A very popular video on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga features clips of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama spliced together to make it look like he is questioning himself over a funding scandal:

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An interesting flashback, brought to you by ABC News and Life Magazine:

An “an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire” had the following to say about Nixon’s bow:
At their 1971 meeting in Alaska, the first visit of a Japanese Emperor to America, President Nixon bowed and referred to Emperor Hirohito and his wife repeatedly as [...]

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama made some remarks on Saturday about Japan’s policy towards foreigners who settle and work in Japan:
Japan has some of the world’s strictest controls on immigration, and Hatoyama admitted that he was broaching a “sensitive issue”.
But he said that as well as introducing pro-family policies, Japan should attempt to encourage migrants to [...]

A short clip showing some highlights of what Barack Obama did in Japan yesterday:

In the late morning, President Obama gave a speech at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Beat Takeshi, Jero, the mayor of Nagasaki, the mayor of Obama city, and the families of the Japanese people abducted by North Korea were among the [...]

The DPJ is going through with its plan to prepare a bill that would grant voting rights to non-citizens who have permanent residency. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, a firm supporter of the bill, hopes that it will be submitted to the Diet as early as next year. However, it is possible that opposition [...]

Barack Obama apparently wants to become the first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki while in office, but he’s not quite ready to visit yet:

President Barack Obama says he wants to visit the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime during his presidency, but will not have time when he travels to Japan later [...]

The international media has jumped on a Sankei report about Hatoyama’s dislike of eating whale:
“I hate whale meat,” Hatoyama said during a meeting with his visiting Dutch counterpart Jan Peter Balkenende on Monday at the prime minister’s office, the Sankei Shimbun reported.
The Netherlands is one of several anti-whaling countries that allows the radical environmental group [...]

This week’s South Park episode, “Whale Whores,” is now viewable on SouthParkStudios.com.

Consider the comments section of this post a forum in which to discuss your thoughts of the episode.

Note: If you absolutely cannot stand the show, just skip the video to 20:55 for the last scene and listen to what Stan’s dad [...]

Photo: Yukio Hatoyama met former comfort women when he was an opposition lawmaker
The Associated Press has an article up about former Korean comfort women gathering in Tokyo to demand that Prime Minister Hatoyama follow through with statements he once made in support of further apologies and compensation:
The women gathered in Tokyo to pressure Prime [...]

The LDP’s leader has borrowed a page from Taro Aso’s play book and compared the DPJ to Nazis:
“I got the impression that the atmosphere in parliament was similar to the Hitler Youth agreeing to Hitler’s speech,” Liberal Democratic Party leader Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s first policy speech since his [...]

“The Cove” got its first screening in Japan the other day at the Tokyo International Film Festival. How did audiences react?
According to the AP, there were “mixed” reactions from Japanese viewers:
Junko Inoue, a resident of Saitama, north of Tokyo, said she found the final scene, where dozens of dolphins trapped in a hidden cove [...]

The Fuji TV news graphics team gives Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama a cape so he can reveal the results of some approval rating polls:

Their poll shows a 60.9% approval rating for the Hatoyama cabinet, down 7.8% from the last poll. Issue-specific polls give high ratings for the Hatoyama’s personality and the cabinet’s handling of [...]