The Osaka District Court has acquitted a 57-year-old man arrested for touching the breast of a 25-year-old woman on a train, ruling that the touching was not intentional.
“We have found that the man’s hand touched the breast of the woman for more than a few seconds,” said Presiding Judge Nobuyuki Yokota at the Osaka District Court. “But the hand didn’t necessarily grab her breast.”
The judge added that the touching of the breast was so faint that no other passengers noticed it.
All you Kittyler out there get ready. . . Sanrio is about to launch a new package that combines an official Hello Kitty laptop with an official Hello Kitty iPod Nano.
But you’ve got to act fast. This is a limited production run of only 100 units.
When Irish rock star Bono recently presented Abe with a pair of a pair of red Giorgio Armani sunglasses (”Red”-branded product part of whose profits are donated to AIDS programs), Japan’s leader slipped them on and posed of the cameras.
No doubt more than one person in the room held their breath in anticipation of a Koizumi-esque air guitar performance, but none was forthcoming.
“The world doesn’t really understand that Japan in the ’90s led the world not just as a percentage contribution to the world’s poor but as the volume contribution,” he told reporters at the prime minister’s office.
“The world doesn’t understand that Japan has had a lot of success in its aid and assistance in Southeast Asia in particular, and that there’s a lot we can learn from Japan in applying this to the rest of the developing world.”
“We installed the wine spa last year, and conducted the Beaujolais Nouveau celebration. It was a great success,” said Seiji Sanada, an official at Yunnesun.
“The aroma of Beaujolais is very pleasing, very nice. From the open-air spa, you can see the mountains, leaves turning color and hear the sound of a nearby ravine. It’s very pleasant,” he said.
It is said that people in the bath enjoy being on hand when the wine is poured in so they can catch some of it in their hands and have a drink as they soak.
Sanada claims that a Beaujolais bath gives you smooth skin and helps to relieve stress.
Norio Minorikawa has entered the Guinness Book of World Records for his sheer inability to shut up. The garralous television personality spends nearly 22 hours a week gabbing away on Japanese TV screens.
“I want to die talking,” was his response to the news.
A skin care company named SK-II is laying on the “Mysterious Japan” shtick pretty darn thick to tout a lineup of products they promise will deliver the benefits of a beauty secret known only to Japanese.
For almost a generation, Japanese women have known a secret. This secret was discovered by a Japanese monk who visited a sake brewery in Kobe.
He was surprised to discover that the brewery workers had extraordinary soft and youthful hands. Even an elderly man with pronounced wrinkles on his face possessed the silky smooth hands of a young boy.
This observation encouraged the monk to conduct a series of experiments. He eventually discovered a clear, nutrient-rich liquid that could be extracted during the yeast fermentation process. He shared his findings with a group of skincare scientists, who became equally excited by the potential of his discovery.
For the following five and a half years, intensive research was undertaken to understand more about this magical seemingly ‘age-defying’ liquid.
The site includes a section that describes the “ritual” required to keep your face youthful that sounds part Zen and part Karate Kid, with passages like: “VISUALIZE: Empty your mind and visualize your skin now and in the future. ”
The Yomiuri Shimbun claims that a number of muncipalities are getting tougher on parents who claim free school meals for their children and then turn up to collect the kids in luxury cars. One parent even claimed he needed to avoid payment in order to finance the running of his car. Others claim the meals are part of the child’s compulsory free education and they intend to contest the law suits on human rights grounds.
Perhaps the municipalities concerned could take inspiration from the dubious practices revealed in this WaiWai piece, where host bars force women who can’t pay their bar bills to do sex work for them. These parents won’t be so keen to brandish their Louis Vuitton while they’re washing dishes or cleaning down tables at lunchtime.
I read recently that the social skills of young people in Japan have become stunted because the Internet allows them to obtain autoerotic gratification without the need to go out and come into direct contact with other human beings.
Apparently in an attempt to take this trend one step further, here is a virtual pole dance scene from an Xbox 360 game called Dead or Alive Xtreme 2.
The game allows you to choose from among four DOAX girls named Lei Fang (above), Hitomi, Kasumi, and Kokoro.
In a bold move that has many people very upset, starting early 2008 the government of Japan will be sending out “Sushi Police” across the globe to Japanese restaurents to determin if that particular establishment is worthy of being called “Japanese cuisine”.
In what is being billed as an attempt to protect culture, the government is reacting to what appears to be many complains from Japanese citizens who have traveled abroad and where shocked by how they found their cuisine represented in other parts of the world.
Unofficially, the Japanese are reacting to the global take over of Chinese and Korean run Japanese restaurents.
Japanjin has an interested blurb on this news as well available here if you’d like to read further into it. There is also an interesting blurb on this story HERE on this website.
This could go one of two ways. Firstly, it could force low rent “Japanese restaurents” to up the quality and service of the food they are serving. Or two, it could be an entire waste of money and come to absolutly nothing.
Either way, if the sushi police are looking for volunteers, Count me in !!
One of Australia’s enduring WWII maritime mysteries has apparently been solved. During the Pacific War, elite Japanese submariners in their ‘midget’ vessels launched a daring raid on Sydney Harbour intending to sink a US ship that was docked there. Two of the midget submarines were intercepted and disabled, but the third managed to fire its torpedoes and, while missing its target, sunk another Allied vessel and killed 21 servicemen on board. The tiny sub then escaped the harbour and fled out to sea, but failed to rendezvous with its Japanese mother ship which was waiting off the coast. The fate of the submarine was, until now, unknown.
