Osu! Tatakae! Nippon!

Sofia News Is This Season's Vernon Wells

2011-04-15T16:51:00.007+01:00

Japan is considering whether to change its capital city to either Osaka or Nagoya, according to this article from the Sofia News Agency. I'm not going to say that that article is clearly bullshit, but I am going to heavily imply it.

It's a story which I cannot corroborate from any non-Sofia sources, even five pages into multiple Google searches. That's strike one against it. Sofia News also provide no direct citations. Strike two. The only source it briefly mentions is ITAR-TASS. As we all know, ITAR-TASS is the Russian state-media, and an extensive search of their news site couldn't corroborate the story. Strike three. And everything attributed to the 'experts' (who are unsourced) is the purest speculation, the accompanying photo is irrelevant and it's poorly written. So after striking out the ball went in the dirt and Sofia News broke for first, got thrown out there, then tripped over the base and faceplanted, breaking their nose.

Stop swinging at balls you can't hit, Sofia.

Earthquake Visualisation

2011-03-31T14:51:00.005+01:00

Want to see something that'll blow your pants off? Then you can either look at this sped-up visual representation of the Japanese earthquakes since the 11th of March, or you can go to Windmill Street in Soho after 10pm.

Stay on that visualisation until 2pm on the clock and I promise you won't forget it in a hurry. Ditto for Windmill Street but make that midnight.

Scary shit.

Daddy's Home

2011-03-30T04:44:00.008+01:00

Hey! I'm back! Did you miss me? What? 'No'? Oh. Well I'm back anyway, so you'll have to deal with it! What? You don't have to because you can just go read Our Man In Abiko for your current affairs jokes fix? Oh.

Look, I know this is all a bit weird - it's been 20 months since I last blogged on here. But I didn't plan it that way! You know I still love you, right? Nothing's changed. Oh, except the Prime Minister. Twice. And Ueto Aya (my long-standing Future Wife) is now in a relationship with Morita Go. And there's been two new Pokemon games out. But that's it though. I'm not forgetting anything, right? Not forgetting anything big?

Huh? 'A three-pronged offensive against Japan by the Forces Of Nature'?

...Ok so maybe everything's changed. The point is, I still love anyone who ever took the time to read any of this blog. How about this: I'll slightly redesign the site, try to reconnect with old friends, acquaintances and readers, promise to start writing on here regularly, and we can be happy again. Happy like we used to be. Before all this- this shit got in the way. When the skies were blue and anything was possible. Agreed? Awesome.

TBS Election Rip-Off Video?

2009-08-07T14:25:00.005+01:00

I posted a video up last December, made by these guys. Here's the video again:

At the end of last month, Japan Probe posted the new TBS intro for its election coverage. Have a watch:

Notice any similarities?

People Need To Stop Being Idiots

2009-07-30T19:28:00.004+01:00

I'd like to briefly step in to the biggest debate in Japan at the moment: Miyasaka Emiri's dress. The Miss Universe 2009 contestant is going to be wearing a leather kimono-like thing in the pageant and some stuck-up people are throwing hissy-fits about it, claiming it makes her look like a porn star. This is her in the outfit:

What the hell is wrong with people? It's being referred to as "vulgar". It's also being claimed that the dress undermines part of Japanese culture. But I'd like to remind people that this is a freaking beauty pageant. The whole damned event is vulgar, and the whole event undermines the dignity of women, so a stupid dress is really not the thing to be complaining about. Are people fine with the idea of parading women in bikinis around whilst they spout inane bullshit and then lauding them as the pinnacle of the feminine gender, but somehow appalled if she makes a national dress slightly smutty? Get a fucking clue.

Dissolution

2009-07-26T19:12:00.012+01:00

You know how sometimes you intend to blog about shit and then by the time you get round to it everything's changed and you realise that, actually, you can't be arsed? Well watching the last two weeks of the LDP imploding has been like that. But with more alcohol. And less being arsed.

So. The LDP lost the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections two weeks ago by almost as much as I like to tell people they lost by. Which is shitloads. They no longer hold the majority, that now goes to DPJ, Tokyo Network and assorted cronies. Unfortunately hardly anyone voted for the SDP, but then that's no surprise. There are still people who don't wash their hands after they use the toilet, so I guess some people just refuse to be civilised.

Obviously Aso tried to limit the damage by telling people that the Tokyo Assembly elections weren't indicative of how the party would do in the general election because they deal with entirely different issues. Naturally, everyone knows that's horseshit. They're going to lose spectacularly in the general election. Not spectacularly because they'll lose by much, but spectacularly because they've only been out of power for nine months out of the last 54 years.

Aso needs re-inflating again.
That's not to say that they've had a solid monopoly over Japan for all of those years. Since Koizumi they've had a litany of popular failures and private disasters. The best way to imagine the LDP's situation is to picture a man falling down an up-escalator for three pathetic, bone-splitting years. Like the LDP's approval rating the man seems to be constantly falling, with all the associated pain and embarrassment, but always miraculously stays in the same place. We have to wait for him to finally hit rock-bottom to see whether he'll lie there and bleed out with the remains of his dignity or whether he'll lurch like Frankenstein's monster back to the escalator of government.

Aso has dissolved the Lower House in preparation for a general election on the 30th of August. This obviously means that there is effectively no government in Japan at the moment. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Cos I'm pretty sure this means Japan is ripe for a coup d'etat. If we can barricade ourselves in Aso's office so we've got the Prime Minister's Throne on the 30th of August then it's legal, right? Isn't that how it works?

Debt Will Eat Me Alive (Also A Woman Was Burnt)

2009-07-10T16:03:00.008+01:00

Having recently found out how much debt I'm currently in from my student loan (£32,000, or $51,823, or 4.8 million yen), I can sympathise with people being made redundant. Although, the economy will stabilise and they'll find jobs again, and at least they've all got experience and viable qualifications. This £32,000 is going to hang around my neck til I die, because there's no way in hell I can pay it off. Surely there's someone in the world looking to employ a Comparative Literature graduate? Seriously, I can compare the shit out of things.

Anyway. Fuji TV have reported how some crazy bitch set a job-agency office-worker on fire because she couldn't find her a job. The batshit psycho doused her with gasoline and then ignited her. And as if telling us wasn't good enough, Fuji TV then show us what a plastic bottle of gasoline might look like, then show us a lighter. And for those of us that still don't get it, they then do a CGI re-enactment. They also show the spot where she was set alight over and over again, as if by looking at it often enough we'll get some kind of clairvoyant flash-back of the actual incident. This is a news-story in which every person featured failed at their job.

Video via Japan Probe
The job-agency worker couldn't get a client a job. The psycho-woman got fired from her job in the first place. And Fuji TV are just shit. I could do any of those jobs! Or at least not do them any worse than these people. Somebody hire me! ...Please?

Land Of The Rising Unemployment Figures

2009-07-09T22:59:00.006+01:00

"Yes, unemployment rates are increasing. And yes, the rate at which the unemployment rate is increasing is increasing. But! The rate at which the rate of unemployment rate increases are increasing is DEcreasing! So it's all going to be ok! Vote LDP! Vote LDP!"

The unemployment rate in May was up to 5.2%. I'm waiting for an update on June's figures, which I expect to see at Japan Economy News any day now. I'm also preparing my face to adopt the appropriate expression of concern to mask the fact I have no idea what any of this really means.

Aso's "I feel your pain. No, seriously" face

Aso Meets His Boss

2009-07-08T17:43:00.003+01:00

Well, hasn't Aso Taro been busy? (No.) He turned up at the Vatican yesterday for a meeting with the Pope ahead of the G8 Summit in Italy that's just started. Every time the G8 meet it seems like all their members go on press-junket style tours, meeting local luminaries and being interviewed, like weary actors promoting their latest movie but with a radiant sense of glee and self-importance. They smile for the cameras and answer questions like, "What was it like working with Silvio Berlusconi?" and "Can you confirm or deny rumours of a romance between you and Chancellor Merkel?" Then everyone forgets they exist for six months or so before they're off again.

So yesterday Aso (68 years old, Catholic) went to meet his Overlord, the Pope. But he wasn't just there to take Pope Benedict's each-way bet on Obama to use the word "reform" at least three times in a single sentence, oh no. He also wanted to present him with a Sony digital camcorder. Because if there's one thing the Pope likes more than gambling on dead-certainties it's home-videos. Oh, and God.

Awkward gifts are something of a staple in the political world. When Obama met the Queen for the first time, he gave her an iPod loaded with songs from The King And I (true fact). In turn, the Queen gave him a framed, signed photo of herself, which quite frankly is fucking hilarious. And when Gordon Brown visited America, Obama gave him a box-set of 25 DVDs (another true fact). Of course, Region 1 DVDs can't actually be played in Britain, but how was the President to know that?

Here's the Aso-Pope meeting, with the Sony camcorder being presented on a silver platter:

You'll notice the camcorder doesn't actually have a charger though. So the Pope will be lucky to get even one match of the All-Italia Nuns Volleyball Championship out of it. Better luck next time.

Abandoned Hotel Becomes Even More Abandoned

2009-07-02T23:09:00.007+01:00

The Takara Hotel in Nakagusuku, Okinawa, has been a hang-out for lots of idiot teenagers living in the nearby military base. It's also been used by some Japanese "military-gamers" as a paintball arena, which is a far better use for an abandoned hotel than kids trying to scare each other. I mean, honestly. But now, because a Marine was injured there recently, the Corps has declared it off-limits to all personnel and family of military staff. The wimps.

2nd Lieutenant Lucas Burke (great name) has written that, "Injuries sustained by a service member brought the dilapidated conditions to light with Marine Corps leadership, who consider the high risk of harm at Takara Hotel to constitute a threat." The Corps elaborated on the "dilapidated conditions", specifying "decaying structure, broken glass and accumulating detritus".

I'm no expert, but aren't these guys trained for wars? You don't need to coddle them, they're soldiers. A little "decaying structure" never hurt anyone! And "detritus" is known to be character building. Significantly, the military have declined to describe the details of the Marine's injury sustained in the hotel, leaving us no choice but to speculate wildly.

The Takara Hotel was half-constructed in 1975 by an adventurous businessman. Apparently the local villagers told him not to build the hotel because the proposed site was on sacred grounds. No seriously. But, like any conscientious horror-story protagonist, he did it anyway. Then the local Buddhist temple started accosting the builders, warning them that the construction site was right next to a cave housing "restless spirits", so most of the builders left. We're told that the rest of the workers "abandoned the project when several other workers died in mysterious construction accidents". It's like the plot of every shit teen-horror movie rolled into one ridiculous mess. And the businessman ended up in an asylum.

Is that blood in the hallway?! (No.)
So, bearing all that in mind, what do you think happened to the Marine that was injured? Speculate as wildly as possible in the comments section, and the winner will get 100 Points.

Not Long Before Flying Monkeys Now...

2009-07-01T23:06:00.004+01:00

Monkey news time! Not fugitive monkeys tonight though, we're talking about glowing monkeys!

Marmosets have been genetically engineered in Japan's Central Institute for Experimental Animals to glow in the dark by splicing some jellyfish genes into them. Somehow. And when the glowing marmosets fathered baby marmosets, the babies glowed too, meaning the scientists can make non-monkey genes inheritable in monkeys.

This fantastic snub of Mother Nature is supposed to "herald development of monkeys that are better models of human disease than genetically modified mice". Somehow. I'm withholding judgement on that angle, given my lack of a bio-engineering PhD, but I'm all in favour of the Mother Nature snubbing and invention of anything that glows. Pictures have been very hard to come by, unfortunately, and the ones on this post seem to the only ones available.

Glowing monkey hands

YoYoJam Japes

2009-06-30T23:22:00.004+01:00

I've got over my accidental, self-induced food poisoning and I'm fighting-fit again! Although I'll probably still try to avoid fights. Let's keep it real.

Right, I've got a lot of catching up to do with what's happening outside my flat, so whilst I go read some "news" here's what I'd like to fob you off with:

Via Japan Probe

This is the three-time World Champion yo-yo-er Suzuki Hiroyuki, of Team YoYoJam.

How many times do you think he's hit himself in the head with that thing? (OTN Official Guess: one million!)

Maria Sharapova Taking On Four Guys And A Girl

2009-06-25T23:31:00.003+01:00

As tennis fans and anyone with access to the BBC's blanket-coverage will be aware, Wimbledon is happening at the moment. I wasn't interested in the tennis at all, then I saw that Maria Sharapova was playing. Then she lost. ...Stupid tennis.

So for anyone else that was expecting to relax into a couple of weeks watching leggy Russian women prancing around in miniskirts and grunting, here's a video of Sharapova playing against an opposing team of five Japanese tv personalities.

Japanese Blogging Topics

2009-06-24T23:51:00.003+01:00

What Japan Thinks has translated an interesting survey that ranked the top blog topics in Japan.

The Top 10 for men were:

1. What I Did Today
2. Impressions of Movie/TV/Anime
3. Favourite Product/Service
4. Impressions of Today's Food
5. Product/Service I Want to Recommend
6. Political News
7. Financial News
8. Sports News
9. What I Bought Today
10. Entertainment Gossip

And for women:

1. What I Did Today
2. Impressions of Today's Food
3. Favourite Product/Service
4. Impressions of Movie/TV/Anime
5. Product/Service I Want to Recommend
6. What I Bought Today
7. Impressions of a Manga
8. Impressions of Music
9. Entertainment Gossip
10. What My Friend/Relatives Did Today

By way of comparison, here's the OTN Top 10 Topics so far:

1. Politics
2. Technowizardry
3. The Economy
4. Ueto Aya
5. Criminal Underworld
6. Visions of the Apocalypse
7. Culture
8. Baseball
9. Wildlife
10. Pokemon

Yeh, you'd never have thought that the bulk of this blog has been about politics, would you? But those are the numbers, man.

Go to What Japan Thinks for more details on the blogging survey and for shitloads of other interesting surveys.

