Culture – Page 63 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

Now your entire meal is embargoed

We’ve all been hearing so much about how the mad cow disease related beef embargoe is going to damage Japan/US relations so badly that we might as well be going back to the day before Little Boy fell out of the Enola Gay, but according to this article in The Mainichi, there’s actually been another large-scale food embargo going on for some time.

Japan will allow foreign potatoes into the country for the first time, accepting a U.S. proposal to brush or wash off all dirt before shipping, send them in sealed containers, and limit their use to processed potato chip snacks, an official said Wednesday.

Japan decided to accept the proposal after 17 months of deliberations, which included sending a team of experts to the United States from July to August 2005, said Masashi Kaneda of the Plant Protection Quarantine Division at the Agriculture Ministry.

Until now, Japan banned imports of foreign potatoes to keep out potato wart fungus and a potato eelworm, the ministry said.

Potato wart fungus has been eradicated in the United States since 1992, while potato eelworm has been limited to areas in New York state, the ministry said.

If potatoes had been banned until now, why is beef attracting so damn much attention?

Download Sengoku Jieitai

Old readers may remember Adam’s original post on the film Sengoku Jieitai or my followup on the author.

I just found a torrent of it here on this site (2 files, no subtitles) and am in the middle of downloading it now. I hope it’s as good as it sounds.

Big changes coming for Japanese curry?

Thanks to Comedy PC Diary:

House Foods to Transform Curry’s Seasoning with Development of No-Fat Stock Cubes

It has been almost 50 years since the birth of household curry stock in Japan. But now a new product has arrived that will likely transform the flavor of curry rice, which has become a staple of Japan’s dinner tables as “the people’s food.”

Its creator is House Foods (based in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo). They announced on Feb. 3 that they have developed curry base that can be packed into cubes without using fat. Since it reduces the amount of fat included in the total base, it will bring out the aroma of the spices and the seasonings of the buillon that were hidden in the fat, making it possible to cook low-calorie, delicious curry.

The new curry base using this technology will be released March 6 under the name “PRIME Curry.”

Due to the progression of an aging society, in 2007 the number of single-person households will overtake the number of married-with-children families. The retirement of the “baby-boom generation” will begin, and the number of married couples eating as a couple at home are expected to rise. Even curry rice, which was considered optimal for cooking when dining with a large number of people, will be required to be healthier and have a more robust flavor corresponding to the increasing needs of people eating in small groups.

House Foods developed this new technology to meet those needs. The new curry has 25-30% fewer calories than previous curry products.

When the company applies for a patent for the new technology, it will also open a new production facility at its Kanto factory in Sano City, Tochigi Prefecture at an investment of 2 billion yen. For the time being, the new curry will only be sold in Eastern Japan (Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, and Shin’etsu regions) due to production limitations, but will debut nationwide next spring.

The “Prime Vermont Curry” and “Prime Jawa Curry” will both cost 300 yen before tax. House predicts annual sales of 3 billion yen.

Yahoo Japan To Open Dedicated Political Info Service

ZAKZAK informs me that it will soon be easier to follow my favorite politicians, like Taro Aso and Sumio Mabuchi (pictured above (left) with Terry Itoh):

(Paraphrased)

Easily Search Diet Member’s Activities… Yahoo! Opens Politics Site

Yahoo! Japan will start “Yahoo! Everyone’s Politics,” a political information site where one can easily search politicians’ actions and proposals submitted to the Diet, from Feb. 22. It will also be possible to read comments written by Diet members and political parties.

Users can search for politicians by name, party affiliation, and election district. In addition to bios and daily political activities penned by the Diet members themselves, they have also instituted a function to monitor members’ voting records.

Yahoo! has been explaining the contents of the service to political parties and Diet members since around the summer of 2005. Some said that inputting all that data would be cumbersome, but there were many who responded positively to the service as an opportunity to directly connect with their constituents. As of now, approx. 200 of the 720 Diet members in both houses have written entries, and that number is expected to grow.

The site will not contain ads from normal companies but will instead display ads related to the political parties and elections. The site can be accessed from the Yahoo! portal, and the company expects approximately 2 million hits per month. Yahoo! users are often in their 20s and 30s, and Yahoo! has commented that they would like this to promote understanding of politics and lead to an increase in voter turnout.

ZAKZAK 2006/02/06

Goro Miyazaki’s Journal: 1/20/06: I saw Mamoru Oshii’s Latest Movie

I have been busy, but apparently Goro-san has been writing a LOT. So I am only going to go after the parts where he talks about the relationship between him and his father. Here we go:

Yesterday I saw a pre-screening of Mamoru Oshii’s latest, “Biographical Vignettes of Dr. Tachigui” at the Ghibli screening room. But before I give my thoughts on that, I’ll tell you an anecdote.

20 years ago, when I was still a high school student, I met Director Mamoru Oshii.
The place was at my grandfather’s cottage in Shinshu (more of a mountain shack than a cottage).
The time was the middle of summer, I remember.
At the time, Oshii-san, in his mid-30s, was the very picture of a rosy-cheeked beautiful (?) youth, and his white running shirt made an impression on me.

While we were at the cottage, Oshii-san and my father would argue for hours on end over their theories of animation.

The previous year or so, Director Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” and Director Mamoru Oshii’s “Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer” were released.
At the time, I preferred Urusei Yatsura 2, and learned later that my opinion had been communicated to Oshii-san.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about.

