Archive for November, 2009

Jimmy the super gaijin wants a GF

Jimmy, a weird American, appears on a TokyoMX TV program to appeal to all the lady viewers out there who want a “supaa gaijin” boyfriend with “sexy power” [skip 3 minutes and 50 seconds into the clip if you only want to hear his girlfriend recruitment speech]:

Update: Jimmy has left some comments on this post justifying his appearance on a small local channel as a trick meant to ““expose the ridiculous spectacle the Japanese Media is.” The Philly City Paper has a story up about his TV appearance.

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

Investigative report on teen girls giving massages in Yokohama

NTV’s “Bankisha” investigates a massage parlor in Yokohama that pays high school-aged girls to rub their bodies against male customers:

Similar businesses in Nagoya and Hokkaido have been shut down by the police and there are strong suspicions that this place may be breaking the law as well. NTV’s reporters discover that the store pays girls to put on high school uniforms and hand out fliers for the store, some of them advertising massages that look pretty lewd. The girls, some of whom are as young as 16, are paid several thousand yet per hour, far more than they would earn at other part-time jobs.

When they confront the store manager, he refuses to answer their questions and fled. Police in Yokohama are apparently in the process of monitoring the store to determine if illegal activity is taking place.

[Note: The video has received several thousand views on YouTube. It had two comments at the time of this posting, both of them accusing NTV is having faked the news report.]

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

Brad Pitt & Quentin Tarantino meet SMAP

Brad Pitt & Quentin Tarantino appeared on last week’s episode of Bistro SMAP, where they chatted with their pop group hosts and talked about Inglorious Basterds. Here are a few clips, with partial English captions provided by AngelinaJolieVIDEO2:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

[Hat tip to Clay & Stears]

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

Korean enka singer Kim Yon-ja

The Chosun Ilbo reports about Kim Yon-ja, a South Korean who came to Japan in the 1980′s and became a popular enka singer:

Kim topped the Japanese Oricon Chart 15 times. “I got noticed thanks to the uniqueness of Korean voices, which the Japanese don’t have,” she says. Yet it wasn’t easy. She went to Japan all alone at the age of 18 in the late 1970s, but it ended in utter failure. Then she met her lifetime partner, a second-generation Korean-Japanese 18 years her senior who was a member of a famous jazz orchestra. The two married in 1982.

The key to her eventual success in 1988 was the stability and security that her family gave her. “But it was very difficult in the beginning. When I sing overseas, I have to be aware of many things because I’m no longer just the singer Kim Yon-ja, but a ‘Korean’ singer.’”

The article also contains her fond recollections of traveling to North Korea and meeting Kim Jong-il. She apparently could not make a second visit to the DPRK because she was worried about anti-North Korean sentiment in Japan.

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

American sushi expert suggests alternatives to bluefin tuna

Trevor Corson, author of The Story of Sushi, appears on a Japanese TV news program to discuss how people should give up bluefin tuna for less endangered types of fish:

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

Origami Butterfly

NTV’s “Surprise Surprise” had a feature last week about Shigeru Okada, creator of some pretty awesome origami stop motion animations:

The original, as it appeared on YouTube:

And a far cooler origami sumo video:

A whole lot of other animation shorts and “making of” videos can be found on his YouTube channel.

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