Archive for February, 2011

Giant Chocolate Billboards & Musical Advertisements in Japan

FTV shares some new and creative types of Japanese advertisements:

First, we have a gigantic chocolate bar billboard. The billboard is located in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, alongside a Meiji chocolate factory that is visible from passing trains:

Factory operator Meiji Seika Kaisha Ltd. said it has applied with Guinness World Records for the billboard, which measures about 166 meters wide and 28 meters high, to be registered as the world’s biggest advertising board made of plastic.

The billboard consists of 42 plastic blocks that look like chocolate blocks.

It effectively covers the outer wall of the factory, which makes chocolate and other products, with the intention of catching the eye of train passengers on the nearby JR Tokaido and Hankyu Kyoto lines.

The second advertisement shown is a tea ad that uses Yamaha‘s Thin Light Flexible Speaker technology. The surface of the ad is a speaker, emitting slogans and music.

The musical advertisement shown in the report is inside Seibu Ikebukuro station. It is scheduled to stay up until February 17th, so hurry on over there if you want to see it in action!

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Japan Revises Tests to Help Illiterate Nurses

Media outlets in the Philippines are reporting that Japan is going to revise its nursing certification exams to make it easier for foreign nurses to pass:

Since the Japan Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) was implemented in 2009, only one Filipino nurse qualified to work in Japan after going through rigorous application and hiring procedures, an official of the Japanese embassy in Manila said Tuesday.

In the same period, 139 Filipino nurses and 299 caregiver applicants were accepted to train in Japan between 2009 and 2010, according to the Japanese official, who requested anonymity as he was not supposed to talk about the revised exams pending an official statement from his government.

Applicants are given qualification tests after six months of the language course but the Japanese official said Filipino applicants had a difficult time passing the examinations.

For the sake of Filipino applicants, the Japanese diplomat said medical terms in Japanese — like diabetes, cataract, and pulmonary tuberculosis — will be replaced with English words to make it easier during the written tests.

“We are trying to improve the implementation of movement of natural persons particularly in the (context) of licensure examination to make it more passable for foreign applicants including Filipinos,” he said.

If the reports are true, the changes will mean that nurses who cannot read medical terms in Japanese may be able to become certified nurses in Japan and receive work visas.

If hospitals are expecting nurses that are illiterate in the language of this country to do the same work as Japanese nurses, they will need to change over to bilingual paperwork and make sure all their medicine and equipment has bilingual instructions. If that doesn’t happen, one can probably expect the newly certified foreign nurses to be treated as second-class nurses, doing menial tasks while Japanese nurses still do the important work that requires literacy.

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The Great Japanese Condom Heist?

The AFP reports that 700,000 ultrathin Japanese condoms have disappeared under very suspicious circumstances:

Sagami Rubber Industries, Japan’s first condom maker, said last week that the shipment was loaded into a container at its factory in northern Malaysia, but that it was empty with the locks replaced when it arrived in Tokyo.

“We take the matter of the missing condoms very seriously… we are investigating the matter,” a Malaysian police spokesman told AFP.

Sato Koji, manager of the Sagami rubber factory in Malaysia’s Perak state, said they had lodged a police report over the loss of the shipment.

“We are unhappy over the incident. This is the first time such a thing has happened since our Malaysian production started in 1997,” he told AFP.

Officials at Sagami’s head office have said that the prophylactics, which it bills as being 14 percent thinner than conventional ones, are worth 1.5 million dollars at Japanese retail prices.

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Russia Prepares for Japanese Attack

Following some run-of-the-mill protests in front of the Russian Embassy by a handful of Japanese right-wingers the other day, a wonderfully paranoid article appeared in Pravda:

Anti-Russian hysteria continues in Japan. On February 7, Japanese revanchists who gathered at the walls of the Russian Embassy in Tokyo demanded that Russia returns four Kuril Islands, and abused the Russian national flag in the process. The police did not intervene in the proceedings, acting as interested spectators.

