As 2007 draws to a close, all of us here at JAPUNDIT would like to say thank you to everyone for stopping by and taking part, and to wish everyone the best for 2008.

Taking us out are a couple of videos of mixed-race female entertainers in Japan, past and present. They will give you some idea of how Japanese pop music has changed over the years.

Then it was the Golden Half

Now it is Leah Dizon

Check out this 17-year-old who calls herself “America-jin Musume.”

Her hobby seems to be recording movies of herself doing Morning Musume dances and putting them up on YouTube.

Her real name is Chelsea, and she will soon be in Japan for three months to work as a model.

See the whole collection of videos here.

It’s New Year’s Eve! Hope all Japundit readers have a Happy and Prosperous New Year. There are lots of contests and lists and top tens around this time of year, so why not us too? What do you think was the best, most memorable, enlightening, funny, or inspiring post you saw on Japundit this year? Here are some I remember, but you all probably have different ideas:

• Kanji Becoming a Lost Art? that discloses some shocking findings from a survey by the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
• Envy: Don’t Leave Home Without It which quoted a brief passage from Helmut Schoeck’s Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior and stimulated a lot of comment.
• Oyogu Hone — Swimming Bones with disgusting commentary and a video clip of the technique.
• Translating Beauty or Japanese Girls Must Stop Being Kawaii, Marie Mockett’s thoughtful commentary on Riyo Mori’s win in the Miss Universe pagent.
• Step Right Up–You Go First… which elicited a number of comments about the horrors of colonoscopy and worse.
• Toujours Tingo about the new book which draws on more than 300 languages exploring areas where English fails us.
• The Tokyo Yamanote Halloween Train Rides into a Sea of Adversity leads to everything about the legendary and notorious Yamanote Halloween Train.

You might also have a favorite devilishly clever title or witty comment. All the commenters and contributers keep Japundit alive by providing the content that we all come back for — but the editor Edward Chmura deserves a special vote of thanks for always filling in the gaps when commenters and contributors sometimes get busy, or tired, or lazy…

Well — who’s perfect? But all in all, looking back over a year of posts and comments here — there is a lot and a lot of it is really good. We are all to be congratulated! Yay!

The following is my personal favorite of all the TV commercials Arnold Schwarzenegger, current governor of California, did in Japan back in the 90s.

A recent incident in Osaka underscores a government-created medical emergency in Japan that most probably will only get worse.

Last week an 89-year-old woman whose family called an ambulance when she started experiencing vomiting and diarrhea died after she was rejected for admittance by thirty hospitals. The poor woman was finally admitted two hours after the family called the ambulance.

The hospitals rejected the woman because they claimed they were too full or that doctors were not available to treat her.

The latest case underscores Japan’s health care woes, in part created by a shortage of doctors in the country’s rapidly aging society. Critics say long working hours and a government policy change several years ago to keep the number of doctors down are to blame.

Faced with a rapidly aging society, the government implements a policy to limit the number of doctors in the country. . . Brilliant!

Thanks to Vin Alsace

Here is this weekend’s Open Thread in which readers are invited to let loose and discuss things that have been on their minds, regardless of whether or not they are on topic.

Rules are very loose for open thread posts, usual restrictions concerning topic matter do not apply. Feel free to sound off about anything you like.

Despite what the PR folks at National Police Agency would have everyone believe with their crimes solved stats, I have long contended that Japan is a paradise for crooks, conmen, murders, and other baddies. Sure, once you are caught the System is eerily efficient at securing a confession, convition, and incarceration (or execution), but the real question is one that is imposible to answer. . . How many people are committing crimes and not getting caught?

Once case in point in this regard comes out of Saitama Prefecture, just outside of Tokyo, where an unemployed homeless man was arrested for shop lifting. Police found out that he was able to live at a business hotel since January 2005 on money he got by selling CDs and DVDs that he pilfered and then sold to secondhand shops,

[Tsutomu] Shimizu lived in the business hotel in front of JR Kumagaya Station for 716 days until he was arrested Oct 25 this year, when he attempted to shoplift five CDs at a shop in the prefecture. He was found to have paid a total of 3.7 million yen for the accommodation, according to police. The man is believed to have stolen CDs and DVDs worth some 10 million yen, the police said.

The hotel did not find anything suspicious about Shimizu as he wore business suits when coming and going through the hotel, police added. The Kumagaya branch of the Saitama District Public Prosecutors Office has indicted Shimizu on charges of theft and attempted theft.

Perhaps sensing that they are finally reaching the end of their creative rope (I hope) or maybe feeling that women have had their fill of the mouthless wonder (I doubt it), Sanrio has decided for the first time to start producing T-shirts, bags, watches and other products that target young men.

“We think Hello Kitty is accepted by young men as a design statement in fashion,” [company spokesman Kazuo Tohmatsu] said.

The feline for-men products will go on sale in Japan next month, and will be sold soon in the U.S. and other Asian nations, according to Sanrio.

The shape of Hello Kitty was altered slightly to give her a more rugged and cool look that Sanrio hopes will appeal to teens and young adult men.

“Young men these days grew up with character goods,” said Tohmatsu. “That generation feels no embarrassment about wearing Hello Kitty.”

See JAPUNDIT posts on Hello Kitty here.

Thanks to Vin Alsace.