The first little tidbit I’d like to share with you all that I found from JANJAN is their feature Kokkai Watch. It covers all events related to the Japanese Diet.
Some Interesting links I saw:
衆議院ＴＶ (Lower House TV)
参議院審議中継 (Upper House Live)
These are like a Japanese C-Span — watch any meeting of Japan’s legislature at your leisure.
Whenever something important comes up I’ll be sure to keep an eye on these. I also like the UN’s video archive, while we’re on the topic.
MF was telling me the other day that he read in an old tourism guide that foreign visitors used to have to register at hotels when they wanted to stay the night. But now that Japan has modernized that kind of suspicious behavior would be unthinkable right? Wrong:
Registration Procedure at lodging facilities in Japan
to be changed as of April 1, 2005March 2005
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
As of April 1, 2005, foreign nationals who visit Japan will be required to do the following when they check in at lodging facilities such as hotels and inns in Japan for the purpose of effective prevention of infectious diseases and terrorism.
* To fill in their “Nationality” and “Passport Number” in addition to “Name”, “Address” and “Occupation”, which are already required, to the guest registration form.
* To present their passports to be photocopied (The proprietors of lodging facilities will be obligated to keep the photocopies).
Your understanding and cooperation will be appreciated.
Unbelievable. Where was this policy when SARS broke out? I saw on the news they were scrambling in the dark to find some Chinese guy who went to Universal Studios and might have spread the disease. And really I think Japan should be worried more about domestic terrorists than foreigners, despite some empty-sounding threats from al-Qaida. The government must be jittery about the influx of foreigners coming to see that half-baked exposition that no one is talking about.
There’s so much lip service paid to bringing more foreign tourists to Japan these days, but I can’t help but suspect trepidation on the part of some sectors of the government in accepting the new visitors.
Here are some helpful ideas on what to do if the hotel staff gives you a hard time.
I recently came across this great web site, JANJAN — Japanese Alternative News for Justice and New cultures. It’s kind of like Korea’s OhMyNews, which as some of you may know is an Internet-based “citizens’ journalism” site. All the reporters are amateur, and content is regulated through an editing staff and the following of a set of rules called the “Citizen Journalist Code“.
The site, as I learned belatedly, got some international attention when one of its reporters, Imai Noriaki (18 — the link is actually not a story by correspondent Kwan Weng Kin but a translation of a Japanese tabloid story that paints the three abductees in a negative light) was abducted in Iraq and threatened with beheading. While I certainly don’t support the fact the he and the other two abductees (Takato Nahoko and Koriyama Soichiro) needlessly put themselves in harm’s way, the idea of citizens’ journalism is refreshing, especially in a country such as Japan with a relatively controlled, passive, and reactionary media.
Continue reading JANJAN — Media by, for and about the people
Just a quick follow-up to my earlier posts on the subject:
Abiru Yuu to continue career
Abiru Yuu (18) who had been suspended for a comment made on a television program, reported the timeline of events and announced her return to show business on March 31 (tr: late, I know). “Now that I am returning, I would like to show some more maturity in my activities,” she explained.
Abiru got in trouble when she announced she was involved in shoplifting/theft in her past on the program “Coming Doubt”.
In other news, there’s a really good article about the “talent” scene on Japan Today’s Metropolis section that will help put the Abiru Yuu incident in persepctive:
They are everywhere—on TV variety shows, in dramas, singing at concerts, endorsing products on billboards, in commercials and attending glittery events. No matter what channel you watch or which magazine you read, you’ll see the same faces: Aya Ueto, SMAP, Yuko Takeuchi, Ayumi Hamasaki, Yukie Nakama, Becky, Papaya Suzuki and countless more.
The “talent” business in Japan is very different from the West. Someone like 19-year-old Ueto, for example, would seem to be making a fortune. After all, she is the TV commercial queen, a movie star, as well as a regular at promotional events. Yet she’s just an employee of her agency, Oscar Promotion. She is paid a wage and gets a percentage of what Oscar negotiates with its clients—the opposite of the US, where it’s the stars that pay their agents a percentage.
The production companies recruit hopefuls at a young age, train them and then supply them to the media, movies and events. When a new TV show or product endorsement is announced, the media get faxed invitations to the press conference, which they dutifully attend. The photos are then used to fill the tabloid magazines, while the TV variety shows replay the same footage four or five times on each segment. “It’s like a revolving sushi restaurant or a ‘UFO Catcher’ at a game center: There is a never-ending selection to pick from,” says Dave Spector, an American who has been a commentator on TV variety shows in Japan for 20 years.
