Apparently, this is an April Fool’s Day stunt: fake PSAs are being aired on NBC, featuring the cast of “The Office.” For example:
You might be out with your friends on the weekend in a cool part of town, and someone offers you a beer for nine dollars. Don’t do it. Nine dollars is way too much to pay for a beer. Just walk away.
In a feat of true generosity, NBC put all of them online. Enjoy.
A commenter asked us whatever happened to Nasubi, the aspiring comedian who allowed Japanese TV to kidnap him and force him to survive by entering sweepstakes in 1998.
Well, as usual, Wikipedia has the answer (paraphrased):
Nasubi’s feature is, as noted by his stage name (Nasubi means “eggplant” in Japanese), his 30cm-long face. He has sought a dramatic acting career since he started, and is currently active mostly in stage productions. In 2002 he founded the “Eggplant Way” and serves as its chief.
Recently most of his television appearances have been on local programs in his native Fukushima, but in 2005 he appeared in national TV dramas “Train Man” and “Trick New Special.”
Looks like he survived his near-starvation experience to go on to moderate success as an actor. Good for him! Check Nasubi’s official website (Japanese only) for appearances. He also keeps a pretty regular diary (latest entry):
So, so strong!!
The World Baseball Classic semifinals… The overall game made me numb, but the third time’s the charm! This game showed us Japan’s sticktuitiveness? or its latent energy, it was 110% worth seeing (*^_^*)
Both teams…had very fine plays, also plays where they had to make up for mistakes, and I got the deep impression that we can be proud of Asia’s high level of baseball throughout the world!!
But truthfully? Don’t you feel kind of bad for Korea?
3/19/2006 (Sunday)
Umm, not really! I was just watching Japan trounce Cuba in the finals (right now it’s 6-3 in the bottom of the 8th). Once, when Ichiro was running home, he actually stopped the 3rd baseman from throwing home by intentionally blocking his line of vision. That’s some superhero shit, my man.
The Financial Times’ Emiko Terazono recently interviewed Bill Emmott, the soon-to-be-departing editor of The Economist (OOPS! The FT took it down but you can still read the interview here). The interview was conducted at a Japanese restaurant in London over lunch (scroll down to the bottom to see what they ate and how much it cost). In the article, Terazono describes Emmott‘s truly enviable career as a journalist and noted Japan expert, and toward the end makes the following observation:
He holds his chopsticks perfectly, and lifts his rice bowl when eating from it – as the Japanese do. He also does not make the common gaijin faux pas of pouring soy sauce on his rice.
I did a little (very little) digging to make sure Terazono is not simply an adopted Briton who kept her Japanese name (a la Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of The Remains of the Day). Turns out, according to this interview, Ms. Terazono was born in Japan 40 years ago, spent her junior high and high school years in Canada, went to a Japanese college, worked at a bank, hated it, and then got work at the FT Tokyo Bureau, where she fought hard for six years to get out before getting assigned to the London headquarters. So that confirms that she is writing from the perspective of a member of Japanese society, not that of a gaijin herself.
IMO, the observation works well to drive home the point that not only is Mr. Emmott a well-received author on Japan (whom I have not read, unfortunately), he actually took the time to get the little things “right” about Japanese culture and thereby truly understands it. Don’t you get that impression?
But wait a minute – do his table manners really matter? I mean, would a journalist in India, for example, earn the respect of the locals by eating with his/her fingers and refusing to carry around toilet paper? Would his analysis ring untrue if he didn’t?
Continue reading Even the departing editor of the Economist isn’t above chopstick praise
When I saw the editorial titled Kabuki Congress, I knew what the next blog post would be.
The question is whether the Bush administration broke the law by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others in the United States without obtaining the required warrant. The White House wants Americans to believe that the spying is restricted only to conversations between agents of Al Qaeda and people in the United States. But even if that were true, which it evidently is not, the administration has not offered the slightest evidence that it could not have efficiently monitored those Qaeda-related phone calls and e-mail messages while following the existing rules.
