African/Japanese Group Arrested For Money-laundering
A group of 3 Nigerians, 2 Japanese and one Ghanaian have been arrested for international money-laundering:
The six are suspected of having received funds that were the proceeds of a crime, wired to them from a New York Citibank account in the name of the National Bank of Ethiopia, Japan’s Metropolitan Police Department said.
Police said they had arrested a Nigerian citizen, Nyeche Obeneme, 36, living in Saitama, north of Tokyo, and two other Nigerian men as well as a Ghanaian man, and a Japanese man and woman.
Police suspect the six between them received up to 200 million yen (2.4 million dollars) in October 2008, allowing the money to be wired into their bank accounts in return for commissions.
The money is believed to be part of roughly 33 million dollars that were wired to accounts in seven countries, also including China, South Korea and Australia, Kyodo News reported.
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan
Smile Measurement Technology
A Japanese company called Omron recently developed something it calls “Smile Measurement Software.” The software analyzes an image of a human face and determines whether that face is smiling. An ideal smile would receive a score of 100, while no smile at all would get a score of zero. They have been using the software to visit companies across Japan that want to improve customer service. It’s been especially popular at fast food chains, which always want their employees to provide service with a smile.
Do Japanese people need to improve their smiles? The “Mezamashi TV” morning show recently ran a test of the smile software to see how Japanese smiles measured up against other countries’ smiles:
Here are the results for Japan, Russia, the United States, France, and Thailand:
As you can see, Japan came in last. Thailand, which many people in Japan know as “the land of smiles,” came in first place. The result seemed to confirm the claim that Japanese people need to get some special smile training.
Don’t read too much into the results of this test, folks. It was just for fun. A proper test would have obviously required much larger sample sizes and a balance between the two genders. Also, I think that one French dude must have been paid off by team Thailand, because he totally drove down France’s average with his lame smile…
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan, Technology
Another Monkey in Tokyo?
A couple weeks back, a wild monkey was caught in Tokyo and returned to the mountains. However, a couple days ago, a resident of Tokyo’s Itabashi ward called the police to report that a monkey was climbing around on a nearby house:
The eyewitness was a foreign guy who spoke in English to Japanese reporters. As you can see from the video, he was quite certain that it was a monkey. His sketch does look a lot like a monkey, and hand-like markings left behind on a house seem to support his claim.
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Categories: General Japan
Foreign Tourists Go Without Dinner
A Japanese news program interviews foreign tourists on the streets of Asakusa to see how they’re coping with the Yen’s rise in value:
One guy claims that he’s saving money by not eating dinner. A woman whose business relies on foreign tourists says that there has been a definite decline in the number of European and Asian customers.
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Categories: Foreigners in Japan
The Ainu and the Bear
There’s a very neat article in the Hokkaido Shimbun (Japanese) about a group called Project U-e-peker. The members of the Project have been working hard to translate books so that Ainu culture accessible to an international audience.
Their latest release is “The Ainu and the Bear,” and English translation of a children’s picture book about Iomante. As part of the effort to increase international awareness of the Ainu, 150 copies of the book have been donated to libraries in the United States and Canada.
[Note: At the time of this posting, Amazon.co.jp claimed to only have 2 remaining copies available for order. If you visit the link and it's sold out, try ordering it directly from the publisher.]
[hat tip to 空]
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Categories: Books, Foreigners in Japan
Gunman Attacks Discovery Channel
A gunman has been shot and killed by police after taking hostages at the American headquarters of the Discovery Channel:
A website registered to Lee criticized Discovery and announced plans for the protest in January 2008: “These guys have been very sneaky and deceptive as to their contribution to the planetary problems. Just look at their ‘new’ show about saving the planet, ‘Planet Green,’ to me, it’s just another show about more PRODUCTS to make MONEY, not about actual solutions. We can’t let them get away with doing it anymore.”
Lee is believed to have distributed a manifesto outside the Discovery building several weeks ago that called on the network to “broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet.”
“All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions,” the list of demands read.
“In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”
Discovery owns the Animal Planet network, and most major media outlets feel the need to mention the “Whale Wars” series in their articles, noting that the company had received threats related to the show. One article contained this line:
Sources are saying the suspect is allegedly upset about the documentary called “Whale Wars.”
So far, I haven’t seen any reliable information about the gunman’s views about that TV show [WTOP later edited their article to remove the above-quoted line]. However, his views about the human race being “pollution” and the need to eliminate millions of humans are actually quite similar to those of Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson. Maybe the gunman thought the Sea Shepherd people on “Whale Wars” were not militant enough, or maybe he thought that Discovery was simply not putting enough focus on other issues? I’ll update this post as information becomes available….
Update: Mother Earth Network and AOL News now have articles up that discuss how Lee’s actions can be seen as “eco-terrorism” akin to the actions of Sea Shepherd and the ELF. I have found a few online postings by Lee that hint at his thoughts about whaling:
It’s really not about me. It’s about the pandas, lions, giraffes, dung beetles, worms, cockroaches, mice, eagles, sharks, whales, and don’t forget about the gorillas not to mention the squirrels. Yes, even the numerous squirrels.
The Discovery Channel produces a lot of shows about saving the planet that all have one thing in common: They don’t work. Why don’t they have REAL shows about SAVING THE PLANET? Have you ever noticed the crap they have on their network about just about everything else but that? They glorify fishermen who are overfishing the planet, they glorify Weapons of Mass Destruction. They highlight shows about people who build pollution machines and other environmentally harmful practices. What’s next? Whaling the Planet with Modern Whalers???
Both posts were made in early 2008. “Whale Wars” did not air until later that year.
[hat tip to Brian]
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Categories: General Japan