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Live-action Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
The winning act from last night’s Kinchan no Kasoh Taisho was a Ponyo dance performance by a group of sixteen elementary school 5th graders:
Kunikazu Katsumata’s Ponyo-related act was not as successful:
American swimmer Michael Phelps is going to China to sell Japanese cars:
Winner of a record eight gold medals at the Games, Phelps has signed a seven-figure sponsorship deal to become the brand spokesman for Mazda in China, DMG Entertainment announced Sunday. The group, a division of Dynamic Marketing Group, signed the deal for Mazda, saying it is the biggest sponsorship agreement for a western personality in China.
“The people of China have been very supportive of me and my efforts to help promote swimming,” Phelps said in a statement. “I am excited to begin 2009 with my first return trip to Beijing since the Games.”
Phelps will endorse the new Mazda 6 model vehicle in a series of advertising campaigns that include television commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, outdoor poster advertising and personal appearances.
No word yet on if any other car companies are planning to use this guy in some Chinese ads.
Authorities in Saitama Prefecture have begun the clean up of a pile of 200,000 old tires:
28 years ago, a transport company in Kurihashi began dumping old tires in a wooded area, hoping to eventually recycle them. The company went out of business 7 years ago, leaving behind about 200,000 tires at the dump site. Residents had filed many complaints about the tires, so the Saitama prefectural government has finally taken action and begun to clean up the site. It is hoped that they will have all the tires trucked away to recycling plants by the first week of March.
The Yomiuri reports that food falsely labeled as Japanese is being sold all over Taiwan:
At a vegetable and fruit market, pears believed to be South Korean in origin were wrapped with a paper printed as “Products of Hita, Oita Prefecture.” Carrots and onions produced in China were sold as Japanese products, contained in cardboard boxes with the printed trademarks and logos of “Hokuren” and “JA Kitamirai,” both of which are names of agricultural cooperatives in Hokkaido.
“Since the melamine cases [in Chinese food products] came to light, labeling foods as ‘Chinese products’ has had a negative impact on sales,” a Thomson examiner quoted a person in charge of sales at one of the Taiwanese markets as saying.
A Taipei department store also sold mackerel without permission using the trademark Seki no Sensaba, which is used by a producer of Oita Prefecture.
Frozen scallops were also found in a package claiming its contents were “Products of Hokkaido, the Sea of Okhotsk.”
Japanese producers confirmed that both the mackerel and scallops in question were not of Japanese origin.
There also were cases in which consumers were led to misunderstand the origin of products. Milk was sold in a plastic bottle labeled “Hokkaido” on the front, but also “Made in Taiwan” in small letters on the bottom. Pork was sold as “Matsuzaka pork,” which obviously derived from the top Japanese “Matsuzaka beef” brand.
There are thousands of spam blogs on the net that automatically lift content from the feeds of other blogs, and normally this kind of thing could not be a very big deal. However, Jams.tv appears to be a legitimate corporation based in Australia, and their site is running quite a few direct advertisements from well-known companies (Kinokuniya, HIS, etc.). It is hard to believe that an a corporate website would be engaging in the type of feed scraping generally associated with shady spam sites.
Daughter of illegal immigrants submits petition seeking special residence permission
Last year, I blogged about the situation facing Noriko Calderon, a girl born in Japan who is facing deportation because her parents were illegal immigrants. Back in November, the Justice Ministry decided to delay the deportation of the Calderon family, and the new date by which they must leave Japan is January 14th.
Noriko Calderon, a 13-year-old attending a junior high school run by the city of Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, said she told a ministry official, “I was born in Japan. I have friends in Japan and have a dream for the future. I want to be allowed to continue studying.”
Submitted along with her request were signatures from around 7,400 supporters, bringing the total number of people who have signed petitions on her behalf to nearly 14,500.
Kanagawa prefectural police display a grenade they found while searching the house of a yakuza gang member:
The grenade was found in the house of Satoru Hirayama, a leader of a gang linked to the Inagawa-kai. Hirayama, who is already in police custody over a drug-related crime, has told police that somebody gave him the item in question for safekeeping about a year ago and he had no idea it was a hand grenade.
I spent counting down the new year at Tokyo’s Zōjō-ji (増上寺) with my best mates, Some people went to the famous Meiji Shrine, but I prefer this one right beside Tokyo Tower.
