t been able to attend a screening of the film, but every clip I’ve seen and every article I’ve read confirm what I previously thought: this film isn’t going to win Japanese hearts and minds. It might even make matters worse by deepening the sense that Japan is under siege by cultural imperialists who feel they have the right to dictate the morality of eating certain types of animals.

After hearing about the anti-Japanese hate going in Australia, I searched twitter for comments about the Taiji dolphin hunt. There is a huge volume of “STOP JAPAN FROM KILLING DOLPHINS” comments, and it didn’t take long to find a few that were ridiculous and/or racist:

If you see your friends tweeting stuff like this, please tell them to control their emotions. Don’t let twitter turn into Broome Shire.

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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