Companies like Oscar, Johnny’s Jimusho, Sun Music and Yellow Cab have tremendous power when it comes to their talents, so much so that very few newspapers, magazines or TV stations dare carry negative stories. “The production companies are money-making machines,” says Tario Cham, who has operated the website jpop.com since 1996. “They work very hard to create an image that sells but also work very hard to protect that image.”
I encourage you to read the whole article, very interesting stuff!
Continuing our ongoing coverage of Rod Stewart’s every move, the singer has apparently purchased a private island shaped like the UK off the coast of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Click the link to see a bunch of manmade islands positioned to look like a map of the world from an aerial view. The islands are being sold for resorts and mansions and whatever. In recent years, the Emirate of Dubai has been plunging headfirst into the upscale tourism industry, and they seem intent on both destroying the environment and showcasing a shocking lack of good taste in the process. (via BoingBoing)
OK, they look a lot less alike than they did when Koizumi first took office, but god damn:
UPDATE: For those who don’t see the resemblance, you may now shut the hell up and bask in the awe that was once the Mane of Richard Gere:
It’s like an older white version of Koizumi came back to warn him about some future disaster… or maybe just dance the night away…
But seriously: what is going on? Assuming for a minute that Gere is the future Koizumi (and, just so we’re clear, I believe in this as surely as I believe in the tastiness of unagi-don), theoretically there should be a big problem. Movies have taught me that if the you of the future encounters the you of the past, there will be a rift in the space-time continuum and all existence shall be erased forever. Or could BTTF be wrong, and it’s totally OK for you to meet your future self (or even have kids with women from the past who are destined to liberate your people.. in the future…)
Or maybe it’s some combination of various sci-fi movies.. What if, for example, the BTTF warning about meeting your future self is true, but the space-time continuum doesn’t rupture instantly, instead taking 29 days to unravel a la Donnie Darko? The end may be coming folks… Feel free to share your own theories of what the Gere-Koizumi meeting portends for the survival of the universe!
I’m busy, so I don’t have time to write individual entries on these, so here’s a synopsis of some stuff that caught my eye:
From ZAKZAK, everyone’s favorite online tabloid:
Japan’s favorite pickles NOT kimchee after all — An earlier report that Japan’s #1 pickled dish was in fact Korean kimchee turns out to be false. Asazuke, a general term for Japan’s traditional lightly pickled vegetables such as takuan or umeboshi, is in fact Japan’s favorite. “After all,” the ZAKZAK reporter concludes, “We are Japanese!”
North Korean fans get violent with Iran after losing 1-0
“Kill the foreigners” shout thousands of angry fans; Zico’s Japan shudders
The Marmot has covered this pretty well, but seriously I thought that the DPRK’s citizens were either above it or just too weary to get angry over soccer. Ogura Junji, Vice Chairman of FIFA, expressed surprise, saying, “There was a clear security problem in North Korea.” Kind of hard to believe from the world’s most notorious police state.
Japan is up in arms over the incident as well, and there is a possibility for the location of June’s Japan-NK matchup to be moved depending on NK’s response.
TSUTAYA buys Virgin Japan from Marui, shifts focus from “renting” — Virgin’s “huge foreign investment” selling media products expanded throughout the 1990s, but it could not compete with the consumer’s shift toward renting CDs and DVDs (In Japan, CD rental shops are ubiquitous, unlike in America where I have never seen one). Though Virgin Japan has centered its business on media sales stores on Marui Properties, it will now focus on creating rental/sales combination stores within Marui properties (presumably shopping malls and stationfront properties).
Since Tower Records opened its first store in Japan in 1979, and after the relaxing of regulations on foreign-owned companies in Japan, Virgin and HMV have also joined the market. Opening large stores all over the country, these record stores have become a part of Japan’s youth culture.
Since then, however, consumers’ focus has shifted entirely from buying media to renting it. Marui bought the Virgin chain in April 2003 and had been attempting to revitalize it.
From Excite News:
What the hell is a Weather Certificate?! — The Japanese Meteorological Service provides Weather Certificates to confirm what the weather was like on a given day. Great for when you need a good alibi or when making insurance claims. (Do any other countries do this?)
There are some more articles, but they really deserve their own entry. Expect them later.
Those living in Japan may remember a segment on the popular TV program Dempa Shonen called “Kensho Seikatsu” (“Sweepstakes Life”) in which a poor comedian named Nasubi was trapped naked in a room and forced to to win sweepstakes if he hoped to survive.