For Lack Of Anything Else: Gundam Stuff

2009-06-23T22:54:00.007+01:00

There's been a spate of Gundam suits being made recently. It started with the life-size Gundam RX-78 suit made in Odaiba as part of the 30th Anniversary of Gundam celebrations, which seem to have spawned a series of copycat-crime Gundam creations all over the place.

Video of the Odaiba Life-Size Gundam, via Japan Probe
But as we all know, the Universe craves balance. And as a multi-million yen, painstakingly accurate Gundam suit had been erected in Odaiba, so the Fukuoka Science Museum had to build four Gundam suits out of cardboard. This is the tiny picture that the Asahi Shimbun provided, and I haven't been able to find anything bigger, sadly:

Quite frankly I'm more impressed by these cardboard Gundams than by the life-size one.

And in America, army mechanic Carlos Owens has designed and built his own mobile suit. It's not a Gundam, but in contrast to the Odaiba and cardboard models his actually works. It's a six-metre tall hydraulic-powered suit that can be controlled from within.

Via Japanator
Given the numbers of novelty robots now roaming the Earth, could someone please get round to organising a Robot Battle Royale? Who's job is that? It must be someone's job. Yeh I'm looking at you, Japan.

Guitar Playing Nine-Year Old

2009-06-20T15:52:00.003+01:00

Despite Ellen Degeneres, this video is amazing. Try to ignore her and watch the video to the end - seriously. You won't regret it.

Hotness, Courtesy Of Asian Poses

2009-06-15T21:49:00.002+01:00

In the past week I've seen three people link to Asian Poses, and the last person was Gary Cutlack so clearly it can't be ignored any more.

Although this doesn't come under "Japanese news", it does come under "pictures of hot Asian girls" and is therefore still within the mandate of this blog. Asian Poses is, as you can imagine, a catalogue of the poses that girls strike in photos. Like in this video demonstration of quick-fire posing:

Check out the site, it's super cool.

Breaking Monkey News!

2009-06-14T21:01:00.002+01:00

Another monkey is on the run! This is not the same creature as the elusive Shibuya Monkey or the Kisarazu Monkey, it's a brand new one that infiltrated Kasukabe in Saitama yesterday. Look at it go!

Actually they're not really chasing it, are they? It's like they hardly care.

Monkey Chase!

2009-06-13T22:20:00.003+01:00

The people of Kisarazu in Chiba have failed where their compatriots in Shibuya also failed. Late last month, 30 people attempted to capture a monkey that was running amok in the town, chasing it through streets and over rooftops, but they were outmaneouvred and outrun.

Why were they chasing the monkey though? Was it causing damage to property or something? I know nothing about the countryside, other than that it doesn't have internet and is therefore something to be avoided, so I very rarely come into contact with animals. I can't imagine the monkey was being that much of a danger to anyone or anything, but maybe that's ignorance on my part and monkeys are an infamous threat to crops or something.

Pretty much the same thing happened in Niigata in March, but the people there caught their quarry. They initially tried to outwit it by leaving bananas laced with tranquilliser around, but when the monkey didn't fall into their trap they ended up just cornering it in a garage. And it only took 20 people there. Here's a video of the Niigata chase:

Sadly there's been no news about the Shibuya Monkey, who evaded train-station workers, the public and the police for months. I really hope it survived the winter.

Max's Vision Of The Apocalypse #3621

2009-06-12T23:18:00.005+01:00

Robots are now capable of reading. Waseda's Information, Production and Systems Research Centre has developed a one metre tall, 25 kilo robot that can scan text and read it aloud in a soulless, Mother Nature-mocking voice. He reads kana and over 2,000 kanji, making him officially about 10 times better than I am at Japanese.

The robot, which some commentators are already calling a "crime against nature" (source: OTN), has been dubbed "Ninomiya", and is an abomination upon the Earth. The heathen scientists behind Ninomiya are currently working on making its voice sound more natural and human, the better to infiltrate our homes. They hope the aberration will be used in the future to read books to children and the elderly. Although the scientists didn't say what it would be reading, it's probably significant that they didn't explicitly state it wouldn't be reading anti-Human propaganda and Satanic pledges, so we must fear the worst.

Video from Pink Tentacle
Woe! Woe! Fear the unbelievers!

Evangelion Phones!

2009-06-11T14:18:00.005+01:00

Oh if only my blog hadn't broke this week and I hadn't been so lazy last week. Then I could have linked the last blog-post and this one together and created a kind of Evangelion-themed week. Once again the forces of bad luck and laziness have colluded against me. Anyway, brace yourself for the most awesome mobile phones ever...

Evangelion phones! Yaaay, Evangelion phones! Say it with me: "Evangelion phones"! All the fellas: "Evangelion phones"! Now just the ladies: "Evangelion phones"!

Yes, Evangelion mobile phones costing 90,000 yen each (that's about £560 in good, honest, British currency) have been released. There were 20,000 of them available on Friday at 10pm, and at 3pm after five hours of taking orders there were none left. That's over £11 million earned by Nerv in five hours. Or £2.2 million every hour. Or £37,000 every minute. Or £617 per second. Just in the time you took to read this paragraph they probably earned enough to buy you and everything you own.

And I can't think of a better way to spend 90,000 yen. Look at it:

It's designed by Anno Hideaki, who I'm guessing had to sell his soul to do shit this cool, to tie in with the release of the second of the Eva-remake films.

And look at the stuff it comes with:

They sure as shit know how to merchandise, these people.

Watching The News Gets Marginally Closer To Being Worthwhile

2009-06-03T18:12:00.006+01:00

I've got a new addition to the list of Reasons To Shell Out Stupid Money For A PS3: Katsuragi Misato is delivering real-time news through a downloadable Nerv News 24 application. This now joins the previous one reason on the list: "the PS3 exclusive release of Yakuza 3".

They haven't got the original voice-actress doing the reading, but they're using a voice-synthesizing programme to recreate her so it's all ok. The background and Misato's clothing will be customisable, so you can have her reading in the Nerv Headquarters or in her dining room. It's as yet unknown how far Bandai are capitulating to the fans in the choice of outfits they're making available. Although the Evangelion franchise is very open to total fan-service so we could be in for a real treat.

Unfortunately the application is only available in Japan, thereby adding to the already lengthy list of Reasons To Live In Japan. It joins such reasons as "not having to live in England" and "not being able to accidentally overhear people talking bullshit I can understand".

In Before The Clock Ticks Over

2009-05-22T23:57:00.004+01:00

It's 11.57pm over here, so it's time for today's blog post!

The brilliant Crazy Ken Band have just signed with a major label. Universal are establishing a sublabel called, for absolutely no reason, Double Joy International just for them. Frankly, I didn't know they weren't already signed with a major label. Well, 'every day a little wiser', eh?

For those of you who aren't already familiar with Crazy Ken Band, here are a couple of songs. They kick ass. Bask in the glory! Etc!

Lock Stock

2009-05-21T23:00:00.004+01:00

There's a reason I haven't written any blog posts since Monday - I forgot. I've been literally so busy over the past three days that I completely forgot to write on the internet or watch even a single minute of baseball. Apparently I missed a Mariners win last night. :o( Still, the reason I'm so busy is that the Pokemon World Video Game Championship is currently happening around the globe and the London heat is in nine days, giving me a frighteningly short amount of time to do a frighteningly large amount of preparation. So you can expect anything I write on here over the next ten days to be quite spectacularly half-assed. Even more so than last week when I only had university exams to prepare for and not a potentially life-changing Pokemon tournament.

But anyway! Today, let me introduce you to the Stocking Tug Of Team War!

Available in shops.
Behold! The heady mix of two parts entertainment, five parts extreme lack of taste!

Paper Plane World Record. Whoopee.

2009-05-18T18:11:00.004+01:00

Toda Takuo is a 52 year old paper plane enthusiast from Fukuyama. He recently broke the world record for the longest paper plane flight by 0.3 seconds, and it now stands at a proud 27.9 seconds. He tells us that "the key to breaking the record is how high you fly it." No. Shit.

That story makes today officially the Slowest News Day Of The Year so far. It's actually slower than the days when I didn't even have any news to post. Give me strength.

Stagnation

2009-05-17T23:53:00.005+01:00

I said a week ago that I'd do a post on the DPJ leader election when they announce who's running for office, but they already elected Hatoyama Yukio this weekend when I wasn't looking. Sorry. That's what happens in politics when you're not paying attention: nothing.

Somehow the DPJ decided that instead of giving Japan something different from the failing LDP, trying to win an election by being better than the other candidate, they'd give Japan something exactly the same and hope that people confuse the two enough to elect the DPJ. Or something. Shisaku points out that both Hatoyama and Aso are bad communicators who are recent descendants of former conservative party Prime Ministers. (We can also add the other two leaders of the LDP since Koizumi to that list - Fukuda's father was Prime Minister and so was Abe's grandfather.) So what's making the DPJ more electable now? They might have had something under Ozawa, but that's been scuppered.

Time to elect the Communist Party?

Well I Blame The Parents

2009-05-16T23:13:00.003+01:00

The Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Konoike Yoshitada, resigned a few days ago due to "health issues". Not having a formal education in politics it took me a while to realise that "health issues" is actually a euphemism for "being caught using government money to pay for a golf trip as part of a poorly-concealed extramarital affair with a young lady". Don't you just hate jargon?

And you know when Aso said to reporters that he shouldn't be held responsible for the appointment of someone who later had to resign for being a cheat and a crook? That was a euphemism he cleared up in yesterday's speech. It's apparently a more poetic way of saying that he's "responsible for appointing all those who ended up resigning" and that "This time is no exception". I guess we should have known that. Silly us. Who knew we were actually supposed to trust politicians less?

So now Konoike is "entirely to blame", and Aso is also "fully responsible". Once Japanese scientists invent an engine powered by Japan's surplus guilt we're all gonna be driving hovercars.

Aso's "How-can-you-ever-forgive-me?" face

Why I'm Not Working In R&D

2009-05-14T19:52:00.003+01:00

Japanese scientists have developed technology for an organic electro-luminescent display that stretches. Apparently,

The team demonstrated a face-shaped display showing changing expressions, and a spherical screen to show weather information. They were produced by spraying a layer of carbon nanotubes with a fluoro-rubber compound to produce a stretchy, conductive material. The displays are thinner than plasma and LCD equivalents, and consume very little power, making them suitable for a range of different uses.

Not entirely sure that it's going to make much difference in the world. What actual good can this technology be put to? Maybe they'll be able to make bras that have a Twitter-feed on them. Or bras that show the baseball scores. Or bras that tell you what mood the wearer is in. Hmmm. Maybe someone with more imagination than me should have a look at the new technology.

Miss Universe Japan 2009

2009-05-13T22:40:00.007+01:00

Miss Universe Japan 2009 has been chosen! And this time she's actually hot! Cue a gallery of Emily Miyasaka photos! Yaaay!

A strong contender who didn't quite make it was this chick:

There's an exhaustive gallery of photos from the event at the Mainichi. I'll leave you to enjoy the photos in your own way. (click them to enlarge)

Abe In Nine Hour Play

2009-05-12T10:34:00.007+01:00

I don't want to turn this blog into a laundry list of my woes, because that list is about as long as the Thames and growing every day. But I will say that today has already been an especially shit day, because the exam I thought I was supposed to be sitting is actually scheduled for next Monday. So I've been working myself up thinking that after today I'd be finished with university til October, but now I have another week left because I can't read a bloody exam timetable properly. I must be the only literature student who can't even read a timetable.

But anyway. That's a phrase I'm having to use more and more to distinguish actual blog posts from the opening paragraph of whinging.

Abe Hiroshi, star of Trick and Hero, is going to be playing the lead in the first production of The Coast Of Utopia in Japan from September to October. It's actually a trilogy of plays set in nineteenth century Russia, but they're going to be performed back-to-back. Which means that Abe will be onstage for nine hours per day.

The play was written by British playwright Tom Stoppard, widely known for writing Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, but whose real genius came out when he co-wrote the Brazil screenplay. That was a fucking awesome film. Why don't they do a stage adaption of that? Abe Hiroshi as Sam Lowry would be kickass.

Le Sigh...

2009-05-11T19:24:00.003+01:00

Something has actually happened in politics! After several particularly dry months for political news, Ozawa has announced that he's resigning.

The DPJ fund-raising scandal that had nothing to do with Ozawa himself has still affected his image, and that's what's prompted his decision. It's a shame, because his approval ratings were far higher than Aso, and if the scandal hadn't dragged its sagging, irrelevant ass onto the scene then he'd be almost guaranteed to win the election this year. Now we don't know who we're going to get.

I just can't agree with this Japanese culture of offering resignations as a form of apology. Resigning is a one-hit-deal; if someone's screwed up and they're really sorry then they should be prepared to stay on and work like a dog to make things right again. I guess it's gratifying to see someone who screwed up making a sacrifice as penance, or just suffering, so people are very keen to demand resignations. Hey, I do it all the time. But of course Ozawa hasn't actually done anything wrong.

Anyway, when they announce who's taking over or running for office I'll do a proper post on this, the most tedious and boring scandal-resignation-leadership-race in history.

Prognosis: Shit

2009-05-09T22:48:00.003+01:00

Fresh from kicking the ass of a bad case of flu, only to have it kick back, and then completing all my university coursework in record and hysteria-inducing time, I now have some kind of stomach bug. It's entrenched in my stomach and it really hates me. This month has started as badly as last month. At least it hasn't dampened my joie de vivre, eh? OH WAIT.

Anyway. Let's see what's happening in Japan.

The papers say something about a Pacific Islands Summit and the leaders of Fiji not being invited, and how that's making some people unhappy. But hey, people are always unhappy. At least they haven't got stomach bugs. Three cases of swine flu have been confirmed. They were from America and had been travelling in Canada, so expect all Americans and Canadians to be put under house arrest for the next ten years.

