Archive for May, 2011

Illustrated Diaries Chronicle 56 Years of Life in Japan

“Nanikore” finds a man in Aomori prefecture who has been keeping illustrated diaries for the last 56 years:

Shouzou Takenami started his diary in 1955, originally focusing much of his attention on the silly antics of his children. He’s kept up the diaries ever since, and now there are so many volumes that he has to store them by the box load.

One can also observe the postwar economic development of Japan in his diaries. For example here is an entry from 1957, showing Takenami and a crowd of people visiting a radio store and watching television for the first time:

And here’s one from 1960, when his house finally got running water:

Takenami also made an entry to mark the day that he was filmed for this TV program:

Takenami was 92-years-old when the camera crew visited his home in 2010. He says that writing daily dairy entries helps keep his mind sharp.

The diaries are beautifully drawn. I hope that Takenami and his family are doing their best to preserve such a treasure. It would be awesome if somebody scanned them and put the diary entries into a website or book…

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Pedestrian Scramble in Asakusa

On May 6th, the crosswalk in front of Asakusa’s famous Kaminarimon was converted into a pedestrian scramble:

The decision was made to increase the safety and convenience of the crossing. The original crosswalks had often been so clogged with tourists that some people would walk across the middle of the street. It also wasn’t rare to see people standing out in the intersection to get the perfect photo of Kaminarimon.

People seem happy about the change, but there is one problem right now: there aren’t many tourists visiting Asakusa. Since the earthquake and tsunami, the number of Japanese and foreign tourists have greatly dropped.

One shopkeepr has a suggestion that might help improve the situation. Why not go a step further than a scramble crossing, and just block off automobile access to the street in front of Kaminarimon?

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Women Accidentally Drank Insecticide

Two elderly women in Saitama prefecture have poisoned themselves after accidentally drinking insecticide:

They accidentally drank the insecticide because it was inside a plastic drink bottle and looked very much like it was tea. Both women had to be taken to the hospital. At the time the report aired, one of the poisoned women had yet to regain consciousness.

On May 13th, the local neighborhood association had distributed small amounts of insecticide to each household in the area, storing the insecticide in plastic drink bottles. The bottle the women drank was a used tea bottle, and nobody had removed the label before filling the bottle with the toxic tea-like substance.

The insecticide came from the Koshigaya city government. The city had specifically warned against dividing the insecticide up into small portions, probably because this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened in Japan.

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Wig Hair Stylist for Anime Cosplayers

FTV visits a hair salon in Akihabara that offers a special “wig cut” for anime and manga cosplayers:

It isn’t very hard to buy colored wigs, but sometimes it can be quite difficult to style a wig so it matches the wild hairstyle of your favorite anime character. Starting for about 5,000 yen, the hair stylists at this shop will help achieve cosplay wig perfection.

They order a wig to match Franky from One Piece. It’s a pretty advanced hair style, so it ends up costing 14,000 yen.

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Edible Udon Dress

Here’s a very interesting art event that took place the other day in Kagawa prefecture:

The dress in the video is made from 30 kilograms of udon (wheat-flour noodles). Visitors to the event were invited to break off pieces of the dress and eat them. Apparently it tasted pretty good.

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Softbank English Class Commercial

For the past few weeks, Softbank has been running a semi-English commercial advertising its mobile phone plans for students:

They are not attempting to speak proper English. If they tried to speak in complete sentences, almost nobody would understand what was being said. Instead, they just shout some simple English words that most Japanese people would understand.

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