Video: Man Cooked Over Fire
“Nanikore” finds an annual event that involves a man who looks like he’s cooking himself over a fire:
This is a Yutate Kagura ritual held every year in the town of Yamaga in Oita Prefecture. Similar rituals exist in other parts of Japan, but usually only involve the splashing of hot water. Yamaga is the only place where one can witness a man climbing into a scalding pot.
The man in the pot is 71-year-old Kenzo Koya. He’s been doing this every year for decades now, and he’s supposedly never suffered any burns in the process. He says that perfect concentration can prevent the body from being injured when undergoing such an ordeal.
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Categories: Odd / Strange
Okinawans Eat Lots of Canned Tuna
“Himitsu no Kenmin Show” shows us that people in Okinawa buy large boxes of canned tuna on a weekly basis, something that people living in other parts of Japan would find very bizarre:
Much like Okinawa’s love of buttered toast with spaghetti, this culinary oddity can trace its origins back to the period when America owned and administered the prefecture (1945 to 1972). American canned food was cheap and plentiful, and islanders incorporated it into all kinds of traditional recipes.
According to Hagoromo Foods, the company that sells Sea Chicken brand tuna, Okinawa has the highest rate of tuna consumption in Japan – 5 times the national average. Okinawa is the only prefecture in Japan in which their tuna is sold at normal super markets by the case.
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Categories: Japanese Food
Japanese Professor Denounces “The Cove”
When Professor Tetsuya Endo of the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido agreed to be interviewed for a “documentary concerning mercury contamination of marine life,” he was expecting that his views would be properly presented alongside other scientific arguments. Instead, he found that he had been tricked into appearing in “The Cove,” an emotional hit piece aimed at portraying Japanese dolphin hunts as barbaric, cruel, and uncivilized. Endo found that his interview was selectively edited to make it look like he supported the animal rights activists’ sensational claims about Japanese authorities “poisoning” citizens by covering-up the truth about the level of mercury in dolphin meat. As one might expect, he is not happy about it:
Endo claimed the director interviewed him without explaining at all about his intention to criticize dolphin hunting based on particular ideas and values.
“The film is extremely subjective and unscientific,” the associate professor stated, adding the director’s act “destroys the credibility of a scientist who is noted for his objectivity.”
In reference to the scene in which Endo was holding in his hand the meat of a dolphin from Taiji, he argued that the director arbitrarily inserted into the scene a caption saying mercury was detected in the meat, even though he was explaining about another dolphin.
The director, who is a photographer and founder of a marine life conservation group, alleges in the film that a large quantity of mercury is contained in dolphin meat.
A brief report about Professor Endo confronting Ric O’Barry and other animal rights activists at a FCCJ press conference can be found here.
Note: Back in May 2010, a study by the National Institute for Minamata Disease found that no residents of Taiji had any mercury-related health problems. Supporters of “The Cove” continue to claim that Taiji is “poisoning” its citizens and the study must have been part of the vast Japanese conspiracy to hide the truth about dangerous dolphin and wheal meat.
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Categories: General Japan
Google Image Search + Projector Screen
A very cool Japanese commercial for Google:
“At Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo we created a 30 second TV commercial for the launch of the new brand campaign ‘more with Google’ in Japan. It features the Image Search functions ‘sort by color’ and ‘similar images’ and shows that you can do more with Google than you imagined.”
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Categories: Technology
Imperial Japanese Navy Christmas Lights
The city of Kure in Hiroshima prefecture is known for having been one of the principal bases of the pre-war Imperial Japanese Navy as well as the home port of the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built. Today, it is still has a naval base and its Battleship Yamato Museum is a major tourist attraction.
Every Christmas season, Kure sets up some awesome X-mas lights that reflect its local history. They include scale models battleship Yamato, the aircraft carrier Akagi, and a Kawanishi N1K fighter plane. Here’s an Asahi Shimbun YouTube video of the illuminations:
A few screen captures:
And a couple more videos:
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Categories: General Japan
Sakura Panda Meets Real Santa
The Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Store apparently sent its Sakura Panda mascot character to Finland so it could meet the “real” Santa Claus:
The purpose of the visit was to get official permission to be a representative of Santa-dom in Japan. To become a real “Panda Claus,” Sakura Panda was told to make friends with Santa’s reindeer. The task was easily accomplished, and the department store and Finland tourism got featured on the TV news.
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Categories: Odd / Strange