Archive for June, 2010

Tommy Lee Jones & Cormorant Fishing

In his latest commercial for Boss Coffee, Tommy Lee Jones goes cormorant fishing and observes the power wives have over their husbands:

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• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
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Al Jazeera: Growing political instability in Japan?

It’s rare for an international news channel to spend a considerable amount of time discussing Japanese politics in English, and even rarer for such a program to be available for free viewing on the internet.

Here’s Al Jazeera English delivering an in-depth report on why Prime Minister Hatoyama resigned and why Japan seems to be politically unstable:

Yukio Hatoyama, the outgoing Japanese prime minister, quit earlier this week amid plummeting popularity ratings after he failed to deliver on a campaign promise to relocate a controversial US military base off the island of Okinawa. He had been in office for barely eight months. Inside Story asks if his resignation reflects a growing political instability in Japan.

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Otaku Politician Throws Cosplay Party

Via ANN, I bring the news of a financial dork who likes anime dorks:

40-year-old economic commentator Takaaki Mitsuhashi campaigned for this summer’s House of Councillors election by hosting a “cosplay party” at the Liberal Democratic Party’s Tokyo headquarters on Saturday. Mitsuhashi previously wrote an economic analysis of the popular online bulletin board system 2channel, and he appeared at the party dressed as the calculating father figure Gendō from Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series. About 200 people participated in the party with Mitsuhashi in cosplay, karaoke, and other activities

You can see him bearded and belting our karaoke in this picture.

And here is some footage of him campaigning in Akihabara, where he speaks of strangely dressed people who’s culture is spreading throughout the world. He’s got a pretty good turn out for a politician on the streets.

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Contributor Bio: Claytonian blogs and vlogs about Japan, language, and news at The Hopeless Romantic. He is totally not nerdy and would never be into something like anime.
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A Visit to the Yasukuni Shrine

The guy who runs JapanVistor.com recently visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and produced a nice quality tour video about the sights and sounds one can experience on a visit to the shrine.

Part I

Part II (includes a brief conversation with a somewhat shy ultranationalist):

In the first video, he mentions meeting an ex-Kamikaze pilot on a previous visit to Yasukuni. You can read the article about that here.

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Greenpeace Battles Against French Tuna Fishermen

Greenpeace activists battled against French fishermen the other day, attempting to free bluefin tuna that were trapped in a fishing net. In the process, one Greenpeace activist was apparently wounded by one of the fishermen’s hooks. Here are a few videos of the clash:

France’s national fisheries body backed the fishermen Saturday, saying they “were attacked by helmeted Greenpeace activists, equipped for and engaged in a violent operation — the destruction of a work tool.”

“After trying to get the species classified as endangered, based on an erroneous reading of the scientific facts regarding the stock of bluefin tuna, now (Greenpeace) assumes the right to attack fishermen out at sea,” it added.

Sathoan’s Wendling said fishermen need protection from Greenpeace.

“We have requested the French state intervene and ensure the security of our sailors,” he said.

Jean-Marie Avallone, owner of the boat involved, accused Greenpeace of acting like “brigands.”

As Greenpeace posted a video of the incident on the Internet, Wendling said Saturday that fishermen feared further action by environmentalist groups competing for publicity and donations.

Greenpeace’s aggressive move had stolen a bit of the spotlight from Sea Shepherd, a radical animal rights group founded by people who thought that Greenpeace’s activism was not violent enough. Sea Shepherd’s main ship arrived in Malta on Saturday, and they will soon be launching an operation nicknamed “Blue Rage.”

Most of the bluefin tuna caught by French fishermen will be exported to Japan. An American-backed proposal to ban international trade in bluefin tuna was soundly defeated in March, after Japan, Canada, and 66 other countries voted against it (European countries with tuna fishing fleets abstained from the vote).

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Baby Foreheads Stamped for Good Luck

A clip from TBS news about a 400-year-old festival in Tochigi prefecture that involves the stamping of babies’ foreheads for good luck:

Examples of Japanese bloggers proudly displaying their stamped babies can be found here and here.

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