Sylvain Bouchard

Daruma doll artisan Chihiro Nakata is shown in this EPA photo with a World Cup 2006 Germany doll at her studio in Takasaki, Japan the other day. Her company has received more than 1,000 requests for World Cup daruma dolls in preparation for the games, which begin on (drum roll) June 9. As everyone in the civilized world knows by now, it is a cool Japanese tradition to paint a black pupil in the left eye of the daruma after making a wish. Once the wish has been fulfilled, the other eye is painted. Politicians love this tradiition, too. [Note: A symbol of good luck and protection in Japan, the large daruma dolls are being sent to Germany to support the Japanese national team in the World Cup.]

PS: For the grammarians out there, should daruma in the plural sense be spelled with an S, as in “three darumas” or should it be “three daruma”?

(credit: EPA photos)

The Guardian newspaper in London is reporting that “Japanese who object to being forced to sing their country’s national anthem have a secret weapon: the English language. Kiss Me, an English parody of the Kimigayo, and that the song has been spread through the Internet and was sung by teachers and pupils at recent school entrance and graduation ceremonies. Can anyone here find a link to the song and post it below? Would love to hear it.

The song, whose composer remains a mystery, takes the syllables of each word of the Japanese original and turns them into phonetically similar English words, allowing non-conformist singers to escape detection. For example, “Kimigayo wa” becomes “Kiss me girl, your old one.” Weeks after a British music producer caused uproar in the USA with a Spanish version of the Star Spangled Banner, the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun, denounced the new song as an attempt to “sabotage” Japan’s traditional anthem. The English lyrics have a serious political twist: they apparently refer to the tens of thousands of Asian ianfu “comfort women” who were forced to service soldiers in Japanese military brothels during the World War II.

In related news, a retired Japanese teacher has been fined for an anthem protest he carried out recently. Quote:

A Japanese court for the first time yesterday punished a teacher for disrespecting the national anthem, which liberals associate with World War II militarism, officials said. Retired instructor Katsuhisa Fujita, 65, was fined ¥200,000 (US$1,800) but escaped prison time for delaying a graduation ceremony when he urged the audience to stay seated during the national anthem.
It is the first known time that a court has punished a teacher over the anthem, although the Tokyo metropolitan education board has disciplined 345 teachers for refusing orders to honor it, a board official said.
Fujita, who had retired before the incident, said he was practicing his right to free speech.

(via wire services)

This photo from a hospital in Shanghai caught my attention today. The two-month old baby boy pictured here was born with three arms, and doctors there are now mulling over what to do in surgery. DNA and chromosomes and all that!

(via photo wire service)

Once again we get a report of how young parents left their infant in a locked vehicle while they played pachinko, only to come back hours later to find the child dead.

This time it happened in Nagoya where an asshat couple left their 2-month-old baby boy in the car for five hours with all the windows shut.

This type of thing happens way too often in Japan and is widely covered in the news. You have to wonder just what it will take before some idiots finally understand that you just do not leave infants unattended in a closed motor vehicle.

If you are living in Japan, be forewarned that your current television may become obsolete in July 2011, just five short years from now.

At that time Japan will discontinue analog television broadcasting, which means that analog television sets will not longer be able to receive any TV show broadcast here without the addition of a special digital tuner.

Despite the fact that this deadline approaching relatively shortly, only about 30% of the people in Japan know about the upcoming changeover from analog to digital broadcasting.

Consumers generally buy new television sets every 10 years. Digital television sets account for only about 10 percent of some 100 million television sets across the country because such TV sets are expensive and public relations activities have been slow.

The Asahi Shimbun recently ran a story reporting that 50 elementary schools in Saitama Prefecture are grading their pupils for “love of the nation.”

In Gyoda city, a model report card prepared by a group of principals includes “love of one’s country” as one of four grade criteria for social studies.

The standard assesses students on their “willingness to study our nation’s history and politics as well as Japan’s role in international society, while trying to love the country and wish for world peace.”

In the last school year, 14 of the city’s 15 schools adopted the standard and awarded children an A, B or C.

But, says one veteran teacher in charge of a sixth-grade class, many teachers in fact ignore the “love of the nation” aspect due to its obscurity.

