One person’s take on how the Beijing Olympic logo was created.

Japan Airlines has been hit with a fine by a “city consumer court” for serving a meal containing beef to a devout Hindu.

G.L. Aggarwal, a resident of Palam Enclave, had taken a Japan Airlines flight to San Francisco on September 13, 2004. He had specified he wanted Asian Vegetable meal and also confirmed its availability twice by calling up the airlines.

As he began tucking into his meal, Aggarwal realised that he was chewing something strange. He vomited instantly when the airhostess told him that it was a piece of beef. The unrepentant airhostess told him that she had served a beef-based non-veg meal as Asian Vegetarian meal was “out of stock”.

On reaching San Francisco he complained to Japan Airlines and US consumer protection department. Coming back to India, he dragged the airlines to the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum. “The hurting of sentiments cannot be measured in terms of money. However, taking into consideration the deficiency of service on the part of Japan Airlines, we have to compensate in terms of money”, said the forum headed by its President K.K. Chopra. The Airlines took the plea that it was a complimentary service and no charges were taken for the meal. But the court rejected the argument saying “it is a matter of common knowledge that meals are covered in the ticket and nothing is served free”.

Thanks to Mr. Pink

EAST WINDUP CHRONICLE (EWC) has a post that is highly critical of Seibu Lions pitcher Jason Johnson, in which they say he is personification of the Ugly Gaijin in Japan - those who think Roppongi is Japan, complain that things here are so different from the U.S., etc.

Some of the commenters to the piece say that EWC was too hard on the young pitcher, while others think the criticism is spot on.

What say you, Japundits?

Japan Talk #083 is now available on the Japan Talk website and at FeedBurner.

* Very comfortable in beautiful Tochigi Prefecture
* Listener feedback

* Carbon offsets company starts in Tokyo
* Man tries to rob store in front of police box
* Couple robbed as man proposes in New York
* Normal weather forecasted for winter
* Murder in the sumo stable

* WANTED. . . Still
* Whale meat. . . The healthy choice?
* $50-dollar-a-bottle milk
* The reluctant executioner
* Foreign woman and new born rejected by 7 hospitals
* Woman suffers miscarriage after rejection by dozens of hospitals
* 2,780 cases of multiple rejections over two years

Music
Podsafe Music Network
* Take You To Japan, by Davis Coen
* Lady Pearl, by Madi Sato
* Japanese People, by Argyle Pimps

Links of Interest
* Foreign crime in Japan
* Lindsay Anne Hawker website

* Mainichi Daily News
* Japan Times
* The Daily Yomiuri
* Asahi Shimbun

* Japan Talk in the iTunes Store
* Japundit
* Jindiecast

Contact: podcast@japundit.com

I don’t know about you, but this University of Tokyo robot (named Mowgli) makes me feel a bit uneasy. . . Everytime I look at the video clip I get an image of the thing jumping up on someone’s back and injecting something into their neck. . .

Via The Raw Feed

An economically China seems to be taking a bead on one of Japan’s last bastions — impractical women’s lingerie items.

The above pieces are made of 950 grams of gold worth $26,600.

Via Skirmisher

Politics watchers all over Japan have been shocked by the first week of the new Fukuda administration, which has been completely unmarked by any form of controversy whatsoever.

Even the revolving door at the Ministry of Agriculture appears to have stopped spinning. When asked how the new Agriculture Minister had managed to hold on to the particularly slippery job for over a week, a ministry insider was quoted as saying “He must be lost somewhere in the building.”

“We’ve been watching the exits,” said an anonymous senior journalist, “but the silence is eerie.” After the fireworks of the Abe government, observers are growing suspicious after this week’s lack of resignations. “We can only hope that things settle back in their usual pattern next week, and that the ministerial exodus starts up again,” he added.

With no daily cabinet dismissals to report, the morning news programmes and daily newspapers have been caught on the hop and have had to content themselves with the last resort of reporting international affairs.

Japan telephone giant KDDI has started offering subscribers to any of its broadband services DVD-quality films for download for just 500 yen.

The KDDI’s DVD Burning service delivers copy-protected (CPRM DRM) movies, which theoretically protects against copying.

The initial selection of movies includes 1,000 titles, which will be increased to 5,000 titles next year.

Via Digital World Tokyo

Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama has suggested eliminating a legal stipulation that requires issuance of an execution order, signed by the justice minister within six months after a death sentence is finalized, before a prisoner can be executed in Japan.

Hatoyama said that the signature requirement should be scrapped because “no one wants to put his signature on an execution order.” He then said, “I wonder if there is any way not to delegate the responsibility solely to the justice minister,” and went on to suggest creation of a procedure that could be used to carry out executions objectively and automatically, without involvement of the justice minister.

Though I am not necessarily against capital punishment per se, I still say it should not be applied lightly. The thought of turning over executions to an “automatic” bureaucratic mechanism in a country that is constantly being barraged by news of scandals and serious misbehavior in high places is downright terrifying.

Hatoyama claims that his proposal is based on “public trust in Japan’s judicial system.”

If there is one thing that is true about SANRIO, it is that they never tire of upping the ante in their lineup of outrageously priced junk for Kittylers around the world.

The latest addition to the collection of Kitty Krap is a deck of solid gold Hello Kitty playing cards to mark the 33rd birthday of the Mouthless Wonder.

Each deck includes two jokers for a total of 54 cards, each of which is made of 0.73 grams of 99.99 percent pure gold.

Price: 567,000 yen

Via Hello Kitty Hell

Nakazawa Foods, a dairy company in Japan, has released a new type of premium milk that they say will relieve stress. At 5,000 yen per 900-milliliter bottle it also does a pretty good job of relieving you of your hard-earned cash as well!

