Archive for November, 2011

Toy Poodles as Police Dogs

If you’re a regular reader of this site, you may remember that there are Chihuahuas and Miniature Schnauzers that have become police dogs in Japan. Here are a couple toy poodles to add to the cute police dog club:

Fuga, two, and Karin, one, passed the police canine test in July and would be put to work finding missing hikers in the mountainous region (of Tottori).

The female toy poodles, one of which is gray and the other brown, also would take part in criminal manhunts, the report said.

Police in Tottori prefecture rarely make use of dogs, so they don’t maintain a full-time K9 unit. Instead, they accept volunteers from private homes. The poodles will live with their masters, and if needed, the police will be able to call them into service.

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Thermae Romae: Live-Action Movie

Here’s the teaser for the upcoming live-action adaptation of the popular Japanese comic series Thermae Romae:

The story is a comedy about Lucius, an architect of public bath houses in ancient Rome. During the manga, he time-travels to various modern-day baths in Japan. Through manga and essay passages, the author explores the two cultures in the world “that have loved baths the most: the Japanese and the Romans”.

There aren’t any well-known Italian actors who speaks fluent Japanese, so it looks like Fuji TV decided to select Hiroshi Abe for the role of Lucius. He sort of looks Italian…maybe? The movie probably isn’t meant to be taken very seriously, so I doubt many people will care that they’ve cast a Japanese guy as an ancient Roman.

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Tokyo Police Raid Popular Roppongi Nightclubs (Gaspanic Bar & Club 99)

Police have raided Club 99 and Gaspanic Bar, two popular and infamous establishments in the Roppongi area of Tokyo:

It seems that the owners were operating their nightclubs without a license to stay open late a night.

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Japan’s #1 Mascots: Kumamon, Bary-san, and Nishiko-kun

Over the weekend, the 2011 National Yuru-chara Summit was held in Saitama prefecture. Over 300 regional mascot characters attended the event, and about 135,000 people came to see them. On the final day of the summit, they announced this year’s top mascot character (based on the results of an online poll):

The winner was Kumamon (287,315 votes), a bear who represents Kumamoto prefecture:

The runner-up was Bary-san (245,238 votes), a chicken representing the city of Imabari (Ehime). Third place went to Nishiko-kun (174, 079 votes), the bizarre mascot of Nishikokubunji (Tokyo).

The real surprise was the Nishiko-kun. Until very recently, he was completely unknown, but enthusiastic support from netizens propelled him into the national spotlight:

On November 15th, Nishiko-kun was in 84th place in the poll. After receiving attention from sites such as 2channel, he suddenly received tens of thousands of votes and jumped up to first place on November 20th. Apparently some people may have set up automated voting tools, so thousands of the votes were thrown out, sending Nishiko-kun back down to 10th place. Despite this setback, he able to get many more votes and finished in third place.

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Chinese Cyberattacks Threaten Japanese Industry

Earlier this year, Japanese police investigating a cyberattack on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries determined that there was a very high likelihood that the attack originated in China. The Japanese government asked the Chinese government to investigate, but as the Japan Times has reported, the Chinese government doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it:

China said in its reply it would contact the relevant authorities, but there has been little progress since, leaving the investigation at a standstill, they said.

After its own investigation, Mitsubishi Heavy said viruses had infected its in-house servers and computers in mid-August but there was no sign important defense-related data was taken.

NPR ran a story yesterday about how the same kind of thing has been happening in America. The U.S. authorities have privately complained to China, but they’ve also seen no significant action to stop the cyberattacks. This kind of industrial espionage is costing the American economy billions of dollars:

Rep. Mike Rogers has actually spoken with executives from some of the American businesses hit by cyberattacks, and he says stolen intellectual property from just one hi-tech company cost them billions of dollars in research and revenue as well as thousands of U.S. jobs.

“Those are 10,000 jobs that would be in this economy, that would employ Americans, that are gone because of Chinese economic espionage,” he says.

New estimates put losses from intellectual property espionage at about a trillion dollars a year, Rogers says. And he says U.S. companies that deal in intellectual property fall into two camps: those that know they’ve been hacked and those that don’t know.

“There really is no other exception than that,” he says.

And if that’s the case in America, you can be assured that the same thing has happened in Japan. The attack on Mitsubishi is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

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Japanese Imperial Family Tree & Order of Succession

A chart from the Daily Yomiuri shows Japan’s royal family and the candidates for Imperial succession:

The current rules say that only a male can succeed to the throne. However, that only applies to the male children of Imperial princes. When princesses get married and have children, their families are not considered branches of the Imperial family. The rules have resulted in a shrinking list of candidates who can become Emperor in the future, and most of the potential heirs are quite old. Only one, Prince Hisahito, is under the age of 45.

To solve this crisis, some are suggesting a change in the rules that would give Imperial status to the children of princesses:

The Imperial family currently comprises the Emperor and 22 other members, with four of the seven male members in their 60s or older.

There are eight unmarried females in the Imperial family, including three granddaughters of the Emperor: Princess Aiko, 9, the only child of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako; and Princesses Mako, 20, and Kako, 16, two of the three children of Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko.

The five other unmarried female members are all granddaughters of Prince Mikasa, brother of Emperor Showa. The eldest is 29-year-old Princess Akiko.

According to the sources, the Imperial Household Agency is concerned it will become more and more difficult for the Imperial family to perform its duties as the number of members decreases due to females marrying outside the family and losing their royal status.

Shingo Haketa, grand steward of the agency, visited Noda at the Prime Minister’s Office on Oct. 5, and told him it was a matter of urgency to enable female members of the Imperial family to create family branches, the sources said.

Other officials of the agency have delivered similar communications to senior government officials, the sources said.

According to the sources, agency officials said creating a system to maintain the stability of Imperial succession is a mid- to long-term concern, considering Prince Hisahito, 5–son of Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko–is at present the only grandson of the Emperor eligible to assume the throne.

Allowing females to create family branches would also pave the way for a female to assume the throne if there is no male heir.

The Yomiuri seems to have fully endorsed the plan.

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