Dokdo bus in New York City
South Korean nationalists have paid to have a tour bus in New York city decked out with propaganda airing their grievances against Japan:
The full five-meter LED (light-emitting diode) ad, attached to a double-decker that tours around Manhattan, flashes to pedestrians that the proper name of the international sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan is “East Sea” and Dokdo, a set of islets there also belongs to South Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Saturday.
“Do You Know? For the last 2,000 years, the body of water between Korea and Japan has been called the `East Sea.’ And Dokdo located in the East Sea is a part of Korean territory,” the 15-second ad said, displaying a big picture of Dokdo.
More details can be found at Brian in Jeollanam-do.
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Categories: Anti-Japan
Tsuchinoko sighting in Japan
Throughout Japanese history there have been many recorded encounters with tsuchinoko, the snake-like animal shown in the above illustration. However, nobody has been able to actually catch one dead or alive, so it is largely regarded as mythical creature that doesn’t actually exist.
Last week, a man in Sendai caught a creature that looked a lot like a tsuchinoko. TBS news sent a reporter to investigate the alleged tsuchinoko. The video of their report is embedded below.
Bad news for all you cryptozoologists out there: it wasn’t actually a Tsuchinoko.
A scientist consulted by TBS news stated that the creature is actually a type of caterpillar that will eventually become a large moth. The snake-like pattern is probably a defense against predators.
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Thunderbirds Dance
A group of Japanese high school students perform a dance tribute to that the puppet-tastic science fiction series Thunderbirds:
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Categories: General Japan
Dogs walk on their hind legs
TV Tokyo’s “Champions” held a competition to determine what dog is a champion of walking on two feet. Here is a video clip of the dogs in action:
One of the dog kind of hopped, while others genuinely seemed capable of walking on their hind legs without trouble. The winner walked a total of 30.9 meters.
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Categories: Animal Videos
Japanese men sit down to pee
The TV Tokyo program that introduced the foreigner learning traditional Japanese manliness from an ouendan also contained a brief segment on how Japanese men sit down at toilets to urinate instead of peeing from a standing position. In 1999, only 15% of Japanese men claimed they sit down to urinate. By 2007, almost half of the male population were answering that they sit down to pee!
The panelists on the TV show lamented this change as a sign of how manly Japanese men are becoming a rarity. An increased percentage of single men living with their parents and a higher rate of saving income were also cited as examples of increases in unmanliness.
I have posted about this issue in the past, but this video is a bit different. The 2007 FTV program blamed wives for the change, while this TV Tokyo program blamed mothers. Apparently the trauma of being scolded as a child has made many men unable to assume a standing position before toilets.
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Company rushes to produce Yukio Hatoyama merchandise
TBS TV news reports on how a company is rushing to produce merchandise related to Japan’s soon-to-be Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama:
A company that makes novelty tea mugs featuring a timeline of Japanese prime ministers has begun to produce mugs that include Hatoyama. However, since it isn’t 100% clear how long Hatoyama will take to form a cabinet and assume his office, the company is printing leaving the exact date blank and printing that he took office in the month of September.
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Categories: Politics