Hello Kitty panties made of Swarovski crystals? Ouch.
Ooooo..that's gotta be uncomfortable.
10 October 2004 /AFP/Getty Images / TOKYO, JAPAN: ...Wacoal unveils a pair of underwear with Hello Kitty character made of swarovski crystals for the celebration of Hello Kitty's 30th birthday...Wacoal are selling only 1,000 limited underwears (500 blue and 500 pink colors) 10 October with a price of 6,000 yen (55 USD).

Banjo kanojo - - Japanese engineer plays the axel-housing banjo

AFP/Getty Images -- Oct 11 -- TOYOTA, JAPAN: An engineer of Japan's auto giant Toyota Motor Corporation, plays the banjo made from a car part during the Toyota Idea Olympics in Toyota, central Japan... The banjo is made from a rear axel housing.

Nanjing massacre funny papers not funny in Saitama Japan
Cartoon strip on Nanjing massacre draws flak
TOKYO (AFP) Oct 09, 2004t
... The publisher of the Weekly Young Jump comics magazine had received strong protests for printing the 'inappropriate' strip by 57-year-old cartoonist Hiroshi Motomiya last month, the conservative Sankei Shimbun daily said... ...The Sankei did not say who made the protest, but Kyodo News agency reported that those responsible included a group of 37 members of local assemblies including those from Saitama City, north of Tokyo.
<--Hiroshi Motomiya--"Dilbert with an attitude"

What a load of pie!

1,083-pound pumpkin... (491.24 kg) won first place in the state's annual Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Anamosa, Iowa October 8, 2004.

Deserter Charles "Dumbo" Jenkins' Vietnam Card is a losing hand
Via the NK Zone news site quoting the the Wall Street Journal
http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone/category/defectors/index.php

"...In a little-noticed reference in an interview published in November 2002, Sgt. Jenkins told the Japanese weekly, Syukan Kin'yobi, that he "walked" into North Korea with the intention of avoiding Vietnam service.
"I served in the army, but when I was ordered to go to the Vietnam War, I refused," Sgt. Jenkins told the magazine. "Now I don't have any interest in war-related issues."

Wall Street Journal October 06, 2004 (subscription required)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109706200192737805,00.html?mod=world_news_whats_news


Jenkins' claiming Vietnam desertion] Which if true would seem to be a confession.

Comments of NK Zone

http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone/entry/2004/10/hitomi_and_char.php#comments

If true, the sad irony of his "avoiding" Vietnam service is that he wasn't on orders to go to Vietnam. The Division was, by means of a strategem that moved the colors and unit designations of the 1st Cavalry Division from Korea to Fort Benning, Georgia, where the 2nd Infantry Division folded its flag, and "moved" to Korea. All that happened in Korea in Jul '65 was that units fell out in the quadrangle and changed guidons and colors. (As supply sergeants laid in stocks of white and red paint for the eventual "Indianhead" painted rocks and signs that would replace the "Horse and Line")
Hopefully, his attorney will check the facts for himself and not rely upon Jenkin's misjudged impressions. It's sounding more and more like Jenkins should have gone for the jury trial.
(On the other hand, learning that he walked into North Korea to avoid service in a place he wasn't going anyway might just unhinge whatever mental balance he has left.)

See also http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone/entry/2004/09/jail_for_jenkin.php#more

Now call it "Datsun Stadium of Yokohama(tm)"
Nissan to get naming rights for Yokohama International Stadium
Kyodo / Wednesday October 6, 11:26 PM
Nissan Motor Co. plans to obtain naming rights for Yokohama International Stadium, the venue for the final match of the World Cup soccer finals co-sponsored by Japan and South Korea in June 2002...
<---Hell I'll call it "Dildo Stadum" just as long as Yokohama City will stop losing ichi-oku yen a day of my tax money to mismanage it. (ichi-oku yen/day = 1,000,000,000,000 yen/day = aprox. $875,000 USD/day).

Japanese seal-lion curry
Japan takes curry fare to new heights, depths
The Japan Times, Oct 7
....Sea lion, bear and deer are among more than 800 different kinds of ingredients contained in curry offered as regional specialties, often sold as boil-in-the-bag souvenirs.
Shoppers might be surprised to see sea lion reheat-and-eat curry, but they will find that its dark brown meat tastes like beef jerky, thanks to spices that keep the smell very much subdued.
... Tamba-Sasayama district in Hyogo Prefecture has made a big name out of its curry with locally grown black soybeans...There are also curries featuring such high-grade ingredients as king crab, fugu and shark fin. Others include turbo shellfish, cuttlefish ink and loquat, a small plumlike fruit.....
...Takahisa Inoue, a producer at the Yokohama Curry Museum, predicts the curry boom will continue and more surprising dishes will emerge.

Bogus Burusera ( Japanese schoolgirl uniforms)
More trendy uniforms for Japanese schoolgirls attract unwanted ...
6 Oct -- Channel NewsAsia's Japan Bureau Chief Michiyo Ishida. TOKYO : ....All they want is to enjoy making a fashion statement with their school uniform..."There are some public schools in Tokyo where you can dress in your own clothes, yet the girls choose to go to school in a uniform. They're called 'make-believe uniforms'."
Nobuyuki says there are even grown up women, who try to look young by wearing such uniforms.

Tokyo's a tight town sometimes
Now Playing: Captain Chaos in your trousers...

Seperated at birth?

Rodney Dangerfield is not dead! He's living now as General Tommy Franks and still doesn't get respect.

Zombie Models for the Japanese Zombie Market

Yamamoto Uses Zombies for Paris Fashion Show

AFP/Getty Images - 04 October 2004 - PARIS, FRANCE: A native Japanese zombie presents a creation by Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto during the Spring-Summer 2005 Ready to Wear collections presentations in Paris.