In politics, Aso Taro wants to host a nuclear disarmament conference in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, to get world leaders talking about possibly planning to do something which might marginally reduce the pace of Armageddon. And Aso is also going to "face-off" against Ozawa in the Diet on Wednesday. Unfortunately the "face-off" is a public debate and not a "Face/Off", with Aso playing the part of John Travolta and Ozawa playing Nicholas Cage. Aso has also inadvertently said something that insults most of the population, again, but this time had the sense to retract it afterwards. Who gives a shit? I certainly can't because all my food is coming out the other way.

In business news, all car companies are going down the drain. Fuck them. It's not like they have stomach bugs or something.

That's the news. Take two pills and pass the bottle to the left.

Aso's "John Travolta circa-'97" face

OMFuckinG! Nintendo Announcement! Pokemon Gold and Silver Remakes! OMFuckinG!!

2009-05-08T09:35:00.003+01:00

As I type this I am happier than I could ever admit to people not on the internet. This is one of the best days of my life! Nintendo have announced that they are remaking Pokemon Gold and Silver for the DS. The remakes will be called Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver. It's all confirmed, it's on the official website. It's actually happening! The dream has become real!

Look at the title graphics:

Isn't it beautiful? I'm so happy I'm genuinely on the verge of tears! This is one of the best things that has ever happened! I CAN'T STOP USING EXCLAMATION MARKS!!

Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver are due for release in November this year in Japan. The US version will likely be released in mid 2010, with the European version coming whenever they remember the European market still exists. But we'll all be importing the Japanese versions and then importing the US versions and then completing them both and then framing the boxes before we even start thinking about the European release, right? I mean, we all will. Won't we?

I'm inviting all my friends out tonight to drink like there's no tomorrow. This is the Best Day Ever.

"We Won't Diagnose You With Swine Flu If You Might Have It"

2009-05-05T19:55:00.006+01:00

As my slow return to lucidity continues, it looks like everyone else is going the opposite way. My WTF-Moment of the Day happened when I read this article in the Mainichi. You remember how Japan was getting ready to fight the swine-flu virus by setting up hundreds of emergency clinics and heat-scanning people and encouraging everyone to wear thin, permeable bits of cotton over their faces? Of course you do, that was in the news yesterday - your brain only needs 24 hours of storage space to remember that.

Mr. Porky's foil-sealed Bag of DEATH
Well today it's being reported that people with any kind of fever are being turned away by doctors and hospitals. They've also refused medical-examinations to people who mention that they have a foreign friend. The potential infected are being sent to public health centres (which are not actually equipped to test for the H1N1 virus), or just having doors slammed in their faces amidst shrieks of "Unclean! Unclean!".

So on the one hand they've set up more facilities for treating the virus than anywhere else in the world, but on the other hand they're refusing to send the possibly-infected to places that might be equipped to deal with them. There's a paradox here somewhere, I know there is. I can smell it.

Bird Flu and Swine Flu collide... with hilarious results

Swine Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest

2009-05-04T19:57:00.003+01:00

I haven't been writing much in the way of Japanese news lately, but that's only because I haven't been reading any. But I've started again out of an illness-induced lack of things to do.

I guess the most important news over the past week has been swine flu, right? So far I've managed to avoid caring about it, as I have with everything the Central British Media Brain has churned out as a scandal or triumph in the past five years. But then I got ill, and suddenly it became very interesting indeed. Obviously I don't have swine-flu, just the unfashionable and unglamorous regular flu, but it seems like whenever anyone sneezes these days everyone dives for cover "just in case". The Japanese have a great tradition of wearing a face-mask if they're ill (so they don't spread it to others) or if there's a bug going round, a purely speculative and useless precaution that's more a gesture of social-consciousness or panic than a viable preventative measure. Of course, there's always a bug going round, that's just how the world works. Somewhere, someone you know is ill, and that'll never change. Unfortunately, this time it's me.

But anyway. I'm rambling now. That'll probably be the flu. Japan is currently on "high-alert" for this swine-flu thing, and have created 684 emergency clinics to deal with it. 684 clinics, all with absolutely nothing to do, because there hasn't actually been an outbreak of swine-flu in Japan yet. 684 clinics, all with nothing to do but work themselves into a frothing panic.

They've also started running heat-scans over arrivals at Japan's airports to see if anyone has a fever. And absurdly, people are worried that they're not prepared enough. The world really has gone stone-cold crazy.

This is why I hardly read the news any more. I'll be back tomorrow with some jokes. If I'm still alive.

"Death! Death and Pestilence upon ye!"

Time-Lapse Tokyo

2009-05-03T23:18:00.003+01:00

Some time-lapse footage of Shinjuku was recently posted on TokyoMango, so I got to tracking down other time-lapse footage of Tokyo. The most interesting ones are obviously the ones which retrack a number of years into a number of seconds. This video shows the construction of a few skyscrapers over the course of two years in Roppongi:

Pretty cool, right? But this next video is a little more ambitious - it retracks 35 years into 10 seconds. Every year from July 1969 to July 2004 a picture was taken of the skyline over Shinjuku and then strung together by a tv show:

This next clip shows time-lapse footage of roads:

And finally this is the awesome video that made me spend a half hour looking at sped-up home-movies:

OMFuckinG New Pokemon Game Announcement Is Imminent!

2009-05-02T23:08:00.004+01:00

Aaaaaaahh! Aaaaaaaah! A new Pokemon game! A new Pokemon game! AAAaaaaaaaahh!!

According to Bulbapedia:

Several media outlets have revealed that the announcement of a major, popularly-discussed Pokémon game will be made later this month. Pokémon Sunday is set to reveal the title May 10.

Issues of CoroCoro and Nintendo Dream will be published the day after the announcement with screaming headlines and about the "much-talked-about big title".

Bulbapedia reasons that since Nintendo have said that the new game has been the centre of speculation, this means they're probably referring to the Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver remakes that the whole fanbase is collectively trying to will into existence. The reasons for expecting a remake of those two games are numerous. They are so numerous, in fact, that it would take a Pokemon fan with psychotic-level obsession and a flagrant disregard of his readership to list them all on his blog. So here they are:

1. Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were remade in Generation III, setting a precedent for remaking games two generations before after the new generation games have been released.
2. The Generation IV games are set in the same time span as Gold and Silver, just as Gen III was in the same time span as Red and Blue.
3. The red Gyarados from the Lake of Rage is mentioned on the news in Sinnoh.
4. The Olivine Gym Leader, Jasmine, has a cameo in Sunnyshore City.
5. Professor Elm's Pokemon egg studies are mentioned.
6. Cynthia gives the player a Secret Potion in Gen IV, just like the Secret Potion needed to cure the Ampharos in the Olivine lighthouse. The in-bag description also mentions Cianwood City.
7. Bebe talks about a "friend from Johto", who gave her an Eevee, and sounds a lot like Bill.
8. The guy in the Hotel Grand Lake talks about locations in Johto, namely the Tin Tower and Whirl Islands.
9. The Veilstone City Department Store has Ragecandybars, but they're always listed as "sold out".
10. In the game data, possible locations for non-Sinnoh Pokemon are Kanto, Hoenn, and Johto.
11. In the Diamond/Pearl series of the anime, every major character has obtained at least one Gen II Pokemon.
12. One of the promotion Pokemon for the new movie is a unique Pichu, who was also used as a promotion for Gold and Silver.
13. The new movie also features all three Johto starter-Pokemon.
14. Trademarked names include Pokemon DuskGold and Pokemon DawnSilver (which might correspond to the Dawn and Dusk Stones in the Gen IV games), and also Pokemon WhiteGold and Pokemon MoonStone (and Nintendo also own the rights to www.pokemonwhitegold.com).

But anyway. We'll see come the 10th, right? I'm very excited. Pokemon Gold being my third favourite video game ever, if remakes are announced on the 10th I may very well cry with joy.

Please please please, Nintendo. Please.

Oricon Survey Aggregate List

2009-05-01T19:13:00.005+01:00

Disengage Laziness Protocol! OTN is back! I've not been blogging for a week due to a nexus of life setbacks including multiple deadlines, a broken internet service, illness, and a predisposition towards sleeping a lot. But now that's all over so we can get back on track. What was I almost definitely talking about? Oh yes, Ueto Aya.

So I've been doing some research on recent Oricon surveys, through the brilliant Tokyograph. And I've come to the conclusion that Aya isn't quite as popular as she used to be. In the "Ideal Younger Sister" survey she came fourth (Becky came first), in the "Ideal New Co-worker" category she came second (Becky came first), and in the "Ideal Type Of Daughter" survey she came fourth again (Becky came first). Seriously, what the hell? I'm a fan of Becky, obv - who isn't? But she's no Ueto Aya.

The surveys kind of puzzle me. It would be interesting to see what kind of criteria the public are using which makes them think Aya would be twice as good as a new co-worker as she is a daughter or younger sister. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can't sleep with your daughter. Well... it's frowned upon at any rate.

I also looked at the "Who Do You Want To Marry?" survey, in which Aya came second, and the "Who Do You Want As Your Lover?" survey, in which she came first (YES!). Funny how those two surveys aren't the same, eh? It seems the average man wants to marry Ayase Haruka, whilst sleeping with Ueto Aya. Anyway, I then aggregated the positions of the celebrities in each survey using a rudimentary point system (a technique carried over from too much time spent on Fantasy Baseball games), and got the following Top 5 Most Popular Female Celebrities:

1. Ueto Aya (37 points)
2. Becky (30 points)
3. Aragaki Yui (25 points)
4. Nagasawa Masami (22 points)
5= Ayase Haruka (18 points)
5= Horikita Maki (18 points)

So there you go. Rudimentary statistics crunched from laughably small sample data don't lie. Ueto Aya is officially the most popular female celebrity in Japan.

Japan, You MUST Stop Doing This

2009-04-22T18:33:00.000+01:00

I like cats - who doesn't like cats? Even witches like cats. Some of my favourite pictures on the internet are of cats wearing things or hiding in sleeves. I like cats.

What I do not like, however, is when a cat is given undue authority. Authority should be bestowed based on merit. That's why stories like this piss me off.

The news story says that a cat (irritatingly referred to in the headline as a "moggy" - seriously, what's wrong with these people?) has been made a Special Director of the Issa Memorial Museum in Nagano. The museum displays artefacts pertaining to the life and works of the poet Issa Kobayashi. And the cat has been Special Director because it often walks around the museum. Clearly the whole point behind this shameful PR stunt is to send a message to the public. And that message says, "This museum is run by people who just don't care".

I cannot be the only person infuriated by this. And Special Director Sora, or "Sir" to you, isn't even the first cat to have a better and more undeserved job than most of the world. Last year a cat called Tama was made a stationmaster at a train station in Wakayama. Because it hung around there a lot. Wakayama Electric Railway then gave it a fucking office after a few months on the job. Then, they commissioned a custom-made train for it. Then - and the italic font would have to make the next words fucking horizontal to do justice to them - they knighted the stupid cat. Yes. They knighted the cat.

...

I've hung around at loads of train stations!! Where's my fucking knighthood?! I've also - and get this - done loads more impressive things than just hang around at a cocking train station! Look at its smug face:

Look at it. It's laughing at us. Laughing at all of us who have to work to get anywhere in life. I hate that stupid cat so much. If you want to see Tama in action, Japan Probe has quite a few videos of the offending animal. You can also watch a video of the completed Custom Tama Train here:

Where is this going to end? Although I can see a lot of positives in replacing Aso and Ozawa with cats (satire!), I honestly think it'll hurt Japan in the long-term. And it's a slap in the face for everyone who hasn't been knighted. Actually, it's slap for everyone who has been knighted, too. The madness must end. Now.

Finally! Some Robots That Don't Herald Armageddon!

2009-04-21T19:53:00.005+01:00

Yokohama has become the giant robot spider capital of the world! Because it now has one giant robot spider! Also, I'm aware that a significant fraction of blogs have written about this before me, but then that's proportionately how much lazier I am than other bloggers.

A four-storey high robot spider built by the crazy French scientists La Machine called, for some reason, La Princesse, is now living next to Yokohama Bay. Apparently this is to start five months of celebrations marking Yokohama's 150th birthday. The spider is supposed to represent "networking" and "reaching out to contact distant places", because spiders build webs and, um, walk. But of course this spider doesn't build webs, slightly weakening the already flimsy analogy.

It certainly walks though! You can watch it walking here, amidst music, lights, and exclamations of "Sugoi!".

Sugoi indeed. It would be even sugoier if they could orchestrate some kind of battle between La Princesse and the huge fuck-off robot beetle built by a 60 year old man from Ibaraki over a period of eleven years that was recently shown on tv. The beetle, called Kabutomu RX3 (kabuto-mushi being the word for a rhinoceros beetle), can be piloted from a cockpit or remote controlled, and has space for six passengers. Here's a video, ripped by Japan Probe, of the beetle, amidst music, lights, and exclamations of "Sugoi!" of course.

If you need more pictures - and frankly who doesn't? - you can find spider pictures in the wonderful Pink Tentacle coverage and beetle pictures in Technotaku.

How To Make Money Fast

2009-04-20T22:49:00.003+01:00

Not all Japanese companies are doing badly in this recession. It turns out that convenience stores have stolen the fire from industrial manufacturers' sails and are now leading the pack, in a horribly mixed-metaphor of an economic merry-go-round.

Sales are up in convenience stores by 5%, but average customer spending is down 0.7%. So are they making 4.3% more money, or is it a function of 0.05 multiplied by 0.007, or what? Well anyway the average money spent by each customer is now 585 yen, or about two 20-packs of cigarettes. Interestingly profits started rising at exactly the same time as Taspo cards were been introduced, meaning that minors couldn't buy cigarettes from vending machines any more.

So, this week's financial-advice-from-someone-who-knows-nothing-about-finance is: Sell stocks in vending machines! Buy stocks in 7-11! You'll thank me when you're rich.

Yellow Sand

2009-04-19T21:23:00.002+01:00

A research team from the National Institute for Environment Studies has published a report that 5 million tonnes of yellow sand blow over Japan from China every year, and about half of that settles on the islands. Throughout the report and the newspaper articles everyone keeps referring to it specifically as "yellow sand", as if the fact that it's yellow is important. As if sand were like Kryptonite, with different effects for each colour.

