Available here in a choice of 24 different colors and patterns, and including a map of the Tokyo subway system, the Nagoya, Kobe, and Fukuoka subway systems, the Osaka and Kyoto subway systems, or the Sapporo and Sendai subway systems.
100% silk.
Price: 6,090 yen
A bit off topic, but how many times have you wished that you had a Bullsh*t Button on hand.
This is a real product that you can purchase here, and pressing it causes one of the following five alerts to issue forth.
“(Beep) That was bullsh*t”
“(Siren) Bullsh*t detected, take precautions”
“Bullsh*t level defcon 5″
“Oh come on now, that ain’t even bullsh*t, that’s horsesh*t”
“Warning, warning, bullsh*t alert”
Cool ad for a film festival.
This is one of those strange cases that came out of left field for me. I read about it and scratched my head in puzzlement. Ok here’s the story. A 37 year old Chinese woman working in a sex shop in Japan was kidnapped by a group of 4 to 5 men. The woman was apparently beaten and manhandled by the group.
She was released by the group only to be arrested for illegally living in Japan for the past five years. The Mainichi has additional details here.
An interesting compilation of some tricks from magicians in Japan. Some of the material is very very cool.
It’s golden week in Japan. A time for people to take a week off work and relax. Most people I know use this holiday to travel. Narita is usually really really busy during this time and sure enough I found an article from Kyodo News that describes what traveling can be like during this crazy time.
A massive exodus of holidaymakers started at Narita International Airport near Tokyo on Saturday, with its operator estimating some 727,000 people will go through the airport during Japan’s Golden Week holiday season through May 6.
According to a major travel agency, China is attracting many tourists from Japan as it enjoys a robust economy prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while Hong Kong and Macao are also popular destinations.
Hiroko Morita, 35, from Fukaya, Saitama Prefecture, said before departing for Greece with her family, “I’m planning cruising in the Aegean Sea and looking around monuments there.”
Japan Talk #067 is now available on the Japan Talk website and at FeedBurner.
* Golden Week
* Dog? Sheep? Hoax!!
* Blackman verdict: Not Guilty!?!
* Tokyo taxi companies want fare hike
* Long-distance maglev trains coming to Japan
* Prius owner hack cars to increase mileage
* Election decided by drawing lots
* Two countries dealing with tragedy
* BBS owner charged for not deleting insulting message
* Men try to get residents to drink pipe cleaning agent
* Facemask fetish in Japan
* Man rapes woman aboard crowded train
* Bad bidets burn butts
Music
Podsafe Music Network
* Japanese Girlfriend, by Earwig
* Take You To Japan, by Davis Coen
* Hanging Out with the White Boys, by Jesushairdo
Links of Interest
* Japan Talk in the iTunes Store
* Japundit
* J-LIST
* Jindiecast
Contact: podcast@japundit.com
The Mainichi is reporting that a supervisor for an online bulletin board is facing criminal charges for allegedly not deleting a message that said a junior high school girl was “ugly”.
I don’t know about Europe, but in North America there’s been a giant push by government on both the federal and province/state level to curb smoking. In Japan there are quite a few signs and anti-smoking sites and things but nothing in my estimation that even compares.
But whatever anti-smoking campaigns there are, they don’t seem to be affecting Japan Tobacco Inc. who on Friday reported huge profits at the end of their fiscal year. How much you ask? Here is what the Associated Press are reporting:
Net profits rose by 4.6 percent to an all-time high of 210.7 billion yen (1.77 billion dollars) in the fiscal year to March on revenue of 4.77 trillion yen, up 2.8 percent, the company said in a statement.
Operating profit jumped by 8.2 percent to 331.9 billion yen, also a record.
Japan Tobacco Inc, which recently bought British rival Gallaher Group for 2.25 trillion yen, said that overseas sales remained the main driver of profit growth, with revenue outside Japan up 13.4 percent.
The article mentions that places where the company saw some of its highest growth were The group saw strong sales of Camel in Italy and France, Winston in Russia, Spain, Iran, Turkey, and Ukraine, and Russia. It’s good to know that with all the things people fight about and kill each other over, at least they can all agree that people seem to love smoking.
Hidekazu Ichinose, a famous Japanese actor, has broken his right leg while filming an NHK drama at a studio in Yokohama, the public broadcaster said. Click here for the painful details!
US first lady Laura Bush and Akie Abe, right, the wife of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pose for the cameras. (I didn’t realize Akie was that tall.) Photo by AP.
The Mainichi is reporting that traces of fossilized dinosaur skin have been found in Japan. This is the first time that such a find has been done in Japan. Exciting! Maybe Spielberg and company will see that a Jurassic Park Park 4 could be done about it? We’ll call it “Jurassic Japan: Jurassic Park 4…!” Eh, no, never mind.
(Ok, I’ll work on the title. But think of the carnage of one of those T-Rex’s in Shinjuku… Oh hell, I’m totally off topic aren’t I? ugh, sorry about that.)
Anyways the fossilized skin traces are quite small measuring between 3 to 4 millimeters in diameter. They were found in Katsuyama (勝山市) in Fukui prefecture, and date to about 120 million years ago.
