Uighurs Hold Protest March in Japan
Japan’s small Uighur community held a protest march yesterday in Tokyo:
“Free Uighurs! We want real freedom!” around 60-70 demonstrators shouted, as they marched from a Tokyo park to mark riots that the Chinese government says killed nearly 200 people after unrest broke out in Xinjiang on July 5.
The marchers carried the large sky-blue flags of East Turkestan, home to Uighurs but crushed by China in 1949. Signs read “We don’t forgive China’s massacre of Uighurs!” and “Stop ethnic assimilation!”
Ilham Mahmut, who heads an association of Uighurs and their supporters in Japan, said many Uighurs were still missing one year after the unrest.
Marches were also held in Europe.
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan
Japanese Bullet Trains in America?
Transportation Minister Seiji Maehara was in Chicago last week to help promote the idea of America using Japanese trains and technology for its high speed rail projects:
The land, infrastructure, transport and tourism minister toured the city’s Union Station, the biggest terminal in Illinois that would serve as a hub for a high-speed rail system the state plans to build over the next few years.
The station is being served by major rail operators including Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corp. (Metra) and the National Railroad Passenger Corp., commonly known as Amtrak.
Metra has purchased about 500 rail cars from Japan’s major manufacturer Nippon Sharyo Ltd.
Maehara has also visited San Francisco in an attempt to help the Japanese bid for a high speed rail connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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Categories: General Japan
Smoking in Japan
A interesting infographic that shows us how Japan is #2 in a world ranking of cigarette consumption, beating out much larger countries such as the United States, Russia, or Indonesia:
However, it will probably drop in the rankings. An editorial in today’s Japan Times notes that anti-smoking campaigns in Japan are gaining ground:
Not so many years ago, smoking was accepted as a matter of course everywhere, even in hospitals. Now Japan has largely become a smoke-free zone. On July 1, Osaka became the 40th of Japan’s 47 prefectures to ban smoking in taxis, and Japan’s universities are increasingly imposing a total ban throughout their campuses. According to the Japanese Association of School Health (Nihon Gakko Hoken Gakkai), as of the next academic year, 151 campuses at 107 universities will have imposed such bans, both to prevent secondhand smoke and to nip the smoking habit in the bud among their students.
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Categories: General Japan
Naoto Kan: The Odd Man Out?
Naoto Kan making his diplomatic debut as Prime Minister at the recent G8 summit held in Canada:
The user who uploaded it did so in an effort to show how the other leaders seem to be getting along well while Kan seems awkward and lost. While most of the leaders take time to have friendly conversations, Kan is on the sidelines. A lot of the other leaders have been in office for a while and have already met each other, whereas Kan is the representative of a country that is consistently failing to produce a leader capable of staying in office for longer than a year.
Japanese news coverage of Kan’s summit trip has been generally positive. Every channel played the clip of him not knowing where to stand for the group photo, but reporters emphasized the friendly pat on the back Obama gave to Kan while directing him to his proper position. They have also pointed out that Kan was able to later able spend a whole 30 minutes talking with the American president. Supposedly, this means that the damage the Hatoyama administration dealt to Japan-America relations is being repaired.
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Categories: Politics
Michael Jackson Returns to Tokyo Disneyland
Michael Jackson’s 3D attraction “Captain EO” has been revived after 14 years, so Disney can profit from the renewed interest people are showing in the dead pop star:
Captain EO was filmed in 1986, under director Francis Ford Coppola and executive producer George Lucas. The attraction originally played in Tokyo Disneyland from March 20, 1987 to September 1, 1996, and reopened after a 14-year hiatus on July 1st. Reports state that beyond the addition of a few special effects, the film is unchanged from its previous run.
Disney describes the short film’s story as, “Captain EO (played by Michael Jackson) and his crew find themselves on a dark planet devoid of color. To bring the color back, Captain EO and his friends use the power of their music and dance to fight against the Supreme Leader and her minions.”
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Categories: Celebrity News
A Cat’s “Summer Cut”
A cat gets a summer hair cut (via Cat Cafe Nekorobi‘s YouTube channel):
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Categories: Animal Videos