The scientists say that the sand originally comes from the Gobi Desert, and that they can now "spot a source in a 40-kilometer radius". Whatever the hell that means.

What's clear, though, is that these 2.5 million tonnes of sand a year could be put to good use in reviving Japan's beaches. All they'd need is a series of huge funnels or something to catch the sand, then they could put it down over the tetrapods. Why don't they just do that? Come on, Japan, just do that.

Impending Putin Visit

2009-04-18T18:13:00.002+01:00

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is visiting Japan on the 11th of May. A lot of people are excited because he's going to discuss the sovereignty of the islands off Hokkaido, that's Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan and Habomai, which Japan and Russia have been fighting over for decades. The Japanese call them the "Northern Territories" and the Russians call them the "Southern Kurils".

Personally, I'm excited because this visit will bring us one step closer to the Legend Of Koizumi. All we need to get now are the two Bushes and Kim Jong-Il. And how hard can that be?

Tetrapod Nation

2009-04-15T23:18:00.004+01:00

Along 50% of Japan's 35,000 km coastline tetrapods have been placed to hold back erosion, like concrete-assed, break-dancing King Canutes. The tetrapods are piled high to take the force of the sea and save the coast. But what are they saving it for? There are virtually no beaches left in Japan because of all the tetrapods. And the island did just fine before the invention of concrete, so what's changed that makes it necessary to put these things everywhere?

Flow #2 by Saksak
The cynical and suspicious answer to those questions lies in government building contracts and the fact that there's virtually nowhere left to build on, so work is being created in order to keep the construction industry alive. And it's been alleged that tetrapods actually increase coast erosion, although the people doing the alleging conveniently forget to back up their claim with actual facts.

River by Kodama
Even though the logic behind the tetrapod invasion is flawed, I still think the tetrapods are kind of awesome. Although they clearly shouldn't be used to concrete over the beaches there's something really quite beautiful about them. But then I find concrete buildings oddly inspiring, contrary to most people.

Tetrapods in the Mist by Montgomery
If you're a really big tetrapod fan and you've somehow managed to acquire money to spend on tetrapod paraphernalia, there are these kickass tetrapod cushions available (from somewhere I haven't done nearly enough research to find).

Photos from Ken Ohyama
And there are also tetrapod rubbers (or "erasers" for the American-English inclined) made by Sun-Star Stationery Co. You can buy them for 120 yen each, in nine different erosion-prohibiting/advancing colours! (Or "colors". Seriously, you people.)

And to keep this blog's loading time down, like I care, here are links to tetrapods as captured by five more talented photographers.

Montkd
Toru Aihara
Seotaro
F l u x
Joshua Richley

Ichiro Art

2009-04-14T18:57:00.003+01:00

This is a video of artist Phil Hansen drawing a picture of Suzuki Ichiro, easily the most famous Japanese baseball star in the world, on a street pavement.

This was part of Hansen's Goodbye Art series, which also included gems like this and this. Check out the rest of Hansen's website too - he's quite, quite brilliant.

A "Modern Samurai"

2009-04-12T23:57:00.002+01:00

Samurai still exist! You all thought they were dead, but they're not dead yet! Check out this absolutely AMAZING video of a guy who can cut stuff with his katana with a frightening precision and strength. It's hands-down AWESOME.

Gundam's 30th Anniversary

2009-04-08T22:31:00.003+01:00

Today is the 30th anniversary of Gundam, the famous Japanese franchise. Obviously you know what Gundam is - even people with nothing but the basest knowledge of Japanese popular culture are familiar with Gundam - so I won't bother explaining it. Also I don't actually like Gundam, so explaining it would be a hell of a chore.

What I am going to do, however, is show you some adverts for Gundam toys. Adverts which feature Ueto Aya. Yes, we're back there again.

As with all running-adverts there's a kind of narrative involved, and Aya takes on a variety of roles. These adverts have been uploaded to YouTube by Panda2000fun, a true Hero Of The People. I'm going to embed the first five, but seriously you need to go to Panda2000fun's profile and watch all of them. Bear in mind this is very much a test of your heterosexuality.

Happy 30th, Gundam franchise! Please try to make the next 30 years at least slightly entertaining!

Schemata Architects Want You To Live Like A Hamster

2009-04-07T14:54:00.005+01:00

My dad is an architect and he did a concept-design for an apartment building about a decade and a half ago or something. It was brilliant - you only had one room, but at the end of it there was a revolving utility hub. So if you wanted to use the kitchen you'd revolve it so the kitchen segment, and when you wanted to sleep you revolve it to the fold-out bed, etc. Obviously it was designed for single-tenants: if one person was asleep and the other needed the loo it would all get either very inconvenient or very messy. The point is, it puts this guy to shame.

Nagasaka Jo from Schemata Architecture has designed a home that "rethinks just how much space one person needs". His 3-metre cube has all modern conveniences in it, and apparently he thinks that's enough. But obviously it's not.

My dad's design was smaller than this. And it didn't look like the inside of a fucking mental institute. And it wasn't a single block that can't actually be put anywhere. Look at this:

What the fuck? Where are they planning to put this cube? Where is it supposed to go? Is the electricity and water going to be piped in? Cos that would seriously undermine the sleek white design they've got here. And also, the shower and the toilet and the desk and everything else are all stored in the walls and floor. So when they say that they've condensed the living space, all they've actually got is multi-function space. You still need at least two more metres in every dimension to store all this crap. They haven't thought at all about reducing the space needed to live. What a load of bollocks. And it also looks like a fucking prison.

Final Score

My Dad: 1
Nagasaka Jo: 0

Aya Ads #1

2009-04-06T21:15:00.004+01:00

Well I've had a busy day and I'm very, very tired but I have to get my blog quota in, so I think I'm just going to throw some videos at your face and then run away before you notice. Let's see if that works out.

If you're an Ueto Aya fan then you'll already have seen all her Dr. Panda commercials. And if you haven't seen them then by god you're going to see them now. I won't have my readers ignorant of the best damned adverts ever made.

The panda character that Aya plays was originally used to sell health insurance, like in the advert above. See? Doesn't it make you want to buy health insurance?

Look what happens when you buy health insurance! Why wouldn't you? The panda character was also used to advertise car insurance.

Cars! I used to think they were rubbish, now I know they're awesome! And then it was used to advertise a language course called "One Step". I love languages!

There's an awesome "making of" video somewhere about that commercial, but either I've misplaced it or it's been removed from YouTube for being just too mind-warpingly cute.

That's it for today. Remind me to talk about some of the other Aya commercials at some point - if you've never wanted to buy Softbank contracts before then you certainly will after you see the adverts.

Pokemon On Twitter

2009-04-05T19:09:00.009+01:00

This is genuinely some of the funniest shit I have ever seen. Sometimes the Pokemon community just fucking rocks.

Here are some very brief highlights, but if you're on Twitter then I strongly urge you to follow these guys.

Blastoise

Nidoking

Magikarp

Tentacruel

Venomoth

Dugtrio

Moltres

Youngster Joey

Officer Jenny

Lt. Surge

Gengar

Porygon2

Cleffa

Jolteon

Missingno.

Hitmonchan

Aerodactyl

Gyarados

Squirtle

The world just doesn't get much better than that.

Max's Vision Of The Apocalypse #3586-G

2009-04-04T23:15:00.008+01:00

Japan's space-programme is gathering pace, and in their latest statement the Strategic Headquarters for Space Development have announced a plan to land a walking humanoid robot on the moon by 2020. That escapade will then be followed by a joint moon-mission of humans and robots.

The government also plans to have robot nurses working in hospitals within five years. And Honda are busy developing technology to allow people to control robots with their thoughts:

So after all this, why is no-one freaking out? Surely now, if ever, is the time to start panicking and storming the Diet. I know that most of my Visions involve robots, so maybe my regular readers have got a little desensitized towards the frightening leaps in robot technology and prevalence. Well don't! That's how it all starts! With robots for convenience and "art". Like this 7 metre fire-breathing behemoth built in Roppongi, as "art":

That live footage was captured by CScout Japan, braving the no-mans-land to send us a warning. And Japanator also struck the appropriate tone of confusion and defiance. That's one branch of the future of robots: pimped-out machines of war that'll easily crush us when they gain sentience (yes, that's "when"). The other branch of the future can be represented by, amongst other creations, these:

Those are Robo-Qs - 3.4 cm tall remote-controlled robots made by Takara Tomy. Cute, aren't they? You'd welcome them into your home, wouldn't you? And that's the danger in this branch of the future - infiltration. Not only are robots beginning to tend to our sick, they're teaching in schools. That's right, robots now have full access to your children. And they're taking over from supermodels too, arguably the pinnacle of modern civilisation.

She's no Alessandra Ambrosio
And Motoman SDA10 can do anything you can do ten times more efficiently, and won't get crabby if he can't have a cigarette break. Here he is assembling a disposable camera.

And here he is making Okonomiyaki:

Can you assemble a disposable camera? Can you make Okonomiyaki? Of course you can't, just look at you! And that's why this robot is going to take over your life. Then your country. Then the world.

Start panicking now, the revolution's already begun.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

2009-04-03T18:50:00.005+01:00

Japan famously has the one of the most freakishly long life-expectancies in the world, something like 78 for men and 85 for women. But the Japanese elderly don't just sit at home drinking green tea and passing on wisdom, oh no. They often lead very active lives. Frighteningly active lives.

Asahi TV showed the exercise regime of an 82 year old woman in Okinawa, who is more physically capable than I am. Asahi TV dubbed the Rocky-theme over the montage, but I like to believe she actually puts that music on the stereo when she exercises.

Following this work-out routine she hopes to live to 125.

Aso Taro is also holding back his 62 years through exercise. Last month he dismissed comments that he looks like he's gained weight by talking reporters through his exercise routine of 50 sit-ups, push-ups and back-exercises a day, with stretches and morning-walks. "My weight hasn’t changed since I became Prime Minister. My body-fat ratio is 15-16 percent", he said. Of course this officially puts his body-fat ratio higher than his approval rating. Maybe if he spent a little less time on his figure and a little more on his job, eh?

Aso's "No-Pain-No-Gain" Face

A very different picture of elderly vitality is painted by Tokuda Shigeo. A 74 year old retired travel-agent, he's starred in over 300 hardcore porn films. Apparently "mature porn" is a "fast growing niche market", and since his nearest rival died at the age of 90 Tokuda's been raking it in.

The oldest female porn star he's co-starred with is 72 year old Ito Fujiko, but of course in the vast majority of his films he works with women five decades younger. He's managed to keep his job a secret from his wife, grandson and one of his two children, despite the fact that he gives interviews and appears in publicity for the company making the films, G's Spot Co.

And the world's oldest living man, Tanabe Tomoji, is still going strong at the age of 113, having accrued eight children, 25 grandchildren, 54 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren along the way. He was born on the 18th of September 1895, and attributes his long life to an abstinence from alcohol, drinking milk every day, and eating healthily. Although, at his 112th birthday he said, "I want to live forever, I don't want to die", and on his 113th birthday he said, "I am happy, I eat a lot, I don't want to die", so it sounds like he's living on sheer willpower. Here's a video of him a few days before his 113th birthday.

So which is the best way to live a long life? Is it frequent exercise, having absurd amounts of sex, or nurturing a consuming fear of death? And who's willing to participate in a scientific test of them? I've got dibs on Method Two.

Join The Club

2009-04-02T22:02:00.003+01:00

Brother Slain At His Own Request, a news-story from the Asahi Shimbun today. But haven't we all killed our mentally deranged brother with a towel purportedly at his own request because he couldn't afford medicine to treat his illness? We've all been there, haven't we?

Yes!

2009-03-31T20:40:00.003+01:00

Success! After the impassioned appeal I made yesterday (And dare I say as a direct cause of it? No, I daren't.) Tokyograph today announced Ueto Aya's first single in two years.

The song is called "Smile For..." and is part of a concept album for Smile Project 2009, which we're told intends "to bring smiles to faces across Japan". It's due for release on the 3rd of June, and is going to be used as the ending-theme in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn! anime from Saturday onwards. Well done, Aya! And well done, Japanese Press!

Making A Stand

2009-03-30T23:14:00.005+01:00

I was reading this story about an Oricon survey and it made me very upset. The survey asked 600 men which female celebrities have the most beautiful lips, and top of the list was Inoue Waka. Can you spot the problem with that last sentence? It was a survey of female celebrities involving beauty, and the person who won was Inoue Waka. What is wrong with the world? Why wasn't Ueto Aya top of the list? She ended up in second place, transforming what we all thought was a simple celebrity news story into a horrific, scandalous violation of our sensibilities.

And yesterday Tokyograph reported on the most recent TV Tarento Image Ranking results, which measures the popularity and recognisability of celebrities. Guess what? Ninth place! Ueto Aya came ninth, and to add appalling insult to disgraceful injury, it was joint ninth place! The horror! The horror!

There's been a spate of this kind of thing recently, and I don't like it. If it's not news stories where we're affronted by Aya not being in the headlines, then it's news stories where she doesn't even feature, if you can imagine such a thing. Look at this piece of journalistic hackery: Japan Should Use Globally Standardized Ball. Nippon Professional Baseball Commissioner Kato Ryozo thinks Japan should use the same type of ball that everyone else uses. That's all well and good, Breitbart.com, but are we just supposed to intuit what Ueto Aya thinks of it? And this: Newly Homeless Flout Rules Of The Street. Oh I'm sure they do, Yomiuri. But what does this tell us about Ueto Aya?! It's just lazy journalism. Do your research, dammit!

A photo of Aso meeting Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine. It doesn't show Ueto Aya and is therefore USELESS.
I've done the maths, and it's clear that over 99% of the stories in national Japanese newspapers this year have featured a distinct lack of Aya. I can't say I'm not disappointed. Obviously, because I've already made it very clear that I'm outraged. I want to see some changes. This is me calling you out, Japan. Tell me what Ueto Aya is doing (pictures too please) and then I'll listen to what you have to say about the possibility of a global financial stimulus package. But not until then.

