Archive for January, 2010

New Year’s Eve in Akihabara – 2009

FTV shows us how some otaku spent the last night of 2009 partying at a maid cafe and an idol stage in Akihabara [beware- this clip contains a lot of sweaty men engaging in crazy dances]:

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

Newspaper deliveryman puts in ads at hyper speed

A Japanese newspaper deliveryman puts advertisement fliers into 150 newspapers in less than 3 minutes (I guess they don’t have a machine that does that for them):

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

Rikaichan for Google Chrome

All of you out there who love the Google Chrome browser should be happy to hear that Rikaichan, the popular Firefox plugin that automatically looks up the reading and meaning of Japanese words, is now available for Chrome:

(Requires the latest Beta version of Chrome)

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

Babies documentary trailer

The trailer for what looks to be a fascinating documentary:

Babies is a documentary film by Thomas Balmes, depicting the early lives of four infants growing up in Mongolia, Namibia, San Francisco and Tokyo, respectively. The film is scheduled to be released in the United States by Focus Features on April 16, 2010.

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Promotion for Japan’s stationmaster cat

Tama the feline stationmaster has received a promotion:

The train operator has promoted 10-year-old female cat Tama, currently a stationmaster of Kishi Station on the Kishikawa Line, to the post of operating officer in recognition of her contribution to expanding the customer base.

This is the first time in the world for a cat to become an executive of a railroad corporation, a company official said. Tama will continue to serve as the stationmaster while assuming the new role.

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Sea Shepherd’s high-tech speedboat heavily damaged after collision with Japanese whaling ship

Sky News reports on a collision at sea that has pretty much destroyed a speedboat owned by radical animal rights group Sea Shepherd:

A high-tech trimaran used by anti-whaling activists to try to halt Japanese hunters in the Antarctic has been sliced in two and is in danger of sinking, say crew-members.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said its powerboat Ady Gil was rammed by a Japanese security vessel.

According to reports, the Shonan Maru 2 also launched projectiles.

Sea Shepherd’s Australian director Jeff Hansen said: “The Shonan Maru 2 had it in its direct line of sight, coming straight for it.

“It came through and took off a section off the fuselage.”

The whalers accused the Ady Gil’s five New Zealand and one Dutch crew of trying to tangle the Shonan Maru’s rudder and propeller with rope.

They also claimed the protesters aimed a “green laser device” at its crew and threw stink bombs at them.

“The Sea Shepherd extremism is becoming more violent. Their actions are nothing but felonious behaviour,” Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research said in a statement.

It appears that no one was seriously injured in the collision. Here are a few videos of how it went down:

The first, taken from the perspective of the Japanese whaling ship, has been cited as evidence that the Sea Shepherd power boat powered up its engines and moved directly into the path of the larger ship. The other clip, filmed from a far away anti-whaling vessel, is being used by Sea Shepherd as proof that the Japanese deliberately rammed them.

Being no expert on ships, I can’t really say for certain which vessel did the “ramming” in this case. However, judging from the wake coming from the back of the Ady Gil, it is very hard to believe Sea Shepherd’s claim that the vessel was “motionless” and “dead in the water” at the time of the collision.

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