Author: Roy Berman

Man uses machete to chop off hand in front of Diet building

Report from The Mainichi:

A man almost completely severed his left hand with a machete in front of the National Diet Building on Tuesday, apparently to protest policies toward North Korea, police said.

The 54-year-old man approached the front gates of the building by car, stepped out, silently placed his left hand against the hood of his car and swung the 40 centimeter blade down across his left wrist, according to Tokyo police official Hideyuki Yoshioka.

The man, who identified himself as a member of a right-wing organization, then mumbled a few words about Japan’s handling of the abduction of its citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s. Police snatched the machete and rushed him to a hospital, Yoshioka said.

The man “appeared to be in a lot of pain and his hand was hanging by a piece of skin,” according to Yoshioka.
[…]
Last October, another man linked to Japan’s extreme right tried to commit suicide outside the prime minister’s office by downing pesticide. Police said he was carrying a letter demanding that the prime minister pay his respects at a Tokyo shrine that honors Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals.

In the past year, a woman has also tried to kill herself by ritual disembowelment in front of Koizumi’s office, demanding the leader resign.

Curzon, if this keeps up, it looks like you may not be able to make fun of Korean as easily. What’s a few psychos over there cutting off fingers compared to entire hands in Japan?

Niimi files final appeal

I mentioned the other day that Niimi Tomomitsu, one of the leaders of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, had recieved a death sentence. Naturally, he has filed an appeal.

The lawyers claim hanging is too harsh a punishment for Niimi, 42, reckoning that as Aum founder Shoko Asahara’s most loyal disciple, he had no option but to follow the guru’s orders.

The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday upheld the district court-meted death penalty against Niimi, with the judge saying there were no mitigating circumstances.

He was found guilty of conspiring with Asahara and other cultists who carried out the March 20, 1995, sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people left more than 5,000 injured.

He was also convicted for his roles in the June 27, 1994, sarin attack in a residential area in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.

Should his final appeal fail, I think it is safe to assume that he will, as in all things, follow the lead of the Esteemed Master Asahara Shoko-masturbate in public and hope for the best.

Asahara – still crazy

For all you Aum watchers, make sure to take in this article on the English Mainichi. It’s actually been posted for a week or so, but I just ran across it. The former cult leader, who is responsible for a number of atrocities, was sentenced to death a little while back, but seems to be working very hard to delay the (cough, cough) execution of that sentence for as long as possible by faking insanity.

“He took off his trousers and diapers, exposed his genitalia and masturbated. He repeated the same action frequently. Whenever he acts like that, he drops his trousers, his diaper and diaper cover to his knees, finishes the act, then raises his trousers up to his waist again,” Friday quotes the Nishiyama Report as saying.

The weekly goes on to note that Asahara does not restrain his self-ministrations to times when he’s alone in his cell at the Tokyo Detention Center.

“In April 2005, just before the accused’s lawyer entered a visiting room, the accused exposed his penis and began masturbating, continuing until he had finished while the lawyer stood before him the entire time. He has repeated this act of masturbation in the visiting room, as well as in his solitary confinement cell since being placed under observation in May. He also performed the act in front of his daughters when they came to visit him in August of the same year,” the Nishiyama Report says.

On the other hand, Asahara is well documented as having been bat-shit crazy at the very least since 1983, so who am I to accuse him of just putting on a show?

Uniqlo arrives in the US

I had actually heard about this a few months ago, I think on some Japanese news site. But yesterday I was surprised to see that The Motley Fool had reported on it.

You’ll have to forgive me for not catching this one sooner. A year ago, I wrote about the possibility of Japanese retailer Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo business setting up shop in the U.S. and the potential competitive problems that could cause for Gap (NYSE: GPS). However, it looks like I wasn’t paying close enough attention, because in the last six months, Uniqlo has opened three stores in New Jersey and now has one store open temporarily in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.

I must admit, I was a little puzzled to see that their first three stores were in New Jersey malls, at least there is some kind of sense to it. After all, while we may not have the largest mall in the country, we are the undisputed center of the shopping mall lifestyle – as much as that association pains my holier than though New York oriented Montclair ass. Now, the fact that their next store was in Soho really shocked me. At least, shocked insofar as I can have any kind of emotional reaction to retail clothing. Which, I should not have to inform you, is rather minimal.
Now, will Uniqlo have any impact? Well, they’ve already managed to expand profitably into China, Korea, Hong Kong and apparently, England. I assume that if England had been a flop they would never have bothered with the US. But what does the Fool think?