Bad Week

2009-03-27T17:30:00.005Z

You are not having a bad week. You've never had a bad week. You don't know the meaning of the term "bad week".

This man knows the meaning, though.

On the 6th of August 1945, Yamaguchi Tsutomu was on a business trip to Hiroshima. That day he sustained serious burns during the atomic blast, and the next day he was evacuated back home. Evacuated back to Nagasaki. On the 9th of August 1945, Yamaguchi Tsutomu saw his home city nuked.

In some ways he's a very unlucky man, having been present at the only two times in history that atomic bombs were used against another country. But in a way he's incredibly lucky. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but Yamaguchi survived them both. He also survived the subsequent two decades when a large proportion of the bomb survivors died of cancer or leukaemia from the radiation, and this despite having been exposed to large amounts when he was searching for his relatives in Ground Zero.

This week Yamaguchi officially had his ID updated to show that he survived two atomic bombs. "My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die." So. If you think you're having a bad week, at least you haven't been nuked twice. And if Yamaguchi can find a positive side to his experience then you can too.

Japan's National Colours On The Empire State Building! (ish)

2009-03-26T21:56:00.004Z

The people who celebrated Japan's WBC victory mostly did so by drinking heavily. No doubt the Koreans also drank heavily that night, but not in celebration.

A reptile shop in Japan has decided that it's not enough to get drunk and shout at people in the streets, though. You've got to celebrate by giving back to your country in a display of appreciation. And that's why they're giving 30% off all reptile purchases!

In America, Japan's victory was celebrated by lighting the Empire State Building. They gave the top fraction of the building a kind of pinkish tint, and proudly announced they'd lit it with Japan's national colours.

Maybe both the Americans and the reptile shop should have just got drunk instead. It's certainly cheaper and more fun. Although, I'm not sure their ideas weren't rooted in drunkenness. So maybe less drinking.

Druggings In Roppongi

2009-03-25T13:44:00.002Z

Do you "maintain a high level of situational awareness"? Because if you're American and you don't, then you don't want to go down to Roppongi. (You might also not want to go down to Roppongi because it's shit)

Last week the US Embassy issued a statement urging Americans to stay away from bars in Roppongi because of the rise in drink-spiking incidents. Americans who are drugged tend to wake up outside a few hours later with their wallets missing. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office of Britain echoed the statement on its website. But if you're not
British or American you're probably fine.

WBC Result!

2009-03-24T19:16:00.003Z

Well, if you've been following my World Baseball Classic Live Twitter Feed (and I know you haven't because only three people did and one of them was me) you'll know that last night Japan won the second World Baseball Classic Series! Yaaay!

I watched most of the matches and was determined to watch the final too. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the spectacular last two innings nearly as much as I should have because I was far too tired and the match started at 1am. And then went on to extra-innings. So instead of being happy to see Japan win I was relieved I could finally get to sleep. Then I had four hours rest (about a third of what I've come to expect) before I had to get up to go to an exam. Lucky me.

Anyway the final was fantastic and Ichiro kicked ass and everything was good and fun. If you're one of the unfortunate people who didn't get to see the final then here are some highlights for you.

Dai Nippon! Etc!

Manabe Daito, The Man Who Read Too Much Cyberpunk

2009-03-16T20:08:00.003Z

Very tired and thus not able to write for realz, so here's a video of Manabe Daito, a man who wired up his face to his computer such that when it plays music his face muscles twitch in time. It's a bit awesome, and a lot scary.

He also did this thing with an LED in his mouth and a "myoelectric sensor program", whatever black magic that is.

Hardcore, you know the score.

Georgia Toilets

2009-03-13T23:33:00.004Z

Georgia, the company that makes canned coffee almost as well as Boss Coffee, have branded toilets at a ski resort. They've covered the inside walls of the toilet cubicles with a snapshot of the view from a ski-jump ramp.

These ski toilets, or as I'm going to call them, "skitoilets", are part of the coffee makers' winter marketing campaign. The slogan on the toilet-roll holder (or "toirolder"?) reads: "Seriously kick-ass intensely sweet for the real coffee super zinging unstoppable Max! Taste-explosion!" That's not a joke, it actually says that. I think if you read it out loud whilst holding a cup of coffee it invokes the Devil or something. Below that it has the url www.georgia.jp/max/, because other than that there's no mention of Georgia whatsoever. You'd have to have assumed that the ski resort had started printing babbling nonsense on their utilities and trying to scare people who need the loo.

It's definitely the coolest coffee-marketing campaign that I've seen. To be honest, I can't remember seeing any others, but this one's definitely very very cool. Top marks, Georgia!

DS Sales Have Passed "Loads", Now Up To "Shitloads"

2009-03-12T22:32:00.005Z

Sales of the Nintendo DS have reached 100 million. It's been four years and three months since the DS first went onto the market, and now on average 1.5% of the world's population own one each. That's a frightening statistic given that you can guarantee there are almost none in either Africa or the Middle East. And it looks the DS isn't far from breaking the GameBoy record of 118 million sales.

I'd very much like to think that the people buying DS's are playing life-changing games like Ouendan 2 or Rune Factory or Phoenix Wright, but they're bound to be playing drivel like Nintendogs or Brain Training or whichever one of the literally countless games about ponies is popular at the moment. How can there be so many games about ponies? Seriously, who buys these games? What's gone so horribly wrong with the world that there are so many goddamn pony games? I know this wasn't the angle I started this blog-post with, but I'm on it now and it's infuriating me. It's probably best we move on quickly before this becomes another anti-pony-game rant. Those have lost me enough friends.

Here's a video of someone who's coded an iPod emulator for the DS! That's nice, isn't it?

And here's a thing about a man who made a tiny DS out of paper! How clever.

Right, have to go and bottle up some rage now. Don't talk to me about pony games.

UFO In Osaka

2009-03-11T18:53:00.004Z

People often say to me, "Hey Max, have you ever seen a real UFO?" Well, up to this morning I was always able to say "No".

And I'm still able to say "No", because this is clearly not a UFO:

The people at the Real UFOs website posted this video a few weeks ago from the History Channel, suggesting that they probably think it shows a Real UFO. But it doesn't. It shows something that is either a Fake UFO, fabricated for people who believe any old light in the sky is a Real UFO, or more likely something that is entirely unrelated to UFOs, Real or Otherwise. It's probably something as mundane as a camera glitch, despite what the History Channel narrator and tense soundtrack would have you believe.

And how could aliens fly across space in a tiny ball of light anyway? Pffft, how absurd.

The Curse Of The Colonel Has Been Broken!

2009-03-11T02:04:00.005Z

Oh my fucking god. Just one week after I wrote on here about the Curse Of The Colonel in Hanshin Tigers history, they've gone and found the statue. 24 years it's been in the Dotonbori River. And now it's back. The Curse is over!

The statue was found by construction workers during their preparation for laying a pavement along the river. This year the Hanshin Tigers won't be able to lose the Central League, and won't have any excuses for not winning the Japan Series. It's got to happen. Everyone expects it now. I'd put money on them winning this year but the bookmakers are probably going to give stupid odds in their favour so it might not be worth it.

Although, technically they only found half of him because his hands and legs are missing. Does this mean the Tigers are only going to win half their games? I'm not sure how these curses work. Can someone give me a ruling on this? And given how excitable the Tigers fans are, it's not entirely implausible that they'll celebrate the end of the curse by throwing another effigy into a body of water. Or maybe they'll try to get their own back on Colonel Sanders by throwing into the River the closest lookalike they have of him - Randy Bass.

We might not be out of the woods yet.

UPDATE: They have found the lower half of Colonel Sanders! The miracles just won't stop coming!

Hot Girl Clock!

2009-03-10T15:31:00.003Z

Oh. Yes. Yet another thing I didn't know I needed until someone on the internet invented it. Bijin Tokei is an internet widget that you can install on Windows Vista or iGoogle that tells you the time by displaying a picture of a hot girl holding up a blackboard. Like this:

Not all the girls are amazing, but enough of them are to make it worth clock-watching for a few hours. And if you don't want to download the widget then you can still bookmark the page and go to it when you want to see the time but can't be bothered to look at the bottom-right of your screen, or when you just, you know, want to. Hey, these girls aren't gonna objectify themselves! (Actually they probably are)

Iwate Prefecture: "We Simply Can't Afford To Spend Money We Have On Things We Need"

2009-03-09T19:46:00.006Z

This would never have happened if The Great Sasuke was Governor.

The Governor of Iwate, the prefecture that failed to re-elect former wrestler and deranged showman The Great Sasuke to their Assembly in 2006, had to literally get on his knees and beg that same Assembly to reverse their revisions to his budget last week.

Governor Tasso Takuya planned for Iwate to purchase buses that could transport patients to prefectures that don't have doctor shortages, but the Assembly cut the buses from the budget. Now, I'm not saying that Iwate prefecture definitely hate sick people, but they haven't released any statements saying they don't hate sick people, have they? Just something to think about.

That's Progress

2009-03-07T03:47:00.007Z

We all know the problem with J-Pop, don't we? It's so easy to become a fan of certain young singers, and so difficult when you have to let them go. You know what it's like: you see a new pop-singer - she has a beautiful voice, a cute smile, and a fantastic... um... well let's say she's good-looking. So you buy her overpriced album and watch her simpering on a plethora of variety shows where she has to talk endlessly about her favourite desserts or something equally inane - but that's fine cos she's got a beautiful voice and a cute smile and a firm... um, she's very pretty. But then, before you know it, she's turned 17! Disgusting! You wanted to watch an artist dancing in a four-inch long skirt (it improves her mobility, ok?) with all the charms and assets of blessed youth, not some washed-up hag dragging her sorry, sagging ass around a stage trying to relive her glory days! The horror! The horror!

I mean... we've all been there, haven't we? I mean... haven't we?

Well this problem that we've all faced has now been solved thanks to the "Hatsune Miku" software! This computer program synthesizes the voice of a virtual pop-singer, and lots of song-writers have already started using it to showcase their own talents without having to find someone who can sing to learn the song and record it. But much more importantly, it also means that with the advancement of computer graphics it's now possible to create a fully virtual pop-idol! Now your fodder- I mean, favourite singer will never wear ou- er, grow old! You can wan- um, appreciate her br- talents for decades! Ah, sweet, sweet technology.

Huge Ackman

2009-03-06T20:02:00.002Z

Fantastic video found by Japan Probe a few days ago shows Hugh Jackman, star of stage and screen, on a Japanese variety show. I'm not a particularly big fan of his work, but he seems like a genuinely cool guy in real life. And by "real life" I mean "the chaotic vortex of a Japanese variety show".

World Baseball Classic 2009

2009-03-05T06:30:00.002Z

There's only a few hours left til the start of the second World Baseball Classic Series. The inaugural series three years ago was won by Japan, and they'll start their defence of the title by playing China in the opening game (today, 9.30am GMT).

If you can't watch your favourite out of the 16 competing nations on TV, you can pay a $20 subscription fee and watch the whole tournament live on the official website. For informed and analytical coverage, go to NPB Tracker - they're a fantastic baseball blog and I'm sure they'll be writing a lot about the tournament. For fevered whooping and exuberant trash-talk, I'll be live-blogging as much of the tournament as I can on this Twitter account.

Suzuki & Matsuzaka FTW!

Cups

2009-03-04T22:36:00.002Z

The Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the silver sake cup given by the government to people in Japan on their 100th birthday is to be reduced in size. The current cup has a diameter of a muscular 10.5cm, and this is going to be reduced to an insulting, withered 9cm starting this year. Because old people obviously need all the silver they can get.

The article quotes a person as saying that it was a shame "aged people will become victims of the government's financial problems". But the source was anonymous and merely described as a "staffer" at a "municipality". So he's an anonymous guy, employed in some capacity, at a place. Nice work, Yomiuri.

Of course, the centenarians aren't really victims at all. They may get a slightly smaller silver cup then the people last year, but I doubt they're all going to protest and refuse to grow older because of it - I'm pretty sure an extra year of life is as precious a gift as you can get.

So here's to the 20,000 people in Japan turning 100 this year. Don't get too drunk with your silver cups, now.

Immortal Hands & Eyes

2009-03-04T17:01:00.001Z

H-h-h-h-hanshin Tiiiiiigeeeeeers! Ah, I like the Hanshin Tigers. Here's a little history of the Tigers for you. Because I know you can't wait to learn about the greatest baseball team on the planet.

The Hanshin Tigers are based in Nishinomiya in the Hyogo prefecture, and are owned by the Hanshin Electric Railway Co. who operate lines between Osaka and Kobe. The team was founded in December 1935 and the first players were signed in 1936. Their name was changed from the "Osaka Tigers" to the "Hanshin Tigers" in 1940, then back again in '47, then back yet again in '61. They've won the Central League five times: '62, '64, '85, '03 and '05; and they've only won the Japan Series once in 1985, but when they did the sky practically fell on Osaka. That mini-apocalypse had a profound effect on the team, but you'll find out about that a little further down this post. In 2004 the Tigers played an exhibition match against the New York Yankees, the most successful team in American baseball. The Tigers won 11-7. (Ha!) The home stadium of the Hanshin Tigers is Hanshin Koshien Stadium. It's the oldest baseball stadium in Japan, being built in 1924, and also hosts the High School Baseball Championships.

It's the fans though. The fans totally make the team. Hanshin Tigers fans are known as the most obsessive and over-enthusiastic in Japanese baseball, which is probably what attracted me to them in the first place. I also remember reading that they "have a reputation for rough behavior and a willingness to brawl with other fans or with each other, although long fights are rare". Not sure why you'd brawl with people on your own side. I guess they really are very excitable.

