Big Scooters - - Big in Japan
Big scooters selling like hot cakes
Yomiuri Shimbun / Sept 27
Scooters with an engine displacement of more than 250cc have become increasingly popular recently. The machines, which do not have clutch levers, are easy to handle, and their relatively large underseat storage space...At a time when the number of people applying for motorcycle licenses is falling, the motorcycle industry has high hopes for large scooters. Manufacturers, who expect that more people will get motorcycle licenses if a license for automatic machines is introduced, are likely to further boost their production and introduce new models of large scooters.



Photo via masamania.com, which also used to run now-offline-and-seemingly-dead ninjashot.com. Also see Steve B's thread: MasaManiA with fucking photo & poor English in his own world

MOON BURGERS at Mcdonalds Japan
MOON BURGERS ... I'm lovin' it.

I'll never get the deal with the Japanese 'Rabbit in the Moon'(aka the Western Man-in-the-Moon).

The Original Fruitcake Gajin: Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn was the original fruitcake gaijin... Here's Lafcadio Hearn: the Good, the Bad, the Butt Ugly...
the Good:
Hearne made the HUGE intellectual jump that Japanese esthetics had value. In his day, everyone "knew" that Japanese music was cat screeching, Japanese gardens were barren dumps, and Japanese houses primative. Hearne set architectural greats like Frank Lloyd Wright, L. Sullivan, Frederick L. Olmsted, et al on the Path.
the Bad:
Most of the FGs here on the f*ckedgaijin.com speak better Japanese than Hearn. He couldn't read or write Japanese and depended on his wife for everything to understand the J-world.
the butt-ugly:
Lafcadio Hearn was a wacked fruitcake: Just read his work for free on Project Gutenburg.

Hearn wrote:

"I only wish I could be reincarnated in some little Japanese baby, so that I could see and feel the world as beautifully as a Japanese brain does."

Also see
Virtual Hearn dairy http://www.lafcadiohearn.org/bkup.html


Map of Hearn's Japan http://www.lafcadiohearn.jp/index.shtml


Abandoned misfit who found peace in prose and his new land


By BURRITT SABIN


Special to The Japan Times / Sunday, September 26, 2004


..."The beautiful illusion of Japan, the almost weird charm that comes with one's first entrance into her magical atmosphere, had, indeed stayed with me very long but had totally faded out at last" ("Out of the East," 1895).


....For other stories in our package on Lafcadio Hearn, please click the following links:



Disillusioned bard of a bygone Japan


By Roger Pulvers http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20040926x2.htm


Glimpsing the essence of Hearn's Kamakura


By Burritt Sabin http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20040926x3.htm
href="http://www.lafcadiohearn.org/link.html" target="_blank">http://www.lafcadiohearn.org/link.html
Hearn's estrangement with Japan in his last year of life, " "I have long been a subject of persecution in Japan. For many years, I have been isolated -- unable to meet or to have other friends, other than Japanese." http://www.trussel.com/hearn/letter.htm

Posted by trek/taro at 11:49 AM KDT
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Let's "turn Japan into a nuclear sea of fire"!

6-Nation North Korean Nuclear Talks in Doubt
NYTimes.com (no registration required) September 26, 2004 by James Brook
.... ....The urgency of defusing North Korea's arsenal became clear this week when American and Japanese officials reported that soldiers and vehicles were gathering around North Korean missile sites, and the country's main newspaper warned that North Korea could "turn Japan into a nuclear sea of fire." The Kyodo news agency of Japan said the latest analysis indicated that North Korea was conducting missile preparedness drills in northwestern North Korea. At a site in the east, North Korea may be preparing the test burn of an engine of a modified Soviet-made submarine-launched missile, Kyodo reported Saturday. Known as an SSN6, this missile has a range of up to 2,500 miles, roughly the distance from North Korea to Guam.....

Don't mess with my false memory of aliens
"With alien abductees," Clancy thought, "I'm never going to have to deal with the criticism that it might have actually happened."

