Archive for March, 2010

New Hampshire state representative: “two nukes just wasn’t enough”

NH State Rep Nick Levasseur is in trouble after posting the message shown above to his facebook account. Here’s a YouTube video of a news report about how his remarks could be offensive to “the Japanese heritage”:

“Anime is a prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough.”

Levasseur has apparently apologized. It is unclear just how much damage this might do to his political career.

More Reading: The Red Hampshire has been keeping track of the reactions from anime fans on Twitter.

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

Walking with Dinosaurs in Japan

Walking with Dinosaurs will be touring Japan in July and August. To help promote their arena tour, they sent one of their dinosaurs to appear on FTV’s morning “Mezamashi TV” show earlier this week. Watch as announcers react with fear:

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

Duck and Cat dance in celebration of overtime work

Aflac’s newest commercial has their duck and cat mascots showing up at an office to cheer on a young salaryman as he does overtime work:

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

Japanese dog food made by dogs

How Doggy Man dog food is produced:

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

Made in Japan: The Green Exit Sign

Slate has a very cool article up about the story behind the green exit signs used in many non-North American countries:

Many other countries use some version of the ISO standard, a symbol developed the late 1970s by a Japanese designer named Yukio Ota and adopted for international use in 1985. This take on the exit sign goes by the informal name “the running man,” and looks like this:

Fans of Ota’s running man point to two key advantages: It’s a pictogram, and it’s green. The sign’s wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don’t speak the local language. And the green color, they argue, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over. Red, on the other hand, most often means danger, alert, halt, please don’t touch. Why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? International designers tend to think our system is illogical and consider our rejection of the running man to be as dumb as our refusal to adopt that other sensible international norm, the metric system.

Read the full article here.

[via JapanSoc]

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

USNI Guide to HBO’s “The Pacific”

If you’ve been watching HBO’s new miniseries about the Pacific War, you’ll probably enjoy checking out the U.S. Naval Institute’s historical companion to the series: Read it here.

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