A similar program was also implemented in Fukuoka City in 2002, but it was discontinued a year later after complaints from Korean residents and lawyers.

Sylvain Bouchard

Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, via Internet, in Osaka, Fall 2005, and love bloomed. Although Dan Feit has gone back to New York, the story still has legs.

Firstly, I should explain that we met via the Internet, specifically the
forums at japan-guide.com. That means that the
Internet has played a crucial role in introducing me to three of the most
significant women that I have known: my first-ever girlfriend, Hyde, and now
Mako. Mako placed an ad in late August and I started visiting that site on
September 5, less than two weeks after I had arrived here in Japan. I first
wrote to her on the 6th and she replied the next day. In our early e-mails,
she described herself thusly: “I’m frank and easy-going. and I don’t worry
about small things.” When I asked her about her hobbies, she told me (in
Japanese): “movies, music, cooking, reading, watching sports, sports,
internet, trying foods at various restaurants, etc.” So far, she seemed to
be right up my alley. The e-mails flew back and forth for about a week when I asked her what she
was doing over the three-day weekend (Sept. 17-19). I told her I had the
whole weekend off and she asked if I wanted to meet her in Kobe on Monday,
warning me that she was busy in the evening but offered to show me around
during the afternoon. I jumped at her offering and quickly agreed. It took a
few days to hammer out the details but we eventually met as planned.

(via Dan Feit blog)

さようなら

Farewell to ubiquitous curry, seafood-flavored chips and alcohol-vending machines.
Farewell to temples, shrines and pachinko.
Farewell to rigorously constructed politeness.
Farewell to Chad, Richard, Megan, Kazu, Maki, Yui, Chiaki, Yusuke and dozens of other people who I spent time with in Japan, some of it was quite fleeting but all of it was memorable.
Farewell to all my professors and even the various administrators at Kansai Gaidai who worked to make this experience possible. I may complain about the rules and the system at times but if it wasn’t for that system I wouldn’t have come here in the first place.
Farewell to Japan and all the people and places I leave behind here. I will come back someday. I doubt Japan will miss me but I will certainly miss Japan while I am gone.
Farewell to Mako. I love you. I promise this is not the end.

Discovered a new Japanese manga publisher online today: Broccoli Books specializes in manga, calendars, illustration books, graphic novels, and more. Acclaimed for its top quality releases and attention to translation, Broccoli Books is known as one of the top manga publishers in the US. Day to day perations are led by Shizuki Yamashita, with Kaname Tezuka serving as president. Did you ever see their books?

Blog

Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe has indicated Yasukuni Shrine visits will continue to be an issue if he succeeds Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who is stepping at the end of this year. Abe said that he would continue to visit Yasukuni if he becomes Prime Minister.

“My view on visits to Yasukuni Shrine is the same as I have explained many times,” Abe said at a regular press conference. “If there is any misunderstanding, it’s important to explain our views sincerely to China and South Korea and try to resolve such misunderstandings.”

A police sergeant in Nara, Japan was arrested for shooting an upskirt video of a young mother as she comforted her son in the back of an ambulance that was transporting the lad to a hospital following an accident.

“He had a palm-sized digital camera and he brazenly filmed from directly in front of the woman,” a prefectural police spokesman says.

Incredibly, even though caught in the act, [the policeman] wasn’t arrested for taking the filthy footage.

“Under the prefectural ordinance outlawing people from creating a public nuisance, the inside of an ambulance isn’t regarded as being ‘in public,’ nor as ‘public transport.’ He couldn’t have been arrested for that,” the police spokesman says.

The cop was arrested, however, after investigators raided his home and found videos of more than 400 women on his computer. Apparently, the lawman had a habit of secretly shooting videos of women during official police investigations. In one video, he had a woman squat down to view damage to her car as he shot up her skirt.

I was excited to find an upscale dog shop in Osaka, complete with doggie yukatas and wa-fu beds. This “model” is showing off his (her?) seasonal garb and a nicely covered dog bed.

Cambodia has banned the introduction of 3G cell phones, which can be used to send still images and movies, upon the order of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

“I have written to the Minister of Telecommunications to delay the use of certain mobile phones,” Hun Sen told an assembly of Buddhist monks in Phnom Penh on Friday. “We can wait 10 more years until we have managed to improve morality in society.”

