Archive for July, 2011

Taiwanese Ultranationalist Tries to Visit Senkaku Islands

A Taiwanese ultranationalist tried to take a small fishing boat to the Senkaku islands yesterday, but was forced to turn back after encountering patrol boats:

The boat, escorted by two Taiwanese patrol vessels, turned around after a brief standoff with the Japanese side and was expected to return to a port in northern Taiwan around midnight, the coastguard and local media said.

It was the latest of a number of incidents in recent years involving a standoff between Japanese patrol craft and Taiwanese activists trying to sail to the disputed area to press Taipei’s claim.

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31.2% of Japanese Households Are Single-member Households

Newly released census data shows that almost a third of households in Japan consist of just one person:

The share of single-member households came to 31.2 percent as of last October as their number increased some 10 percent from the previous census in 2005 to 15,885,000.

The number of couple-and-child households, which had been the most dominant household category until the previous census, fell slightly to 14,588,000, accounting for 28.7 percent of the total.

The total number of households surpassed 50 million for the first time since Japan’s population census began in 1920 due to an increase in smaller households. The average number of persons per household declined to a record low of 2.46.

Related link: The Nikkei tells us that the aging of Japan’s population has stretched its social security system to the breaking point.

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Robot Dental Patient / Love Doll

Researchers at Showa University have modified a love doll to create a realistic robot patient that will help train dentists:

The main features of the new robot are a silicone skin and mouth lining by Orient Industry, a maker of love dolls. The tongue and arms each have two degrees of freedom, and the robot overall has ten, enabling it to make natural movements, like shaking its head and choking.

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Texting in North Korea

An Asahi TV reporter visits North Korea and films some surprising things:

The report mostly focuses on luxuries offered to foreign tourists and the technological and economic development of North Korea. We are shown:

• A facial massage that is popular among Chinese tourists.
• A North Korean waitress texting somebody on her mobile phone. In addition to text messages and photos, her phone can send and receive video calls. There are now 530,000 mobile phones being used in North Korea, enough for about 2% of the country’s population.
• Prepaid foreign currency cash cards can be used at some shops in Pyongyang.
• They visit a huge ostrich farm. Ostriches are being raised as a food source, but their egg shells and skin are also used to make products for export. The farm is a big deal in North Korea, and Kim Jong-il even took Chinese leaders on a special tour of it so he could show off the DPRK’s economic prosperity. (During the early days of the farm project, they thought that osriches needed to wear clothing in winter, but now they realize that the birds have no problem with cold weather.)
• At a new luxury hotel built for Chinese tourists, the employees are kind of shy.
• There is a special train that travels between Beijing and Pyongyang four times a week. The journey takes 26 hours. From the window of the train, one can observe propaganda signs praising Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un.

This news report gives us a picture of the comfortable lives enjoyed by North Korea’s small elite, but it doesn’t mention how the situation faced by the rest of the population. The rich are enjoying mobile phones and cash cards in restaurants full of food, but people in the countryside are on the verge of starvation. According to the AFP, the North Korean government has recently cut rice rations for the poor:

“The lowest I heard was 150 grammes per person per day, and I even heard that in Pyongyang the rations are cut to 200 grammes per person per day.”

Diplomats say the rations have been halved over the past 18 months. One hundred grammes of rice produces about 250-350 calories a day, experts said.

Zellweger said she had seen “a lot more malnourished children” on recent travels around the country.
“You see more people out in the fields and on the hillsides digging roots, cutting grass or herbs. So there are signs that there is going to be a crisis.”

Video footage filmed in secret and recently smuggled out of North Korea shows malnourished soldiers and young children caked in filth begging in markets.

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