Archive for January, 2011

Japan’s Creepiest Panda

“Nanikore” visits a park playground in Ehime Prefecture to take a look at a really creeping looking panda that makes children cry:

The panda used to look cute, but over the years it got old and its paint started to chip. When it got a new paint job a few years ago, the guy who did the painting wasn’t entirely sure how to paint panda eyes, so he ended up creating the creepiest panda in Japan.

If you’re in Ehime and want to check it out, here’s the location of the park on Google Maps:

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
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An Iranian Izakaya Owner / Painter in Tokyo: Part II

Back in 2008, I posted about a FTV profile of Mansour, an Iranian man who owns and operates an izakaya in the Itabashi area of Tokyo.

Here’s a more recent report from ATV, with Sahel Rosa and Alain visiting Mansour’s business and enjoying some good food:

Mansour is an example of the ideal immigrant to Japan. He’s industrious, hard-working, and integrated into Japanese society. He speaks Japanese fluently. He loves to make bad puns. He has a warm and loving relationship with his wife and children.

Since the basic details of the report are the same as the one from 2008, here is a copy-paste from the old post:

• The focus of the report is Mansour, an Iranian man who owns and operates an izakaya called Kamon (“Come on”) in the Itabashi area of Tokyo. Mansour speaks fluent Japanese and loves to make corny puns while preparing drinks and food for his customers. Every single food item on his menu is an amazingly cheap 399 yen, and the portions are huge. Many of the offerings are typical Japanese dishes, but there is also a special menu section of Persian food. (More details on the izakaya can be found at Daily Portal Z.)
• When they eat at home, Kiyomi cooks the meals for Mansour and their daughters. Since Mansour works at his Izakaya most of the time, the full family is only able to have a meal together once a week.
• Mansour first came to Japan about 20 years ago to study the language. He had a big moustache at the time, so Japanese people would often tell him he looked like Mario. He met Kiyomi while they were both working at an izakaya, and they got married in 1991.
• Back in those days, the Japanese drama Oshin, a story hardworking and impoverished rural Japanese, was popular in Iran. Mansour’s mother would often mail rice, ketchup, and other foods to him, even though he would repeatedly tell her that people in Japan were not as poor as the characters in Oshin.
• To make some extra money to pay for his daughters’ education, Mansour has a part-time job driving a cement truck. He also carefully shops for the best food deals when obtaining supplies for his izakaya.
• While very busy with work, Mansour still manages to devote some time to another activity: painting and sculpting. His oil paintings have been featured in galleries and exhibitions across Japan, and his dream is to one day open his own gallery. Images of many of his works can be found on this website.
• Mansour is well-liked in his community and always participates in local festivals. He is shown dancing and holding his neighborhood’s banner as part of the Itabashi Agricultural Festival. A local woman says that people love to see him carrying the banner. She says she has pretty much forgotten that Mansour isn’t Japanese, and says he’s like a son to her.
• The report ends with Mansour taking his family to the 40th Nitten exhibition at the National Art Center.　　Over 140,000 paintings are submitted each year to the contest, and one of Mansour’s paintings has been chosen to be displayed as one of the 2,000 winning entries. The painting took him about a year to complete, and his wife and children have not yet seen it. Much to the joy of his family, the painting on display is a portrait of his daughters.

This latest report updates us on his artistic achievements. For the forth year in a row, he’s had a winning entry in the Nitten exhibition. As with the previous paintings, it is a portrait of his daughters.

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• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Eating Too Much Fruit Will Change the Color of Your Skin

In Japan, it’s sometimes said that eating too many satsuma (mikan) fruits will turn your skin yellow. “Mezamashi TV” recently decided to test to see if the saying had some truth to it:

They have a man and a woman each eat 10 fruits. At the end of the test, the woman’s skin looks about the same as when she started, but the man’s hand has taken on a sort of yellowish tone (I can’t really see it, but they claim it is). An expert says this is entirely possible, as the fruit contains a lot of beta-cryptoxanthin. If that guy’s hand looks more yellow, it’s probably because the fat cells in his hand are chock full of beta-cryptoxanthin.

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

Japanese Apologies vs. Foreign Apologies

Several weeks back, during the height of the Ebizo scandal, FTV asked a few foreign residents of Japan to comment on Ichikawa Ebizo’s public apology and generalize about the kind of public apologies that usually take place in their home countries:

• A Belgian says that Japanese always do apologies like that, bowing their heads and acting like they’re sorry. She doesn’t really put much value in such apologies. She says that public apologies in “the West” follow a different pattern: whereas Japanese start with the apology, Westerners start with an explanation and end with an apology.
• An American also doesn’t trust those kind of apologies. She says she thinks the Ebizo apology was him saying whatever he needed to say in order to maintain his image.
• Another American says he’s confused about who exactly Ebizo was apologizing to. Offering his opinion on public apologies in America, he says that it’s more often for people to say “no comment” instead of apologizing. Also, if a business apologizes to customers, it is an admission of blame that could have legal consequences.
• A German says that Europeans have too much pride to get down and bow like the Japanese do in their public apologies.
• Tiger Woods’ public apology for his extramarital affairs are shown as an example of how offering too many excuses could cause people in “the West” to not take an apology seriously.
• A South Korean says that his country has public apologies that are similar to those in Japan, but the apologizers are expected to shed tears of regret.

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
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Cat Taxi

If you’re in Wakayama City and call a taxi, you might have a chance of summoning Mr. Hiraga’s catmobile:

Hiraga started his cat collection 12 years ago with a single lucky cat decoration he bought from Kimii-dera temple. He thought the one cat looked kind of lonely, so he soon bought it a friend. His taxi now is filled with 888 lucky cats:

According to the Wakyama Shimpo, those interested in taking a ride in the cat taxi can call up Mr. Hiraga at 090・7965・2135 (assume that he only can speak Japanese, because the article says nothing about foreign languages).

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

Website Tells Foreigners to Learn Japanese

As a follow-up to yesterday’s “In English, Please!” post, Japan Probe reader Phil sent us an e-mail letting us know about the Ibaraki Symphony Orchestra’s method of dealing with visitors to its website who cannot understand Japanese:

This Site is only in Japanese.
Please Study Japanese, if you cannot read them.
Thank You.

How’s that for a polite non-exclusionary message?

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