Learning to Bow to

Japanese teachers trained to stand
Rebel teachers forced to get training to stand up for national anthem
Monday, August 2, 2004 at 14:18 JST / Japan Today
TOKYO --
The Tokyo metropolitan board of education started a mandatory training program on Monday for teachers ... failing to stand up and sing Japan's national anthem, "Kimigayo," during school ceremonies.

A record: 628 people hospitalized in Tokyo in July due to heat
Here's further proof that Japan is not fit for living.
Record-high 628 people hospitalized in Tokyo in July due to heat
Japan Today / August 2
A record-high 628 people suffering heat exhaustion and heatstroke were taken to hospital by ambulance in July in Tokyo amid the heat wave, the Tokyo Fire Department said Sunday. Tokyo has been hit by a heat wave this season, with the mercury hitting an all-time high for the capital at 39.5 C on July 20...

Japan cops commemorative!
Via the French site of "cakos"...

JAPAN POST's commemorative issue reads: "Current Japanese Police Regulations were inacted on July 1st 1954, and this year is the 50th anniversaries. It protected right of the individual and freedom and for public safety and order maintenance, it guaranteed the management and management of the police who is based on democratic idea, the unit of police management in the metropolis and districts unification, efficiently accomplishing duty it was enforced in purpose."

Red Panties and Pink Salt
I was out shopping yesterday and ran into two Japanesque oddies at ODAKYU Department Store:
1. "Tradition dictates that it brings good luck to wear red all year long during your birth year .... many in the Year of the Monkey prefer red underwear because "some monkeys have red butts too." See alss akapantsu, or red underwear for luck
2. Pink Rock Salt, blessed by pink monks.
VS

It's official: Japan's Princess Masako is crazy

Japan's Imperial Palace Says Princess Ill
Guardian, UK - 30 July
TOKYO (AP) - Crown Princess Masako, out of the public spotlight for months, has been diagnosed with adjustment disorder. ...generally defined as a psychological problem caused by a major life change. An Imperal Household Agency official declined to comment.

Tokyo in it's true glory
Topic: Concrete Japan

Via GRACE.tc

Learn the POWER of the Ninja ... $5!!
Learn the POWER of the Ninja

Freddy VS Samurai?
I have no idea what a "Nachi" is but WTF?!
Aya'sblog in reads"
Nachi - Nachi - Nachi!
Woah... NABUHAY ba si Nachi!!!! And why ninja ang kasama nya... Hhmmm. "

underdressed Ninja
Via the zaftig Coco in Tokyo brings you the Ninja of Ueno-shi, Mie Pref. (where some say ninpo originated) who have started to wear a summer uniform to beat the heat.
Ninja Summer uniform

The concreting of Tokyo's Mt Takao & strict Buddhist doctrines
Topic: Concrete Japan

Who prefers concrete and cars to Tokyo's natural gem?
The legal fight goes on to save sacred Mount Takao
By KEN KAWASHIMA, Special to The Japan Times; July 29, 2004
....The entire mountain [of Tokyo's Mount Takao] and its wildlife is being threatened by a tunnel project spearheaded by the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry that is part of a grandiose plan to build a 300-km road around Tokyo called the Ken-odo.... to shave minutes off journey times, two 10-meter-wide tunnels are planned to be blasted through Mount Takao's core.....
Meanwhile, up until now, one key reason that has ensured Mount Takao's forests remained in their natural state was the 1,200-year-old Yakuoin Temple' strict Buddhist doctrines forbidding the destruction of any wildlife on Mount Takao, whether animal or vegetable. During the feudal era, Yoshiyama even says the felling of a tree was a crime punishable by beheading.
....[Yakuoin] temple spokesperson put it last week: "We cannot take sides in matters of conflict, whether it be a war or the dispute over a new road. We must always remain neutral."

No arsenic-filled Hijiki seaweed for me please
UK Food Agency Advises Against Consumption of Hijiki Seaweed
Bloomberg - 28 July
-- The U.K. Food Standards Agency warned people not to eat a type of seaweed served in Japanese and Korean restaurants after finding it contains high levels of a naturally occurring arsenic linked to cancer.
People shouldn't eat any hijiki -- a near-black, shredded seaweed harvested around Japan and Korea -- although occasional consumption probably wouldn't have increased cancer risks, the agency said in an e-mailed statement. U.K. regulators did a study after Canadian authorities found arsenic in hijiki....

New-old
Via the labyrinthman blog...

The '60 Minutes' news program had a piece of the "revolutionary" "undercover marketing" -- marketing by masquerade, or stealth marketing: Undercover Marketing Uncovered. Example: "Freedom Tobacco wanted to market Legal, their new brand of cigarettes, they didn't have a big budget, so they did what a lot of companies are doing lately: they went undercover.?The goal here is to be sitting at the bar, you have your package of cigarettes on the table, they're open, they look full, and you're really waiting for someone to come up to you and bum a cigarette,? says the marketer.