The fans also have an awesome tradition of releasing hundreds of balloons after the 7th innings and then singing the Tigers' fight-song, The Wind Of Mount Rokko. These lyrics come straight off Wikipedia by the way, so you know they're unquestionably accurate:

Hanshin Tigers no Uta (Rokko Oroshi)

Rokkō oroshi ni sassō to
Sōten kakeru nichirin no
Seishun no haki uruwashiku
Kagayaku wagana zo Hanshin Tigers
Ō-ō-ō-ō Hanshin Tigers
Fure-fure-fure-fure

Tōshi hatsuratsu tatsu ya ima
Nekketsu sude ni teki o tsuku
Jūō no iki takaraka ni
Muteki no warera zo Hanshin Tigers
Ō-ō-ō-ō Hanshin Tigers
Fure-fure-fure-fure

Tetsuwan kyōda ikuchitabi
Kitaete koko ni Kōshien
Shōri ni moyuru eikan wa
Kagayaku warera zo Hanshin Tigers
Ō-ō-ō-ō Hanshin Tigers
Fure-fure-fure-fure
And this is the official English version of the song:

The Song of the Hanshin Tigers (The Wind of Mount Rokko)

Dashing swiftly through the wind blowin' from Rokko
Like the big sun soaring in the clear blue sky
Mighty spirit of the youth shows the victor's grace
The name that shines in glory "Hanshin Tigers"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hanshin Tigers
Hooray, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!

Powerful hits and skillful pitch achieved a thousand times
Trained with every discipline here at Koshien
Crowned with constant victory glorious, matchless feat
Always proud, invincible "Hanshin Tigers"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Hanshin Tigers
Hooray, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!
I know what you're all thinking: "It's all very well giving us the lyrics, Max, but how can we sing along if we don't have the tune?" Well have I got a little surprise for you. Click here. And apparently you can find this song on karaoke machines in Kansai.

One of the more kickass parts of Hanshin Tigers lore is the Curse Of The Colonel.

Dotonbori River
After the Tigers' 1985 Japan Series win (which you'll remember I mentioned earlier - told you it would come back), the fans went kind of insane and there were some riots in Osaka. One of the things that the fans did was to gather on the Ebisu bridge in Dotonbori (you'll be familiar with this area if you've played Ryu ga Gotoku 2... or been there). They then went through the roster of Tigers players, and after each player that they shouted the name of, a member of the crowd who looked a bit like him would jump off the bridge into the river. But then they got to Randy Bass, the Most Valued Player of the Series and an American. They didn't have anyone that looked like an American. So, reasoning that any bearded white-guy would do, they stole one of the metal and plastic Colonel Sanders statues that stand outside all KFCs in Japan and launched it from the bridge into the river, no doubt to ecstatic cheers.

Then followed an 18-year losing streak, in which the Tigers almost always finished in the bottom half of the Central League. But who should the fans blame for the Tigers' losing streak? They were doing so well until they won the Japan Series and threw Colonel Sanders into a river! Wait, that's it! Colonel Sanders!

So the legend now is that the Hanshin Tigers won't win another Japan Series title until they find the statue at the bottom of the Dotonbori River. The Osakan local officials have spent a lot of time and money trying to get it back. They've sent divers down there numerous times. They even dredged the river, but still no luck.

The Tigers came quite close to winning the JS in 2003, and fans were giddily speculating that the curse might be over. They won the Central League that year and instead of player-lookalikes jumping into the river, 5,300 Tigers fans jumped in. When the time came for the Tigers to play the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks (now the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks), all the KFCs in Osaka and Kobe either moved their Colonel Sanders statues inside or bolted them to the pavement. Unfortunately the Tigers lost the Series four games to three.

"Please don't jump into the river"
Since then the Hanshin Tigers have won the Central League again in 2005, and generally look a lot better. And the Osaka City Council have constructed a new Ebisu bridge to stop people jumping into the river.

Well, I hope that's been interesting. It was a little longer than I'd planned, but hey. These things need space.

A typical Hanshin Tigers fan

Not A Baseball Post

2009-03-02T20:01:00.002Z

I've been writing about baseball a lot recently, mostly due to my excitement about the World Classic Baseball Series starting this week. But I know that a lot of you aren't really interested in baseball, and are a bit perplexed by the sudden change of emphasis in this blog. So, to reassure you that I haven't lost sight of what's important in the world and that I'm still doing my bit for the edification of the public, here's a video for you. It's simply called "Schoolgirls snowboarding".

Check back tomorrow for more BASEBALL!

Minor Leagues

2009-02-27T23:29:00.005Z

Continuation of my "very quick" introduction to Japanese baseball. It's not looking quite so very quick after all.

In addition to the two major leagues there are two minor leagues and two independent leagues. The minor leagues are the Western and the Eastern Leagues, and feature the "farm teams" of the major league teams. The farm teams are kind of semi-professional teams, with players who aren't quite up to scratch yet, or injured professional players, and they are each linked with a major league team with whom they share their name. With me so far? So players from the Chunichi Dragons farm team can "graduate" into the professional team, for instance. Or they can take out a contract in American baseball, as sometimes happens.

The teams in Eastern and Western Leagues don't conform directly to the Central and Pacific Leagues. So the Chunichi Dragons and the Softbank Hawks wouldn't be playing each other in the big leagues, but they are in the small leagues. Unless the professional iterations of the teams win their respective leagues and play off for the Japan Series. Do you see?

Actually, screw it, just read this. It explains it all.

Now, the independent leagues. There's the Shikoku-Kyushu Island League - that happens on the Shikoku and Kyushu Islands, predictably - and the Kansai Independent League. These leagues aren't affiliated with any others. They are independent. The teams also are not owned by any corporations. They are independent. This much at least is pretty simple.

The six teams in the Shikoku-Kyushu Island League are:

Nagasaki Saints (Nagasaki)
Kochi Fighting Dogs (Kochi)
Tokushima Indigo Socks (Naruto)
Ehime Mandarin Pirates (Matsuyama)
Kagawa Olive Guyners (Takamatsu)
Fukuoka Red Warblers (Fukuoka)

Now the first thing you'll notice about this league is that the names are all freaking awesome. The Shikoku-Kyushu Island League was founded in 2005, so I guess they had to be more creative with the names to avoid repetitions. It sounds like a really cool league to follow, but I have no idea how to follow it in England. Good luck to the rest of you.

The Kansai Independent League's teams are:

Akashi Red Soldiers
Kishu Rangers
Osaka Gold Villicanes
Kobe 9 Cruise

Only four teams because the league was founded only last year, and this will be the first year they've run. Next year two more teams will be added. Kobe 9 Cruise, apart from it's killer name, is famous for having signed up the first woman in professional Japanese baseball - Yoshida Eri. She can pitch at 101 kilometres per hour, and is only 16 years old - she's currently still a student at Kawasaki-kita Senior High School and will be taking time out to pitch for the team.

Should be an awesome year. Now if only there were some way to watch these games on the internet...

Central-Pacific

2009-02-26T20:02:00.007Z

This will be a very quick intro to Japanese baseball. Ready? Hold on tight.

Baseball came to Japan in 1872, with the first full-time team being formed in 1878. It faltered for a few decades until the Greater Japan Tokyo Baseball Club was formed in 1934 and the Osaka Baseball Club in 1935. Respectively those two clubs became the Yomiuri Giants (booo!) and the Hanshin Tigers (yaaay!). In '36 a few more teams were formed and the Japanese Baseball League took off. This was a bit crap until the foundation of the Central League in 1949. The Pacific League was also founded in 1949, but back then it was called the Taiheiyo Baseball Union (the name changed in 1980). By the way, there are loads of name-changes going on all the time in Japanese baseball. You know, just in case it wasn't difficult enough to follow already.

The Central League and the Pacific League are currently the two major leagues in Nippon Professional Baseball, but there's a few more leagues which we'll get onto later. Both leagues have six teams, no team is in both leagues. The winners of the leagues each year then play each other, and the winner of that is the Japan Series Champion.

Japanese baseball teams are franchised - they are owned by corporations, and rarely have much of a connection with their home turf. They are usually referred to by their sponsor name, not the name of their town - so it's the "Yakult Swallows", as supposed to the "Tokyo Swallows".

The Pacific League consists of:

Saitama Seibu Lions (Tokorozawa)
Orix Buffaloes (Osaka and Kobe)
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks (Fukuoka)
Chiba Lotte Marines (Chiba)
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters (best name ever) (Sapporo)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles (Sendai)

I don't really follow the Pacific League. One league is enough for me, given I live in England - a veritable black-hole of baseball coverage. I'm sure the Pacific League is very interesting though.

The Central League consists of:

Tokyo Yakult Swallows (awesome name) (Tokyo)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp (even better name) (Hiroshima)
Yokohama Baystars (Yokohama)
Yomiuri Giants (booo!) (Tokyo)
Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya)
Hanshin Tigers (yaaay!) (Nishinomiya)

You can probably tell just by the names, the Central League kicks ass. Unfortunately it's historically been dominated by the Yomiuri Giants, who are owned by the famous multimedia corporation. Because they essentially have the Yomiuri Shimbun and NTV on their side, they've been successfully marketed as "Japan's Team". The Giants have won the CL 30 times and the Japan Series 20 times, and 50% of Japanese polled support them, so I don't like them. As an Englishman I don't like winners, I like plucky losers who almost make it, and are therefore consigned to history book footnotes. Like the Hanshin Tigers! The Tigers will get their own blog post.

If you want a more detailed overview of the Japanese Leagues then read Deanna's post.

The Great Sasuke Having Battle-Flashbacks

2009-02-24T20:54:00.005Z

Former wrestler The Great Sasuke (aka Murakawa Masanori) was arrested for assaulting a man on a train last week. The man was photographing The Great Sasuke with his mobile phone on a train in Tokyo, so The Great Sasuke picked him up by his collar and kicked him in the knee. And then threw him into the train door.

He is quoted as saying, "Even I have a right to protect my image. I admit to jostling with him, but I don't remember assaulting him." Of course, The Great Sasuke cracked his skull twice in his wrestling career, so maybe he really doesn't remember assaulting the commuter.

In 2003, The Great Sasuke was elected to the assembly of his home prefecture, Iwate. He caused controversy by refusing to take his butterfly mask off, even during assembly meetings. The Governor of Iwata issued an order obliging him to take off his mask, which The Great Sasuke fought against for two months. Finally it was put to a vote and the other assembly members overturned the Governors order.

He's not been in office since 2007, but he still refuses to remove his mask in public. I think it would be fair to say those skull cracks really haven't healed properly.

Not The Time To Have Acid Thrown At You By Psychotics

2009-02-23T08:23:00.004Z

Well, it's already a pretty grim start to the week on this blog. A report from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency today states that 8.3% of people in need of emergency treatment were rejected by three or more hospitals in one week in December, because of a lack of space. 60 people were rejected by over 10 hospitals, and three by over 23. Earlier this month a man died after being rejected by 14 hospitals.

Tread carefully out there. Happy Monday, everyone.

Anti-Whalers Get Boarded (Warning: This Post Contains Mild Profanity)

2009-02-23T04:49:00.007Z

UPDATE:
I usually don't do this, I usually let the subtext speak for itself. But I've had a few messages about this post from people who clearly don't get it so I'm going to explain the point of it, and this is very much a one-off.

I am very anti-whaling. I believe the "research" excuse is at best transparent and at worst insulting. Even if the whaling going on was research-based, I still think that no-one has cause to be conducting any research on endangered animals that involves killing them.

Having said that, I am also against throwing acid in people's faces and ramming sailing vessels, and both of those are criminal acts in which the Sea Shepherd "Conservation" Society have engaged. Violence is not a solution to the problem, and the sheer smugness of the SS"C"S as it assaults and lies its way through the issue is utterly reprehensible and viscerally sickening.

There are procedures in place to deal with these sorts of things. Violence only demonstrates a lack of civility and a lack of imagination, and ultimately it diminishes us all.

ORIGINAL POST:

The self-righteous, militant cocksuckers at the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have had their flagship, the Steve Irwin (that's its actual name - feel the anger!), boarded by the Australian authorities when they docked this weekend.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is famous for attacking the crew of a Japanese research vessel with acid, twice, ramming another vessel (video below), and generally being a bunch of mindless, violent, knuckle-dragging fucknuts.

Is this how you solve all your problems, you backwards, turd-gurgling ass-masters?

"Hey, your research vessel's motives are at best ambiguous, but I don't have the patience to protest with civility! Ramming speed!"

The Steve *spit* Irwin was boarded by Australian police, who had a warrant to seize "all edited and raw video footage, all edited and raw audio recordings, all still photographs, producer's notes, interview transcripts, production meeting minutes, post production meeting minutes as well as the ship's log books, global positioning system records, automatic radar plotting aid, purchase records, receipts, financial transaction records, voyage information and navigational plotted charts." The Sea Shepherd Wankathon Society had the gall to claim that this was because the Japanese government was embarrassed by their series, Whale Wars. But it actually had more to do with them being belligerent, brain-dead bastards with absolutely no sense of propriety.

"Hey, that guy just overtook me from the wrong lane! Ramming speed!"

So called "Captain" Paul Watson, who once claimed to have been shot by the crew of a Japanese whaling ship, said that the Japanese government applied "diplomatic pressure" to get the Australian government to board the Steve *spit* Irwin. He added that,

The Rudd government was elected on a promise to take the Japanese whaling industry to court for their illegal whaling activities. Now they seem to be more interested in taking Sea Shepherd to court for our efforts to intervene against illegal whaling operations.

I really don't think the Rudd government was elected because of Japanese whaling. Ask any Rudd supporter, I think you'll find whaling had very little to do with their voting decision. And even if Japan was illegally hunting whales, that doesn't give the Sea Shepherd Dick-Swinging Society the right to throw acid at people or ram other ships.

"Hey, I asked for a DOUBLE cheeseburger! Ramming speed!"

These guys are primeval, circle-jerking, grade-A motherfuckers. Being boarded is nothing, they deserve to be locked up.