The undead are perfect for catwalk modelling - they don't smile, they don't eat, and they rarely have "wardrobe malfunctions", although they sometimes have "limb malfunctions". Actuually killed in a car crash 3 weeks ago, one Japanese model, apart from the gear stick stuck in her butt, is now perfect for hanging clothes on.

Distress call from Princess Leia in Makuhari, Tokyo
AP News / Tue Oct 5, 9:10 AM ET Visitors watch a woman projected on a three-dimensional display at the CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) Japan 2004 in Makuhari, east of Tokyo... The cylindrical display... shows a solid image on a rotating screen by projecting composed multiple images reflected by 24 mirrors set around the screen.

Gimboids, Goits & Smegheads vs NHK boneheads
the co-creator responsible for the cult-hit BBC TV series Red Dwarf, Doug Naylor. ....
...By the way, when the series was sold to Japan they were particularly worried about Red Dwarf because they thought it was (chuckles) 'anti-small-peopleist' ... but of course it isn't, it has nothing to do with small people, meaning to 'embarrass small people' they thought it was about, but anyway ...dvdanswers.com / Oct 5, 2004

One terabyte VAIO type X "home server" records 6 TV channels in a week
AFP/Getty Images / 5 Oct 2004 12:00 AM... Sony unveils the new home server computer "VAIO type X", equipped with a 3.6GHz Intel's Pentium 4 processor on its CPU and 1 terabyte HDD, enabling it to record six TV channels in a week with MPEG2 compression at the Ceatec Japan, Asia's largest electronics trade show at Makuhari..

Japan's PM Koizumi prefers to be Bush's lapdog

Japan PM Prefers Bush, Could Cope with Kerry

Mon Oct 4, 2004 09:30 PM ET / TOKYO (Reuters)- - If Junichiro Koizumi could vote in the November U.S. presidential election, the Japanese prime minister would almost certainly cast his ballot for his diplomatic soul mate, President Bush....

The end of Japan Inc's hollowing out?

So Much For Hollowing Out

--Japan's giants are investing in plants at home again. Why the switch?--
BusinessWeek magazine / OCTOBER 11, 2004 edition
Lying 800 kilometers south of Tokyo on the island of Kyushu, Oita prefecture is hardly the kind of place you would expect to find the trendsetting titans of Japan Inc. Until recently the biggest contributors to the economy in bucolic Oita were the hot spring resorts in the coastal town of Beppu.
But this year, Oita is flourishing as Japan's corporate giants invest billions in new manufacturing plants. Canon Inc. (CAJ ) is building a 29,000-square-meter digital camera facility near Beppu Bay. Down the road in Oaza Matsuoka , Toshiba Corp. (TOSBF ) in October plans to open a semiconductor plant that's part of a $1.8 billion, five-year investment in Oita. And auto producer Daihatsu Motor Co. is building a factory in nearby Nakatsu...

A Japanese rubber with an attitude: the VICON(tm) vibrating condom



Adult world abuzz over vibrating condom
By Ryann Connell - WaiWai - October 4, 2004
Since the development in 1909 of the Heart Beauty, Japan's first domestically produced condom, Japan has, according to the men's weekly, led the world in the development of rubbers.
And the Vicon, short for vibrator condom, the latest development the safe but saucy sex business has unsheathed, has proved to be a real humdinger...

Guy's like me Sit-n-Pee: It's Japanese!
More Japanese men prefer sitting whizzes
(Mainichi Shimbun, Oct. 4, 2004)
-- Almost one in every four Japanese men sits down on the toilet to urinate, according to a survey by Toto Corp., the country's biggest manufacturer of toilets. Toto's poll of 2,312 adult men from across Japan discovered that 23.7 percent sat down while having a pee....
...Toilet researcher Junichi Hirata blames the spread of Western-style toilets on the increasing prevalence for Japanese men to sit on the toilet even while only urinating...

The last American sumo Yokozuna grand champion
here's perhaps the last American Yokozuna (grand champion), Musashimaru, during his topknot cutting ceremony on October 2, 2004 in Tokyo....

Topic: adviceS

Q: What is the best way to come to Japan?

A; Joining a foreign software company and being sent to Japan on "The Package" for expats is the best. Why live in Japan as an "in-country hire" low-life like me when you can live the fatcat expat life?
Ahhh, the old pig-in-the-poke problem: No Japanese company wants to hire you sight unseen...but it's a pain in the ass to come to Japan without work (and often a visa).
"Ideally" if you want to come to Japan, you try to hire on at a non-Japanese company with a large Japanese division and then get transferred here to live as royalty. The greater the Japanese presence the non-Japanese company has, the more chances you have to transfer here on the all-important Package. Occasionally a smaller company like RAMRON (Colo. Springs) with have a gaijin director position available but you would have to have inside connections to know that and generally the smaller the company the higher the level of Japanese is required.
The reason I am saying non-Japanese companies is that Japanese companies don't like to transfer folks from the Real World to Japan except for specific projects of less than 6 months. The game industry has the greatest amount of cross-border transfers most other industries use in-country hiring of very F'ed gaijin and "astronauts" who commute to Japan for a couple weeks or months at a time.
You might find a master's degree somewhat a hinderance in the Japanese corporate world since you will outrank most everyone. I have for sure. The pay diifference for a masters is only 12-20,000yen/month at Fujitsu for example. It's experience and SKILLZ that count .
However, bigger companies, in particular DoCoMo and Hitachi value Phds and advanced degrees. If and only if you remind me by PM, I just learned of one contract programming company that offers 1-year job contracts* in NTT Data, Renesas, et al which would be a great foot-in-the-door.
*(in-country hire, no visa provided)

Posted by trek/taro at 11:14 AM KDT
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