If JAL’s shoddy maintenance doesn’t kill you, this guy might:

A 55-year old driver of the “Airport Limousine,” operating between the Haneda Airport terminal and aircraft parked on the apron, was found to have continued driving for nine days in May and June of last year despite having had his license suspended for drunk driving.

Tokyo Airport Transit, the bus operating company, ordered the driver dismissed.

According to the company, they had not been informed about his license suspension for drunk driving. As the buses operate on the taxiways, a “Restricted Area Driving Permit” is required in addition to a regular driver’s license. However, because on-field inspections only check to see whether the permit is being carried, it was not discovered that the driver had no regular driver’s license. The company checks its drivers’ personal violation records once per year, and only noticed the man’s violation in November.

The Japan news forum Crisscross has a great new feature in which users list their “goals.” I really don’t see the appeal of this, but it’s a revealing window into the collective hopes and dreams of the Crisscross readership. Let’s take a look:

1.go to Japan (72)
2. Learn Japanese (61)
3. become fluent in Japanese (38)
4. marry a Japanese girl (34)
5. Learn Japanese perfectly (33)
6. get a new japanese girl friend (31)
7. meet new friends in Tokyo (31)
8. teach english in Japan (26)
9. live in Japan (25)
10. be friends with Japanese girls (21)
11. marry a nice sweet Japanese man and shower him with affection and devotion! (19)
12. Be happy (18)
13. learn about Japanese culture (16)
14. see Memoirs of a Geisha (16)
15. get a kitten (16)
16. eat sushi (16)
17. go to Osaka (15)
18. learn aikido (15)
19. completely master Kanji (14)
20. get somewhere with an asian girl before I die (14)

The aspirations of these Japanophiles (presumably so if they read Crisscross) range from the mundane (Read Harry Potter, wear a kimono, grow out my hair) to the horny (“get somewhere” with an Asian girl) to the ambitious (completely master kanji, dance on bin Laden’s grave, hug a friend in a monsoon). But the goals throughout the list definitely center around “go to/live in Japan,” “score with a Japanese girl,” and “master Japanese”.

To many, these goals might represent the masturbatory fantasies of anime nerds worthy of nothing but scorn. But not to me – they were, in fact, my top three priorities at age 17, in precisely that order. Seeing so many like-minded people really takes me back…

I started learning Japanese at 15, and as soon as I mastered hiragana I was completely hooked. Japan and its new and unknown culture, mysterious and forbidding language, and strange women who actually seemed somewhat interested in talking to me came to be an obsession.

Now, at 24, after two years in Japan, a nightmare relationship that all but turned me off from Japanese girls forever, and landing a job as a translator/researcher, I’ve accomplished all three of the above-mentioned “goals” and can look back and see them for the self-absorbed, adolescent, small-minded yearnings of a high school dork that they were. And I’ve changed – even though I’m still a proud nerd, my interests have broadened beyond just Japan stuff, I don’t feel the obsessive need to live in Japan or befriend Japanese people (though I’ll never let my Japanese language skills slip), and I am not worried about “getting somewhere” with women.

It’s been a fun ride, and I don’t regret for a minute the path I’ve taken as a result of my earlier immature ambition. Living in Japan and learning Japanese first and foremost opened my mind to “world things” (as Mrs. Adamu and I like to call them) and expanded my palate for delicious food my friends in the US can hardly bear to look at. But it also served as the stage on which I ended up wrestling with a lot of my high-school era demons – and the process I learned humility, became a little less selfish, and found out who my friends are.

As corny as it sounds, it allowed me to find out “who I am” and become more comfortable with myself, surely moreso than I could have if I just stayed home. And if I may be even more trite, sometimes to get to somewhere interesting in life, you’ve just got to follow your dumb teenage heart. It may well get you killed, but in most cases it’s far preferable to having stayed at home.

Hot.

This did not come from The Onion:

More sex. That’s what one expert says is needed to solve Japan’s baby shortage.

“Japanese people simply aren’t having sex,” Dr. Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily.

An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 percent had not had sex for more than a month “for no particular reason”—a condition known as “sexless.” (Where I come from, we call it “NERD!”)