Paul Watson concludes that "If need be we will be in court to answer to charges of defending endangered whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and to this we proudly plead guilty." Go suck an exhaust pipe, Watson, you sanctimonious, braying fucktard.

Max's Vision Of The Apocalypse #3788

2009-02-21T16:01:00.002Z

Professor Yazaki Kazufumi of the Kyoto University Institute of Sustainability Science has identified the gene in tobacco plants that carries nicotine from the roots to the leaves. Doesn't sound like the Apocalypse, does it? But it could be.

He plans to genetically engineer the plant so that instead of carrying nicotine to the leaves, and thus into cigarettes, it'll carry either something beneficial or nothing at all. It's all in the best interests of smokers of course, making cigarettes not only non-addictive but possibly good for their health. This in turn will lead to the 63,000 lung cancer deaths in Japan being significantly reduced, which will then give Japan the population boom it was always looking for. That's right, isn't it? They need more people, don't they? Not less - less would be bad.

Now, I'm not trying to sarcastically imply that it would be better if they let the smokers die because the world doesn't have the space or resources to accommodate a population that doesn't gleefully and ritualistically decimate itself. I'm really not sarcastically implying that. I HATE sarcasm. And I would neeeeever accuse Professor Yazaki of being short-sighted and naive.

Professor Yazaki's funding runs out in March, and he's hoping the big tobacco corporations might finance his research. Japan Tobacco have already sent the Professor a letter saying that they'd be very interested in discussing the feasibility of a non-addictive cigarette with him. The letter was delivered by a flying pig.

Still More Dignified Than A Normal Bank

2009-02-20T01:18:00.004Z

I've never used piggy-banks or seen any need for buying one. Why not just use a jar. I'm currently using empty Ribena bottles for my coins. But here's something a little more interesting that Rinkya have come up with:

Every time you put a coin in, the pigs screw. It's a snap at 1,980 yen. I still wouldn't get one, though.

It also reminds me a little of this incident:

Flipping Off Africa, One Bowl At A Time

2009-02-18T23:34:00.003Z

There are many cultural phenomena that Japan appears to have inherited from America. A love of baseball is one. The ingenuous mistake of referring to 'lifts' as 'elevators' is another. Perhaps the most graphic, however, is the 'eating competition'.

There's something farcical, I find, about competitive eating. Something farcical and disturbing. Maybe it's because in a world where countless people are starving to death, paying someone to eat freakish portions of food that they neither enjoy nor need seems at least insensitive. But at the same time it's also hypnotic to watch. I recently watched a man eat his way through a few hundred bowls of soba, and then found myself feeling disappointed and grumpy when he finally had to stop, like I'd been cheated or something. Weird.

Tonight, I'm going to show you three superstars of Japanese competitive eating. There are two types of competition: those in which contestants eat as much as possible within a time limit, and those in which contestants eat a set amount of food and the fastest finisher wins. Both are equally frightening.

Meet Sugawara Hatsuyo, a 44-year-old woman from Iwate. This video shows her defending her title at the 23rd "Wankosoba" National Tournament, eating 383 "bowls" of ramen in 10 minutes. They're not full, normal-sized bowls, but apparently 10 bowls of wankosoba make up one standard bowl of kakesoba, and 38 bowls of noodles is a crazy amount to eat in 10 minutes.

One of the most famous Japanese eaters is Kobayashi Takeru. He's won the "Nathan's Hot Dog" Eating Contest six years in a row, holding the world record during those years (63 hot dogs in 10 minutes), the Glutton Bowl competition, and the Krystal Square Off for three years running with a world record 97 hamburgers in 8 minutes (no, seriously). I recently found him performing in the most ludicrous television stunt you'll ever see: he has to compete against a bear. The commentating is so transcendentally stupid it'll make you cry. And the phrase "appetite for destruction" is used.

"See how casual the bear is", they say. What the hell does that mean?! What's it supposed to look like? It's a freaking BEAR. What a world.

This is Gal Sone, who hit the eating-scene in 2005. She's in the pop group Gyaruru, who were formed off her fame as an eater. In this video she eats 9 kilos of curry, noodles and rice on daytime tv. She does a lot of this sort of thing - often she just sits eating on programmes whilst they film things around her.

So there you are, that's competitive eating. Now you won't have to lie when people ask you if you've ever seen a woman consume 20% of her weight in curry. Don't say I never spoil you.

Any Objections?

2009-02-17T15:16:00.003Z

There were four things that made the Summer Of Love '07 possible for me: the Crisis Team, a student loan, an almost rebellious disregard for university attendance regulations, and DS games. One game I'll forever associate with that summer is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

In the Ace Attorney games you play an attorney. An ace one. You're hired to defend innocent people from being convicted by a criminal justice system that, quite frankly, takes the piss. The judge is a moron, and your client is almost always assumed to be guilty, immediately putting you on the back foot. You investigate crime scenes and present evidence, and hopefully outmanoeuvre the prosecutor and uncover the real criminal. All of which gives you absolutely no idea how brilliant the games are; I only write it in the hope that it'll go a little way to explaining this video:

You see, an all-female theatre troupe called 'Takarazuka' have made a musical out of the Phoenix Wright games. I don't know whether I think this whole venture is ludicrous, or whether it's the height of genius. It's so lame, but it's so amazing. I guess it's what Olli Rose would call 'lamazing'.

State Of The Nation

2009-02-16T23:07:00.004Z

It's like every week is the worst week of Aso Taro's life. All news reported yesterday has been, without exception, utterly horrific. As Gwen Stefani would say, "This shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-N!" (Sic.) So let's look as some of the stories!

One story (that even the BBC was covering) is the shrinking of Japan's GDP - it's contracted by 3.3%, annualized at 12.7%, in the fourth quarter. Now, if you're like me then you won't have any idea what that means. Luckily, I've done the research for you and the upshot is: the economy really sucks. In fact it doesn't just suck, it's deep-throating. It's putting in a performance that Abi Titmuss would be proud of, if she were capable of feeling pride. Apparently this is the largest GDP contraction since the "1974 Oil Shock", and that has the word 'shock' in it so it must have been pretty bad. And this is almost as bad as that. Which actually still doesn't tell you how bad this is... Hmmm. Well it doesn't even matter! Because as long as they've got a diligent and incisive Finance Minister they've got nothing to worry ab- oh wait.

"Finance Minister Nakagawa Found Drunk At G7 Conference". Well. That's certainly a more visceral way of showing people how fucked they are. His excuse was that he was jet-lagged and had been taking cold medicine. But there's no smoke without fire, and these are some pretty thick clouds:

You can kind of understand why he might be drunk - not only is he faced with these huge, glaring negative figures, he also has to understand what they mean and then pretend to the public that he has some idea of how to fix things. And also he's an alcoholic. Still, he'd have done far less damage to his and the cabinet's reputation if he'd called in sick or something, rather than going ahead with the press conference.

Finally, an NTV survey has shown that Aso's approval rating has fallen yet again! It's a veritable approval-rating-limbo he's dancing over there - he's now bending backwards to the vertebrae-crunching tune of 9.7%. Presumably to piss-off the remaining fraction of the country who isn't sick to the teeth of him already he'd have to literally take a shit on the national flag. But don't think he won't do it. I have total faith. Dream the impossible dream, Aso.

Aso's "riding-high-on-a-tenth-of-the-electorate" face

Akebono Vs. Tokyo Marathon

2009-02-15T13:30:00.004Z

Akebono, the retired sumo superstar, plans to run the Tokyo Marathon on the 22nd of March. He's written on his blog that he's turning 40 this year, and that at 220kg running a 26mile marathon will "feel pretty tight". Apparently they stop giving finishing times after 7 hours, so he's aiming to finish before then. How hard can it be? He only needs to keep walking, right?

Still, good to see he's keeping active. His blog shows him training at home in Hawaii in a regimen that includes lots of food and some treadmilling. He might be approaching this challenge the wrong way.

Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T18:09:00.003Z

It's Valentine's Day! A day dedicated to obligatory, and therefore hollow, acts of affection. A day where couples show their love for each other, because it's the done thing and everyone's doing it. A day when millions of couples are essentially peer-pressured into spending money, like the mindless sheep they are. Baaa! Baaa! Baaaaa! Buy her something or she'll think you don't love her! Quick! QUICK!

In Japan, Valentine's Day is slightly different. It's a day where girls give guys they like chocolates. They then have a festival called 'White Day', which is "celebrated" exactly a month after Valentine's Day, in which men who received chocolates have to give the same amount back, thus completing the cycle. The average amount spent on Valentines gifts by women in Japan is £65. Yes, £65. Let's put that in perspective: £65 could buy you 6,500 penny sweets - enough to feed a Namibian family for at least half a year. For £65 you could have a man killed in East London. £65 could buy you one and a half Xbox games. Or an R4 cart, which would then enable you to play every DS game ever made for free. Is a box of chocolates worth any of those things? When you could just as easily say, "Um, sorry, I forgot..."?

Anyway.

Anyway, anyway, anyway. There's been a lot of coverage of Valentine's Day in Japan (or "VD-coverage" as I like to call it, because I am very clever) on blogs that have the professionalism to impart actual information. What Japan Thinks has an absolutely frightening number of statistics on the subject (ie. 15 sets of statistics). AltJapan has a picture of the chocolate beetles you can buy for the man in your life who's slightly wrong in the head. Shibuya246 has found non-chocolate chocolate-towel rolls. Japanator has found real, honest-to-goodness chocolate tools. And Japan Probe has found Ultraman chocolates, pictured above.

I don't want to call it a "carnival of horrors". But it is. It's exactly that.

...

...WHY DID NO-ONE GIVE ME ANY CHOCOLATES?

:o(

Sport

2009-02-12T21:16:00.004Z

After much deliberation I've decided to provide some sport coverage in this blog. Not golf or swimming or basketball or tennis or rugby, because they're shit. And not cricket because Japan doesn't play cricket, to its eternal detriment. And not football, unless there's an international football tournament going on - at any other time football is numbingly tedious. I shall be covering baseball and some sumo wrestling.

The baseball season hasn't started yet, so I'll probably use this time to get my tiny readership up to speed with the rules and the teams. And then you can forget all about the teams, because the team you need to support is the Tigers. And I'll be telling you why later. The actual coverage will probably start with the World Baseball Classic series in March, in which Japan are going to shit on everyone else, including America, just like they did three years ago. Osu!

Asama Eruption

2009-02-11T23:45:00.003Z

Should've have posted this when it was relevant, but at least it's still kind of cool. You'll no doubt be aware that the volcano Mount Asama erupted at the beginning of this month, and there was ash scattered over a few cities because of that. But you probably only read about the eruption... so... you wanna watch it? Because Maechan uploaded some awesome time-lapse footage of the eruption.

Click for the video
Different angles (but not such good quality video) can be found here, here and here.

Don't get that with the Yomiuri Shimbun, do you?

Factories And Lights

2009-02-11T16:55:00.006Z

I haven't blogged in a while due to my time and energy being taken up with fun. I'm going to get back to blogging just as soon as I get some sleep.

While I'm gone, though, here are some pictures from Seilbleu, Hanazuc, Totoon and Beef.200%, who all take pictures of factories. It may sound a bit rubbish, but the pictures are beautiful.

A lot of them look a bit like sci-fi villain fortresses - especially the last two with the clouds hanging over them. Go their Flickr accounts for more - you can't really start to appreciate the pictures until you see them at double their size here.

Sapporo's 60th Annual SnowFest

2009-02-08T18:32:00.006Z

The 60th Sapporo Snow Festival is almost over. Here are a few pictures of this year's sculptures in Odori Park.

2008 Olympic Gold Medalist Swimmer, Kosuke Kitajima (photo by Sasakei)

Namdaemun (photo by Sasakei)

A Kickass Building (photo by Moontears)

Hammamatsu Castle (photo from here)
And finally, this year's Miss Sapporo:

It's almost over so I'm not sure this'll be worth it, but click here for a live video-feed of the festival.

Gamarjobat

2009-02-08T17:44:00.002Z

I first saw Gamarjobat at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007. Their show was advertised as Japanese physical comedy and the poster had penguins on it. That's literally all it takes to sell me something. I went to see the show with Giorgio, and it was fucking brilliant. (Their 2008 show wasn't quite as good, but calling it 'slightly worse than fucking brilliant' isn't much of a criticism.)

If you haven't seen them before, Gamarjobat are two Japanese comedians, Ketch! and HIRO-PON. They do sketches and some magic tricks and general japes, wearing black suits, sunglasses and mohicans. The Japan Times wrote a special on them last week, so read it for more detailed description than 'they are fucking brilliant'.

When I was in Japan last summer with the Crisis Team we saw adverts that Gamarjobat had filmed for the Tokyo local councils showing on the Shibuya Crossing Screen. They are short clips that warn people not to litter or throw chewing gum onto the streets, that sort of thing. These are them:

Shadow

Chewing Gum

Can
They've just had a pilot show screened on BBC3, which you can watch by clicking here. It's only up there until the 13th of February though, so watch it soon. Because it's fucking brilliant. (Also, if you're boycotting the BBC post-DEC-controversy then you can justify watching it by reminding yourself that the pilot was filmed before that scandal.)

This is a clip from the show.

Some Aya-News

2009-02-06T14:31:00.002Z

I was going to blog this morning, but I got sidetracked. By sleep. And now I have to run off to the countryside to spend an evening with the talented Mr Olli Rose. But before I do, I've just got time to show you this. It's another Oricon survey, this time about the celebrities with the best smile. And in the list of female celebrities they've ranked Ueto Aya a disappointing 2nd. Sacrilege! Blasphemy! The people of Japan think that Miyazaki Aoi has a better smile than Aya! How absurd.

In other Aya-news, she's just been cast in the movie "Baton", directed by Kitamura! Although the news-item does say that it's an animated film. They spend all that money hiring her then don't even show her on screen. How absurd.

