Archive for December, 2009

Watch Wings of Defeat online

Got some free time today? Why not watch Wings of Defeat, which will be viewable today (December 22nd) on NewDay dot com:

Wings of Defeat brings viewers behind the scenes of World War II’s Pacific theater to reveal the truth about the Kamikaze—the “suicide bombers” of their day. Interviews with surviving kamikaze, rare battle footage and Japanese propaganda reveal a side of WWII never before shown on film. American vets from the greatest generation tell harrowing tales of how they survived attacks. Wings of Defeat shatters the myth of the fanatical kamikaze to reveal a generation of men forced to pay for an empire’s pride with their lives.

Just go to this page and click the watch button under “FREE title of the day” in the bottom right corner.

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Changing ads on a Japanese train

A short clip of Mr. Mori, a 71-year-old employee of Keikyu railways who has the ability to remove and replace advertisements at an impressive speed:

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North Korean school uploads video of protest to YouTube

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a video showing some angry Japanese right wingers protesting against a North Korean school’s unauthorized use of public park land in Kyoto. Those who watch the video may recall that one of the North Korean teachers was carrying a video camera and recording the incident. Well, it now seems that the footage from that camera has made it onto YouTube, with English subtitles provided by a somebody who wants to spread the word about how Japan is racist:

“In Japan, discrimination against the Korean minority who live in Japan since the colonial period is rampant. One can easily find abusive comments on Internet and some go as far as to threaten school children.

Kyoto Korean Primary School 1 does not have a school field and is using a park next to it for sports and assemblies.

The right wing activists accuse the school claimingly on behalf of the neigbourhood and make protests by removing the speaker/platform and giving strong verbal insults.”

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Izumi Mori’s toothpaste

Some folks say that Japanese have got bad teeth, but the huge number of dentist offices and commercials for dental products tends to suggest a lot of people here care about their teeth.

In one such commercial, American-Japanese celebrity Izumi Mori gives Sato’s Access E toothpaste credit for her clean teeth:

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Can tongue surgery improve English-speaking ability?

TV Tokyo’s “Ariehen Sekai” recently aired a segment about a form of tongue surgery that is being offered by some doctors in South Korea because some parents there are convinced that their children cannot properly pronounce English words because their tongues are too short:

Note: This video was removed from YouTube because users flagged it as “inappropriate.” As it didn’t contain anything more graphic that the other video linked in this post, I can only conclude that it was flagged because somebody out there either 1) can’t tell the difference between a tongue and human genitilia or 2) a few Koreans were offended that the existence of this surgery was being shown to the world on YouTube.

The procedure is known as a lingual frenectomy:

The removal of the lingual frenulum under the tongue can be accomplished with either frenectomy or frenuloplasty. This is used to treat a tongue tied patient. Immediately after this minor oral surgery, the tongue can often dramatically extend out of the mouth which it could not do before. This can help reduce breastfeeding complications, help improve speech and promote proper tooth arch development.

The Wikipedia article quoted above contained no source citations for that information. The Korean surgeon interviewed on the Japanese TV show did make a similar claim about the surgical procedure helping children with their pronunciation. An anonymous patient says he got the surgery because he heard it improves one’s kissing ability.

YouTuber ZionKhim has proudly uploaded a video of his child undergoing a lingual frenulum. (Warning: Don’t click the link if you don’t want to see a baby cry as his tongue is cut.)

The Los Angeles Times ran a story about Korean children getting this kind of tongue surgery back in 2002. It states the obvious, in case a few readers have never met some of the Koreans out there who can speak English without having their tongues mutilated [quote via Gusts of Popular Feeling]:

Linguists sneer at the idea that South Koreans’ tongues are too short to speak English properly, pointing to the unaccented speech of hundreds of thousands of Korean Americans.

“O.K., since Westerners are taller they might have longer tongues. But this operation lengthens the tongue by only a millimeter or two and that has nothing to do with it,” said Lee Ho Young, a linguist at Seoul National University.

The real problem for South Koreans, as for Japanese, is that their languages make no distinction between Ls and Rs, so they cannot detect the difference, Lee said.

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Another strange quotation: An 2003 article on the Al-Jazeera English language site contains a quote from a South Korean psychiatrist who claims this surgery is bad because trying to teach young children to learn a second language can apparently cause autism.

Dr Shin Min-sup, a professor at Seoul National University who specialises in issues of adolescent psychiatry, is worried about the trend for surgery and also for pushing young children too hard to learn languages.

“There’s the potential for life-damaging after-effects,” Shin said. “Learning a foreign language too early, in some cases, may not only cause a speech impediment but, in the worst case, make an child autistic.”

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Shibuya gyaru pick the top people of 2010

“Mezamashi TV” morning show conducts a polled Shibuya gyaru to see who they thought would become super popular in 2010. Here are the results:

Top Three Handsome Men

1. Hikiti Takazumi
2. Ayumu Sato
3. Joseph Greenwood [aka "Joy"]

All three of these men are models for Men’s Egg.

Top Recording Artists

1. Kana Nishino
2. Juliet – 3 gyaru group
3. Miliyah Kato

Top Politicians

1. Ren Ho – of budget panel fame
2. Shinichiro Koizumi – son of the former PM
3. Kunio Hatoyama – brother of the current PM

Fashion Leaders

1. Hiromi Hosoi (Rohimi) – model for Egg
2. Aya Suzuki & Nicole Abe – models for Ranzuki
3. Maiko Takahashi – model for Jelly

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