Overall, I still believe Uniqlo poses the biggest threat to Gap’s namesake stores and its Old Navy shops, because the price point, style, and level of quality are similar. Whether or not Uniqlo ends up being a true threat will take years to play out, and Uniqlo will also need to prove that it will endure in the U.S. and is not just a passing fad. As a customer of Uniqlo for a number of years, I believe the company can compete successfully, largely because the company has had some success in the U.K., Hong Kong, and Korea.

I must say, I always liked Uniqlo well enough when I was in Japan. I have a jacket from there that I’m rather fond of, and the zip-up black hooded sweatshirt I got almost 4 years ago for something like 2500 or 3000 has very possibly been worn more days in total than any other single piece of clothing that I own, but in all honesty the main attraction of Uniqlo was that it was the only decent store in Japan where I could find clothes that I was comfortable with at a decent price. While the Gap and Levis stores in Kyoto might offer clothing that I would be willing to wear, they did it at prices dramatically higher than I would pay for identical items in the US, while Uniqlo, despite being in Japan, cost no more than the Old Navy at the Willowbrook Mall a short drive from my house in Jersey. Uniqlo may be a pretty good store in Japan, but is there any particular need in this country for a Japanese clothing brand whose style is, in my eyes, virtually indistinguishable from the preexisting mainstream American brands?

Usefulness of local indexing

One technique I use to help me with translations is saving as many dictionary and glossary files as I can find in one place on my hard drive. I’ve managed to wrangle a good number of very specialized Japanese/English glossaries out of the dark corners of the Internet, since one never knows what’s going to be useful. While one can always browse what may be a relevent file, or load it up in Word or Firefox and use that programs built in search function, the best thing to do is really to use something like Google desktop search to search the entire folder for the desired keyword.

Sadly, Google Desktop Search hasn’t lived up to the promise so far. It’s been very useful for locating file (aside from a tendency not to erase the old record of files that have been erased/renamed/moved) but in contrast to the plethora of operators avaliable on their web site search, has until now lacked a convenient operator to restrict searching to a particular folder.

Thankfully, this has been addressed in the newest version. The updated feature list tells us how to do this.

“under:” search New!
The under: operator lets you restrict what folder your file search results can come from. For instance, if you search for [basketball under:”C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents”], your search results will only include files found in the “C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents” folder.

Rare Chinese frog uses ultrasonic communication

It may not be a mutant per-se, but it sure is an evolutionary rarity. From Reuters:

The frog, Amolops tormotus, is the first non-mammalian species known to use the ultra-high frequencies that humans cannot hear.

It comes in handy to be heard above the pounding waterfalls and streams in the mountainous region of east-central China where Amolops tormotus, which is known as the concave-eared torrent frog, lives.

Update on used electronics restrictions – some good news

Update to an earlier post where I discussed Japan’s new restrictions on sales of second hand electronics. I’ll start by summarizing what I know about the issue so far, and then add the good news at the end.

To summarize, Japan is (from April 1) requiring that most used electronics older than 5 years of age must be certified as electrically safe for usage before resale, which puts a serious cramp in the business of small scale used goods stores. While few people really care about being able to get their hands on a decade old refrigerator or rice cooker, fans of vintage electronic musical instruments were particularly outraged, and organized a strong campaign against the new regulations.

This issue became widely discussed on the English internet when retro gaming fans became scared that sales of used consoles would become illegal. I pointed out that foreign export sales of all items will remain unrestricted, which is at least a boon to retro electronics fans outside of Japan, but it could still potentially cause problems for Japanese gamers.

Since the regulations are about electrical safety, in the case of units that operate off of an external power supply, it seems that only the power supply itself will be tested, and there will also be a grace period of 2 additional years before regulations regarding AC adapters and power cords come into effect. Now, it would be possibly to replace the old power supply with a newer one of the correct voltage/amperage, but that’s a rather serious step for an ordinary gaming store, and would probably cause serious price increase. Also, there are unfortunately a few models of consoles that integrated the power supply, which means that they will be affected right on April 1, without the AC adapter related grace period.

HOWEVER, thanks to an anonymous comment, I noticed that there is some very good news on this front. In fact, I’ll just repost the text of the comment below, since it covers it pretty well.

Yesterday March 14, 2006 the Japanese ministry in charge of the PSE law and its interpretation announced that “Vintage Electric Equipment” including guitar amps, audio, electric musical instruments, and electric powered photographic equipment etc. will be exempted from full PSE testing requirements, and will be allowed to sell after a simplified registration procedure is followed by the merchant.

For those who can read Japanese, see news item at Yahoo Japan:
http://dailynews.yahoo.co.jp/fc/domestic/pse_law/
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20060314-00000053-mai-bus_all

Also notice that major second-hand audio retailer HiFi Do had already registered with the ministry as a re-manufacturer of used audio equipment and has set itself up to do fully compliant testing and certification, and also will equip each piece of used equipment they sell (after testing and modifying the equipment to comply with the law) with a properly registered PSE sticker.

