Where are they Now? Nasubi edition

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.

Thinking past the first step?

During one of my walks over the weekend, passing through Dupont Circle I stumbled across a sleeply 3rd year anniversary protest of the War in Iraq. It had all the common characteristics of such protests: bad poetry slams by wanna-be Jello Biafras, lots of people in need of a bath, a heaping helping of ill-conceived self-righteousness, Lyndon Larouche zombies, and more stupid signs than I could count.

I didn’t have my camera with me, so I had to search the web for something similar, and I think this does the trick, well illustrating one of the most foolish signs I saw that afternoon:

I wonder if these people are actually thinking about what they’re asking for. I say America sould give them their wish. Impeach Bush; bring on President Cheney!

Post-Koizumi update

Looks like the press is diving into the “post-Koizumi” story head-on today. This morning’s Nikkei has a profile of “young” Shinzo Abe, billed as the first in their series of articles about possible successors to Koizumi. Meanwhile, the Daily Yomiuri has a fun medley of articles today. The first two focus on Yasuo Fukuda and Taku Yamasaki, the “moderate” contenders. Then there’s this fun little nugget:

Taro Aso, on a trip to Australia for talks with his U.S. and Australian counterparts, said Saturday he thought he had had “more experience” in the political arena than Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe…

Referring to economics, Aso said, “I’ve never seen Abe talking about the economy.” “When it comes to diplomacy, he is a bit of a rightist, although there is no big difference in positions between the two of us,” Aso said.

As far as popular opinion goes, Fukuda and Abe seem to be the most popular candidates at this point. Of course, this isn’t a public election—it’s an internal LDP election, and their opinion will rule the day.

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.

Japanese government takes a bite out of wonky translations

One little-publicized project being undertaken by the Japanese government right now is to write official English translations of the most important Japanese statutes. This is being done by a special Conference for Examination of the Implementation and Foreign Translation of Laws (法令外国語訳・実施推進検討会議), which has met several times over the past few years (see the Cabinet Secretariat website).

As part of this project, the government is creating an official Japanese-English legal glossary, and trying to end the practice of using awkward English translations for Japanese legal terms. Some of the changes, as reported by the Asahi Shimbun:

  • 法律, which has previously been translated as “Law,” will now be translated as “Act” or “Code.” This is a really, really good change. The translation “Company Law” for 会社法 has always made me chuckle: my American legal ears expect it to be called “Corporations Code.”
  • 株式会社, glossed in most dictionaries as “joint-stock company,” will now be translated as “business corporation.” This is an awesome change. I don’t think native English speakers have talked about “joint-stock companies” since the days of Queen Victoria.
  • 法人, previously called “legal entity,” will now be called “juridicial person.” I really wish they would just call it a “corporation.” ALC seems to back me up on this one.
  • Here’s a real stinker: 時効, the Japanese equivalent of what Americans refer to as a “statute of limitations,” is going to be called a “prescription.” WTF? This word has so many meanings in English, and it’s hardly ever used in this sense.

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.

Government of Japan Places Full Names, Addresses of Newly Naturalized Citizens on Internet

As fellow Japan watchers, haven’t you ever wondered what kind of people decide to naturalize as Japanese citizens? Well, according to the Ministry of Justice, it’s vastly Chinese and Koreans followed by “Other.”

But let’s say you wanted a little more detail. In fact, let’s say you were so curious about what kind of people are deciding to become Japanese that you wanted to visit each of them personally and congratulate them? Sounds impossible, right?

Wrong! As I was digging through some government regulations today, I noticed that the government of Japan publishes the full names, addresses, and birthdates of every single naturalized citizen on the Internet via the online version of its Government Gazette (“kanpo” in Japanese), the official public registry for new laws, regulations etc. You can even see who celebrated a very lucky St. Patrick’s Day with their official acceptance into Japanese society. Or you can check out the online archives going back 1 year at the Prime Minister’s Office website. And I am sure if you took a trip down to the Diet Library the nice librarians would be happy to allow you to peruse the Kanpo archives.

With the Japanese people in an uproar over leaks of personal information, often to unscrupulous scam artists, it should come as nothing less than a slap in the face that the government is publishing their fellow citizens’ home addresses. I’m just a curious nerd, but what’s to stop some right wing group from harassing new citizens for tainting Japan’s supposedly sacred and pure bloodline? (Of course, they’d have to go looking for it at a relatively obscure and boring government website, but gosh darnit, it’s just like that Clint Eastwood movie where all the celebrities get put on a hit list!)
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