Archive for October, 2009

Fur coat heist in Japan

A surveillance video shows a thief breaking the window of a store　in Gifu and making off with some fur coats:

The whole incident took less than a minute. The missing coats were valued at around 2 million yen ($22,000).

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Typhoon-damaged apples sold for bargain prices

Mainichi reports that supermarkets across Japan are offering great deals on apples that suffered some damage from last week’s typhoon:

The apples, priced at a mere 15 yen per 100 grams, hail from orchards in Iwate Prefecture, where Typhoon Melor triggered a massive preharvest drop of apples earlier this month.

Though damaged and irregular in size, the apples apparently pleased the palates of urban housewives. “They are juicy and taste like apples that I ate as a child,” said a 67-year-old housewife, who bought two sacks after tasting some at a Daiei outlet in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, on Tuesday.

A TBS News report also covered the cheap apples:

At the end of the clip, we see that a lot of damaged apples are also being made into apple-flavored beer.
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Marutei Tsurunen – a Japanese politician who was born in Finland

Marutei Tsurunen (Martti Turunen), the first foreign-born Japanese of European origin to serve as a member of the Japanese Diet, is up for reelection. During some of the TV coverage of Upper House candidates, Tsurunen made a brief appearance:

Tsurunen, a member of the DPJ, expresses his determination to defeat in LDP.

His 1992 book “I want to be Japanese”
Tsurunen’s official website has an English section, which includes a mission statement and a profile. He’s also selling a DVD in English and several books written in Japanese.

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Nara’s deer lose their antlers

An Asahi Shimbun HD video shows the annual Shika-no-Tsunokiri (Deer antler cutting ceremony) held in Nara:

A 300-year old, annual event at Kasuga Taisha Shrine, “Shika-no-Tsunokiri” or deer antler cutting ceremony is held to prevent deer from hurting people or one another. This ceremony is held at the deer enclosure along the path (Omotesando) of the shrine. A running deer is chased and caught. Sake is given to it to calm it down, and then its antlers are cut off. The removed antler is dedicated to the shrine.

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Century 21 Japan CM

A Japanese commercial for Century 21 real estate [submitted Quill]:

I saw this ad on TV this morning and thought you might want to do a post about it. Century 21 proves that if they can sell to foreigners, they can even sell to cats!

The commercial is aimed at a Japanese audience and presents Century 21 as a company that employs hard-working real estate agents that go through the trouble of learning foreign languages so that they can better serve customers who cannot speak Japanese.

Does this mean that Century 21 doesn’t discriminate against foreigners? Perhaps not when they are selling homes and apartments. However, when it comes to renting apartments, it would seem that Century 21, like many other real estate agencies in Japan, has been known to tell non-Japanese customers that certain apartments do not allow foreign tenants. Although I have not used Century 21, I have met a couple foreign residents of Japan who claim to have encountered housing discrimination from Century 21 agents (who are no doubt acting on behalf of landlords with “no foreigner” policies).

In a comment thread on a previous post about discrimination, Japan Probe reader sublight left the following comment about his frustrating experience with one Century 21 branch in Tokyo:

Century 21, however, gets special mention for their two-hour “we don’t want to help you, but we don’t want to say we don’t want to help you, so we’re going to be as unhelpful as possible until you leave” dance. They were friendly enough when my Japanese wife had called the day before to ask if an apartment was available to see, but the moment they saw me, the smiles dropped (this was at the Ikejiri-Ohashi branch in Tokyo). Suddenly, there was a ‘problem’ with the apartment and they couldn’t show it just yet. While we waited (for over an hour), they didn’t give us any other listings to look at, and instead spent all their time with other couples.

After realizing we weren’t leaving (it had taken us an hour to get there, and we had all day), one agent said, “well, we can show the place, but we can’t go inside.” I said “fine, we’ll look at the outside.” “But it’s raining and we can’t use the office car.” “That’s fine, I have an umbrella. You’ll walk there with us.” So we walked over and stood in the pouring rain staring at the outside wall for about 15 minutes before heading back. When we got back to the realtor’s office, he positioned himself in the doorway and quickly said “well, sorry we couldn’t help you thanks for coming goodbye.”

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Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, a tell-all book by former Yomuiri Shimbun crime reporter Jake Adelstein, is finally out in stores. Reuters has an article up about him:

A 12-year stint covering crime for Japan’s biggest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, brought Adelstein into contact with the seamy side of Tokyo that most Westerners never see, from loan sharking to murders to trafficking in sex workers.

His mission to pull off a scoop about the yakuza turned personal after the disappearance of a prostitute friend who had been trying to help him find out about what he suspected was a human trafficking ring.

Adelstein, who wrote in Japanese, left the newspaper in 2005. In his English-language memoir, “Tokyo Vice,” which will be published in the United States this week, he tells the story of how he got to grips with the unique Japanese way of journalism, becoming such a serious irritant to the yakuza that he faced death threats and was placed under police protection in 2008.

Not being an expert on organized crime in Japan, I cannot speak for the accuracy of what he is writing, but I am always suspicious of authors who hype up their tell-all books by advertising the fact that gangsters are supposedly trying to kill them for knowing too much. That being said, however, I downloaded the Kindle edition of his book yesterday, and what I’ve read so far is pretty interesting and not too outlandish or paranoid. Unlike other authors of English language books about the dark side of Japan, Adelstein at least has a resume that gives him some authority to speak about organized crime.

For more information on Adelstein and his book, check out the following links

• WNYC radio interview about Tokyo Vice
• Japansubculture interview with Jake Adelstein.
• Random House Q&A with the author.
• “Yakuza Wars,” a JapanFocus article by David McNeill & Jake Adelstein

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