“As much as subsidies and welfare programs are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem.”

To which a friend of mine replied:

Seriously, what Japan are they surveying?

Obviously not Roppongi.

Competition is heating up among Japan’s big time Internet TV operators, the Yomiuri writes:

More than 10 million people have signed up for Usen Corp.’s Gyao Net TV service since it started broadcasting in April 2005. Yet despite the numbers putting the free service ahead of competitors such as Yahoo, the nation’s largest cable broadcaster’s service is still deep in the red.

Go read it if you care to.

The article goes on to note that this and other services continue to post losses while they compete for viewers. I would like to heartily to suggest that all three services do the following:

OPEN ACCESS TO FOREIGN VIEWERS

(Note: All of the top 3 Internet TV sites in Japan use DRM to keep foreign viewers out)

This way, you could sell ads to a much wider spectrum of merchants (j-list? foreign companies catering to Japanese living abroad?) and quickly boost viewership! Get on it people!

There was a cool piece in today’s Nikkei (special Monday high-tech supplement) asking Lawson CEO Takeshi Niinami about the future of kombinis in today’s rapidly-advancing world.

Asked about what to expect from Japanese convenience stores (kombini) within the next five years, he laid out his vision: a person will be able to walk into a Lawson, be identified by the mobile payment system in their phone, pick up items on the shelf, and walk out without going to the register. RFID chips on each item will cause sensors at the door to automatically total their purchases and charge it to their mobile wallet.

The real bonus of this setup: Niinami believes that the average Lawson, which requires about 20 employees today, will be able to get by with just five. I, for one, will happily await the day when I don’t have to deal with some shit-ass at the register who thinks I’m an alien. Although I guess I’ll still have to deal with people when I want my bento microwaved…

Well, that may be what the mainstream media wants you to believe, but come on-we ARE talking about a Philip K Dick ANDROID here! How could anyone familiar with the man who wrote A Scanner Darkly, Valis, Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, and of course We Can Build You, which stars a cybernetic simulacra of Abraham Lincoln think that a robot containing a complete copy of his surviving records was merely stolen, like a mere piece of luggage? I fully expect to see this android again. My guess: the Replicant Liberation Front freeing their spiritual leader.

But of course:

Scale of Japan’s aid to pro-whaling nations revealed

In a written reply to a query on Japan’s “marine aid” to developing countries, the government acknowledged pouring 617 million yen ($8.7 million) last year into St Kitts & Nevis, the tiny Caribbean nation that hosted the IWC conference.

Nicaragua, the top recipient of Tokyo’s largesse, was awarded about $17 million, and the Pacific island cluster of Palau got $8.1 million.

All three countries voted with Japan, Iceland and Norway at last weekend’s conference in favour of the “St Kitts & Nevis Declaration”, calling for the 20-year ban on commercial whaling to be scrapped.

Keep in mind this pales in comparison to the billions (PDF) of dollars Japan spends on aid that’s largely unrelated to whaling and more concentrated on giving handouts to Japanese companies.

Of course, not all countries are so quick to offer themselves up for sale:

TUVALU: Tuvalu Opposes Tying Aid To Whale Vote

Monday: June 26, 2006

(Radio Australia)
Tuvalu says it would be a mistake if countries such as Australia and New Zealand start using their aid programs to persuade Pacific countries to support them in international forums.

Japan has been accused of using chequebook diplomacy to influence the Pacific on whaling after six island nations voted to support a Japanese resolution at the International Whaling Commission.

New Zealand’s opposition National Party spokesman on foreign affairs, Murray McCully, has suggested taking a more robust approach towards small island states.

But Tuvalu’s prime minister, Maatia Toafa says, “Well I don’t think that is fair because as far as Tuvalu is concerned, we are an aid-dependent country and we feel that we should be left to make our decisions without any influences.”

Well, Tuvalu, if one didn’t tie aid to something, what’s the guarantee that the money won’t be wasted on traditional canoes or 900-number network infrastructure with no concrete return for Japan? Something tells me you’re just holding out for a sweeter deal.