It was not that long ago that a Japanese baseball team headed by a foreign manager was unthinkable. The success of Chiba Lotte Marines skipper Bobby Valentine last year and Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters manager Trey Hillman this year, however, seems to have shattered that taboo for good.

Now we get word that former Houston Astros and Anaheim Angels manager Terry Collins may be at the helm of the Orix Buffaloes next season. Orix is denying that anything has been decided yet.

Collins [h]as enjoyed success at the big-league level, posting a 444-434 mark in a six-year career in which his teams finished second in their respective division all but one time.

Collins later managed at Triple-A Las Vegas, an affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was promoted to director of player development for the club, and he was a candidate to replace Jim Tracy as Dodgers manager when Tracy was released after the end of the 2005 season.

I wonder if the Yomiuri Giants will ever go gaijin. . .

It’s late, I just finished this week’s podcast, and there is nothing really that interesting in the news right now, so here’s a link to an off-topic story about popcorn lung.

China has come up with another reason to bash Japan (as if it needed another one). . . A computer game.

Chinese game players are saying that the adult-oriented Japanese computer game “Slaves of the Red Mansion” insults the classic Chinese novel “Dream of the Red Chamber.”

“Turning ‘Dream of the Red Chamber’ into a lewd game besmirches a treasure of Chinese literature, and is a desecration of Chinese culture,” thundered one irate Net surfer on Web portal Sohu.com.

“As a big fan, this is absolutely unforgivable for me!”

The Chinese classic “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which also goes under the “Dream of the Red Mansion,” was penned by Qing dynasty (1644-1911) author Cao Xueqin. It is the story of the decline of a noble family.

While the game’s setting has little to do with the epic novel, Chinese Internet users believed its main character — a pallid young girl called Lin Daiyu — was a direct take-off of the novel’s heroine.
The Chinese Internet users said the story’s character had been slandered, described in the game as an illegitimate child borne after her mother had an affair with a foreigner.

(For some reason I just knew that blue-eyed devils had to figure in here somewhere.)

This isn’t the first time that Chinese gamers have gone ape over what they considered to be insults against China carefully hidden inside of a computer game.

In July, thousands of online game players denounced an image of a red sun used in the hugely popular online game, “Fantasy Westward Journey,” developed by China’s NetEase.com Inc.

Players associated the rising sun image, used as a backdrop in a virtual Chinese government office, with a symbol of Japanese militarism, local media reported.

Police in Tokyo have arrested eight youths for mugging otaku in Tokyo’s Akihabara district in a practice they referred to as “otaku hunting.”

The teens all targeted junior high school students they referred to as “Akiba-kei,” or geeks who like the otaku culture found widely in retail outlets throughout Akihabara.

Police said there have been 25 reported incidents of “otaku hunting” since the start of the year, with victims losing a combined 350,000 yen between them.

“Otaku are weak and they’ve got money, so we went after them,” one of the arrested youths told the police.

Not only do otaku have plenty of money, they also are easy marks. According to police, otaku often meekly surrender their cash when threatened.

Here are some videos of the Uchiwa Matsuri that I reported on here.

Zhang Fei Float

The other day we received word that JAPUNDIT has been nominated in the Best Asian Group Blog category of the Asia Blog Awards.

Normally, we have taken a rather dim view of the self-nominating, ballot-box stuffing fiascos that try to pass themselves off as serious blog awards, but the folks at Asia Pundit (who are running the awards) seem to be doing their level best to ensure that the Asia Blog Awards are fair and representative.

One sure sign of their good judgment was the selection of Japundit as a judge for the Best Asian Blog category. Of course, we will have no vote in the category in which we were nominated.

Thanks to whoever was responsible for our nomination, and the best of luck to all of the other blogs that were nominated in this and all the other categories for this year’s contest.

By now most people have heard the news that Iva Toguri D’Aquino, also known as “Tokyo Rose,” has passed away at the age of 90.

I met Ms. Toguri D’Aquino a number of times down in Chicago’s Little Tokyo many years ago, and she seemed like a nice woman.

Japundit reader and U.S.-based Japanese workworker Len Cullum kindly sent along a link to a site that tells the Tokyo Rose story, and suggests that Ms. Toguri D’Aquino may actually have been victim of a post-war witch hunt.

You’ve probably never heard of Iva Toguri and, if you have any association with the name “Orphan Ann” at all, it’s probably to the Little Orphan Annie comic strip. On the other hand, you probably have heard of “Tokyo Rose” and think you know all about her: the sultry, Japanese radio propagandist who taunted “our boys” in the Pacific during World War II.

You’re in good company, too. When National Geographic interviewed Trinh (“Hanoi Hannah”) Thi Ngo on the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, it compared her anti-American broadcasts to the “Tokyo Rose” program. The problem is that there never was anyone called “Tokyo Rose” on Radio Tokyo or any of its subsidiaries. She, like “Kilroy,” is a myth based on the frustrations and fears of young men waging war in difficult circumstances far away from their homes.

There were Japanese women broadcasters, over a dozen of them, and a few of them, most notably Foumy (“Madame Tojo”) Saisho and Myrtle (“Little Margie”) Lipton, even broadcast along the lines attributed to “Tokyo Rose;” but no such person ever really existed.