See http://www.hifido.co.jp/merumaga/osu_sale/060310/

So this means the good Ryuichi Sakamoto (who campaigned against the law prohibiting sale of vintage synthesizers etc.) and his friends were successful.

Check out that last link for a neat series of photos of the solder-smiths at Hifido testing, repairing, and certifying equipment under the new PSE regulations (the source of the above image.)

According to the Mainichi Shinbum, the Japanese Synthesizer Programmers Association delivered a petition with 75,000 signatures to the PSE office, prompting their decision to reclassify musical equipment. This is obviously great news for fans of vintage music and photographic equipment, it also offers hope to retro gamers. While gaming machines (software and peripherals are of course safe, since they aren’t serious electrical conduits) are still classified as restricted items, this decision clearly opens the door for their inclusion on the list of vintage, exempt, items. While their may not be a Japanese Vintage Gaming Association, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some higher-ups from companies like Nintendo or Sega step forward and ask the government not to cordon off their legacy with red tape.

Death sentence of Aum sarin subway terrorist upheld

Saru forwarded me the AP story, but I don’t have a link so I’ll just post it below.

Japan: Death for Man in Subway Gassing

By CHISAKI WATANABE
The Associated Press

TOKYO —

Tokyo’s High Court upheld the death penalty for a doomsday cult member convicted in the 1995 Tokyo subway nerve gas attack that killed 12 people, a court official said Wednesday.

Tomomitsu Niimi, a high-ranking member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, was sentenced in 2002 to hang for murdering 26 people in seven separate attacks.
Continue reading Death sentence of Aum sarin subway terrorist upheld

Japan called upon to curb small arms trade

You may have read this post I made a little while back, discussing Japan’s international trade in small arms under the guise of “sporting equipment,” in defiance of their official stance against exporting weapons. Well, the Japan Times is carrying a brief Kyodo article stating that a London based group is now asking Japan to lead the fight against international small arms trade.

Japan urged to champion curbs on firearms trade

By WILL HOLLINGWORTH
LONDON (Kyodo) Campaigners on Monday called on Japan to lead efforts to strengthen the international code on the export of small arms.

The London-based International Action Network on Small Arms, a group of more than 700 civic organizations around the world, wants the rules to be made more explicit to deter exports to countries that abuse human rights.

It will call on members of the United Nations in June to strengthen the code and wants Japan to take more of a lead in discussions.

IANSA estimates that more than 300,000 people are killed each year by small arms, with the largest number of deaths occurring in Russia, Latin America and the United States. Legal trade in small arms is worth $ 4 billion annually, with another $ 1 billion generated on the black market.

“In its domestic laws, Japan recognizes how deadly small arms can be. There are a growing number of countries which are getting behind the idea of an international treaty to stop small arms transfers to countries which abuse human rights, or where they are going to be an obstacle to sustainable development,” said Rebecca Peters, director of IANSA.

Have you noticed the curious omission from this article? Nowhere does it mention why Japan should be the country taking the lead. Is it because Japan is known as a nation of pacifism with an official policy of not selling weapons, or is it because they violate that very policy and are being asked to begin the reforms at home?

Japanese suicide forums

You may have read about one of the several incidents over the past few years in Japan of suicide pacts arranged by total strangers who hooked up via suicide themed Internet forums. After seeing yet another article about it a couple of days ago I decided to look at some of these forums for myself. Needless to say, it’s rather grim stuff, people asking for advice on how to kill themselves, locations to do it, looking for partners since they lack the courage to do it alone, other people responding with advice or heartfelt pleas not do to it, and so on.

Because it’s possible that nothing has yet happened to ruin your day, I’ve decided to start translating some random suicide forum posts for your amusement and edification. Here’s the first one.

From Miss Chika,

I am a 22 year old woman living in Tokyo. For a few years I’ve been depressed, unable to go about my life without alcohol.

Wrist cutting, hanging, gathering up medicine to drink, I did all kind of things. But being a half-alcoholic it all ended up just attempts.

Now I’m working, but the scars are still there. When someone asks me about them I just say “I cut myself.” There are people, dummies, who ask around to find out more information. There isn’t anything more than “I cut myself,” so that’s all I say.

But there’s nobody who asks about the injuries. It’s because everybody is scared of themselves being injured by the sadness and pain of others.

It’s bad, but I’m being difficult. I even carry a knife when I go to the psych clinic.

Having come this far already I’m not threatened by or scared of cutting my neck or wrists. If I can die the momentum at that time, I’ll be satisfied.