Tag: Japan

The Year’s Best…

In 2008, academics discovered that…

• A 30cm-long, 130 million-year-old fossil unearthed in Ishikawa Prefecture belongs to the world’s oldest plant-eating lizard

• Menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage

• Thanks to the heat island effect, the average January temperature in Tokyo rose 2.62 degrees during the past 50 years

• Men who eat lots of fruits and vegetables are half as likely to suffer esophageal cancer as their junk food-eating brethren

• East Asians tend to examine faces starting with the nose, whereas just about everyone else focuses on the eyes and mouth

• Genetics can account for the variances in physical traits between “mainland” and “Ryukyuan” Japanese, such as hair thickness and “whether earwax is dry or wet”

• There is a way to measure the brain waves of a cow to determine whether it is afflicted with BSE

• Caffeine has the effect of relieving pain

• People who are either socially outgoing or “nonconformist” tend to have higher obesity rates than average, while neurotics are skinnier

Mind games

A Keio University professor has developed what is believed to be the world’s first web-based psychotherapy sessions available via mobile phone.

Academy Award-winning anime director Hayao Miyazaki was quoted as saying that Prime Minister Taro Aso’s publicly avowed love of manga is “embarrassing.”

The education ministry said it will distribute 80,000 copies of a manual that provides tips for teachers on how to combat internet bullying.

Ah Singapore

You go, gals!

Naoko Yamazaki, a 37-year-old mom, will become the second Japanese female astronaut when she rides the US space shuttle Atlantis in February 2010, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced.

Japanese runner Yoshimi Ozaki passed countrywoman Yoko Shibui with a late surge to win last month’s Tokyo International Women’s Marathon, the final running of the race. A women’s field will be added to the Tokyo Marathon to take its place.

Sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Eri Yoshida, said to have a nasty knuckleball, became the first woman ever selected in Japanese men’s pro baseball when she was drafted by the independent league club Kobe 9 Cruise.

In other Cruise news, a Toyota Land Cruiser will take part in the grueling Dakar Rally powered by used tempura cooking oil collected by students and donated from school cafeterias and local restaurants. Former Formula One racer Ukyo Katayama will pilot the vehicle on its deep-fried drive through the desert.

Kids these days

It was revealed that 22 students who passed the entrance exam to Kanda Prefectural High School in Hiratsuka were rejected admission because of their “long nails, piercings or alleged appearance or attitude problems.”

The Japan Pediatric Society has devised a 46-question survey to help doctors and school nurses determine the effects of video games and TV on kids’ physical and mental health.

A survey by Recruit Co. found that 78 percent of Japanese men and women accept their parents’ financial assistance when getting married. Of the ¥4.21 million average wedding cost, mom and dad ponied up ¥1.99 million.

A Buddhist temple from Nagoya that was rebuilt on a college campus in South Carolina will hold a class called Realizing Bodymind, in which students are to “use the powers of [their] mind… to sit in meditation for an hour and a half without being cold.”

A K-12 school that caters exclusively to Indian children is set to open in Midori-ku, Yokohama.

The foreigners in our midst

Illustration by Emi Yokoyama

The foreigners in our midst

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry reported that the number of international marriages in Japan skyrocketed to 44,700 in 2006 from 27,700 in 2005.

During the same period, the number of international divorces rose from 7,990 to 17,100.

After receiving reports that forged passports were being used to buy keitai, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a seminar for cellphone shop employees on how to spot fake IDs.

The labor ministry said that the number of foreigners seeking help at government-run job centers recently doubled, while the number of Japanese jobseekers has remained constant.

End of an Era

The communications ministry announced that fiscal 2007 marked the first time in history that Japanese people talked on mobile phones more than on fixed-line phones.

An opinion poll by Mitsui Home Remodeling Company found that over 40 percent of married couples in their 60s sleep in separate bedrooms.

The National Police Agency said that money-transfer scams involving ATMs dropped for the first time in a year and a half.

Japan slipped one spot to ninth in the World Economic Forum’s annual list of most competitive nations. The US retained the top spot, followed by Switzerland and Denmark.

In the same survey, Japan scored well in “technological innovation and business environments” but was 98th in terms of “macroeconomic stability,” thanks to its huge fiscal deficit.

The story of United States research into and use of biological weapons remains a huge blank spot in the known history of this country. There have been attempts to document this history, but much remains classified or has been destroyed. The use of biological weapons dovetails with U.S. research into drugs and mind control against prisoners, as the revelations about MKULTRA or the Edgewood Arsenal experiments make clear (see this fascinating story by Michael Ignatieff in the New York Times Magazine, April 2001).

This posting is the first in a series I hope to publish over time looking at the controversial question of U.S. use of biological weapons, and its links to MKULTRA and other covert CIA or military programs. It examines the origins of the U.S. program in biological weapons research, as it grew out of the ashes of the horrific program in the same, started by the Japanese Imperial government in the 1930s. It is best known by its bureaucratic moniker: Unit 731.

Winners and losers

A Japanese film called Okuribito (“Departures”), which portrays the work of people who wash and groom dead bodies for burial, was awarded the Grand Prix des Americas at the Montreal World Film Festival. The organizers say that the film captures “comically and with full emotion a job that is usually loathed.” Sounds like a real knee-slapper.

Seiya Ueno, a 19-year-old student at Tokyo University of the Arts, won the Jean-Pierre Rampal International Flute Competition in Paris.

It was revealed that the Japanese government has refused to grant a visa to a 57-year-old Russian diplomat who is suspected of being linked to the Russian intelligence service. Hey, at least he’s not a weed-smoking sumo wrestler.

A court ordered Ehime Prefecture to pay ¥1 million in damages to whistleblower Toshiro Semba, a sergeant who was transferred after revealing the misuse of police money at a press conference in 2005.

Toxic melamine was found in a product called Chocolate Pillows that was sold in Osaka and imported from China, but so far no reports of disease or death.

Original article, by Fred McDowell, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

Communism is suddenly back in fashion in Japan. The reason is not hard to seek. ‘Lifetime employment’ is a thing of the past for young workers, who face a casualised and insecure future. One in three is temping. Some 44% of country’s workforce are part-time only, while a profusion of short-term contracts has created a generation of freelancers who are often ‘between jobs’. They have already worked out that, as recession bites, they will be first in the firing line. They are drawing political conclusions in increasing numbers.

Well, glad that’s settled

Researchers have determined that genetic variations can explain the physical differences between “mainland” and “Ryukyuan” Japanese, such as hair thickness and “whether earwax is dry or wet.”

A Japanese historian claims to have found documents proving that the US military was able to locate and kill Imperial Navy Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto because his travel plans were broadcast in “an old cipher that should have earlier been destroyed.” The Americans shot down Yamamoto’s plane in an aerial ambush over the Pacific in April 1943.

It was announced that sexpot Mika Kano, who along with “sister” Kyoko has made a career out of having large breasts, is releasing a book called Something Beyond Boobs.

A North Korean official said that Japan should never be allowed a permanent seat on the UN Security Council because it “beautifies… the massacre of millions of innocent peoples in Korea and other Asian countries.”

Soon after, Japan decided to extend economic sanctions on North Korea for another six months.

Researchers at the National Institute of Animal Health say they’ve come up with a way to check the brain waves of a cow to determine whether it is afflicted with BSE.