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!