In other words, there is not a shred of proof that the illegal program produced information that could not have been obtained legally, had the administration wanted to bother to stay within the law.
…Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.
I mean, it’s the usual NYT line, but you gotta love the kabuki.
Somehow, political robotic telemarketing seems even more annoying than robotic telemarketing that’s trying to sell me something. Thankfully, I haven’t gotten any of these calls:
Column: Just a bit of hypocrisy in Simmons’ attitude regarding robo calls
By RAY HACKETT
On Politics
Congressman Rob Simmons wants to share a phone number with his constituents in the 2nd Congressional District, and he’s urging people to call it: (202) 393-4352.
The number belongs to “American Family Voices,” the group behind the recent rash of the so-called robo calls — automated phone messages — that have flooded homes in Eastern Connecticut, urging residents to call Simmons’ office and tell him they don’t like his position against federal funding for port security.
Simmons has, in the past, claimed these calls have caused a major disruption of his staff’s ability to do its work as hundreds of constituents have called to complain about receiving the unwanted automated messages. So his solution to the problem is ask residents to call “American Family Voices” — and tell them to knock it off.
According to Simmons — and these are his words — American Family Voices is “notorious,” “a shadowy, partisan” organization using “these sleazy and deceptive” calls to distort his voting record.
I don’t recall the congressman being as equally outraged back in 2002 when another organization — United Seniors — flooded the homes of Eastern Connecticut with automated calls asking residents to call the congressman and “thank him” for passing a prescription-drug bill for seniors.
Continue reading When Robots Are Used for Evil, Nobody Wins (Except the robots)
Anyone out there remember Dave Chappelle’s “Black Bush” skit? With the scene that went like this:
BLACK BUSH: I got a coalition of the willing! I got 40 nations ready to roll, son!
REPORTER: Like who?
BLACK BUSH: Who the f— said that? Like who? Uh… England. Japan’s… sending Playstations…
Well, although I haven’t seen any Playstation stories yet, here’s the next best thing, which I swear I am not making up:
The Japan Foundation, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Animation International Middle East, has decided to provide an Arabic-dubbed version of the soccer animation TV program “Captain Majed” (originally “Captain Tsubasa”) to the Iraq Media Network (IMN) as grant aid.
As soccer is a popular sport in Iraq, it is expected that the TV program will strengthen goodwill toward Japan on the Iraqi side. In particular, it may provide dreams and hopes for the children of Iraq, who will shoulder the future of the country.
The conclusion of the agreement for this grant aid took place on March 2 between the IMN and the Japan Foundation, and the program will be provided to the IMN within coming days.
Holy crap, can diplomats be any more irrelevant? Although I have to admit, if you dub this show in Arabic, it might seriously look like a show about Iraqi soccer players.
The next target of Koizumi’s Deadly Big Government Assassination Squad?
NHK “has too many stations. If NHK is to focus on overseas broadcasting, it will have to reduce some of the existing” channels, Koizumi said of a request he made to Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Heizo Takenaka during their meeting earlier in the day.
Some background on this: NHK is currently contemplating setting up an English-language channel, an idea that Koizumi has been pushing. This channel would serve honkies living in Japan, and also be available on cable and satellite overseas, like a backwards version of CNN or the BBC. There are some obvious problems with the concept: not many people overseas are likely to need a Japanese channel in English, and the channel doesn’t address the growing number of non-English-speaking foreigners in Japan, but the idea has something of a cool factor going for it.
Of course, another problem is paying for this through the existing license fee system. Many Japanese people are likely to object to subsidizing the new Gaijin Channel, so NHK may actually end up funding its overseas programming through the demons of advertising.
A couple of years ago the fact that a fake sequel to Harry Potter was illegally published in China made headlines and drew large amounts of attention online. And yet, despite the huge numbers of blogs that linked to the story at the time, nobody had any decent visual evidence, or any details beyond that in the short BBC article I linked to above.