The moment that Tokyo Tower reveals to the world its 2009!
Were you part of this crowd??
We felt warm although it was freezing winter in Tokyo, I guess that is because of the enormous amount of heat we get squezzing through people.
How did you spent your New year’s count down? Were you there with me at Zōjō-ji??
Share your stories!!
I hope the year 2009 will bring happiness and prosperity to all!
Additional Information: Photos courtesy of my friend’s camera (Eko Prasetyo) Official name ofZōjō-ji is San’en-zan Zōjō-ji (三縁山増上寺)
A 10-minute clip about special tours for foreign tourists visiting Japan (from Real Time News):
The report says that tours offering foreigners a chance to experience Japanese culture are particularly popular. Two examples are given.
The first tour shown is of a “samurai dojo” in Tokyo where foreigners are given a chance to experience sword fighting. After watching a few professionals who do sword fighting in movies and TV shows demonstrate some techniques, the foreign tourists are given a chance to swing around some wooden swords. An Israeli woman who participated in the tour tells the reporter that she had a lot of fun and she might use some of the techniques she learned in the next fight she has with her husband. (The tour costs 12,000 yen per person, and is organized by HIS.)
Most foreign tourists who visit Japan spend some time in Tokyo, so nearby Saitama is trying to attract some of them to its famous sites. The Saitama prefectural government and HIS have started a “True Japan” tourism program that urges foreigners to “Come to SAITAMA, Next to TOKYO.” The second tour shown in the news report is their “Wear Kimono in Kawagoe with Onsen, Dinner and Samurai Geisha show” tour.
The tour group consists of five foreigners and three Japanese people. After some initial explanation of the contents of the day’s tour, they are taken to a kimono rental shop. While they are trying on kimonos, the shopkeeper tells the camera that foreign tourists tend to pick color combinations that few Japanese people would choose. The foreigners seem pretty happy with their kimonos, but the narrator of the report notes that they are a little too tall for what they are wearing and some of them must wear zori that are too small for their feet. (Apparently HIS, which charges each tourist 13,800 yen, did not think of preparing a few pairs of larger sandals.)
The kimono-clad foreigners walk through the streets of Kawagoe, sampling local foods and enjoying the atmosphere of the old town. They also attract Japanese onlookers who compliment their beauty and want to take photos with them. The French girl notes that she is used to being on the other side of such exchanges.
Their next stop is an onsen. After listening to a quick explanation in English they are given a chance to relax in the warm hot spring waters. Afterwards, a Spanish guy and an Australian guy who are part of the tour group comment on how the onsen felt great and helped them relax.
While they are at the onsen, something odd is going on at a nearby restaurant/theater. When told that a foreign tour group would be coming, the restaurant staff had assumed that “gaijin” would not like to sit on tatami mat floors, so they set up chairs on top of the tatami. When the foreign tourists found out about the weird arrangement, they insisted on sitting Japanese style.
As they finish their meal, a performance of “Mabuta no Haha” begins on the stage. The play is entirely in Japanese, but the actors insert a bunch of katakana words into the play in an attempt to entertain the foreigners in the audience. Most of the foreigners can’t understand a word of the “English” thrown into the play, but they still get some entertainment value out of it. As the tour ends, most of the foreigners declare that they enjoyed the tour very much.
Domestic animators disappearing as anime studios outsource to Asia
A rather alarming news report about the future of anime:
According to the report, the number of people in Japan who are engaged in the creation of anime is dropping. Most studios outsource the actual drawing and animation portions of their projects to other Asian countries, a practice that could hurt future development of the industry. Some believe that individuals must spend decades doing animation grunt work before working as directors or story planners. They fear that outsourcing all that manual labor reduces the amount of anime-related jobs in Japan and it could lead to a shortage of Japanese people capable of creating anime masterpieces.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government released a special series of anime textbooks last month. The textbooks cover the planning, production, and business sides of the industry. The books also include an instructional DVD about how to draw the movement of people and animals. It is hoped that the books will encourage younger Japanese to join the anime industry.
The economy is tanking right now, but Tsukiji’s first tuna auction of 2009 has shown us that the super rich can still afford to pay big bucks for premium tuna:
The 282-pound (128-kilogram) premium tuna caught off the northern coast of Oma fetched 9.63 million yen ($104,700), the highest since 2001, when another Japanese bluefin tuna brought an all-time record of 20 million yen, market official Takashi Yoshida said.