PRIOR ART!
This "undercover marketing" technique has been around so long that there's a Japanese word for it, SAKURA meaning a 'shill' who promotes an event, play or product. In Japan, anytime crowd forms on the street Japanese will clamor to join. SAKURA people are hired to form fake crowds or lines to draw the SAKANA --literally the fish--the 'marks' into the promotion. Of course "shill" and "mark" are old carnival terms.

Let's "gabu-nomi" Japanese milk coffee!
I was drinking some Sapporo ミルクコーヒー milk coffee which is sort of sweet trainer coffee for sleepy Japanese kids when I noticed this slogan on the side of the pet bottle: "[Let's] gabu-nomi milk coffee."

Gabu-nomi Gabu-nomi Gabu-nomi
I loooove it!

Here's every kind of "Milk Coffee" you'd ever want to see.
Natukashi old-timey milk coffeeVS new-age pyramid milk coffee

Typhoon Namtheum is gonna hit Japan

It looks like its moving real slooooooooow but....

Powerful typhoon heading toward Honshu

TOKYO July 28 Kyodo - A strong typhoon was heading northwest in the Pacific toward Japan's largest main island of Honshu....
Typhoon Namtheum, the season's 10th typhoon, was located around 370 kilometers southeast of Hachijo Island, about 300 km south of Tokyo, moving at a speed of around 15 km per hour as of 9 a.m. Wednesday.

TROPICAL CYCLONE ADVISORY
NAME TY 0410 NAMTHEUN
Big animation of the weather map Japan Metrological Asso.

Flying sumo ninja

Ex-sumo champ, Akebono, is a flying ninja in this Japanese CM (.wmv) for FromSoftware's "Tenchuu Kurenai" game.
http://www.tenchu.net/kurenai/download/movie/kurenai_cf01_bb.wvx
See also: http://www.tenchu.de/english/kurenai/movies.asp

"Super crime non-prevention" system of the Tokyo police
Police losing patience over super alarm that cries wolf
The Asahi Shimbun, July 28, 2004
Pranksters are the biggest users of the crime-alert system. The score is in for the high-priced "super crime-prevention" system of the Tokyo police: one arrest, 867 false alarms....
The system consists of a loud buzzer and flashing red lights atop street-corner posts that kick in at the touch of a button. The button is easily reached on the posts. Surveillance cameras atop the posts also record nearby scenes around the clock. A person sounding the alarm can talk to an officer at a nearby police station via an intercom and monitor.
The system costs around 100 million yen ($910,084.00 USD) per unit, and since March 2002, the Metropolitan Police Department has had 94 alarm systems installed in seven districts around Tokyo.
....senior officers also point out that people are now too used to contacting police on their mobile phones. They also say the images recorded by the alarm system are not of good enough quality to aid in investigations.
........Pranksters crying wolf may not always be behind the false alarms, according to a 53-year-old clerk at a nearby shop. "I often see non-Japanese pedestrians waiting for the traffic light to change,'' she said. "Some press the button mistaking it for the traffic light button. Is it really helpful?

Japanese sex-horror, neo-noir, reincarnation, yakuza, coming-of-age, sci-fi flick: GOZU
Splatter-Happy Takashi Miike on Public Baths and Private Jokes Village Voice, NYC, July 27th, 2004 12:10 PM
"I really wanted purity and innocence," Takashi Miike says of Gozu's virginal protagonist, whose id leaks might be responsible for the film's slurping cow god, gender switching, and (for the second time in Miike's career) hyper-lactating woman....Partisans of the notorious, splatterific Ichi the Killer might very well have reached zero, wet-dreamed in their collective psyche, and hatched Gozu?a sex-horror, neo-noir, reincarnation, yakuza, coming-of-age sci-fi flick?to reunite Miike with Ichi scripter Sakichi Sato (acting here in drag, and last seen stateside in a Kill Bill cameo). A straight-to-video title that eventually screened at Cannes, Gozu starts off on yakuza turf: A rookie assigned to gun down his gone-apeshit elder "brother" flubs the assignment, then kills him in a car accident anyway, only to lose the body. His attempts at retrieval plunge him (and the viewer) further into places that Miike expert Tom Mes has dubbed "almost Lynchian realms of post-logic."
Only Miike should embellish some of what happens next. For instance, why has breast milk seeped into two Miike flicks? "The simple reason? Sato saw it previously in Visitor Q and liked it." And the faraway sound?"pasu, pasu, pasu"?that lingers as Minami is about to "lose it"? "As a child, a boy can still be taken inside the women's section of the public baths.

...See the Gozu trailer or visit the website.

Posted by trek/taro at 10:24 AM KDT
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