This is our last post for the year 2005.
Thanks to all of you who dropped in and visited us during the year, and we sincerely hope that you keep on coming in 2006, the Year of the Dog.
See you next year!
JP and the the rest of the JAPUNDIT Gang
Atika Shubert is a familiar name of most viewers of CNN International, since she is based in Tokyo and reports regulary on Japanese politics, trends, fashion and pop music.
Of Indonesian heritage, Shubert went to Tufts University in Boston, where she majored in economics, and in Tokyo, she is responsible for CNN’s coverage of of all aspects of Japanese life.
She aint bad looking either!
Japanese machinery manufacturer Kubota Corporation has apologized to people living near one of the firm’s asbestos factories for the physical ailments they are suffering.
Kubota President Daisuke Hatakake told the residents that he feels a “moral responsibility” for their problems, but stopped short of acknowledging a cause-and-effect relationship between the company’ product and their ailments.
At Sunday’s meeting, Hatakake was quoted as saying it “cannot be denied” that asbestos fibers might have escaped from the factory premises. However, he said the causal relationship between that and mesothelioma has not been fully confirmed.
He bowed in apology anyway, saying: “We did not fully recognize the risks. I feel moral responsibility as an operator (of such a facility),” according to the residents.
Though the company has implemented a compensation plan for people living near the factory, you have to wonder why Japan is acting as if the dangers of asbestos are something that was only recently discovered.
Here’s a good one for the muckamucks who would have everyone believe that there is a one and only “proper” way to eat sushi — chopsticks with a built-in soy sauce well!
No more worrying about whether your tuna should be facing upward or downward when its hits the sauce. Simply select the morsel you want and squeeze a few drops out of the end of your chopstick onto the fish before you pick it up.
And this is not just some gadget being foisted upon an uninformed public by some hairy barbarian, either. These soy sauce dispensing chopsticks are available in Japan on the Japanese Internet shopping site Rakuten.
Via Popgadget>
Many people in Japan swear by the medical benefits bathing in onsen, or hot spring baths. As one family found out recently however, a visit to an onsen in the winter can have fatal consequences.
According to police hydrogen sulfide gas fume being emitted from the ground near a hot spring claimed the lives of four family members in Yuzawa, located in Akita Prefecture.
The police were alerted to the tragedy when they received an emergency call reporting that a group of people had collapsed near a parking lot. Responding, they found Yasushi Matsui along with his wife and two young daughters, all of whom were unconscious. The four were rushed to a hospital but the mother and daughters soon died. The father is still alive, but remains unconscious and in serious condition.
Investigators said an outlet for hydrogen sulfide gas was located near a parking lot in the area. It had been covered with snow, but gas coming out had melted the snow, leaving a hole in the ground about 1.5 meters deep. One of the children reportedly tried to recover a flying disk that had fallen into the hole, and Rie Matsui and the other child had apparently fallen in one after the other while trying to help.
Officials say that sulfurous fumes emitted by hot springs are normally blown away by winds during the summer. In the winter however, escaping gas can collect in holes that form naturally under snow and accumulate to dangerous levels.
Despite their constant criticism of the U.S. for not doing enough to counter global warming, most of the countries of Europe will not attain their greenhouse gas goals under the Kyoto Protocol.
Of 15 countries in Europe signed up to Kyoto, only Britain and Sweden were on target to meet their commitments on reducing harmful gas emissions by 2012, said the IPPR, Britain’s leading progressive think tank.
In contrast, 10 nations — including Ireland, Italy and Spain — would fail to do so unless they took urgent action, it said.
NHK World recently aired an interview with famed conductor Seiji Ozawa the other day, in honor of the China-born, Japan-raised Bostonian musician’s 70th birthday.
The energy and vitality (and his ability to down umpteen glasses of beer) throughout the hour-long TV interview in a fancy restaurant in Tokyo was amazing. Long live Seiji Ozawa!
A Japanese government employee arrested for attempting to steal women’s underwear hanging outside an apartment in Yokohama has come up with an interesting defense.
“I was just looking at the underwear,” Hidekazu Yoshihara, 41, was quoted as telling investigators.
The accused skivvies snatcher, who works for the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, was overpowered by another man who caught him touching undergarments hanging outside the apartment of a 56-year-old woman
People living in Japan will have a chance to see Seattle Mariners Ichiro Suzuki make his acting debut on a special three-night finael of a popular Fuji TV show called Furuhata Ninzaburo. The three parts are scheduled to air at 9:00 p.m. on January 3, 4, and 5.
