World cup fever has gripped the, ummm, the world I suppose. But in all of this fuss over teams of humans from one country competing against teams of humans from another country for the greater glory of their history/race/ideology/religion its important not to forget the as of yet infantile league that will some day destroy them all. I am of course talking about the RoboCup.

And not only humans and robots are caught up in football fever! For according to this report from the BBC even monkeys are new getting in on the action, and this is something that is of great concern—for when monkeys and robots meet on the battlefield, no good can come of it. We have been down that dark road before and we much be very mindful of that awful conflict re-awakening.

As some of you may know, I am leaving my position as a translator/researcher here at a Washington law firm for the hotter, smellier (but nevertheless totally awesome) pastures of Bangkok. However, plans have hit something of a snag since we can’t seem to find my replacement!

So I’ve decided to repost the ad here in the hopes that some of my readers (or their friends) might be up to the task. Here’s the official job posting:

The Washington, DC office of Dewey Ballantine LLP seeks to fill a part time or full-time position with the International Trade Group’s Japan Team. The candidate will work closely with attorneys and other legal professionals in assisting with filings and conducting research both in Japanese and English.

Required qualifications are outstanding English-Japanese bilingual and English writing skills, professional translation experience from Japanese to English, and a strong interest in Japanese policy matters. A brief language test will be given during the interview. Please no J.D. candidates or attorneys.

Please e-mail your resume/cover letter to:
Maki Hishikawa
Director of Japan Research
Dewey Ballantine LLP
mhishikawa@dbllp.com

[NO TELEPHONE INQUIRIES PLEASE].
Dewey Ballantine LLP is an equal opportunity employer.

Basically, we are looking for someone with native-level English but also very strong Japanese reading comprehension skills—i.e. sufficient to digest any given newspaper article in Japanese and be able to abstract it in well-written English. Feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested and qualified.

Look at this headline from May 4’s Mainichi online news:

Son scares off bear after elderly dad seriously injured in attack

At first, I thought this story was about Masayoshi Son, Japanese-Korean internet mogul and Japan’s richest man. But no, turns out it’s just some guy’s son who scared off the bear.

How cool would that have been if my first inclination had been true? He’d be a triple threat as the man who: a) Overcame his minority status to rise to the upper rank’s of Japan’s business elite; b) Helped introduce broadband Internet to Japanese households after years of lagging behind to the point where penetration has now outstripped the US; c) Can fend off any bears who threaten his elderly dad. Well, he got two out of three at least.

Rest of the story:

Son scares off bear after elderly dad seriously injured in attack

NIKAHO, Akita—An elderly man was seriously injured after being attacked by a bear while picking wild plants in the mountains here Thursday morning, police said.

At around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, an adult bear attacked a 69-year-old pensioner who was picking edible wild plants with his son on a mountain in the Kisakata district of Nikaho, local police said. The man suffered serious wounds after the bear scratched his face and left arm.

The 37-year-old son fought back with a tree branch and managed to scare away the beast. The bear fled the scene and disappeared.

At the request of the local government, a local hunter was mobilized to search for the approximately 1.7-meter-long animal while police officers patrolled the neighborhood asking residents to exercise caution.

A residential area is located about 500 meters away from the scene of the attack. (Mainichi)

May 4, 2006

The Supreme Court of Japan dismissed a 278-plaintiff appeal against Koizumi yesterday, holding that his visiting Yasukuni “is not something that interferes with others’ religious faiths” and therefore cannot be the basis for a damage award.

However, they declined to rule on the constitutionality of the visits, stating that since there was no standing for the claim for damages, there was also no need to make a constitutional ruling. It’s another case of squirming out of the hot seat: the Supreme Court has used this tactic before to avoid addressing sensitive political questions, most notably whether the Self-Defense Forces are permitted under Article 9. (See my earlier post on the subject.)

Full story at the Japan Times if you’d like to know more.

I don’t do product placement very often, but I must give the following rave review to my current bank, Shinsei Bank. If you’re in Japan, it’s the place to do your banking. Here are some of the many reasons why:

• You don’t get one of those goofy bank books. You get a card, hard plastic, embossed digits, in your choice of 32 colors (I picked the black one because it’s snooty; apparently the CEO of Shinsei feels the same way).