Perhaps the far-right were inspired by Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who spoke on the same day with an official address in which he called the recent visit of Dmitry Medvedev to the Southern Kuriles “inexcusable rudeness”.

The next day, February 8, the Russian Embassy received a letter with a bullet and a note from which the Russian diplomats learned that the “northern territories is a Japanese land”.

Moscow’s position boils down to the fact that four Kuril Islands, whose ownership is disputed by the Japanese, belong to Russia as the successor to the USSR following World War II.

So far the battle for the Southern Kurils is diplomatic. But who knows what would the Japanese do when it becomes clear that their diplomatic efforts are futile? The history has precedents where the ownership of certain territories was disputed at a battlefield.

Forget about the fact that right-wingers hate Prime Minister Kan. Obviously they were “inspired” by the empty complaints Kan made towards the Russians.

Let’s move on and find out how Japan is preparing to conquer the Russian-held islands:

Currently there are five Japanese small and medium landing ships, as well as at least eight landing crafts, with which they can land troops in heavy weather and natural conditions. The landing crafts alone can land up to 36 armored vehicles, or more than 4.2 thousand marines at a time. In addition, the Japanese leaders do not rule out future significant increase in the number of amphibious ships and boats.

Furthermore, government officials declare their intention to revive full-fledged Marines, creating “mobile assault units,” designed to capture the coastal strip of the probable enemy.

That is, Japan has been actively building up its strike group designed to conduct amphibious operations. Is Russia ready for the Japanese that once had lost all hope of returning “native Japanese territories,” to take action?

Konstantin Sivkov, senior vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Issues, answered this question for Pravda.ru.

“Of course, when we try to imagine a scenario of conflict with Japan, we should take into account the fact that it is not limited to amphibious operation in the Southern Kuril Islands,” the expert believes. “Japanese revenge-seekers who are raising their head increasingly more must understand that in case of military adventurism on their part they will have to deal with Russia on the vast theater of operations, from Vladivostok to the Kuril chain, and possibly up to Kamchatka. They surpass Russia both at sea and in the air at this point. Although on our side we have strategic aircrafts unavailable in Japan. Thus, our missiles can be guaranteed to hit targets within a radius of 1500-2000 kilometers.

With regard to nuclear weapons, in a conventional conflict, without the use of weapons of mass destruction, we simply will not use it, and we do not hope that it can stop the aggressor.

Until recently there was a rather strong Russian unit in the conflict zone, including an artillery division, designed precisely to reflect a probable enemy assault. However, in 1990, our Kuril group significantly deteriorated in the general context of weakening of Russian defenses. In particular, a significant portion of the park was comprised of obsolete armored vehicles T-55. Or there is something else – while the Japanese are increasing their military preparedness, we are only just beginning to wonder out loud: “Should we send S-300 to the Kuriles? It says a lot.

In case of an attack of a potential enemy, our Kurile unit, including the southern islands, is guaranteed to hold out for a day or two. Maximum – three or four days. During this time we must ensure the delivery of reinforcement, otherwise the outcome of the likely conflict may not be very pleasant.

The Russian government has since announced that it will be beefing up its military presence in the area.

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Tough Guys With a Pet Rooster

“Nanikore” finds two tough biker brothers who are who love their pet rooster:

The tougher-looking older brother loves the rooster the most, even sleeping with it every night!

Also, apparently the rooster’s favorite snack is….fried chicken.

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Flip Fold Review

FTV asks random people to identify the above-pictured product, and then shows its actual purpose:

They ask both Japanese people and foreigners, and very few people answered correctly. It’s actually the Flip Fold (or “Quick Press” in Japanese), a device that makes it easier to neatly fold your clothing.

They ask a Canadian guy to fold clothing by hand and fold it using the Flip Fold, and then stack the clothes to compare the neatness. Here is the result:

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