Yoshida said the extravagant purchase _ about $370 per pound ($817 per kilogram) _ went to a Hong Kong sushi bar owner and his Japanese competitor who reached a peaceful settlement to share the big fish. The Hong Kong buyer also paid the highest price at last year’s new year event at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, the world’s largest fish seller, which holds near-daily auctions.
Here’s a Fuji TV news segment about the what the buyers did with the ultra expensive fish:
The clip starts by introducing Ricky Cheng, who owns a very successful restaurant chain called Itamae Sushi. His original restaurant was in Hong Kong back in 2004 and he has since opened two Itamae Sushi stores in the Ginza and Akasaka districts of Tokyo. Cheng won last year’s auction by himself, but this year he shared the purchase of the fish with the owner of Ginza Kyubei.
Most of the part Cheng bought was flown off to be served in Hong Kong, but some parts of the special tuna did get served to customers of the Tokyo branches of Itaemae Sushi. One 5-kilogram section of the fish is shown being cut up and prepared at the Akasaka branch, apparently to be sold as part of a 2980 yen sushi plate. Huge signs plastered all over the outside of the restaurant announce its winning of the special tuna auction, attracting a great many customers. Cheng readily admits he is losing quite a bit of money by letting people eat the premium fish at such a low price, but there is some value in showing the world that his restaurants serve high quality dishes.
Meanwhile, Ginza Kyubei sold their portion of the fish for a much higher price (2000-2500 yen for one piece). Ginza Kyubei has a long reputation as one of Japan’s finest sushi restaurants, and its owner had no intention of having a foreign-owned sushi restaurant take all the premium tuna glory.
Japan has one export more notorious than all others. It’s about time we gave something back.
The lowdown from Kotaku:
Tentacle Grape is a caffeinated grape soda that Mnemosyne is targeting at gamers, cosplayers, and comic book fans. It is also perhaps the best name I’ve ever seen for a product you actually ingest. You can currently pre-order the soda (pre-ordering soda?) in six-packs for $15.99 plus shipping from the drink’s website, with each order before January 5th eligible for free Tentacle Grape bumper stickers or condoms…
Another clip from Asahi TV’s coverage of how certain people spent New Year’s Eve:
This clip is about Hiroshi, a 26-year-old who works at a gay bar in the Shinjuku 2-chome district. It is customary for most Japanese people to visit their families for the New Year holiday, but Hiroshi will not be going home. He has only told his brother than he is homosexual, and is afraid of what will happen if his father discovers the truth. He enjoys his life in Tokyo, but worries about the day he will have to come out to his father.
Hiroshi calls home on January 2nd to wish everyone a Happy New Year. He talks to his brother, but he doesn’t have a chance to speak with his father (who is probably passed out drunk from holiday drinking). Hiroshi hopes he has the courage to come out, but isn’t quite ready to do so.
A clip from an Asahi TV news report about how certain people spent New Year’s Eve:
The person in this clip is Gontada, a 33-year-old otaku who is attending a countdown party at Dear Stage in Akihabara. Akihabara is the one place where he can truly feel like himself, unlike his company, where he must hide the fact that he is an otaku. Gontada spends the night dancing and singing along with the songs of his idols, and it truly looks like he is in heaven.
A 24-year-old Toshiba Brave Lupus rugby player has been arrested on suspicion of theft, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
According to the police, Vivili Iongi, a Tongan national, stole a bag containing 10,000 yen from a 60-year-old taxi driver Sunday morning. The bag was placed near the front passenger seat and was taken when Iongi and two acquaintances alighted from the taxi in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, at about 5 a.m.
Iongi and the other two were found at a nearby restaurant later after the police were informed of the theft.
Souvenir manju packs featuring the image of agriculture minister Shigeru Ishiba have gone on sale in Akihabara:
Ishiba is very public about being an otaku, and the snack box is meant to look similar to the packaging of the plastic models Ishiba is known to love. His name has been combined with “Gundam” to create “Ishidam“:
Kibo Senshi Ishidam, a hero of Tottori
Lives in the Otaku-sei, which is a combination of two planets- Tottori and Akiba. In the year of 3914, a huge battle with Ishidam’s enemy, Prime Minister, Ohta, will begin.