This wouldn’t be much of a problem as problems go, were it not for the fact that a real person was unjustly arrested, tried, convicted, fined, and imprisoned for broadcasting as “Tokyo Rose;” a real person who, by rights, should have been hailed as an American hero and, to the day she died, remained one of the most loyal Americans I have ever known.

Check out this page where this guy posts nothing but photos of Japanese vending machines.

Thanks to Mr. Pink.

In another sign that Japan is, for better or for worse, becoming a more litigious society, the Tokyo District Court has ordered the Japan Racing Association to pay a man 2.64 million yen in damages for injuries that he suffered after slipping on a highly polished floor at one of the association’s off-track betting establishments.

“Granite on the floors had been polished so brightly you could see reflections and when it rained there was always a chance of falls,” Presiding Judge Ken Fujishita said as he handed down the ruling.

JRA had fought the suit, saying that it had operated the facility for 18 years and never had a fall, but the court ruled that it was at least partly to blame for the man’s fall and ordered it to compensate him.

The man had demanded 8.3 million yen in his suit.

Mainichi’s Wai Wai column has a recap of an article from a Japanese weekly that provides a detailed description of Train Café, a members’ only club for adults in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district that makes it possible for chikan to enjoy a little hands on release for their sexual frustrations.

Membership at Train Café runs 5,000 yen. Then there is a flat “cup of tea charge” 2,000 yen you need to pay each time you visit the club, plus 3,600 yen for a 20-minute “train ride.” Passengers “ride” in a special room that outfitted to look like the inside of Tokyo’s Yamanote loop line along with young women, whom they are allowed to touch and fondle to their heart’s content.

“During the 20 minute session, the trip takes you from Ikebukuro to Meguro (about one-third of the Yamanote Line’s 60-minute complete loop). With each stop, the doors of the carriage open and the girls get on and off the train. We use actual recordings of the conductors’ announcements and LCD screens outside the window display actual footage of the trip along the Yamanote Line,” Train Cafe’s operator tells Weekly Playboy. “We cannot be beaten when it comes to reality.”

The operator of the Train Café claims that the establishment helps to curb crime by providing men who are overcome with temptation an outlet for their desires. According to the report, the women of the Train Café enjoy being in touch with their customers.

“I loath real chikan. But if I’m attacked by one, I’m too scared to do anything and just shut up. I really, really hate it,” 20-year-old Rin tells the weekly. “But here, all the customers are members. You know you’re going to be felt up and it’s a good place to make friends, so I enjoy it.”

Maybe someone should tell economist Kazuhide Uekusa about this joint.

A drunk man in Saitama, Japan called police recently to report that he had been stabbed. When police arrived, however, they discovered that he had in fact been shot.

Fortunately, the man’s wounds were minor.

Some stories we have posted here on JAPUNDIT (here, here, here, and here) may lead folks to the conclusion that Japan is alone in their pursuit of the perfect toilet. Actually nothing could be further from the truth.

It seems that toilet technology is serious business. There is WTO (World Toilet Organization) with members from around 40 countries, and all the power plays, subterfuge, and maneuverings of a truly global organization.

At the WTO’s annual meeting in Moscow recently, there was a power grab by Sim Dae-Juk, chairman of the South Korean Toilet Association, who announced that he was forming a rival group called the World Toilet Association. Sim claimed that his move had nothing to do with politics, going so far as to say: “I am a representative of toilet culture, not a politician.”

The members of the WTO take their work seriously. They point out that most complaints by tourists visiting other countries are about toilet facilities. Others say that inadequate public toilets can interfere with people’s lives and even lead to diseases. Some go so far as to claim that the toilet is the “competitive edge of a nation.”

When all is said and done, however, one thing is for certain. . . Toilets are the only thing in life about which everyone gives a sh*t.

Thanks to Mr. Pink.

The folks over at dottocomu are again asking a question that has been puzzling people since the beginning of time: Why is it that a product that is reasonably priced everywhere else becomes a high-priced luxury item in Japan?

This time it is the Roomba vacuum cleaner robot, which sells for about $150 in the U.S. but costs around 47,000 yen in Japan.

I have heard a lot of theories as to why this is so, ranging from the high price of land in Japan all the way to the opinion that Japanese consumers won’t believe that a product is good quality unless it carries a hefty price tag.

Whatever the reason, Japanese consumers seem to love to over-pay as much as manufacturers love to over-charge, so I guess everyone gets what they want.

Via The Raw Feed

In case you have not noticed yet, Japundit has a new add at the top of the red sidebar for a book called The Harsh Cry of the Heron by Australian author Lian Hearn.

Harsh Cry is the concluding installment of the best-selling Otori fantasy epic that spins a magical tale of life and death in feudal Japan. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calls it, “Part Shogun, part Lord of the Rings and entirely enchanting.” The Times (London) says it’s “One of the most thrilling new series of our time.”

Lian Hearn is the pseudonym for a writer, currently living in Australia, who has a lifelong interest in Japan, has lived there, and speaks Japanese.

In a survey conducted in the U.S. in 1944, 13 percent of the respondents thought that everyone in Japan should be killed following the war.

More at What Japan Thinks.

Thanks to a company called BoysStuff, you can now have a team of assassins at your disposal wherever you go

Place one onto the “Ninja Attack warrior deployment device” and it is ready to launch in the direction of friend or foe.