Stories about Japanese from November, 2007
Japan: Environmentally-friendly coffin
Blogger Kaz introduces and talks about environmentally-friendly paper coffins, which he found in an advertisement put by an ISO14001 certified funeral company. The paper coffins reduce the amount of fuel...
Japan: Blog Queen takes a break
Gravure idol, talento and blog queen Wakatsuki Chinatsu announced today that she would be taking time off from blogging. The final entry posted today at her official blog attracted thousands of comments from fans offering their support, a few of which are translated here.
Japan: Kids these days
What do you do when you've had enough of young girls sitting on the floor of the train, talking on their phone and acting like it's their home, when meanwhile you've had a gruelling day at work and just want to get through? One 35-year-old man in Yokohama decided that he'd had enough and kicked the 17-year-old girl sitting and chatting with friends beside him. Bloggers had mixed opinions about the incident, but the majority seemed to be sympathetic.
Japan: Introduction to the Social Web in Japanese
Blogger Akimoto recommends a new book about social networking [ja] by Japanese writer/translator Namerikawa Umihiko (who blogs at Social Web Rambling [ja]). The title of the book is Introduction to...
Japan: The Bully and the Bullied
The phenomenon of bullying in schools is a recurring theme in Japan. A government survey released last week, which found that that the number of cases of bullying has increased sixfold over the result of the year before, has driven up anxiety about the problem yet again. In this post, some of the thoughts of Japanese bloggers, a translated message from a victim, and the experience of one counselor in confronting the problem.
Japan：Travelogue from Georgia
Japanese blogger and blog journalism analyst Fujishiro Hiroyuki of Gatonews has posted a three-part travelogue, recording his trip to Georgia last month[Ja]. (1, 2, and 3) The series describes his...
Japan: Has Beaujolais Nouveau gone sour?
As the date changes at midnight on the third Thursday of November, corks come out of bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau and the celebration begins — in Japan. This has been...
Japan: Yamanote Line Sprint
Earlier this week, roughly 20,000 Tokyo commuters were forced to wait when a 40-year-old woman jumped onto the tracks of the Yamanote Line, one of the city's busiest train lines, and began to run. Reportedly triggered by trouble with an aquaintance, the woman's 1.5 km sprint was heralded by many as the first of its kind. Needless to say, many bloggers wondered what it was the woman was thinking.
Japan: Fingerprints, mugshot, welcome to Japan
Despite protests from human rights organizations and the foreign community, new immigration procedures, which require all non-Japanese citizens over 16 years of age to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering...
Japan: Panama, again?
Boguspokesman at Bogus News reports that conversations [ja] on Japanese forums about the sinking of a Panamanian freighter off the coast of Japan yesterday have been very critical of Panama....
Japan: Am I a Blogger?
Kikko, one of the most popular bloggers in Japan, questions whether what she writes is really a “blog” [ja]. When she was selected as one of Japan's “Alpha Bloggers” [ja]...
Japan: Pulling the Strings
While the world focused this week on the aftermath of negotiations between the leaders of Japan's two largest political parties, the behind-the-scenes mediator, Watanabe Tsuneo, celebrated winning this year's Media Person of the Year Award. Some bloggers, however, wondered what Japan's largest media baron was doing brokering backroom political deals. Was it just a coincidence that coverage differed so much between major newspapers?
Japan: Dolphins and Heroes
In English-language media and blogs this week, everyone had something to say about the Japanese dolphin hunt in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture. Footage of angry Japanese fishermen clashed with images of blonde-haired Western celebrities endeavouring to "share the water" with the soon-to-be slaughtered dolphins. While opinion on the issue in English-language blogs and forums for the most part supported the spirit of the protest, Japanese bloggers had differing things to say.
Japan: Two Degrees from Terror
These days, particularly since the events of 9/11, a latent fear of "terror" has come to lurk in the hearts of many a concerned citizen. But how far away are the terrorists, really? This week in Japan, they suddenly seemed to get a whole lot closer when Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio, just recently appointed to his cabinet position, revealed in an off-hand comment that a "friend of a friend" of his belonged to al-Qaeda.
Japan: Hatoyama Kunio once an American spy
Rumor has it that Japanese Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio made another slip-up after his recent admission that his friend's friend is an al-Qaeda member. In Japanese blogs, web news sites,...