A Bad Trip Down Memory Lane

NYTimes.com > magazine, Sept 25
It is not considered good judgment to wade into the issue of recovered memories without skin as thick as permafrost and caller ID on the phone. Rare is the academic field in which colleagues on opposite sides of a debate -- people with international reputations -- dismiss the very foundations of one another's work, sometimes not so privately, with common barnyard epithets; in which two of the most prominent reference books are almost Jesuitically contradictory; in which more than a decade of fairly sound research has done little to settle a debate that has raged ever since Freud popularized the term ''repression.''

Japan to develop new exploding satellite for N. Korea

What's Japan's batting average now? Isn't it 5 of the past 5 of the satellites lauched have exploded?
Japan to develop new spy satellite to monitor N. Korea
TOKYO Sept. 25 Kyodo -
The government has decided to start research on an advanced spy
satellite capable of taking sequential photos of a range of North
Korean missile bases and nuclear facilities almost
simultaneously....

No Japanese fetus can beat us
Illegal dumping of aborted fetuses almost standard across country
(Mainichi Shimbun, Sept. 25, 2004)
Almost half Japan's 47 prefectures and one in five cities with public health facilities regularly dump aborted fetuses with regular trash instead of giving them special treatment, a shocking national government survey has showed.
Only one in 10 municipalities has created an autonomous ordinance regarding the disposal of fetuses from abortions...
Of these, 21 prefectures and 11 cities said they had handled aborted babies, used syringes and bloodied bandages as regular trash....


See also: Freezer vs Chopped Garbage Where do you keep aborted fetuses?

Posted by trek/taro at 11:18 PM KDT
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Why do Japanese game characters look anything but Japanese?

MAKUHARI, JAPAN - GettyImages.com - SEPTEMBER 24: Characters from a computer game are displayed during the Tokyo Game Show.....

Japanese are more than a bit *amused* anime speaking gaijin
Topic: adviceS
It has been said that, "Japanese speakers are more than a bit *amused* by gaijin who pick up the language from anime."

?Horrified? would be more accurate and for good reason.

Anime freakozoids think speaking like the Beavis and Butthead in Japanese is cho-kool. It seems impossible for them to understand the simple fact that Japanese is not like slang in Spanish or French. Using slang bestows on you negative karma in Japanese--- not cool at all.

Halloween starts on September 15 in Japan

16-Sep-2004 AFP Photo, TOKYO, JAPAN:
Young Disney fans in their hand-made costume of Disney characters Ariel (L) and Jasmine pose for a photo before a Disney Halloween Parade at Tokyo Disneyland in suburban Tokyo, 15 September 2004....

Silly Surfing "Danjiri" in Osaka Japan

Getty Images -OSAKA, JAPAN - SEPTEMBER 15:
The Kishiwada Danjiri Festival passes through the town of Kishiwada... also known as the 'fighting festival'...a procession of four ton wooden floats, known as a Danjiri, are pulled through the streets by 32 teams of up to 1000 men competing in a reckless race...

Cheeky Japanese eyes for you!

Cheeks replace damaged eyes in Japanese study

15 Sep 2004 21:00:30 GMT
BOSTON, (Reuters) -- Thin sheets of cheek tissue can be used to replace the damaged corneas of people blinded by certain eye diseases, Japanese researchers reported on Wednesday.....

Deserter is deserted - - Charles Jenkins' lawyer bugs out of Japan
Jenkins' lawyer leaves Japan
By Ryann Connell, Mainichi Daily News, Sept. 16, 2004
Capt. James Culp, defense lawyer of Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins, will leave Japan to return to his home base in South Korea, U.S. military officials said Thursday.
Culp is going back to Seoul to handle other matters related to his responsibilities as an independent U.S. military counsel.
Maj. Martha Brooks said Culp's return to his base post had nothing to do with the Jenkins case.....
enkins is accused of four charges -- desertion, solicitation, <> unlawful separation and aiding the enemy...