When I went to China for the first time in 2003, one of my main goals was to locate a copy of one of these fake Harry Potter novels. As I was utterly unable to speak Chinese at that time, when I and my travel companion passed a movie theatre showing the film I noted down the Chinese title in the little notebook I carried in my pocket. (哈利 波特) so that I could show it to a bookstore clerk in the hope of finding my very own fake Harry Potter novel, nestled alongside the real ones.
After trying a couple of different bookstores, I met with success! There were actually two different fake Harry Potter novels alongside the real four that had already been published at that time. While neither one of them was the famous Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon (see an English translation of a few paragraphs of that novel here), but they were still gloriously, authentically fake, and of course I bought them both.
Here, for your pleasure, are scans of the front and rear cover of the first of my amazing purchases, which for various reasons have not been presented until now. As you can see, the English title is “Harry Potter and the Filler of Big.” The Chinese title is literally “Harry Potter and the Great Funnel,” which goes at least 35% of the way towards explaining the English translation.
Later on I will post some scans of the interior, lovingly illustrated using bad clip-art, and very possibly type-set using dramatically out of date software. I’ll also post some scans of my second fake Harry Potter novel, which according to what one could ironically call the copyright information page, is entitled “Harry Potter and beaker snd burn.” And as a special bonus, some sample art from a Harry Potter dojinshi from Japan.
Commenter Jim Moore of the blog “Moore Than This” suggested that Japan is taking an extremely irresponsible stance on Iran’s nuclear ambitions based on an editorial he picked up from the Asahi Shimbun’s English edition:
Iran’s publicly stated intention to advance its nuclear technology threatens a key element of Japan’s energy strategy–development of the Azadegan oil field … If Tehran does not alter its position, Japan could lose its rights to the field.
The article is indeed impactful, but the Asahi English edition seems to have taken it out of context a bit. The original Japanese piece was a part of the regular column “Reading the Economy” which focuses on economic aspects of current events. It runs in the back pages and is not intended to serve as the crux of the newspaper’s editorial position.
One advantage that newspapers have over online news sources is their effective allocation of space to individual news stories/editorials. For people like me who only have occasionaly access to Japanese newspaper, this can be a problem. Asahi’s English site, for example, gives the paper’s editorials equal space next to background pieces like the one described. The Japanese site separates the op-ed section by column. Note to Asahi: PLEASE edit your English Op-ed section to make it less confusing!
For a better idea of what the Asahi really thinks of the Iran crisis, check this Asahi editorial, which puts them much closer to mainstream opinion:
That means Tehran should stop enriching uranium on its soil. It should allow the process to be done in Russia. That will provide the much-needed proof that it does indeed seek to build nuclear power plants as it claims. Once it becomes clear that Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, Tehran will receive international support for its nuclear program.
While denouncing the IAEA resolution, Iran has shown a willingness to accept routine inspections by the IAEA. That seems to be a ploy to shake international unity on the issue through a combination of hard-line and soft-line tactics. It may also be aimed at prodding China and Russia, which have taken a more conciliatory stance toward Iran, into avoiding any sanctions against Iran. For that, the roles of China and Russia in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions are very important. Time is limited. The international community should work out a formula to ensure a diplomatic solution to the crisis before resorting to forceful means, such as sanctions.
And indeed, MOFA’s official position on the issue is even clearer:
Continue reading Asahi Irresponsible on Iran? Not really.
Asahi Shimbun’s Economic Observatory column repeats recent talking points of main opposition party Democratic Party of Japan, which boils down to “the LDP is selling you out to the Americans! Vote for us and we’ll protect you!”
Lonely Japanese People
On a personal note, as someone hailing from Japan’s “baby boom” generation, I actually experienced Japanese society becoming rich as a high rate of economic growth took place. However, this era was also the era in which large and medium sized families gave way to the nuclear family. We lost the “village society,” regional cooperation, and religion that protected us while binding individuals, but this was replaced in large corporations by the familistic lifetime employment. Presently, corporate family-ism and nuclear families are beginning to collapse as well.
Continue reading Lonely Japanese People