Or, maybe you don’t remember. For you, here is a great retelling of the saga of Nasubi, complete with screen captures and funny moments. Here’s a taste:
 Nasubi on his first day |
Nippon Television’s (NTV) producers have obviously never heard of the Geneva Convention. If they had, they wouldn’t have treated poor Nasubi the way they did. They wouldn’t have stripped him naked and shut him in an apartment, alone with no food, furniture, household goods, or entertainment. They wouldn’t have kept him there for over a year until he had won $10 000 in prizes by sending in postcards to contests. They wouldn’t have cut him off from the world and they would have told him that he was on nation-wide TV. |
It all started one snowy day in January, 1998 with an audition. The audition consisted of choosing lots because the only talent needed for this challenge was luck. A group of aspiring comedians showed up, and among them was a young man whose stage name is Nasubi, which means eggplant. Nasubi was ‘lucky’ that day, and was chosen over other aspiring young comedians for a mysterious “show-business related job”. He was immediately blindfolded and driven to a tiny one room apartment somewhere in Tokyo.
 Nasubi’s empty room |
When he arrived at the apartment, he was shown a stand full of magazines, a huge pile of postcards, and told to strip naked. The room was empty except for a cushion, a table, a small radio, a telephone, some notebooks, and a few pens. There was not a crumb of food, a square of toilet paper, or any form of entertainment. Whatever he needed, he was to win by sending thousands of postcards into contests. The producers left and Nasubi was on his own in his unique survival challenge. Imagine what was going through his mind: How am I going to eat? Why are they doing this to me? How long will it take to get out of here? He must have thought he was in a bad episode of The Prisoner. |
From Yahoo News:
In a press conference at a Tokyo hotel Mar. 30, Cambodia opposition party leader Sam Rainsy of the Sam Rainsy Party described Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) as “a hotbed of corruption,” offering criticism of the country’s efforts. To enter the UN Security Council, Rainsy called on Japan to “establish new aid policies that further democratization in developing countries.”
Mainichi continues:
The party leader said of Japan’s ODA to Cambodia, “Large-scale construction projects such as bridges and hospitals destroy the environment and do not work toward alleviating poverty or other problems of the people as a whole. The ODA network (that set aid policy) is not operating properly in Cambodia,” seeking a reevaluation of management. Japan is the biggest aid donor to Cambodia. Throughout 2003, Japan gave USD$76,680,000 (based on net disbursement) just in grants in aid. (Uramatsu Junji reporting).
Just a quick link, quote, and commentary shot straight from my hip for a story:
1 DAY BONUS: Over 40 localities to delay mergers
03/28/2005
The Asahi ShimbunThe delay gains merging municipalities an extra year of benefits.
Localities poised to merge in a central government plan to reduce costs are learning that sometimes it pays to be late.
Of the 44 municipalities that are set to merge nationwide by April 1, more than 90 percent, or 41, will postpone the move to qualify for one more year of extra funds, an Asahi Shimbun study shows.
In fact, 24 of the cities and towns delaying their mergers are pushing the date back only one day to gain the bonus. By delaying, the 41 municipalities will receive between a few hundred million yen and nearly 3 billion yen more in tax allocations, the study said.
This merger is the “Great Heisei Merger” which follows the “Great Showa Merger” and the “Great Meiji Merger”. In the Meiji period, the tens of thousands of feudal hamlets that had existed in the Bakufu period were reorganized into more modern style towns and cities when the Meiji Constitution came into effect in 1888. In Showa, there was further reorganization. There is a great World Bank paper on the topic that I completely missed out on when I wrote a paper about this for class. Doh!
Basically, the Showa merger in the 1950s switched from the more hands-off, autonomous style of the Meiji/Taisho/early Showa eras to a mostly centralized funding system. Basically the towns send all their money to Tokyo and then get it doled back to them. It was seen as more efficient since all policy was being made from Tokyo anyway. This new round of mergers reflects more the changing demographics of Japan than a planned economy. Many towns are simply running out of people, so merging would give people more access to public services etc.
Koizumi wants to go back to the more hands-off approach, allowing the Prefectures and towns to have more tax collecting power. The Keidanren wants him to go a step further and eliminate prefectures altogether, making a 9-member United States of Japan (called doushuusei), but this is maybe a first step.
Funny, then, that he’s using funding incentives to get the mergers going. Local governments who have been nurtured with central government welfare aren’t going to change so easily. They’ll be happy to wait an extra day to get a bigger check.