Crazy-Ass Shit: The Legend Of Koizumi

2009-02-04T00:20:00.009Z

I'm not really a big fan of manga, just like I'm not a big fan of anime. Of course, there's some manga and some anime that I love, but people who watch every new release, or who can even get excited by the new releases, kind of baffle me. The vast majority of manga and anime are complete trash, just like the majority of books written in the world are worth less than the paper soiled in the printing process, just like the majority of music released is mind-crushingly boring, just like most films made are spirit-breakingly stupid. So it's not that I don't like manga or anime, it's just that if you look at the titles released every month, you don't need to have read or seen them to know they're almost definitely crap.

Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku: The Legend Of Koizumi is different though. I cannot wait for this to come out in England. It looks like the most epic manga ever. I literally can't wait to get my hands on it.

The premise is this: various world-leaders battle each other in games of Super Mahjong to determine the fate of their countries. Oh yes. The world leaders involved are:

Koizumi Junichiro

Aso Taro

George W. Bush

George Bush Snr.

Kim Jong-Il

Vladimir Putin
The manga describes itself as "real, legendary, hardcore action". That's right: not just action. Hardcore action. Legendary, hardcore action. Real, legendary, hardcore action. Hold on, how can something be both 'real' and 'legendary'? It doesn't matter! If anything can, The Legend Of Koizumi can.

Apparently the story continues in Kindai Mahjong Original, where the Pope enters the battle! The freaking POPE! It simply doesn't get better than that.

Koizumi SMASH!

Origami

2009-02-03T00:22:00.003Z

You know what origami is, obviously. It's what happens when bored people start farting around, folding bits of paper trying to make them look like animals, and generally only succeeding in making them look like folded bits of paper. Famously, folding 1000 cranes is supposed to be lucky. Of course if you put the time you spent folding stupid tiny cranes into just crunching the statistics, you'd stand far more of a chance of winning the lottery. Namely, no chance whatsoever.

But you're wrong to be so dismissive of origami - not all of it is complete rubbish. I've found some videos of people on the internet (traditionally the most bored people in the world) making some quite astounding things out of sheets of ordinary paper. Things that might bring out the excitable geek in you, if you haven't yet crushed that geek, and that ability to become excited, in back-episodes of Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. Here are those videos.

That's right. It's Evangelion Unit 01. From a piece of paper.

A wild Pikachu attacked!

More Pokemon: Squirtle

Actually there are loads of Pokemon origami videos on YouTube: Palkia

This has loads of good work, but no step-by-step instructions on any of them. Also, mute the video before you hit play - the music's fucking execrable. And the last 30 seconds or so are taken up by what I'm guessing is a joke from Mr. "tinhyeusetdanh" on YouTube.

Make 1000 Palkias, then you'll have my respect.

A Bit Of A Wordy Rant - Skip It If You Don't Like Wordy Rants

2009-02-01T17:34:00.003Z

The Christian Science Monitor wrote an article recently entitled "Japanese Dare To Ask: Do We Really Need An Emperor?". I was going to blog about it because it really, really pissed me off, but then I decided not to. But then Japan Probe wrote a post on it and didn't give it nearly the beating it deserved, so I am going to blog about it. The article in question is here.

The first problem with the article is that the question it poses in the headline is really fucking stupid. Of course they don't need an Emperor. But there are lots of things that they "don't need" - does that necessarily mean they should get rid of them? The list of things that people need to survive is actually very short, but if you told people they had to live their lives with no music, no art, no literature, no showers, no beds, no running in the corridors, they'd start getting pissed off pretty quickly. As someone in the comments of the Japan Probe post pointed out, "If someone wants to have a useless piece of art in their house, that's their choice."

Rena Singer seems to think that the Japanese monarchy is useless because it doesn't have meaning or relevance. But, of course, she's wrong. Firstly, something can have "meaning" and still be "useless" - that's what 'Art' is. Secondly, something can be "useful" but not have "meaning" - like 'Cutlery'. And if you took a person and forced them to live in a tent with only what they needed to survive, like Singer seems to be advocating, couldn't you then argue that that life lacks meaning? And therefore, by Singer's logic, is also useless? So she would have to say that the person's life is worthless, despite advocating it in the first place. You're an idiot, Singer.

Also the wording of the headline is so transparently partisan and emotive it makes me throw up a little in my mouth. "Japanese Dare To Ask: Do We Really Need An Emperor?" They "dare" to ask, do they? As if they're being oppressed? As if it takes an act of daredevil courage to even ask the question? What a hack journalist. The point Japan Probe makes in their blog-post is that the Singer hasn't actually cited any sources to back up her claim that Japanese people are questioning their monarchy.

When a reporter makes a claim that “many” people are daring to question the need for a royal family, one might expect some evidence to back up that claim. Did Singer include some quotes from Japanese people who don’t think the country needs an emperor? Nope.

The best she can do is a statement from an expert who says Japanese attitudes towards the royal family might change in 30 years, and a quote from a Japanese woman who thinks the crown prince needs to “change things to make the family more relevant.”

Smooth work, Singer. Do you know what that is? It's a lack of professional rigour brought on by the desire to promote an unjustifiable opinion as daring and progressive fact, coupled with sheer, shameless tabloidism. At this point I'd like to retract my earlier statement - Rena Singer is not just a hack journalist, she's also a cock-chuffing fucktard.

The Japanese monarchy does have meaning: it represents traditional Japan, it's a symbol of national pride and the resiliency of traditional Japanese values. It's important for the Japanese to have something that links old Japan with new Japan. Post-war, the Japanese started assimilating American culture. A lot of people think that this was because the Americans invaded and imposed their culture on the Japanese, but I don't think that's true. The Americans were there in significant force for a very short time, and American culture didn't obtain in Japan until the '60s. My theory is that it has more to do with guilt. Every generation in every culture to some extent rejects the lifestyle of the previous generation - that's what being a teenager is about: finding your own identity starts with defining what you oppose. Japanese children growing up after the war didn't want to identify themselves with their parents who had lost a war and let Japan be invaded for the first time in history, so they latched onto the nearest thing in opposition to their parents: American culture. There was no imposition involved. The adoption of aspects of a foreign culture makes it very important for particularly Japanese institutions, like the monarchy, to continue. The monarchy does have meaning and does have relevance, purely because they are not a product of the modern age. That is why they are important, Singer, you stupid bitch.

(And then, having said the monarchy have no meaning, two paragraphs later she says they "[act] as a unifying force and [foster] hope during difficult times." Another contradiction.)

Singer also claims that the monarchy "was considered divine until 1945". Guess what? She's wrong. They didn't think the Emperor was an actual god - they weren't fucking cavemen. They had a constitution and a fairly intricate judicial system long before the Americans came. They knew he was a man, but they respected him because of what he represented. The Americans forced the Emperor to renounce his claim to divinity in a radio broadcast, but the people already knew he wasn't divine - what was embarrassing for them was that their national figurehead was now at the mercy of American whim.

She also claims that Akihito's duties being reduced are due to him being "stressed". But it's not that at all. It's due to him being "old". And Masako's depression has nothing to do with her being "stressed" necessarily either. There's no evidence for that at all, so I don't know what Singer is doing claiming that.

If you still haven't read Singer's article, you should do so. It's so full of twisted facts and brazen lies that the possibility she could get away with this sickens me. I'd like to retract my previous statement, Singer's not just a hack journalist and a cock-chuffing fucktard. But I don't have the adjectives to properly describe what she is.

Show And Tell

2009-02-01T02:00:00.003Z

Two schoolboys in Okinawa found an unexploded bomb from World War 2 and brought it into their school as study material. It turned out to be safe as the fuse was no longer intact, but it was still a pretty scary moment for the teachers.

The most surprising aspect of the linked article is the statement that in just two weeks this month, the SDF unearthed and disposed of 445 unexploded WW2 bombs in Okinawa. The Americans really took that place to task. For those of you who don't know, Okinawa was a major strategic field in the war between America and Japan, with one of the largest battles being held there in which almost 200,000 Japanese died. It was going to be the base from which the Americans launched their invasion of Japan, but soon after they won it they decided to just nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the short term, nuking the two cities was a horrific and inhuman thing to do, but in the long term it probably saved a lot of lives that would undoubtedly have been lost in the defence of a ground-invasion.

It's just such a shame, because I'm pretty much in love with all the Ryukyuan Islands, and I genuinely believe they include some of the most beautiful places in the world. As the linked article states, earlier this month a man had part of his face blown off when a water-pipe he was repairing disturbed a WW2 bomb. This sort of thing shouldn't be happening. It's too tragic for words.

Oricon Upcoming Actresses Survey

2009-01-31T18:08:00.005Z

Oricon compile the music charts in Japan, but they also do lots of worthwhile and very interesting surveys. I know that sentence probably looked sarcastic, but it totally wasn't. And neither was that one.

In one of their latest surveys they've asked a thousand people which young actresses they expected big things from this year, and drew a list of the top ten 'Promising Young Actresses' for 2009 from the results. That list is:

1. Minamisawa Nao
2. Tabe Mikako
3. Kutsuna Shiori
4. Kitano Kie
5. Yoshitaka Yuriko
6. Kaho
7. Yamashita Rio
8. Kawashima Umika
9. Fukuda Saki
10. Tanimura Mitsuki

I know what you're thinking, but don't worry: I've already done the Googling for you. Numbers 3, 8 and 9 are hot.

Ueto Aya still makes all of them look like five miles of bad road, though. (And yes, Number 4 is Kitano Takeshi's daughter)

My Practically-Worthless Opinion On A Political Thing

2009-01-30T19:17:00.004Z

I've just been asked whether I think Aso Taro is going to call an election to secure a mandate any time soon. I'm by no means an expert on these things, but the answer is 'absolutely not'.

Aso's approval rating is at 19% - less than half what is was four months ago. In September it looked like he could do no wrong. Apparently he then decided that he should therefore take this opportunity to do lots and lots of wrong, and by the sheer density of mistakes people started noticing. Unemployment has hit 4.4%, which, as Shisaku points out, is disastrous. And he's also getting a spanking in the Diet over his economic stimulus package. If he calls an election now he has no chance of winning.

What I think he'll do (and this is speaking from an ill-informed and politically ignorant perspective) is wait for something to happen. Something he can take credit for. If the economic slow-down slows down, he can try to take credit for that; if Korea does something about the abductee non-issue that the Japanese populace are so obsessed about, he can pretend he had some hand in it. Aso's chances can't really get any worse than they would be if there was an election now, so there's absolutely nothing to lose by waiting.

So if anyone wants to know what I think about that, there you go. But seriously, don't quote me on any of this shit.

Aso's "No, I AM a people-person" face

OTN On Twitter

2009-01-28T21:39:00.004Z

You'll no doubt be intrigued to know that Osu! Tatakae! Nippon! is now posting on Twitter. I have no real idea what to do with a Twitter account, thus joining the 5 million strong herd of users circling each other and braying meaninglessly into the yawning chasm of the internet. Maybe Twitter does have a purpose, but to an outsider the whole process is fairly opaque. Time will tell I guess. And then I'll tell you.

There's now a Twitter feed on the side-bar of this blog. I'll also be posting links on Twitter to blog posts I write on here, creating a kind of recursive loop of self-indulgence. I'll also be posting on Twitter links to Japan-related news that doesn't make it onto this blog. And if all of that isn't deterrent enough, there might also be updates about my life in the so-called 'real world'.

Engage Project Twitter!

When Capital Punishment Just Won't Do...

2009-01-26T19:37:00.004Z

Most people are aware that Japan has an astoundingly low crime rate. There are far fewer 'danger areas' in Tokyo, for instance, compared to any other capital city. Some parts of Kabukicho are a bit rough, but it's hardly like dodging the hatchets in London's East End, or going to Brixton where you will die, guaranteed. Petty crime is so low that you can swagger around Tokyo flaunting great wads of cash for at least a month, as I proved last summer, and have no fear of being mugged.

(Conversely, if you are a victim of crime in Japan, your attacker is much more likely to be a warped psychopath who'll drown you in a bath of sand and then remove your limbs. Swings and roundabouts.)

But some petty crime does exist. The staff at the Namba IOSYS shop have tried many and varied tactics to stop people shoplifting. They have signs inside the shop that tell customers about the aspirations of specific members of staff, most of them involving finding a girlfriend or getting married. Other signs tell customers about the history of the shop and have personal profiles of the staff. All of them to cleverly guilt potential shoplifters into leaving them alone.

But their newest tactic looks to be far more effective. This is a poster on display in the shop:

The text reads, "If you shoplift, you will pay with your body." The staff are literally threatening to chase, capture, and then rape anyone who steals from their shop. This idea of fighting crime with even-worse-crime is at least daring. Some people might say that "two wrongs don't make a right." But of course Shakespeare would want us to "be fire with fire, threaten the threatener and outface the brow of bragging horror." And what is the 'moral high-ground' if not a platform to dive off?

Schwarzenegger Ads

2009-01-24T19:36:00.002Z

You've probably all seen the Schwarzenegger advertisements for the California Tourist Board, but have you seen his adverts for Japanese energy drinks?

The way he laughs in this is quite frankly terrifying.

More terrifying laughter.

More terrifying everything.

Possible Pokemon Generation V Names!

2009-01-24T18:52:00.003Z

"Holy shit!!" That's what I thought when I read the Bulbapedia headline "Possible Generation V Names", that I then stole in order to attempt to provoke the same reaction in you. What the headline actually referred to was Nintendo's recent trademark registrations.

Nintendo have re-registered all the Gen I names: Pokemon Red, Pokemon Green, Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Yellow. But they've also registered the new names Pokemon Black, Pokemon White, Pokemon Brown, Pokemon Gray, Pokemon Purple, Pokemon Crimson and Pokemon Scarlet.

This doesn't mean that these names will definitely be used for games. As Bulbapedia point out, Nintendo have registered lots of names in the past that never made it to production, such as Pokemon Opal. They also speculate that Nintendo may be registering these names so that they can discourage bootlegs, hacks and pirate versions of their games.

Still, Pokemon Crimson sounds like an epic game.