• They don’t dick around and mail it to you two weeks later like other banks do: they make it while you wait. Go to bank, fill out form, sit around for 15 minutes, and you’re good to deposit and withdraw at any ATM right away.


• In part because you don’t have a bank book, you also don’t need a seal; you can do everything with your signature.


• Your ATM card works everywhere: at the post office, at convenience stores, in Tokyo subway stations, and even overseas (and they pay you back for any ATM fees you’re charged out-of-network).


• At any other bank, you would have to mess around at the ATM to make a bank transfer. With Shinsei, it’s all online. None of those silly “furikomi cards” for frequent payees: the bank keeps your frequent payees online so you can send them money with one click. And your first x furikomis of the month are free.


• You can keep your savings account in any combination of major currencies. So if you’re pessimistic about the yen, you can keep half of your money in euros or Ozzie dollars or Swiss francs, and shuffle funds from one currency to another online in seconds. (If someone sends you dollars, you can deposit the dollars in your account as dollars and convert them to yen whenever you like.)


• In case you don’t know Japanese, everything is in English. I even got a concerned voice mail from customer service a few weeks ago:

  Harrooooo…? This is Keiko from Shinsei Bank. I, ahhh, need to talk to you, about your account. Ahhh, I try you later. Baibai!

  
  (Lest you be worried about going insane, customer service also speaks Japanese.)

Why is Shinsei so awesome? Probably because it’s run by gaijin. In case you missed the story, it used to be a highly leveraged long-term credit bank, before American investors bought it out, somehow tricked the Japanese government into relieving all its debt, and reformed it into a lean, mean commercial bank, in what might be the ultimate financial Gaijin Smash.

I guess that the only downside is that most of its branches are in foreigner-heavy areas in Tokyo, so if you live elsewhere you might have to hike to find one. But since everything’s online, you would rarely have to go into the bank anyway. (And if you do, there’s probably a Starbucks inside. And if you’re lucky, there might even be booze [the branch in Omotesando Hills has an Italian-style coffee stand selling limoncello]. Getting tanked at the bank is awesome.)

USA Today has a report on the new mobile execution chambers being gradually introduced in China to replace the older execution method of shooting people in the back of the head with something more humane. By installing the lethal injection equipment in a slick looking bus they can perform executions right at the location of the trial, without having to transport prisoners all the way to a central execution facility or set up equipment in each locality. As a bonus, they can also send the bus to drive around your house at night as a subtle reminder to stay on the right path.

There’s a good article in the LA Times about some of the more extreme members of the three great monotheistic apocalypse cults of the Middle East (in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) who take their religion so literally that they are actively trying to hasten the end of this world because, presumably, they just don’t like it very much.

some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building’s foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal’s body.

Interestingly, this phenomena is largely confined to the US and the Middle East. Yes, of course there are apocalyptic cults in other regions (Japan’s own Aum Shinrikyo being one near and dear to my heart) but they are hardly a mainstream phenomenon over there. In fact, according to the article as many as 40% of Americans believe that an apocalypse is not merely coming but imminent. Now, some people believe that some of the more obscure foreign policy moves engaged in by the US governmental leaders can be traced to this very belief in the end time-and I myself have even engaged in some joking speculation of such a nature-but of course when examined logically the argument falls apart. After all, how could anyone who believes that the world is coming to an end in a couple of decades time be so enthusiastic about being midwife to the creation of a landed hereditary aristocracy by enouraging the repeal of the inheritance tax?

You’ve probably already heard about how Ann Coulter said something stupid and offensive about widows of some WTC terrorist victims, and now thanks to the Internet you can also bet on whether or not she is going to be sued for defamation.

Analysts at BetUS.com posted favorable 4-6 odds that the Widows of 9/11, who were also called “self-obsessed women,” will sue Coulter for defamation. However, the chances of Ann Coulter retracting her remarks are slim with only 1-2 odds. Either way, Coulter’s outrageousness has shot her new book to number one on Amazon.com.

Executives at BetUS.com have posted the following odds:

Will Ann Coulter retract her remarks?
Yes: 6-4
No: 1-2

Will the 9/11 Widows Sue Coulter for defamation?
Yes: 4-6
No: 11-10