Archive for November, 2010

Canadian Actor/Stripper Arrested For Marijuana Possession

A Canadian actor named Troy Caspi has been arrested in Japan after police found marijuana in his apartment. Although he only played minor roles in television shows, the story has received some national news attention because he starred in a drama for N-H-K, the public network that strives to maintain a cleaner image than the private Japanese TV channels:

A Canadian actor who appeared in an episode aired last Sunday of Japanese public broadcaster N-H-K’s popular period drama “Ryomaden” was arrested in September for allegedly possessing marijuana at his apartment in Japan, N-H-K and other sources said Wednesday.

The 37-year-old actor, identified by Japanese police as Caspi Troy Alexander, appeared as a supporting cast member by playing a British sailor killed by a samurai warrior with a sword strike in Nagasaki, according to N-H-K, officially known as Japan Broadcasting Corp.

N-H-K said it learned of his arrest and indictment after receiving an e-mail message from a viewer following the episode’s broadcast. The broadcaster will delete his name from the closing credits of the drama when it reruns the episode on Saturday.

A quick Google search found his blog and Myspace pages, which seem to show that he’s landed plenty of roles in Japan as an extra or generic tough-looking white dude. According to his blog, he first came to Japan to work as a male stripper.

Here are two YouTube videos featuring Caspi. The first is him in a short film called “The Wrong Way”:

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100 Yen: A Documentary About Japanese Arcades

This project began in Summer 2010, I (Brad Crawford) flew out to Japan and spent the entire month of July chasing leads and filming all over the country. I went from Tokyo to Osaka, all the way to Fukuoka on my own dime. However, I was unable to complete all the necessary interviews and capture the entire story. This trip allowed me to make certain contacts and discover the overall arc that this film will follow.

What I want to do is go back with a small crew and proper equipment to round-out the documentary with interviews from key subjects such as Daigo Umehara, Satoshi Numata and communicate with the Japanese public about gaming and arcades in general. EVO 2011, the worlds biggest fighting game tournament, is taking place for the first time in Japan in the spring of 2011. Our goal is to attend and film this event as part of the documentary.

We are also looking forward to interviewing more corporate figures including spokes-people from major game companies such as Capcom, Konami and Taito etc…

This coming November 13th, 2010 we will be attending the Canada Cup, Canada’s Newest and most exciting fighting game tournament. Attendees include Justin Wong, Mike Ross, Ryan “Gootecks” Guitierrez and Daigo Umehara making his fist Canadian appearance. Covering this event will create a great compare/contrast point on gaming and its culture differs from one country to the next. We hope to see some additional Japanese players attend this event to get their perspective on the gaming scene in North America.

The filmmakers are independently creating this documentary using financial contributions from internet users. As of the time of this post, they had raised about $2,000 of their $9,000 goal.

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Japanese TV Report About Prop 19

Here’s a short news report from today’s Sukkiri Morning show about California’s Prop marijuana legalization ballot measure (Prop 19). :

The arguments for and against legalization are summed up by bullet points.

Arguments against legalization:

• Using marijuana can lead to the use of other drugs, such as stimulants.
• The legal marijuana could be shipped to other countries.
• The crime rate will increase.

Arguments in favor of legalization:

• The state can raise a lot of money by taxing legal marijuana.
• Law enforcement will no longer need to waste money and resources going after marijuana dealers and users.
• Marijuana has been used for medical purposes, and it is safe.

As the only American in the studio, Professor Robert Campbell of Tokyo University is asked to comment on the story. Despite the fact that he’s spent the last 25 years in Japan, he seems to know a bit about the issue. He correctly points out that “medical” Marijuana has very easy to obtain in California for some time now, noting that there is no evidence supporting the gateway drug theory. Despite having pretty much admitted that the arguments in favor of keeping marijuana illegal are groundless, Campbell says he is opposed to legalization because there’s no need to increase upon the social problems that legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco already cause. He also fears that foreign students in California could end up bringing pot back to their home countries.

Japanese host Terry Ito says he is also against legalization. He wonders how parents would feel if they went home and discovered that their children were smoking legal marijuana. If Prop 19 passed, he predicts that Japanese parents would never allow their kids to study abroad in California. (He makes no mention of how millions of Japanese fathers get drunk on alcohol in front of their children on a regular basis.) He also considers the tax revenue argument to irrelevant, since the California state government shouldn’t have been spending beyond its means in the first place.

The arguments against legalization are presented at face value without acknowledgement that they are bullshit. Even somewhat reasonable commentators like Professor Campbell fail to explain why the criminalization of marijuana makes sense when far more dangerous drugs like alcohol remain legal. I wish I could say that this kind of poor news reporting about the marijuana issue is limited to morning entertainment/news shows, but almost every Japanese TV news report I’ve seen about Prop 19 has gone with a similar style of reporting.

Note: This report aired before it was announced that Prop 19 failed to pass.

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Russian President Visits Disputed Kuril Islands

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the disputed Kuril Islands the other day, prompting Japan to make an official statement of complaint. Al Jazeera, trying its best to add some drama and rage to a pretty undramatic news story, declared that Japanese Prime Minister Kan has “lashed out” at Russia by saying that the situation was “regrettable”:

Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian leader to visit the Kuril Islands on Monday. The islands, which lie north of Japan’s Hokkaido island, have been controlled by Moscow since they were seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II, but Tokyo claims the southernmost four as Japanese territory.

Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime minister, said that Medvedev’s visit to the islands, known in Japan as Kunashiri, was “regrettable”.

“Japan’s stance is that those four northern islands are part of our country’s territory,” he told a parliamentary panel.

Following Medvedev’s controversial visit, Seiji Maehara, the Japanese foreign minister, summoned Russian ambassador Mikhail Bely to register Japan’s protest.

“I told him that it is Russia’s domestic issue. I requested Japan to deal with it cool-headedly and in a balanced manner,” Bely told reporters after meeting with Maehara, Japanese news agency Jiji reported.

Japan’s response has been pretty calm and standard. Japan filed an official diplomatic complaint with the Russian government, and it has temporarily recalled its ambassador to Moscow. There have been no cancellations of cultural exchange programs, no threats of economic embargo, no anti-Russian riots, no late night summonings of the Russian ambassador, and no reported un-invitations issued to Russians attending events in Japan. A meeting between Medvedev and Kan that is scheduled to take place next week in Yokohama will likely go ahead as planned.

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Las Vegas Drive Thru Wedding on Japanese TV

Unfortunately, the American dude who is pretending to be the groom is not very cooperative…

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Dancing Pandas in North Korea

Japanese DPRK Experts seem to agree that the presence of dancing pandas at North Korea’s 2010 Arirang Mass Games is an indication that the Kim dynasty wants to emphasize the importance of its friendly relations with the People’s Republic of China:

Also noticeable was a huge slogan in Chinese that celebrated DPRK-PRC friendship, and a couple giant flags.

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