On the January 4 installment, Ichiro will play himself in a cameo role as a murderer.
His character will match wits with a master detective played by Masakazu Tamura.
Ichiro is reportedly a big fan of Furuhata Ninzaburo.
I don’t know about anyone else, but doesn’t the woman (Pueng Vongs) who wrote the following come off sounding like she is simply in a bad mood?
Somewhere between the “Empire State Building” and the “Eiffel Tower,” I was stopped twice on a recent afternoon, each time by Anglo-looking men who asked similar questions. They wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing there, how long I was staying. They stared at me like a plump, glistening prime-rib roast centerpiece at a nearby buffet.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about me. I was like all the others milling around, dressed down in a baseball cap and T-shirt, except that I was an Asian woman. When the second guy shoved his business card at me and insisted I call him if I needed anything, I finally got it. I was standing beside a row of newspaper boxes, each window filled with glossy pictures of barely clad women in various “come-hither” expressions. There were several portraits of Asian women, and the ads said they came direct from Korea, Vietnam, China. I stormed off, realizing that these men must have thought I was one of these women.
The problems Vongs talks about in the rest of her piece are issues that definitely need to be dealt with, but her above reaction to men trying to chat her up comes off as bit shrill, don’t you think?
Private zoos in China are offering what is being billed as a “safari experience.”
For five dollars you get to watch a live coｗ, horse, pig, or other animal attacked and devoured by a pack of lions or tigers.
The zoo bills the event as similar to what one would see in the wild, and is allowed to stage them because China has few laws governing how zoos are run or who runs them. The shows are wildly popular, and often the sole reason patrons visit the facilities. The number of such zoos has grown steadily.
The predators are often underfed between shows and kept under harsh conditions designed to keep them mean.
China does not have laws governing animal welfare.
It had to happen.
Everyone and their sister, it seems, is hopping on the “Geisha” movie bandwagon, and here comes a Korean American in Los Angeles with an “as yet-to-be-published book, titled American Geisha, which, the PR material explains, “adapts the Asian Geisha experience to the single American woman who needs some help attracting and marrying what the author calls her “Good Man”.
Thank you, Grasshopper.
South Korean prosecutors have announced that they will start sending out notices about fines, penalties, and even indictments by cell phone text messages instead of printed legal documents.
“Most people in South Korea have mobile phones and since the notices don’t reach them immediately by regular mail, this is a more definite way for the individuals to know they have received a legal notice,” Lee said.
The indictments by text messages are not intended to take people by surprise. “People will receive a text message of a legal notice only after they apply for the service,” he said.
Some 75 percent of people in South Korea carry mobile phones.
Rebel Taira-no-Masakado sought the divine Throne
Still even with the gods and powerful ministers on the Emperor’s side this did not stop certain aspiring usurpers. In the mid-10th Century, the Imperial Court faced its gravest threat from a distant cousin several times removed known as Taira-no-Masakado. Masakado rebelled against the court and went so far as to name himself Emperor issuing decrees and appointing governing officials in the Eastern provinces. He was eventually killed in battle but supposedly his spirit is still a force to reckon with.
According to legend his head not being content to remain on display in Kyoto, flew off on its own accord. A priest in Nagoya shot the flying head down which came to land in the eastern part of Tokyo. His head was buried and a small shrine was erected. This tiny shrine still stands in the shadows of huge office buildings. Supposedly those who have tried to remove the shrine in the past have met with unfortunate fates.
All text and photos ©2005 D.Weber
With a long and turbulent history, only since 1948 has the Emperor made public appearances
Japanese Emperor Akihito celebrated his 72nd birthday Dec. 23. The emperor’s birthday is a national holiday in Japan. On this day, the emperor greets assembled visitors in an area of the Hirohito (posthumously named Showa) on his birthday. In 1950, Emperor Hirohito began making public appearances every birthday.
Emperor Akihito, son of the controversial Hirohito, has “ruled” since 1989. Unlike previous emperors, he was sent to school with commoners. He shocked Japan and his mother by marrying a woman who was not an aristocrat, and later in defiance of tradition, chose to raise his children at home rather than send them to be cared for by others.