According to the company, “Adult Milk” targets adults living in our stressful society.

The milk is taken from cows once a week at the break of dawn as they discharge a lot of a stress-relieving hormone called melatonin during the night, the company said.

The milk is bottled within six hours of milking at a farm north of Tokyo.

It is said to contain three to four times as much melatonin as usual milk.

Via Akihabara News

Check out the post by Steve Levenstein over at InventorSpot where he reports on some of the unusual offerings from the Japanese chewing gum industry.

My wife has decided to volunteer at my daughter’s elementary school as an assistant in the English classes they have once a week. I knew it was a bad idea to have her help out, since English education here is not exactly the model of our tax dollars well spent, and I knew it would frustrate her.

The lessons are taught by a Japanese teacher rather than a native English speaker, although there is a separate English lesson another day that has a native gaijin — maybe it’s to instill in the kids a sense that “English” and “English conversation” are separate and should never be confused.

As with all English classes here, the lesson began with the ubiquitous “How are you? Fine, thanks, and you?” (My daughter likes to throw a wrench into the works there, saying, “Actually, I’ve got a headache, so I don’t feel fine at all” just to see the looks on the teacher’s face.)

For the first half of the class, the students listened to an audio tape that taught English phonetics (ba-NA-na, not BA-na-na).

Things went pretty smoothly until the teacher started having the students repeat “I can skating! I can skiing!” My wife desperately wanted to correct the teacher’s erroneous English, but could never do so in front of the students, and in the end, she wasn’t even able to bring the issue up with after the class was over.

A recent Mainichi Daily News (WaiWai) article was about some monks who do a regular live reading (more like rap) of Buddhist prayers on stage at a tiny, 20-seat pub called Chippy in the Tokyo suburb of Shinkoiwa. This really isn’t unusual, since depending on how the Abbot (or Bishop) thinks, this is just an attempt to to “make the faith more relevant and up-to-date with the times” and get more teenagers back to the temple (or church)

“All our chants are in Sanskrit, so there’s no need to try and understand what we’re saying. People can just enjoy the sounds. Our chants are where folk songs and enka (maudlin Japanese ballads) come from,” Hogen Natori, head priest of the Shingon sect temple Mitsuzo-in in Tokyo’s Edogawa-ku, tells Cyzo. “We don’t just do sutras that you’d hear at funerals, we also do a lot of livelier stuff as well. A lot of people in the Buddhist community moan about us getting up on stage to perform in our robes. But we want people who have no interest in Buddhism to know what it’s like to hang out with a Buddhist priest as someone they can feel close to,” Natori says. “Buddhism in the 21st century can’t just stay cooped up in temples.”

Indeed, apparently (like here) the average Japanese only sees a Buddhist priest at funerals once in a blue moon (or when they buy a new car). Not usually at the bar on Saturday night. But the really interesting thing about this article is a few stats it discloses.

As we see now in Burma, this could be a force to be reckoned with? I think the priests in Burma are about to get a real shock, and perhaps the Japanese do not really respect them the same as before, but still seems they could have some clout?

“Many temples nowadays are run by third-generation priests who have inherited their places. But, with about 80,000 nationwide, there are still more Buddhist temples in Japan than there are convenience stores. And there are also about 170,000 Buddhist priests, which is more people than there are enlisted in the Self-Defense Forces. If that many temples and priests got more in line with what’s going on nowadays, Japanese society would be a lot more fun. That’s probably a bit too difficult a goal to try and bring about, but we’re just doing our own little bit.”

Otherwise–Chippy’s looks like a pretty good place? And, really–more monks than convenience stores? That seems pretty serious, even though there must be many more vending machines than monks…

Found the above photo over at AltJapan of a sign they snapped outside of a Kabukicho restaurant that touts the benefits of consuming whale meat.

According to the data presented by the sign, the following are the nutritional values for 100 grams of whale meat, compared with other popular sources of protein.

Beef
Protein: 17.5 g, Fat: 20.5 g, Calories: 260

Pork
Protein: 14.1 g, Fat: 32.5 g, Calories: 354

Chicken
Protein: 21 g, Fat: 5 g, Calories: 135

Mutton
Protein: 16.4 g, Fat: 8 g, Calories: 142

Whale
Protein: 23 g, Fat: 3 g, Calories: 127

The text above the sign says that whale meat reduces cholesterol, prevents hardening of the arteries and cancer, and improves learning ability.

The above is a three-dimensional rendition of a full-size Toyota Corolla by British artist Benedict Radcliffe done using only wire.

Spooky!

The Japan team performing in the rope section of the Group All-Around final competition at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Patra, Greece.

The parents of Lindsay Ann Hawker, the English teacher from the U.K. who was brutally murdered six months ago, have expressed frustration that her killer has not yet been apprehended.

“This man must be caught. We are very frightened that he will offend again,” her father, William Hawker, said by telephone from England. He was referring to suspect Tatsuya Ichihashi, 28.

“I am sure that the Japanese police are doing their best,” Hawker, 54, said, while urging them to provide the family with more information on the progress of the investigation.

“Initially, we had information coming from the police and we felt that we were more involved with the case,” he said. “Now, we only receive a weekly report on what the police have done and where they have searched.”

Back in March, Ichihashi got away from officers who were sent to his home to question him about the missing girl. On checking Ichihashi’s apartment, police found Lindsay’s body in a bathtub filled with sand on the balcony.

Police have received more than 2,000 reports on him from 45 of the 47 prefectures and sent officers to roughly 20 prefectures so far. But they have developed few concrete clues on his whereabouts.

Lindsay Ann Hawker website