Category: Culture

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?

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

Even the departing editor of the Economist isn’t above chopstick praise

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

Best hits of Aum – Part I

Earlier this year I spent an entire month working fulltime translating documents about Aum Shinrikyo into English to be used as research materials for a report on international religious terrorism being created by a Washington DC based organization that shall remain nameless.

While I did a couple of articles and some excerpts from various books, I spent almost the entire time translating large sections of Aum and I, the confessional jailhouse memoir of Ikuo Hayashi, a former medical doctor who helped to spread sarin gas in the Tokyo subway on that infamous day.

Although I was paid to do this translation, it was not intended for publication and my client has no rights over the material, only requesting the translation in the first place for their own reference. Therefore, I’ve decided to excerpt some of my very favorite sections of evil cult related goodness to post every once in a while.

Here is the very first installment – my translation of page 133 of Aum and I.

***

There was nothing I could say in response to that, but I do remember feeling terribly remorseful about delaying the salvation plan. Because of that., I thought that maybe I could perhaps advance my training a bit, and even performed a bit of secret surgery, cutting my tongue’s frenulum with the aim of perfecting my Yoga’s “Nagomdoni.” I also thought I had failed to become a Siddha because I hadn’t pushed myself to the limit, so I started fasting. The result was that my body became progressively weaker, and I became unable to do breathing exercises. Whenever I tried I would develop an irregular pulse.

Over the course of three days of fasting I was able to maintain consciousness even without getting any sleep. I tasted one part of the “experience” described as the so-called “sequential states of consciousness.” As a “prithag-jana” [an unenlightened person still a slave to their worldly desires], I had trouble during the period after the fasting, when I started eating again. I was reading an article by someone who had achieved Siddha, which contained some sections specifically talking about people tormented by gluttony, or pained by fasting. Upon reading these sections, I was swept up by the images of food, and felt the same lust to eat say, eel or bread. I thought that I had been overcome.

At exactly that time, the Aum magazine Mayahana printed a story about the Buddhist training from the time of Shakyamuni. It said that during the time of Shakyamuni’s spiritual training, there was a practice of eating the feces of some animal, say a dog. Thinking that the reason I hadn’t yet become a Siddha was because I just hadn’t been pushing my limits, I thought that perhaps I should try doing the same thing as the original Buddha. I decided to begin eating my own feces.

When first facing my own feces I seriously hesitated. It was originally a part of me though, and there are even living things that eat feces. Since it’s the same E. Coli that just came out of me, it couldn’t upset my stomach, right? Inflammation of the pharanyx is a possibility though… I tried to reason through the various possibilities before finally eating it.

Perhaps because at that time I had been eating nothing but roots and vegetables for three months solid, there was actually no smell.

OMG, more kabuki!

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.

Say it with a nose

From the greatest magazine on Earth:

This Valentine’s Day in Shanghai, people said “I love you” not with roses but with noses. Business at Shanghai’s plastic surgery clinics has risen by 30% since the beginning of the month, a trend fuelled by Valentine’s Day and the Chinese New Year, when young people receive job bonuses and cash presents from relatives. Some clinics offered special Valentine’s Day packages, such as a 20% discount between February 14th and 17th. The most popular treatment was for couples to opt for matching noses, or to have their eyes reshaped.

Liu Yan, who is 24, was quoted in a newspaper as saying, “I suggested it [to my boyfriend] as a way of celebrating our relationship and bringing us closer together with a special kind of bond.” Miss Liu said her 28-year-old boyfriend “loved the idea of matching noses”, and readily paid the 10,000 yuan ($1,200) for the surgery.

When Robots Are Used for Evil, Nobody Wins (Except the robots)

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)

It’s not just for Catholics anymore

Zakzak reports:

At Nagata Jinja in Nagatu-ku in Kobe city it was learned on the 4th of this month that a male priest(30) at the Shinto shrine (shrine head: Masakatsu Fujiwara) had installed a hidden video camera in the dressing room used by the shrine’s Miko and recorded them changing clothes. The shrine then fired him. The Nagata office of the Hyogo Prefectural police then filed charges with the Kobe District Prosecutor on suspicion of the minor offense of peeping.

According to the investigation, when on February 14th a worker was cleaning the shrine, they discovered that a video camera had been installed in an unused locker inside the girl’s changing room. Fujiwara shrine manager, along with reporting this to the Nagata police, also asked the 11 male staff about the situation, and one of the lower ranking male shrine priests known as “Gonnegi”
confessed to the crime.
The man made a statement that he had “made recordings on several occasionas.” The girl’s changing room was normally used by two Miko.

The Nagata shrine is said to have been built in the year 201 A.D. by Goshintaku(御神託). It is counted as one of the representative Shinto shrines of Kobe, along with Ikuta(生田) Jinja and Minatogawa(湊川) Jinja.

Note: Miko are so-called “shrine maidens” who assist in rituals, somewhat like an altar boy in Catholicism, but often with more responsibility and a wider range of dutied. They can be aged anywhere from early teens to mid-twenties, and despite the name virginity, or even marital status, is not a consideration in modern times.

Now You Can Listen to anti-Japanese Rap Song “Fuck Zapan” Courtesy Mutant Frog Travelogue

DJ Doc
One of my first posts for Mutant Frog Travelogue concerned the strange case of an anti-Japanese rap song from Korean rap group DJ Doc (pictured above). In my infinite magnanimity, I translated the unintentionally hilarious lyrics:

Are you going to lie about your own history?! (Hai!) Go ahead and lie, you deceitful pigfeet!
Pussies! How much will you lie, pigfeet?! Keep on lying, Japs!
Lie to your mom and dad! Lie to your mom and dad!
Will you eat your mom? (Hai!) Is that OK? Yeah, that’s fine! That’s just fine!
Retard bitches! Go and have a seizure!
You barbarian, epileptic Japanese!
Mouse-dicked Jeps “Japan is our toilet!”… FUCK!
Pucking nation.. Chapan is a Pucking nation*4 (repeat 2x)

The post proved to be one of our most popular and generated comments that ranged from the merely curious (“Can’t we ALL just get ALONG?!”) to the downright deranged (“You’ll never look as good as the white man. so go eat some kemchi or sushi or shrimp fried rice you slit/slant eyed freaks.”).

Unfortunately, the site I originally linked to took down the audio clip, and I accidentally deleted the MP3 I had. But now I’m feeling generous again, so here it is again in all its amateurish glory! I’ve saved the file here, so this song will never again be lost to history. Try singing along using my English version of the lyrics!

(Thanks to ZMPK for making the song available again and Saru for taking the time to search for it)

Airlifting anime to starving Iraqis

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.