After around 24 ultimately mistaken claims by different groups that they had discovered the wreck since then (including one featured in a History Channel documentary last year), a bunch of amateur divers from Sydney finally located the real deal. The wreckage is just north of Sydney, still above the sea floor and has had its identity confirmed by Royal Australian Navy historians. Its discovery closes the book on one of Australia’s most elusive and important wartime enigmas and the site will be marked as a Japanese war grave to honour the brave submariners who took part in the raid.
Livedoor website has conducted lately a poll about the “marriageable age” for men in Japan. The results showed that almost 40% of the people surveyed thought that ~30 is the perfect age for a man to tie the knot. Here are the other results:
Less than 20 yrs old: 0.52%
~20 yrs old:1.02%
~25 yrs old:26.20%
~30 yrs old:39.48%
~35 yrs old:7.71%
~40 yrs old:1.98%
~50 yrs old:0.21%
I don’t know:5.49%
There is not a thing such as marriageable age:17.40%
The poll mentions the tv drama hit “Kekkon Dekinai Otoko” , the “Man who can’t get married”, that aired this summer and brought to light the issue of 40 years old singles (virgins??!).
(Via Livedoor)
What Japan Thinks reported about a recent survey conducted by Goo, the Japanese search engine. According to the survey almost 70% of the people who took it responded that updating was too much of a trouble, whereas 21% think that they had enough with it and decided to quit. It is important to note that 17% quit blogging in favor of SNSs,social networking services, such as Mixi, because they think that they are more fun. What really caught my attention is the 16% who responded “ran out of things to say”!!! and the 9% who stopped because there weren’t enough visitors!
It seems like Kyoto officials are annoyed by the neon ads that adorn the tops of buildings at night. Hence, they decided to ban those ads in order to “prevent the deterioration of Kyoto’s traditional image” and to “safeguard the beautiful traditional sceneries from waning”.
Kyoto officials claim that ads on top of buildings block the magnificent view of the mountain range that surround the city, while flashing ads ruin the elegance of its world-famous ancient streets.
The city government will revise the municipal regulation on outdoor advertisements this fiscal year, and implement the ban as early as next fiscal year.
However this seems to go against the values of advertising organization who claim that this ban is illegitimate:
Meanwhile, Federation of all Japan Outdoor Advertising Associations, a Tokyo-based organization of ad companies, voiced opposition to Kyoto’s plan.
“We doubt the legitimacy of the idea that frames ads to be the only villain,” a spokesman said.
Bullying is Japanese schools has been causing an uproar as of late, and finding solutions to such a sticky issue seems to be anything but an easy endeavor. The Education Rebuilding Council, a government panel that was appointed to deal with the problems facing education in Japan, has decided to take emergency measures to tackle the increasing bullying-induced suicide cases. Measures includes suspending the delinquent students who bully their schoolmates, and order their parents to not send them to school. These punitive measures will not only concern those involved in physical bullying as it used to be the case, but to those who verbally bully their comrades as well. Teachers who connive in bullying will have to assume their part of punishment too.
Some prefectures have taken the initiative, and started various programs to fight bullying.
The Osaka Prefectural Board of Education has decided to introduce an “empowerment” program at about 920 public elementary and junior high schools to help children to develop skills to protect themselves from violence and bullying, board officials said. Under the “Children’s Empowerment Support Guidance” program, schoolchildren will participate in games and role-playing activities based on the idea of empowerment, which involves developing inner strength. Through these games and activities, they will learn techniques to prevent violence.[...]The program also includes methods to prevent bullying, such as encouraging students to find their own and other classmates’ good points and their differences to make them realize that each person is special.
It seems like it’s about time for Japanese schools to rethink their policies and to hatch some effective programs and regulations to stop the rampage of bullying.
I doubt any Japundit reader would ignore the documentary “Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story”, telling the story of the Yokotas, looking for their daughter for over 30 years, only to discover that she was abducted by the Norks. After a North American screening,The documentary opened Saturday 25th November in 18 prefectures in Japan, and is planned to open nation-wide by mid-February. People who watched the Megumi Yokota story since Saturday were deeply moved by the hardships of the Yokota family in their quest to learn about the whereabouts of their daughter.
A hot springs resort in Hakone just outside of Tokyo is one of them, 
For almost a generation, Japanese women have known a secret. This secret was discovered by a Japanese monk who visited a sake brewery in Kobe. 
In a bold move that has many people very upset, starting early 2008 the government of Japan will be sending out “Sushi Police” across the globe to Japanese restaurents to determin if that particular establishment is worthy of being called “Japanese cuisine”.
One of Australia’s enduring WWII maritime mysteries has apparently been solved. During the Pacific War, elite Japanese submariners in their ‘midget’ vessels launched a 
Bullying is Japanese schools has been causing an uproar as of late, and finding solutions to such a sticky issue seems to be anything but an easy endeavor. The Education Rebuilding Council, a government panel that was appointed to deal with the problems facing education in Japan, has decided to take emergency measures to tackle the increasing bullying-induced suicide cases. Measures includes suspending the delinquent students who bully their schoolmates, and order their parents to not send them to school. These punitive measures will not only concern those involved in physical bullying as it used to be the case, but to those who verbally bully their comrades as well. Teachers who connive in bullying will have to assume their part of punishment too.