Maybe because he remembers that, Oshii-san apparently has a unilateral fondness for me, and really wanted me to see “Biographical Vignettes of Dr. Tachigui.”

I wish all the success in the world for Oshii-san.

So my thoughts, briefly:
Once more, on the same theme, I’d like you to make an effort toward entertainment that puts service first.
That is all.

Japanese vs US Blogs

High praise from Curzon at Coming Anarchy:

Educational and entertaining in one healthy dose, [Mutant Frog Travelogue is] probably the best East Asian blog around.

Thanks, I think we’re pretty great too! But that made me wonder — what do other East Asian blogs look like? What about, just for example, the highest ranked Japanese blogs on Technorati?

(Note about Technorati from their About section: “Technorati displays what’s important in the blogosphere — which bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence, and the speed at which these conversations are taking place.” Hence, these rankings are a measure of what people with blogs are linking to, not the number of page views, influence, revenue, or any other factor (as far as I can tell))

For starters, let’s see what’s out there. Here’s a quick rundown of the top ten blogs in Japan and the US/English-speaking world (for comparison):

Japanese blogs:

1. がんばれ、生協の白石さん！ “Fight on, Shiraishi of the Co-op!”

This is the blog of a Mr. Shiraishi, “very very average” employee of the Co-op (student cooperative/school store) at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. Shiraishi gained fame for being the writer of responses to comment cards that students would write to him. The comment cards are a well-known phenomenon at Japanese universities as the answer are often posted outside the Co-ops on a bulletin board. He differs from other such Co-op employees in that he actually answers the stupid joke comments that he gets rather than giving them a quiet death in the round file. For some reason this has become majorly popular in Japan, probably because college students throughout the country have wondered just what kind of weirdos answer their comments.

Gaining Perspective from Tragedy

Lock your door at night:

Dorm incident may lead to changes in sex assault law

February 3, 2006

STORRS, Conn. — An incident involving three men accused of masturbating over a sleeping University of Connecticut student is sparking calls to change the state’s sexual assault laws.

The men, who are also students at the school, face disorderly conduct and public indecency charges. But they will not be charged with sexual assault because there was no physical contact with the female victim during the September incident, said Elizabeth Leaming, the assistant state’s attorney prosecuting the case.

“It’s a frustration that there is no ability to charge a sex offense for the kind of conduct alleged,” Leaming said Thursday.

The incident occurred after the woman fell asleep in Skvirsky’s dorm room on Sept. 24.

The young woman discovered what happened after she woke up. She filed charges three days later.

I’ve been accused of being both a Japan apologist and a Japan basher. I admit to both readily. I love Japan, but it is screwed up. I have been somewhat hard on Japan, you might say, by translating reports of some fairly depraved activities.

But at times we all need a bit of perspective. That is why am grateful, in a way, that someone from my hometown (Somers, Connecticut) has helped remind me that Americans can be just as perverted as Japanese people, and sometimes the law is caught with its pants down, so to speak, when it comes to dealing with the devious bag of tricks that is the human imagination.

What a bloody language

Lately I seem to be surrounded by menstruation. Continue reading What a bloody language

Who is in line to be the next Dalai Lama?

That’s the question that Michael of Caldwell, New Jersey posed in the Ask Yahoo column a couple of days ago.

Well Michael, if you lived just one town over and had been in my ninth grade World History class in Montclair, New Jersey, then you would have been there when Mrs. Whatshername showed us the film Little Buddha, which taught me both the story of how Sakyamuni founded Buddhism, and how Lama, the priests of Tibetan Buddhism, seek out tulku, or reincarnations of past Lamas or other holy figures.

This is how Ask Yahoo (sorry, Ask Yahoo!) explains it.

In Tibetan tradition, the Dalai Lama is not only the spiritual and secular leader of Tibet, he’s the reincarnation of the Tibetan patron deity, Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. Today’s Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the 14th reincarnation.

Like the rest of the Dalai Lamas, Tenzin Gyatso was put through a series of tests as a small child before he was officially declared the reincarnation, or tulku, of his immediate predecessor. His Holiness was enthroned as the Dalai Lama in 1950, but has been leading his followers in exile since 1959, when the Tibetan resistance to Chinese occupation collapsed.

In recent years, the Dalai Lama has discussed the possibility of the Tibetan people ending the tulku tradition, and the belief that his own reincarnation will not happen in Tibet while it remains under Chinese control. That leaves some uncertainty as to where and how the next Dalai Lama will arise, and who it will be. If you think it could be you, it might pay to have faith. It worked for Steven Seagal.

Of course, you could always say that the next Dalai Lama will be the current one. After all, it’s the same spirit, right?

Police take on pirates in fake alien frog showdown

Sorry, but it’s all downhill from the headline. It’s not that it’s a bad article exactly. Something about how the new Japanese cartoon Sergeant Keroro (ケロロ軍曹-main character pictured at left) has gotten so popular that toys modeled after the character are being bootlegged, and the anime downloaded illegally all over Taiwan and China. Ok, fine, interesting to know I guess-although seriously, by now wouldn’t you expect the same thing to happen with any even halfway popular cartoon show? I mean, after that headline I was really hoping for something with a little more juice than a story about toy pirates.

Ah well. If you’re curious, you can download bootlegs of the show from this anime fansubs bittorrent site. I’ve seen a few minutes here and there on Taiwanese TV, and while I couldn’t really tell what was going on, what with it being in Chinese and all, it did look pretty funny.