I found this deformed triscuit snack cracker, looks like the island of Japan with an X’ed out eye, what appears to be a mouth with a tounge sticking out, another indicator it might have had one too many cups of sake!
Starting bid is $1 with free shipping and handling worldwide with tons of bubble wrap yo. Paypal payments only, thanks!
Nagoya acoustic duos, indie music underground, and an end to the mainstream…
Our Man in Abiko points to this post on corruption within the Japanese entertainment industry (not that corruption is unique to the Japanese entertainment industry). I suppose the notion that mainstream entertainers have not necessarily achieved success based on their own merit is not shocking, no matter what country you’re in, but we’ll leave that to be debated elsewhere. Today we’ll simply celebrate the leveling possibilities of the internet, where a band with talent can get heard - at least to a greater degree than during the dark ages of almost total control by the large corporate labels.
Previously, music marketing went something like this: huge corporate marketing machines would tell obedient consumers what to like. That’s still going on, but the resistance is growing. These days, the success of social music platforms like Last FM and guys like Jonathan Coulton are proving that the best marketing happens when people with similar tastes have an easy way to connect with each other.
We are thinking about how we can support this more open tendency within the music world on our fatblueman channel on Youtube. To that end, we have been keeping our eyes open for talent that we might feature. And we think we have found some in this Nagoya duo, Secret Ocean. This is their song, Word. Turn on the captions in order to follow the lyrics in Japanese or English.
The Japanese newspaper, the Sankei, said it learned on Saturday that China was drilling the Tianwaitian gas field and that Tokyo had lodged a complaint with Beijing.
Japanese government officials were not available for comment.
In June, both countries agreed to jointly develop gas fields and share profits in disputed areas of the East China Sea.
The Chinese government has dismissed the report by stating that the gas field does not lie in disputed waters and it is an “inherent sovereign right of China” to develop the field.
A video about how the neck of a stone Buddha mysteriously lengthened:
The odd incident involved the Stone Image of Buddha named Manji in the Nagano prefecture town of Shimosuwa. Over a period of several years, the Buddha’s neck gradually began to rise out of its stone body.
The Buddha who had practically no neck 5 years ago now had a 5-centimeter neck sprouting out of the rock. A team was brought in to investigate, and after using a crane to remove the head from its base, they found that the head had been forced up by muck and rainwater that accumulated in the statue’s neck hole. After some cleaning, it was returned to its original state.
Japanese still tend to like Koreans, but the feeling is not mutual
The Chosun Ilbo reports a poll has found that despite some recent tensions between Japan and Korea, those in Japan who feel unfriendly towards Koreans are still a minority:
Most South Koreans feel unfriendly toward Japan with 62 percent, far outnumbering those who do, a poll finds. But 50 percent of Japanese feel friendly toward Koreans, as against 41 percent who do not.
The figures are down from a poll conducted in the wake of the 2002 World Cup in the two countries, the proportion of Koreans who felt friendly toward Japan was 42 percent, and that of Japanese who felt friendly toward Koreans was 77 percent. That can probably be traced to recurring disagreements over Korea’s Dokdo islets, which Japan is trying to claim.
“Japanese who were less interested in Korea in the past were adversely affected in the past one or two years as the media touched on the issue much more often,” said Prof. Lee Won-duk at Kookmin University. “Nonetheless, about half of the Japanese, influenced by the Korean Wave or Hallyu, feel friendly toward Korea.”
The survey also found that younger people in both countries held friendlier feelings, so there might be some hope for the future….
The Japan Times has reported that LDP lawmaker Taro Kono has proposed that Japan drop its law banning dual citizenship.
Kono’s plan contains the following features:
The government allows Japanese nationals to be citizens of other countries.
Japanese holding other nationalities must declare this to the local authorities where their Japanese residency is registered. Those who fail to do so may be fined or lose their Japanese citizenship.
Japanese can obtain citizenship elsewhere, except for locations Japan does not recognize, and continue to hold Japanese nationality as long as the other countries allow multiple nationalities.
People from countries other than North Korea or other areas lacking Japanese diplomatic recognition can obtain Japanese nationality without losing their original citizenship as long as their home countries allow multiple nationalities.