“You’re looking for the samurai[s]?” said the girl sitting in the hallway. “They’re up there.”

The New York Times continues: “She pointed up a staircase to a small gym on the top floor of Jan Hus Church on East 74th Street in New York City. Inside was a startlingly surreal scene, especially to someone stepping off the streets of the Upper East Side, where people were picking up dry cleaning and lounging at sidewalk cafes on a Saturday evening.
Up in the old church gym, the scene resembled a ferocious battle from The Seven Samurai. Some 50 people in Japanese warrior dress — dark robes, heavy chest armor and helmets with fearsome face-cages — hurled bloodcurdling screams as they beat one another over the head with poles.” (Read the full story hotlinked above)

NOTA BENE: By the way, should “samurai” in the plural sense be spelled in English with a “s” at the end, according to English grammar rules, or without an “s,” according to the New Rules of Pluralizing Japanese Nouns in English, Book Ten, Verse 9? I would go for samurai without an s at the end, but I see the New York Times copy desk decided to add the S. Okay, then does one add an S at the end of shiitake, too, for more than one shiitake, and what about sushi? If you eat four pieces of sushi, are those called four sushi or four sushis or four sushies? Grammarians of the world, unite!

Back in December, we posted a brief item about Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s new movie titled Babel, starring Koji Yakusho, Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal. It won two big awards at Cannes (Ecumenical Prize and the Golden Palm), with NHK reporting the news because the two Japanese stars in the film, Koji Yakusho and Rinko Kikuchi, won big applause in Cannes!

A patchwork tale of interlocking stories dealing with miscommunication and prejudice in today’s world, BABEL was awarded the ecumenical jury award and the Palme d’Or. The ecumenical jury annually awards a prize to the film deemed to have best promoted human values.

Sylvain Bouchard

A doctor in Yokohama, Japan has been arrested for molesting a 28-year-old woman in his clinic when she consulted him about a stomach ailment.

According to a complaint filed by the woman, the doctor told the woman that her stomachache may have been due to venereal disease, upon which he started fondling her pubic area.

The doctor categorically denies the allegations.

I have received notes from a few people who tell me that the Japundit page is not appearing properly on their computer screens.

It looks fine on my screen, so it is hard for me to understand what to do.

Is anyone else having problems with the appearance of the Japundit page?

Just about the biggest news story for the past few weeks in Japan on the daytime variety shows that cater to housewives is one that involves deception, betrayal, greed, murder and many of the other trappings of a soap opera.

It involves an unnamed Filipina who is trying to collect a 45 million yen life insurance claim from Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company over the untimely death of her Japanese boyfriend in 1998. Though not married to the man, the woman was named as the beneficiary of two separate life insurance policies, the 45 million yen policy from Dai-ichi and a 33 million yen policy from another company that has already paid. She claims that the man did bought the coverage because she was pregnant with his child.

Rather than going into a long narrative about the details of this saga (which you can read here, if you want), here is a recap of the highlights.

• The woman’s boyfriend was only 34 years old when he died. The cause of death was not specified.
• The man purchased the Dai-ichi policy only two and a half months before he died, and the other policy only one month before.
• The monthly premiums of the two policies totaled more than 52,000 yen, though the man’s a monthly income was only 200,000 yen.
• Only 11 days before he died, the man acknowledged paternity of Filipina’s unborn child.
• Tests on the man’s internal organs showed high amounts of salicylic. Salicylic acid is an over-the-counter medicine that can cause respiratory difficulties and vomiting, and even coma and death in large doses.
• DNA testing proved that the woman’s child was fathered by her current 66-year-old boyfriend.
• Three years this case the woman was living with another man who died suddenly at the age of 30, on which the woman collected 90 million yen on a life insurance policy taken out just before his passing.

All of the above came out in the civil trial that ensued when the woman sued Dai-ichi to collect her money. Though the court came to conclusion that the woman and/or her current boyfriend probably poisoned the younger man, the woman has not been arrested. I saw her on TV crying and carrying on about how she was being unjustly accused of wrongdoing, but in light of the facts of the case I really don’t see how you can come to any other conclusion.