Categories: Animal Videos
With snacks like “Takoyaki yasan” for example, we can even enjoy the process of making it.
I remember “Nerunerunerune” as similar kind when I was a kid, but to be honest I felt it was sick and gross. Even though I was a kid, I felt something artificial about a snack like that. It was a lot healthier and better to help with my mom’s cooking if I wanted to experience the process of making foods.
Salty snacks mixed with sweet taste or the vice versa just like “ramen candy” or “takoyaki caramel” may sound funny and interesting enough to bring back as a souvenir but I wonder if they taste any good.
Categories: Japanese Food
At the Koishikawa Botanical Gardens — managed by the University of Tokyo — the titan arum bloomed for the first time in 1991. The plant that flowered just recently was grown from a seed given by an American researcher in 1993.
On the afternoon of July 22, the leaves surrounding the 1.5-meter-tall stem began to open. The plant reached “full bloom” at around 7 p.m. the same day, with a diameter of about 80 centimeters.
The distinctive feature of the titan arum is its strong smell reminiscent of rotten meat, which the plant gives off to attract insects for pollination.
Categories: Odd / Strange
Categories: Technology
The globalization of crime “could very well cause a tectonic shift in the public order of our nation,” the report declares. “From this point on, law enforcers are required to respond to the situation in an appropriate manner.”
Previously, crimes perpetrated by foreigners tended to be of the “hit and run” variety, committed during short-term stays in Japan and followed with the criminal fleeing the country. However, in recent years, cases of global foreign criminal organizations targeting Japan, and the formation of criminal groups in Japan made up of foreigners from many countries, have been conspicuous — a trend dubbed “the globalization of crime.”
As an example, the report cites a 2007 tear gas spray attack on a jewelry store clerk and theft of a 280 million yen tiara from the shop in Tokyo’s Ginza area by a Montenegrin group called the “Pink Panther” gang. It also details a 2006-2009 scam by a primarily Nigerian group that used fake credit cards to buy electronics from volume dealers, which they then sold to used electronics shops. Another example is a Pakistani, Cameroonian, Sri Lankan and Japanese group which stole heavy construction equipment in some 500 cases from 2002 to 2008, dismantled them and exported the parts.
The news reports don’t seem to be mentioning an overall increase in the number or rate of crimes committed by foreigners, so it might be safe to assume that foreign crime actually decreased over the last year. (The number of foreign residents and foreign tourists coming to Japan has also been decreasing.)
Categories: Foreigners in Japan
Categories: Animal Videos
A little over 10% of the inmates in Kurobane prison are over the age of 60. The majority of these prisoners are doing time for crimes like theft and fraud, and it is said that quite a few of them committed petty crimes like shoplifting.
Some of the inmates cannot bathe, walk or eat without assistance. One particular prisoner seems to have mental problems that make him scream and resist help from others. The men in white coats who act as their daytime caregivers are not prison employees – they are younger inmates who have been assigned to such work. At night, their care becomes the duty of prison guards.
A prison official says that the current system, which requires that elderly prisoners be kept in normal prisons, needs serious improvement. A lot of prison facilities are not designed for elderly or physically infirm people, and the younger prisoners who act as caregivers do not have any professional qualifications to perform such work.
There is one prison in Japan that has special facilities for the elderly: Onomichi prison in Hiroshima prefecture. From the 6 minute and 30 second mark in the video, they show how staircases, baths, and other parts of the prison are set up to make life easier for older inmates. There are cells with cushioned walls for violent inmates. There are diapers and cells with rubber flooring for inmates who have bladder control issues. Food is also cut into tiny pieces so that inmates do not have to chew it.
The sight of one prisoner, a man in his eighties who was locked up for causing a traffic accident, is particularly depressing. He appears to be suffering from dementia to such an extent that he cannot even remember his cell number. Guards need to re-instruct him every day on how to carry out simple tasks. When everyone is locked into their cells for the night, the man falls asleep in a sitting position before he has a chance to set up his futon.
Categories: General Japan
The small screens on the trains are good to read when the trains are too crowded to allow any extra space even for a book or a cell phone. But I never found them interesting. It’s only better than nothing. I think there are too many texts, signs, letters, and manga everywhere in Japan.
Our education is weighed more towards memorizing than thinking. It’s not a big surprise to see how many Japanese people can answer trivia knowledge questions like that.
Categories: General Japan
…thanks to the Bowling Proprietor’s Association of Japan’s 16-foot-long bowling lane, balls and pins – all made of ice and set up in the middle of the business district of Shimbashi.
Amused tourists, ranging from small children all the way up to 72-year-olds gave this glacial game their best shot.
Categories: Odd / Strange
The parents of the student who killed himself, meanwhile, are angry. “This kind of teaching is a problem,” they have said.
The testimony of several current and former students led to the discovery. According to the students, since at least 2007, the teacher has used the drawings on the blackboard, adding a line and circle to the picture every time a student can’t answer a question or answers a question incorrectly, gradually forming a complete picture that resembles a person who has been hung.
According to the parents of the third-year junior high student who hung himself on school grounds in November 2008, in his school notes there were also pictures that looked like hanging victims. At the wake for their son, the parents showed the picture they had found to their son’s friend, who told them that it resembled pictures drawn by the English teacher in class, the parents say.
One graduate of the school said, “I considered it a part of a game, a harmless black joke. But, now, thinking about the fact that someone killed themselves, I don’t think it was a good idea.”
Another student said, “It was also going on in 2009 (after the suicide).”
[...]
According to Professor Kazumi Fujimori of Musashino University, a clinical psychologist and author of the book “Gakko Trauma to Kodomo no Kokoro no Care” (School trauma and care for the minds of children), the use of the pictures could almost be considered a form of “power harassment,” when a person abuses their position of authority to harass others in the workplace.
There is evidence that the student mentioned in school that he had been browsing suicide websites, but most of the focus seems to be on the terrible foreigner who drove the child to suicide with “power harassment.” A Yomiuri article states that the parents are suing the school and demanding a considerable about of money.
Hangman is a game in which the objective is to save someone from execution. It is widely used at schools in the United States, where nobody associates it with suicide or harassment. Nevertheless, using the hangman game in class after the suicide was probably not a good idea, assuming that the foreign English teacher even knew about the suicide. In most cases, a Japanese teacher would have to approve lesson plans before use, so it’s hard to imagine why the hangman game continued after the suicide. A lot of ALT’s are told practically nothing about what goes on outside of their English class, and ALT’s who aren’t fluent in Japanese often work inside a virtual bubble, relying on Japanese English teachers for most of their information about conditions at schools. Also, given the high turnover rate for ALT work, it’s quite likely that the English teachers who used the hangman game after 2008 were not even teachers at the school at the time of the suicide.
Categories: Foreigners in Japan, Teaching English
Categories: Foreigners in Japan
Categories: Politics
Ueno Zoo Will Get New Pandas (And Pay China Millions)
Foreign Nurses & Japan’s Immigration Policy
Badass Japanese Hermit
World’s Smallest Piano & World’s Smallest Drum Kit
Nagasaki Archive: Google Earth + A-bomb Information
Shimbashi Station Gets Whisky Highball Melody
Water Bottle Rocketeer
U.S. / British / French Governments Sending Representatives to Hiroshima Ceremony
Ringing a Giant Temple Bell
Nicolas Cage vs. Japanese Magician Kids
Video: Baby Monkey Plays With Tiger Cubs
72-year-old Resident Evil Badass Shiro SuzukiJapan Probe: The web's no. 1 source for Japan-related news and entertainment.