Archive for August, 2010

Japanese Cops Arrest Man Who Peed Inside Gaijin Bar

Some Japanese journalists embed with the cops manning a police box in the busy Sakae area of Nagoya:

In this clip, a man is carried to the police box by some security staff from a nearby bar or club (iD Cafe?). A foreigner explains in a broken mix of angry English and Japanese that the man urinated inside of his establishment and punched security guards who tried to make him leave!

The suspect is very drunk and does not want to cooperate with the police. He claims he has to go outside to make a phone call, but instead tries to run for it. The cops chase him down and carry him back to the police box. He later admitted his guilt.

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

A Sunken Airplane

Every year around this time (Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Surrender anniversaries), Japanese news programs tend to have a lot of war-related news. Here’s a report from a couple days ago about some newly-released footage of a Japanese military plane that lies beneath the water in Lake Towada:

The training plane crashed into the lake during a training mission in 1943. The plane had been carrying 4 young soldiers. Only one of them survived the crash.

The mission had been launched from a nearby airbase. Few traces of it now remain, but until a few decades ago, there were rather large concrete structures remaining in the area. A local man told the reporter that the base had been used to train suicide pilots during the final days of the war.

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

Chimp Eats Watermelon

Just a 15-second clip of a chimpanzee eating a watermelon:

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

North Korea Wants an Apology

The North Korean government is angry that Japan’s latest apology for colonialism seemed to have only been directed at South Korea. They want Japanese money:

North Korea — which does not have diplomatic relations with Japan — held a meeting Thursday at the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang in an apparent bid to press for compensation from Japan.

Pumping their fists into the air, North Koreans chanted slogans such as “Compensate,” and “Withdraw,” according to footage aired by television news agency APTN.

Hong Song Ok, chairman of the North’s Committee handling the issue of former sex slaves and victims of forced labour, also accused Japan of trying to cover up its past crimes.

“The Japanese government coldly refuses and ignores the demands of our victims until now,” Hong said at the People’s Palace of Culture — where portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his late father Kim Il Sung hang together.

When Japan normalized relations with South Korea in the 1960′s, some millions of dollars in reparations was paid to Seoul. North Korea has yet to receive reparations payments from Japan, and Kim Jong-il would obviously like to receive some money on behalf of the victims of Japanese colonialism.

I’ve read that reparations were almost considered during the Koizumi years, but the emergence of the abduction issue and nuclear weapons program pretty much killed the idea. It would also seem pretty ridiculous to pay the DPRK compensation while it forces its own citizens into labor camps and sexual slavery.

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In other apology news, the South Korean government is under fire because it reported Prime Minister Kan said Japan would “return/restore” [返還] artifacts when the actual Japanese term was something more like “hand over” or “give” [引渡/お渡し ].

Kan pledged his government will “transfer” historical artifacts seized during the colonial period between 1910 and 1945, but the Foreign Ministry quoted Kan as saying it will “return” them, and even highlighted the word in bold in a press release.

Japan’s position so far has been that all claims for restitution were settled under the Korea-Japan Normalization Treaty in 1965. The word “return” would imply that Tokyo now recognizes the illegality of taking the treasures and could open the way for a massive repatriation of looted artifacts. But Japan avoided the delicate issue with the word “transfer.”

Any readers who know more details about how the particular historical artifacts in question (royal texts from the Chosun Dynasty?) found their way to Japan?

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

Eel Restaurant + Americans

A Japanese news program visits the Shinozaki Unagi restaurant in the Hachioji area of Tokyo, where the chef is married to an American woman:

The wife, Chris, came to Japan in the 1990′s, first as a student at Sophia University and then as an English teacher. In 1996 Chris met Kenji, the future head chef of his family’s eel restaurant, and they soon married. She’s been working at the restaurant for 11 years now, working the customer service side of the business with her mother-in-law while her husband does most of the cooking. At the restaurant, everyone speaks Japanese, but at home they speak English. (The narrator makes lots of comments about how lots of stuff, such as the food they eat at home, is like a mix of Japan and America).

The second 10 minutes of the report centers around the visit of family from America. It is their first time ever to be in Japan, and their visit happens to fall right on “Doyo ushi no hi” – the day of the year when it is customary for people to eat eel. Chris’ sister is “afraid of snakes”, so she kind of freaks out when she visits the restaurant and sees some live eels. When Kenji prepares an expensive eel dish for them, they refuse to eat it because it grosses them out.

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

Jaden Smith & Jackie Chan in Japan

Jaden Smith, Will Smith, and Jackie Chan promote the Japan release of the re-make of the “Karate Kid” (called “Best Kid” in Japan):

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