'Puroresu' may invade USA
WrestleMania -- Headline Central
March 14, 2004 / The Christian Science Monitor offers this on professional wrestling
.... World Wrestling Entertainment Company... weekly television audience has fallen sharply...as viewership declines for the nation's premier wrestling federation, some see an opportunity for foreign wrestling to gain ground among American fans.
Two contenders are already beginning to make inroads: Japanese pro wrestling, commonly called puroresu, and Mexican-style contests, known as lucha libre. If either can land a television contract in the United States, some industry observers say, they could begin to take market share away from the already weakened WWE.
"One way to look at this is that this is exactly what pro wrestling needs to reinvigorate the industry," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University in New York. "Pro wrestling in America was to the sport of wrestling what an episode of Jerry Springer was to a conversation, and the weight of that style is what ultimately caused it to collapse. There's something about [puroresu and lucha libre], however, that does seem a little less tongue-in-cheek, a little less bathed in the irony that pro wrestling in this country was absolutely floating in....

Posted by trek/taro at 11:14 AM JST
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'Busy-ness' bad. Japan needs to slack.
Topic: Japanese life
"...busy-ness is part of the problem"
IT needs to slow down: guru
ZDNet Australia 15 March 2004
"The busier you are the less able the company will reach their long term goals. When you take the 'slack' out of your organisation you don?t have time to change," DeMarco added.
While admitting that his answer to this problem was simplistic, DeMarco highlighted Japan?s efficiency-obsessed economy in the 1980s as an example of his theory.
"We saw what Japan was doing in the economy in the 80s and we flinched. They worked harder, longer and were better educated?as we found out this didn?t work out so well for Japan. Since 1990, Japan hasn?t been so great," DeMarco said.
He explained that while Japan still had the high work ethic of the 80s, and were still "brilliant and very bright," their over-efficient processes had been at the core of one of the longest recessions in history.

'Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it'
Topic: Media
COOL QUOTE:

"Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it," wrote Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski in a recent copyright ruling. "Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture."

---via Fiona Morgan. "Copywrong: Copyright laws are stifling art, but the public domain can save us." The Independent Weekly, December 3, 2003.

Posted by trek/taro at 9:10 AM JST
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Fake Japanese school visas
This sounds like the Japanese school I used to attend which had three classrooms with 20 desks each and yet 4,000+ "students" enrolled.

School helped 8000 enter Japan illegally
March 14 - Daily Yomiuri
A company executive who runs a Japanese language school in Tokyo helped about 8,000 Chinese people enter Japan illegally over an eight-year period by producing fake certificates for use in their visa applications....

WHITE DAY in Japan
Topic: Japanese life



LET'S WHITE DAY
"White Day" has always sounded to me like something thought up by the whimpy fools in the Aryan Nation.

Japanese babe take the offensive!
Topic: Japanese life
Gov. Fusae Ota
...and SDF babe going to Iraq

Osaka gov. urged not to award prize at sumo tourney over sexism
Kyodo / March
OSAKA, Japan - Osaka Gov. Fusae Ota ... to halt awarding a prefecture-funded prize to the winner the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament to open in Osaka... the refusal by the Japan Sumo Association to let women enter the ''dohyo'' wrestling ring is ''unfavorable'' from the point of view of gender equality.
GSDF force to head for Iraq mission
Kyodo / March 12
ASAHIKAWA, Japan - A female member of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) is seen .. to head for Kuwait ... About some 10 female members will join the mission for the first time.

Book Examines Japanese WW2 Biowar Program
Thursday, March 11, 2004 9:10 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A secret Japanese Army unit, dubbed Unit 371, sprayed Chinese villages with bacteria, spiked their wells with disease and laced their food with germs, perhaps killing up to a million Chinese in World War II, a new book says.There could be over 700,000 or even one million" lives lost to Japan's biowarfare program, Daniel Barenblatt, author of "A Plague Upon Humanity," said in a recent interview.
The book, published in the United States by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., tracks Japan's development of biological weaponry from 1931 to 1945 and its use of these weapons -- bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera -- on civilians, many of them in China....
....AN ACT OF NATURE?
"These are poor people who are for the first time telling their stories. They, at first, thought it (their illnesses) was an act of nature. Many had no idea what was happening to them," said Barenblatt.

Where Can I Find Big Shoes in Tokyo
Topic: adviceS
Shoes? Easy, but your selection is limited.
(You should just buy them in your home country.)
Try Iseten Shinjuku 6th floor, Sports Authority, CostCo Japan, etc.
Washington --- the most "famous" big shoes store of Japan not cheap
Varied footwear available in larger sizes
5-7-7 Ginza http://www.wguides.com/city/80/225_89853.cfm
Footlocker
The popular American athletic shoe chain

in Parco http://www.wguides.com/city/80/225_35231.cfm

See my friends' advice at
Metropolis [Tokyo] Looking Good: Big is beautiful
Fun not serious help
http://www.tokyoshoes.com/blog/archives/2003_06.html


Or read the thread
http://www.gaijinpot.com/forums/read.php?f=22&i=263&t=26
_________________
"The haggis that is sold in Tokyo is very expensive."

Posted by trek/taro at 2:56 PM JST
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Toyota with dextrous fingers, lips & blows
Topic: Japanese Tech

"a lung function that allows it to blow"

A robot sways and plays 'When You Wish Upon a Star' on the trumpet
AP - Thursday, March 11, 2004.
.. Toyota Motor Corp. shows the robot in Tokyo ..The 120 centimeters (47 inches) tall unnamed robot has a lung function that allows it to blow the horn with dextrous fingers and mechanical lips.

