Archive for September, 2009

Flower arranging chimpanzee

Ken Shimura and chimpanzee performer Pan-kun join a famous ikebana artist for a lesson in Japanese style flower arrangement:

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

Foreigner makes Japanese mistakes in tea commercial

Reader Miss Igirisu wrote us to make a comment about a commercial for Coca-Cola’s Ayataka tea:

Just saw an advert on Japanese tv for bottled tea- a blonde girl and a Japanese man, the girl says something in Japanese (I think it was ‘ashi’) and he corrects her (‘aji’) and she keeps making mistakes.

Could this be a female Mr James?

In the commercials, which have been airing for months not, accomplished actor Hiroyuki Sanada corrects the woman’s Japanese and then laughs at her cuteness when she makes the mistake again.

I don’t doubt that there are plenty of foreigners out there who speak poor Japanese, but this woman is attempting some pretty advanced sentences. It’s ridiculous to think that the one word she’d screw up would be aji(flavor), a simple word that foreigners tend to learn early in their Japanese studies. Her deafness to the difference between aji and ashi is also perplexing.

Here’s the other commercial in the series, in which she makes the more plausible error of mispronouncing nigori (impurity):

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

Hatoyama on The Daily Show

Skip 4 minutes and 15 seconds into this video clip from September 23rd’s Daily Show to see Jon Stewart make a joke about Hatoyama and Japan’s climate change policies and wacky Japanese robot news:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Cloudy With a Chance of Heat Balls
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

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

Professor Splash sets another world record in Japan

Back in 2007, Darren “Professor Splash” Taylor traveled to Japan to set a world record by jumping from a height of 10.70 meters (35 feet) into 30 centimeters (12 inches) of water into a kiddy pool. He was recently invited back so he could break his old record with a 10.83 meter jump:

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

Yukio Hatoyama speaks English

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama makes his debut at the United Nations, delivering a speech in English:

TV pundits have commented on Hatoyama’s English. I’m told that Dave Spector placed Hatoyama 2nd in his ranking of Japanese Prime Ministers with the best English proficiency (Kiichi Miyazawa was #1).

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

Reporter responds to attack on article about Japanese “rent a friend” agencies

Yesterday, Japan blogger Ampontan wrote a post attacking a Justin McCurry article in The Guardian about Japan’s “booming” rent a friend agencies.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are hundreds of fascinating stories McCurry could file about Japan if he would only bother to look. But hey, why do some real work when you can spitball your way through life?

Most puzzling of all is why McCurry thinks this minor “rent-a-friend” trend in Japan is worth writing about. The journalistic puffery employed to fill column inches is apparent before one is halfway through the piece.

When posts like this pop up on the blogosphere, mainstream journalists rarely respond. This is not one of those cases.

Justin McCurry has left several comments defending his article and answering Ampontan’s attacks. Read their exchange here.

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