“We’ve had to rely on overseas data for reproducing dinosaur skin, but now domestic data is available. There is a possibility that clearer fossils of dinosaur skin traces will be found in the same area,” said 57-year-old Azuma, who holds a doctorate in paleontology.
(Ok I got a new title.. What about “Jurassic Park 4: Tokyo Terror“. Ohh that’s not half bad… hm, nah that doesn’t work… Ok I give up… Anyways, read the damn article. Its quite interesting!)
Well according to the Prime Minister of Japan, yes he can be. The Associated Press is reporting that Abe feels that Kim Jon Il can be reasoned with. That he is a rational human being.
An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Japan:
Pardon me for stepping out of line here but for you, the Prime Minister of Japan to play politics and simply state that :
“Kim Jong Il is a “rational” man, but his country is headed in the wrong direction”
is both a ridiculous statement and also really understating what most of the world already knows. 
I was not aware that rational leaders let their countrymen starve to death by the thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. That doesn’t seem rational to me. His country is going in the wrong direction? Really? You think?
Ok ok. Maybe Kim-san is capable of rational thought as you say. But I suppose a cat is also capable, physically anyways, to play music on a piano. Can’t say I’ve seen that happen too many times though.
Granted I am not a world leader, well not yet anyways, but from what I’ve seen I’m not sure that a policy of dialog and pressure “vis-avis” the North will be effective. Why would it be? Honestly, what makes you think it would be? It hasn’t been in the past at all. So whats changed that would make you, the Prime Minister of Japan think that?
You mean the fact that N.K. has refused to act on its already agreed upon Nuclear disarmament plan until it gets $25 million in cash back from the frozen accounts? Is that a successful dialog? Honestly Mister Prime Minister that just seems to me like we’re playing the same old cat and mouse game the government has been playing for decades with those communist twits.
Mister Prime Minister it’s not that I dislike you. Honestly. I think you have a lot of potential. But for a man who came into power with a hardline stance against North Korea promising action on the abduction issue, so far I’ve seen a lot of smoke but not a hell of a lot of fire.
But more then that, above the politics for a moment, Mister Prime Minister, perhaps you and your LDP members could do us a favor and hire a PR firm. I ask this one favor from you because the more comments you and the Liberals make, the more you sound like complete asses. We don’t need to go into examples now do we? And saying that the North Korean government is going in the wrong direction isn’t just stating the obvious… It makes you look like a lame duck who read that in a newspaper somewhere. But of course that is just my humble opinion.
PS: I hope you’ll respect my letter but not take my visa away… Cause honestly that would really suck.
Those damn North Koreans. Say what you will about them. At least they are a conversation starter. Today American President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush welcome Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie (both of whom are in the middle of the image) for a private dinner at the White House in Washington. What did they eat you ask? If you really wanna know you can click here to find out.
This is the first time Abe has been to the White House. The meeting was scheduled so that the two could have continued talks on North Korea and what American policy makers see as Tokyo’s expanding global role. Unfortunately with Japan stuck in the mire of its own stupidity with respect to the advancement of building a military instead of a self-defense force, that might take a while.
Nintendo helps the Nikkei stock index rise… All Hail Mario! (Psh, leave it to some sewer surfing Italian dude with a big snoze to lead a rally in the Japanse Stock Exchange). Click here for details.
I was astonished to read an editorial on MSNBC regarding the Virgina Tech massacre with the header: “Loving the US and Hating It Too.” The deck reads: “For South Koreans, the story of Cho Seung-Hui underscores a nation’s ambivalent relationship with America.”
Oh, really? And exactly how does a mass shooting in America underscore how “ambivalent” South Koreans feel about Americans?
But behind the Korean public’s fascination with the tale of a native son who made good before making spectacularly bad, was the ambivalence of the country toward the United States. Koreans have long had a love-hate relationship with America. Young people there routinely take part in protests against the American presence in their country and what they consider its unilateralism, but at the same time see the country as a true land of opportunity.
So, South Koreans look to America for opportunity, but also harbor anti-American sentiment and this has exactly what to do with a mass murderer? You mean that it’s just a short step or even a short leap between protesting American policy and . . . killing innocent students?
Got tipped to the following story here by Richard Cox and here by Mr. Pink. Thanks to both, but I must say that every brain cell of my keen analytical mind is screaming, “HOAX!!!”
Anyone know?
Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.
Flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called Poodles as Pets, marketed as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each.
That is a snip compared to a real poodle which retails for twice that much in Japan.
The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food.
She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.
Then hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new “poodle” was also a sheep.
One couple said they became suspicious when they took their “dog” to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.
Japanese police believe there could be 2,000 people affected by the scam, which operated in Sapporo and capitalised on the fact that sheep are rare in Japan, so many do not know what they look like.
“We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company were selling sheep as poodles,” Japanese police said, the The Sun reported.
“Sadly we think there is more than one company operating in this way.
“The sheep are believed to have been imported from overseas - Britain, Australia.”
Many of the sheep have now been donated to zoos and farms.
