Archive for October, 2009

Yamanote Halloween Train 2009 [ハロウィン山の手線ジャック]

October is here again, which means that certain foreigners in Japan are once again planning to board trains on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line and hold a loud drunken party.

This message recently appeared on Gaijinpot forums:

Its time we got this started. Its a Saturday this time around so almost nothing to discuss, but nonetheless:

Date/Time: Sat. October 31, 2009 from 21-ish
Meetup Place: Shinjuku Station, Yamanote platform #15 (towards Ikebukuro)
Train to board: 21:06 soto-mawari (North-bound)

Gather towards the back of the train, by the stairs that come down from the South exit. Train car 9 sounds like a good one to board.

See you all there. And, of course, BYOB.

In previous years, the Yamanote Halloween party has resulted in halted trains, vandalism, and general harassment of Japanese passengers unlucky enough to find themselves in train cars targeted by the party-goers.

According to one Gaijinpot user who has attended past parties in the 1990′s, many participants see the event as a way to “get back” at Japanese people:

I went on the Yamanote line party way back when and while it was a lot of fun, it did get out of control and stopped being a fun event and started being a “pick on unsuspecting Japanese” event. I remember seeing a poor lady trying to get off at her stop unable to get past the large drunken guys who weren`t letting her through. Seeing her face, it really stopped being a “Happy Halloween” for me.

I got off at the next stop, thankfully missing the Japanese police who were waiting at Ikebukuro station for most party goers to get off.

The Halloween train seemed to die out not long after that – only to be revived some years later by people who had probably never been on any of the original trains.

I have ridden the train in costume many times (including face painting) and will be doing so this year too – on my way to other Halloween events. No problems, and a really fun atmosphere.

The Halloween train itself – no way, not any more. What spoiled it for me was the overtly stated attitude of a lot of people that it was a chance to “get back” at Japanese people.

Maybe the “new Halloween train” is different and only fun and lighthearted and not in any way threatening to those just riding the train. If so I wish you luck and hope you have a lot of fun.

As for the argument that drunk salarymen do it and worse…….do you really want to emulate that shit?

Last year’s Halloween Train was a tiny affair. Costumed participants were outnumbered by Japanese police and angry users of 2-channel who had come out to prevent the party from occurring. 2-channelers have already taken notice of the Gainpot announcement, so it is likely police have been warned and will be ready to prevent things from becoming wild.

Death threats have also been posted:

17 ：名無しさん：2009/10/11(日) 17:54:14 ID:6RV62LbS
Gaijin haloweeners:
Now we ceclare we form assassination squad..to kill unscruplous costumed gaijins
who disdainfully ride on our crowded trains and do some absurdity

If you’d like to warn the police in Tokyo about the party or the death threats, please use one of the following numbers:

General Police Contact Number 警視庁　03-3581-4321（代）

Shinjuku Police Station 新宿警察署　03-3346-0110

Shibuya Police Station 渋谷警察署　03-3498-0110（代表）

Shinjuku Station Railway Police 新宿駅お客様相談室(鉄道警察) 03-3356-7505

A disclaimer for readers from 2-channel: 尚、ジャパン・プローブがこの企画の主催者及び後援者とは一切関係がない上、この企画に賛同するような発言も述べていない。この企画の存在をそのまま記載したにすぎないので、ご了承ください

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

Eldery “Jap” beaten to death in Australia

A 23-year-old man in Australia has been arrested for drunkenly beating to death an Asian whom he believed was Japanese:

James Anthony Dean-Willcocks, of Illawong, was yesterday charged with the murder of Magno Alvarado, 67.

Residents of Elouera Rd, Cronulla, told police of being woken about 5.30am on Saturday by a male yelling: “F … off back to Japan”.

[...]

Police will allege Dean-Willcocks was heard yelling “Ya Jap”.

Another described seeing Mr Alvarado tackled, “body-slammed” and punched many times.

One witness told police he yelled at Dean-Willcocks to stop and asked what he was doing.

“Mate, he’s Japanese and he deserves it,” the accused allegedly answered.

It is understood Mr Alvarado was Filipino.

As you might expect, Japanese netizens who read this news did not have very good things to say about Australia. Here are a few translations of 2channel comments that were posted up on Itai News:

What do you expect from a racist country?

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White pigs can’t distinguish between Japanese and Filipinos.

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Those guys really hate Japanese and Chinese, don’t they?

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What a foolish and wild nationality.

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Aust-Korea’s the same as it ever was…
I feel really lucky that I wasn’t born in such a barbaric country.

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A country that saves whales yet beats Filipinos to death.

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How sad.
Well, there are deviants like these no matter what country you’re in.

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Better watch out if you’re going on a trip to Australia.

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It’s because White Australia’s policies are still firmly rooted there, even before all of that whaling stuff. There have been attacks on people of color ever since the old days.

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Is racism really that intense in Australia?
I mean, the aborigines certainly suffer from racism, but…

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Seems like the whales are the smarter ones.

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should stop travel to Aust-Korea!

Note: Aust-Korea is a pejorative slang term used against Australia/Australians. It combines the names of Australia and Korea.

[The Japanese news article translations in this post were provided by myGengo's simple human translation system.]

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

Junichiro Koizumi to star in Ultraman movie

A clip from FTV’s “Mezamashi TV” morning show about former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi doing voice acting for a new Ultraman movie:

Koizumi will play the role of the bearded Ultraman King, who you can see standing to the right of Koizumi in the above photograph. Koizumi says that his family was enthusiastic about the voice acting job, especially his son Shinjiro, who grew up watching the Ultraman series.

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

Hangul is superior to Japanese katakana

Korean students have posted this video on YouTube in which they display how the Korean language outperforms Japanese when it comes to saying “McDonald’s hamburger”:

[via Brian in Jeollanam-do]

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

Will the Amazon Kindle be crippled in Japan?

Wired.com reports that Kindle users outside of the US will only be able to download books over the 3G network and be unable to view blogs or use the experimental web browser. However, this appears not to be true for Japan. According to the Kindle product page for Japan, only “blogs are currently not available for your country.”  For other countries, such as Australia and the UK, “blogs and the experimental web browser are currently not available for your country.”

But there’s a catch.

It appears web browsing will not be free. According to the wireless terms and conditions:

Amazon provides wireless connectivity free of charge to you for certain content shopping and downloading services on your Device. You may be charged a fee for wireless connectivity for your use of other wireless services on your Device, such as Web browsing and downloading of personal files, should you elect to use those services.

The terms and conditions in Japanese (PDF) also indicate this is the case.

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Contributor Bio: Steve has been splitting time between the US and Japan for the past 10 years or so and is now a post doctorate fellow at a large, lumbering University in Tokyo, where he gets paid to play with dirt.

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
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Sniper Prank: your buddies just got murdered!

The TBS hidden camera show “Panic Face King” tricks three comedians into thinking that they are filming a documentary about telephone scammers. Shortly after the interview begins, a gunman attacks, delivering what appear to be horrendous bullet wounds to other people in the room!

Let’s see the hilarious looks on their faces as they contemplate their deaths (First part partially subtitled, the rest is pretty much the same):

This kind of comedy probably wouldn’t work in a country with a lot of gun-related crime . Since firearms-related deaths are so rare in Japan, I am guessing the channel did not receive thousands of complaints about the poor taste of such a prank.
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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)