Posted by trek/taro at 2:10 PM KDT
Updated: Thursday, September 16, 2004 2:11 PM KDT
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Hello Kitty is finally worth something in Japan

Wed Sep 15,12:55 AM ET / AP News
A set of coins commemorating the 30th anniversary of Hello Kitty is unveiled by Japan Mint .... A total of 200,000 sets of six coins valued between 1 yen (0.9 cents) and 500 yen (US$4.6) with a copper medal featuring the kitten's face packed in the Hello Kitty-shaped plastic case will be sold at 2,300 yen (US$21) from Wednesday, Sept. 15 by mail order.

Stop gRobal warming (Japan is getting mo' hot)
Global warming projected to cause more rain, flooding in Japan

Japan Today / Sept 15
TOKYO -- A Japanese team of researchers has found that continued global warming is expected to increase the rainfall in Japan ... the situation will heighten the risks of torrential downpours and flooding in various parts of the archipelago."

The gaijin/gaijin complex
Topic: Me
Q: Why approximately 50% of you gaijins out there are inclined to give a head nod when passing a fellow foreigner and the other half make a bold and obvious attempt to NOT make eye contact.

A: Ahhhh, the "gaijin/gaijin complex" has been that way since the days Lafcadio Hearn. Basically, the presence of another gaijin on your turf "ruins" the special-unique power a gaijin gets from surviving and thriving in Japan.

The archetypical of this attitude was the original henna gaijin, Lafcadio Hearn, who went to great efforts to ignore other foriegners, wear kimono and act more Japanese than the Japanese to make up for his own inadequacies.

So when you are passing a fellow foreigner who makes a bold and obvious attempt to NOT make eye contact, be aware that it just because you represent a threat to their ?special? Japanese experience.

Me? After more than 20 years here, I literally say ?HOWDY? to everybody.
And if dat don?t it freak ?em out... I give ?em my laser-like Taro smile that?s known to kill anal-retentive salarymen at 50 yards and force obatarian to give me their seat on the train.

130cm, 63kg, NAKED, Japanese elevator girl
Fujitsu units develop human-assisting robots
japantoday > technology Monday, September 13, 2004 at 17:56 JST
TOKYO -- .... humanoid robots able to guide people or transport things. ....on sale for 2 million yen each around next June.
Each robot is 1.3 meters tall, weighs 63 kilograms and can move to its destination with the help of eight cameras in its head and a newly developed high-speed three-dimensional image processing system...
.....The robot can get on an elevator and press elevator buttons by itself. ....

1000s in Tokyo rally to CELEBRATE 9.11 terror attacks!



11 Sep 2004 12:00 AM
AFP/Getty Images -- TOKYO, JAPAN: A Japanese civic group member carries a placard ... during a rally to commemorate 9.11 terrorists' attacks in the US three years ago 11 September 2004 at downtown Tokyo. Thousands people staged ....

As much as I hate bonehead Bush, I think it's a bit over the top to hold a rally to celebrate the 9.11 terrorists' attacks. Maybe somebody might wanna parade HAPPY on Hiroshima Day too? >

Krazy Korean Kabooooom!

Nice, cheery news.....
Banquet Given on DPRK Birthday
Pyongyang, September 10 (KCNA) -- The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) government arranged a banquet at the People's Palace of Culture Thursday evening in celebration of the 56th anniversary of the DPRK. Yang Hyong Sop, vice-president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, said at the banquet that President Kim Il Sung founded the DPRK on the basis of the tradition of building people's power established in the crucible of the anti-Japanese revolution under the banner of the Juche idea....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

N Korea denies explosion had nuclear links
(The Telegraph, UK 12/Sept/2004)
...The latest blast took place in Kimhyungjik county near the Chinese border on Thursday last week, when North Korea marked the 56th anniversary of its founding.

Charles "Dumbo" Jenkins