I know these aren’t the best photos, but I was still figuring out how to use my camera at night (without a tripod). I’m sure the die-hard fans out there will recognize the ad and the location.

The little town of Yokote in Akita province holds the Kamakura matsuri every year to honor the water god and to coincide with the lunar new year.

. . . fill in the blank.

Here’s one from me.

On the shinkansen from Hachinohe to Tokyo, I watched three hearing impaired teens slide into the three seats beside me. After about a half an hour, one of them pulled out two black guns and placed them on his lap.

When I saw the guns, my thought process went something like this.

1. I wonder what kind of portable video game these boys have with them that would allow them to use these guns to play. It must be a game that none of us have heard of in the US yet. I’m really curious about the console.

2. There is no portable video game anywhere in site.

3. I guess that in Japan it is legal to own a toy gun that is black matte and appears to have some weight given the way the boy is holding them and tossing them around. I don’t think you can have those kinds of gun in the US.

4. Those might be real guns.

5. Sh*t.

What would you do?

It’s only been recently that I’ve started to see hearing-impaired kids or adults in wheel-chairs in Japan at all. Until I was an adult, it was as though absolutely everyone was able-bodied and healthy (which I found out wasn’t true when I made a few visits to a mental-health hospital). The last thing I wanted to do was to appear like some bigot and accuse a group of hearing impaired kids of holding guns when they were just playing with toys.

And yet . . . I live in New York which brings with it a certain degree of deep anxiety. So, my mother and I decided to tell someone. The only person we could find — (a bento seller) — thanked us for the information, then said that the conductor of the train was very busy at the moment and that once he was free, she would convey the information. After a half an hour, the boys got off at Sendai. The bento seller never told the conductor.

Consider for a moment that these guns were very likely toys, and that we were simply erring on the side of caution. That’s fine.

But . . . what if?

Yes, I know that Japan is a safe country with an extremely low crime rate. Yes I know that it is very difficult to get your hands on a gun in Japan. But I’m still sort of surprised and fascinated by the fact that the bento seller actually never got the message through to the conductor, and that there wasn’t any sort of process in place for this kind of situation — this despite the removal of garbage cans on Shinkansen trains, and despite the ubiquitous (and I paraphrase): “The Japanese police is now on high alert! If you see anything suspicious, please alert someone immediately!”

Once we finally caught up with the conductor ourselves and told him what had happened, he did explain that there is a policy in place for this kind of situation; he would have looked at the guns, determined if they were toys or not, etc.

Now I am back in the land where, if I see kids pull two black matte heavy looking guns out on a train, I will not wonder if the guns are “toys.” I won’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings. Instead, I know from past experience, that my flight instinct will kick in and I’ll be out of that train car.

Glenn Davis, a former magazine editor at Tokyo Journal, has been appointed an executive producer at JBS, Japan’s first Internet TV station, which starts broadcasting worldwide on March 3.

There will be a press conference in Tokyo that day and a visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, according to media reports.

Among the other shows Davis has planned for JBS, one will feature longtime Tokyo resident Mark Schreiber doing two short weekly segments talking about current Japanese-language magazines and tabloid newspaper stories on a show called Offbeat Japan.

Links coming soon.

Uniforms are a ubiquitous part of the Japanese landscape. The Japanese start early–sometimes as early as kindergarten, and no later than junior high school. They often continue to wear uniforms throughout their working lives, both at white collar and blue collar jobs. Males and females alike wear uniforms at school and at blue collar worksites, but usually only females are required to wear them at white collar establishments (though one could easily make the case that business suits and ties are the equivalent of a uniform for males.)

This has been slowly changing over the years as the Japanese have come to prefer individual expression to their former taste for group solidarity. One small indication was the Fukuoka Bank’s change in policy in 2002 allowing its female employees to choose their own clothing while on the job. They claimed the reason was to present the image of a dynamic company that respected the individuality of its employees. Another unspoken factor may well have been that keeping pace with social trends ensured they could continue to attract a steady stream of job applicants.

The Nishinippon Shimbun (article not online) is reporting today, however, that the bank is reverting to its former policy of requiring uniforms for female employees. It’s not quite as restrictive as it sounds; the ladies will retain a degree of freedom in their clothing choices. In addition to providing the basic uniform in two different colors, the bank also will have three different colors for blouses and two different colors for scarves. The employees will have the freedom to mix and match to suit their taste.

Bank officials cite two reasons for bringing back the uniform requirement. The first is their desire to present a unified organizational image. The second is the concern over an inability to distinguish between employees and customers during robbery attempts.

I don’t think this is a particularly regressive move–it’s impossible for anyone in Japan to reverse the trend toward greater individualism, and everyone knows it. Though I’ve never been to the Fukuoka Bank, I suspect there may be another reason for the uniform requirement—a lack of what the bank may consider minimum standards of presentability and basic clothes sense among young Japanese women. The females working at commercial establishments that in the past would have required uniforms nowadays frequently show up for work in t-shirts and jeans. (So much for individual expression.)

While I don’t think that’s how the women at the Fukuoka Bank dressed for work, it’s conceivable that management may have been dissatisfied with their overall sense of style (or propriety) and wanted to maintain an image less casual and more suitable for a financial institution.

Jim Frederick, a Tokyo-based reporter for TIME magazine, profiled Bathing Ape’s founder and designer Nigo more than a year ago, calling him “Japan’s King of Cool,” noting:

Nigo never set out to become Japan’s hottest fashion designer or an internationally famous arbiter of style, or to show young [Japanese] how to rebel without losing their cool. But the fact that he is now one of the most influential movers and shakers of his generation — given how little attention he paid to cram schools, university examinations and the meticulous career planning that are still adolescent obsessions in Japan — does not strike him as particularly odd, either. In fact, he sees his focus on his passions, rather than on society’s expectations, as the secret of his success. “I never planned too far ahead,” says the 35-year-old, wearing a T shirt and jeans plus two necklaces and a giant watch dripping with hip-hop quantities of bling [not to mention that fact that his now sports two brilliant and colorful rows of diamond-studded teeth]. “I just tried to do what I love and create the things that I wanted to create.

CNN just aired a bilingual interview with Nigo yesterday in his Tokyo office, and I will post the full transcript as soon as it is up on the CNN site.

By the way, I wonder what is Nigo’s full Japanese name?

The Tottori government has submitted a bill to its prefectural assembly that will suspend indefinitely enforcement of a law designed to protect its citizens from racial discrimination and human rights violations.

“We need to make a thorough review as we have failed to obtain support from legal circles, which is essential for its implementation,” Tottori Gov. Yoshihiro Katayama said. “It is better not to set a deadline” for introducing the ordinance, he said.

The assembly approved the ordinance in October, making Tottori the first prefecture to initiate such a measure.

But the Tottori Bar Association has expressed concern about what it calls the arbitrary nature of the ordinance, noting it is left up to authorities to decide whether to reveal the names of rights abusers.

The ordinance was to take effect June 1 and was to run through March 2010. It lists eight types of human rights violations, including racial discrimination, physical abuse, sexual harassment and slander.

Opponents to the original ordinance claimed it was flawed, because it allowed prefectural police and other administrative entities of the prefecture to refuse be investigated.

The following is the cover of pirated DVD purchased in China. Check out the liner notes.

Contributed by Supercoolmanchu