Todai gang bang?
Topic: Japanese life



read more

NHK is giving Big Bird the big bird
Topic: Media
Japan's public TV broadcaster, NHK, is giving Big Bird the big bird...

NHK to discontinue airing 'Sesame Street'
Yomiuri/ Mar 10 "Sesame Street," a children's English-language program broadcast by NHK on its educational channel, is to end April 3, due to policy differences between NHK and the U.S. production company on the focus of the program, an NHK spokesman said..."(The production company) Sesame Workshop has been asking us to broadcast the program in Japanese for several years.."

The real "Last Samurai "
Topic: Media
Quixotic presidential bid by scion of samurai?
--The Asahi Shimbun, March 10 (IHT/Asahi: March 11, 2004)
Irina Hakamada, a candidate in next Sunday's Russian presidential election, likes to wear black. She calls herself 'a scion of samurai,'' and the media has labeled her the 'Samurai Lady.''....
.... Hakamada stands out. She is a vocal critic of the government, charging that Russia has become a society that keeps itself together by falsehood and terror. ... In her campaign speeches, she says, ``Don't keep silent. Let us raise our voices.'' Failing to do so, she warns, could bring a return to the Soviet era.
Her father was Mutsuo Hakamada, a deceased former member of the Japanese Communist Party, who sought asylum in the Soviet Union in the days when being a member of the party was enough to earn the death penalty in Japan. (?!)

(I can't say whether that statement is true about the death penalty for being a Commie, it sounds "off" to me).

Take a leak, take a 1.6 kiloliter leak
Topic: Japanese life
Ohhhh, I gotta take a leak.
This is near where I sea kayak every summer break during OBON.
Ehime reactor leaks 1.6 tons of radioactive coolant water
The Japan Times / March 10
MATSUYAMA, Ehime Pref. (Kyodo) About 1.6 tons of radioactive coolant water poured Tuesday morning from a pump at the No. 3 reactor of the Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku Electric Power Co. said.

Live action CUTIE HONEY film
Topic: Media
Ok, here a good one....CUTIE HONEY is now gonna be a live action film.


http://www.cutiehoney.com/

Hot and new Cutie Honey

    VS

        Old-school Cutie Honey

Congrads you're a BUCHO: now work for free
Topic: Japanese life

TokyoNow: Nearly everyone's a manager at this company
Tuesday March 9, 7:30 AM / Kyodo
Half of the 60 or so full-time employees of a manufacturing company in the Tokai region of central Japan hold managerial positions, which strangely enough, saves the company money.
Initially, the company aggressively persuaded more than a dozen union members in 1999 to become managers, telling them that management could not afford to pay them overtime.

And Japanese call this
Topic: Japanese life
It's that time of year again. The TV "news" constists of nothing but blithering about blooming. ARRRRG! We got to put chicken wire around the TV to protect it from me throwing things at it when the "Flower Front fake news comes on again and AGAIN! ARRRRG!

This is NOT news.

'Sakura' set to blossom early
Japan Times, March 9
It set off a flurry of phone calls to weather officials. The big story: Japan may be on its way to one of its earliest cherry blossom seasons ever. ...


<---translation of the haiku on the right
Without seeing cherry trees
Middie-aged men forget depreession
Got drunk and become alcoholic.

Even the magnolia in Japan lack something
Topic: Japanese life
It was snowing yesterday but today the magnolia is blooming. Oddly, the magnolia in Japan does not have the cloying scent like my grandma's COZY INN in Hot Springs Arkansas. This time of the year you cut the air with a butter knife it was so thick with magnolia fragrance. You view the picture of the magnolia and other dorky flowers in bloom here.

Robo soapland for the elderly: 'I like both ways'
Topic: Japanese Tech
Ok, this ain't "news" except to hard-up-for-a-story gaijin reporter but it's still interesting. I've actually had this done to me in the J-hospital 8 years ago by some very bored night nurses as entertainment...their washing maching had 6 portholes in the sides that they reached into to scrub my various bits in addition to the auto-soap job.

Japan elderly take spin in people-washing machines
NT Times / March 7
MACHIDA, Japan -- With an electronic whir, the machine released a dollop of "peach body shampoo." Then as the cleansing action kicked in....
...a littl more hot water, please?". Futuristic images of elderly Japanese going through rinse cycles in rows of washing machines may evoke chills. t ... Several elderly women living in Katsura-ryo said they rather enjoyed their robotic baths.
"It automatically washes my body, so I am quite happy about it," said Kuni Kikuchi, an 88-year-old.... "These bubbles are good for the massage effect."....Eiko Suzuki, 73, generally agreed, saying: "I like both ways. "

Bird Flu Suspected in Deaths of 10,000 Chickens at Kyoto Farm
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040227p2a00m0dm001001c.html

Chairman of farm that suffered bird flu outbreak in Japan commits suicide
The Star, Malaysia - 8 March
TOKYO (AP) - The chairman of a Japanese poultry farm that suffered an outbreak of bird flu last month and his wife were found hanged on one of their farms ...

TARO COMMENT
Since life insurance pays for suicides, ChickenMan and Okaasan were must likely trying to make their children's lives better and debt free by doing this. In Japanese eyes, traditionalists would say they made the best sacrifice for their kids. See also...""Okaasan, ya wanna hang out with me?"

Aliens have landed!

Black ships outside the city!
Pale aliens with long proboscises present their demands

Today in History - March 8
Associated Press
On March 8, 1854, US Commodore Matthew C. Perry made his second landing in Japan; within a month, he concluded a treaty with the Japanese. ...