Archive for April, 2010

TV Reporter Cries Tears of Terror

A Japanese TV reporter who was clearly not prepared for her special assignment at a circus:

—

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

Gabourey Sidibe in Japan

Gabourey Sidibe, the star of “Precious” talks to the Japanese press while promoting the really really late Japan release of the film at an event in Tokyo:

More photos can be found at OK Magazine.

—

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

Drink Tropicana orange juice & enjoy breakfast with foreign men

Tropicana is running this commercial on Japanese TV:

The foreign men are apparently chefs and you can read their special breakfast recipes on this site.

—

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

Enola Gay crew member dies at 87

Morris ‘Dick’ Jeppson has died at age 87. He was a weapon’s specialist on the Enola Gay, and climbed into the bomb bay to arm the atomic bomb before the plane dropped it on Hiroshima in August 1945.

From the LA Times:

Worried about his family’s safety, he remained silent for decades about his role in the attack that killed at least 80,000 people, leveled two-thirds of the Japanese city and ignited controversy for having unleashed atomic power as a weapon.

When the Army Air Forces unit that flew the mission gathered in 1995, Jeppson attended and spoke in public about the bombing for the first time.

“You had a job to do, you just did it,” Jeppson had often said since then.

[...]

“People were looking down and seeing this enormous cloud coming up and the destruction spreading,” Jeppson told Time magazine in 2005. “And that’s the point that it’s somber because you know a lot of people are getting destroyed down there in the city.”

After the 12-plus-hour flight, the plane returned to Tinian Island in the Pacific, where Jeppson was unexpectedly greeted by a good friend who was a Navy lieutenant. They were sharing dinner when a Navy officer asked Jeppson, “What did you do today?” he recounted in Time. “I said, ‘I think we ended the war today.’ “

In 2002, Jeppson earned $167,500 by auctioning off some plugs he used during the bombing mission. The U.S. government tried and failed to block the sale for security reasons.

From the Washington Post:

Mr. Jeppson received the Silver Star and went on to a civilian career in electronics and applied radiation. He maintained that he had no regrets about the bombing. He told reporters that his wife’s car bore a bumper sticker that read “If there hadn’t been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn’t have been a Hiroshima.”

Last year, Jeppson was interviewed by the Mainichi Shimbun and said the following in response to a question about future Americans apologizing for the bombing:

I think that one’s easy to answer. If it’s done once for an apology for something like that, think of all of the other things over history that should be apologized for, applying the same rule. It’s just not necessary. War is war. There was a good reason for it, put it into history books or whatever. But nobody down the road has any right to apologize for something that happened in the past.

This question comes up in the U.S. all the time. … (Like slavery,) it’s history. It’s all laid out. Why should anybody today apologize for anything that happened 150 years ago? It isn’t necessary. It’s giving somebody 150 years later a right to make this apology. No, they don’t have a right to make an apology.

Now only one last crew member of the Enola Gay, Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, remains alive.

—

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

Expensive Japanese Funeral

Did you know that the Japanese spend a lot more money for funerals than any other countries in the world?
Why? That’s because Japanese people are more likely to pay attention to how other people see us. Having a low-cost funeral seems to be disgraceful in the eyes of people such as neighbors, relatives, and colleagues. This way of thinking has raised expenses on funerals in Japan. Japan is facing a super-aging society and many people are unhappy about current way of funerals that need an extreme amount of money.

How much money do we need for a funeral in average? It’s amazingly 2,370,000 yen [over $25,000]!! Compared with other countries, it’s obviously by far the most expensive!

Average cost for a funeral

• USA…650,000 yen
• Korea…370,000 yen
• UK…120,000 yen

Most of us don’t prepare enough for the time we die while we are still alive and healthy. When someone dies, survinvg family members have no knowledge about funerals when consulting with a funeral director. That’s why there’s no room for negotiation, no way to take time to compare with other services, and many of us cannot do anything but to accept whatever the funeral director advises. It has been regarded as taboo to discuss how the person wants his or her funeral while he or she is alive. On the other hand it’s also true that many of us have been wondering how we can cope with when it happens.

Aeon has started a portal site that introduces 400 funeral directors throughout Japan. It enables us to contact each funeral director for quotation and we can compare prices among a number of funeral directors at Kakaku dot com and finally make a reservation at the one we choose from.

In spite of such a high price for a funeral, many people are quite unsatisfied with it, because usually it’s a lot of work holding a ceremony for neighbors, relatives or colleagues and so many people who had some relationship with the deceased. It’s no time for the family to mourn and say good bye to the deceased. Reflecting this, these days funerals conducted only by the family member are getting popular. Around the big cities, 30% people even don’t need a wake and memorial service before cremation. They want direct transfer from house or hospital to crematorium. It’s only 180,000 yen. Those who want to make use of such service are not always the poor. The wealthy such as doctor or attorney also like to use it. In fact, the survey tells that more than half of Japanese people do not really want to have a funeral for ourselves.

Visiting family graves from time to time, year after year, from generation to generation…this can be a burden. Some people prefer ash scattering over the ocean (210,000 yen~).

—
Contributor Bio: Kirin is a Japanese woman spending her life so far somewhere around Tokyo. She now works from home and is also spreading Japanese kawaii culture and etc. through her popular blog, Tokyo Kawaii,etc.
—

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

Flood in Tokyo

FTV news recently shared this terrifying CG footage of what Tokyo would look like if the current measures in place to prevent the flooding of the Arakawa or Sumida Rivers failed:

The video is part of a government report warning that as many as 3,500 people could die in the event of such flooding. Water would also quickly flow into Tokyo’s subway network, putting as many as 97 stations out of commission.

There’s probably not much chance of this doomsday scenario coming true, but by spreading scary reports about thousands of people drowning and subway stations filling with water the government probably hopes people will pay attention and actually try to learn something about disaster preparedness.

—

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