The Imperial family, Diet members, Cabinet ministers, diplomats, certain members of the Self-Defense Forces or court judges can only hold Japanese nationality.
Japanese who become presidents, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers, diplomats, soldiers, court judges or members of royalty of other countries will lose their Japanese nationality.
Japanese who have a Japanese parent and hold multiple nationalities will lose their Japanese citizenship if they have not lived in Japan for 365 days or more by the time they turn 22.
If Japan goes to war against a country, Japanese public servants cannot hold citizenship in that country.
Japanese holding other nationalities will lose their Japanese citizenship if they apply for and join the military of other countries.
Even if Kono finds support for his plan, it will probably be years before it can actually become law. Still, it is interesting to see that some lawmakers are discussing this issue.
Not so great, according to prize money statistics gathered by pro eating blog EatFeats.com. The former hot dog eating champ, who is shown above competing in a fruitcake eating contest, only earned about $10,000 in prize money in 2008. Kobayashi’s rival Joey Chestnut, who currently holds the Nathan’s hot dog champion belt, made a little under $50,000.
I wonder if Kobayashi makes enough money from his merchandise/health supplement business to actually support himself?
I doubt the Japanese government officials spend a lot of time hanging out in Texas, but just in case they do, somebody is paying for a billboard in Dallas:
The BBC has picked up a report from the Yomiuri about crowds of tourists causing trouble for geisha in Kyoto:
According to Japanese media, local government research shows that geiko (fully-fledged geisha) and maiko (apprentice geisha) are often surrounded or pursued by groups of tourists.
“Some tourists seem to have the impression that Gion is a theme park, and geisha and maiko are walking the streets as part of a performance,” an official of Higashiyama ward office told the Yomiuri newspaper.
An 18-year-old maiko told the newspaper that people silently approach her “and suddenly stand beside me to have photographs taken, so I get taken by surprise”.
In response to this, local residents and restaurant owners have volunteered to patrol the neighbourhood several times a week.
Japan has used pictures of maiko in its tourism posters for years now, so it’s hardly unexpected that large numbers of tourists will be a problem for maiko walking down a street in an area of Kyoto widely promoted as a tourist destination. Having a few volunteers to help with crowd control sounds like a very good idea.
The BBC article was pretty vague about the nationality of the tourists causing the problem, which probably means they used the Yomiuri’s English version of the story as their main source. The original Japanese version of the article is very direct in its emphasis that foreign tourists are the source of the problem, even mentioning them in the headline and first sentence of the report:
Did the translator putting the article into English feel uncomfortable preserving the focus of the original headline and article, or was it something else? If, as the Japanese language article suggests, foreign tourists are the main participants in this behavior, why not be similarly direct in reporting the information in the English version?
Illegal immigrant beats high tech fingerprinting system
It’s already been reported the biometric fingerprinting systems the Japanese government installed at immigration checkpoints can be bypassed with fraudulent Japanese passports. Now it seems there is an even easier way for illegal immigrants to beat it:
A South Korean woman arrested in Nagano in August of 2008 has made a startling claim. Although her fingerprints were on record after a 2007 deportation, she was able to beat the high tech fingerprint check with a fake passport and some special tape she attached to her fingers. She said that the broker who sold her the passport and tape has used the same method to help many other foreigners illegally enter Japan.
Japanese authorities are in the process of investigating her story. If it turns out to be true, it will mean that any criminal with several thousand dollars to spare can use a similar method to slip through the fingerprinting system and enter the country.
Update: Some details this morning from the English language story in the Yomiuri.
The woman also was quoted as saying that the broker gave her the special tape with someone else’s fingerprints on, and that she slipped past the biometric recognition system by holding her taped index fingers over the scanner.
According to an analysis by the bureau, regular adhesive tape does not work, as the scanner fails to read any prints. The results have led the immigration bureau to suspect that the woman might have used a special tape bearing someone else’s fingerprints.
Although the bureau detained the woman at an immigration facility for further questioning, she did not provide information that pinpointed what the tape is made of or the South Korean broker before she was deported again in mid-September.
The bureau has compiled a report based on her statements and submitted it to the Justice Ministry. The report says it is conceivable such tape exists and that the South Korean broker might have helped a considerable number of foreigners enter Japan using it.
