Stories about Japan from April, 2006
Japan: Bush photo mocked
Blog of the Riding Sun‘s Gaijin Biker has a caption contest for a photo of American president George W. Bush pulling on the arm of Chinese president Hu Jintao's suit during Hu's talk at the White House last weekend. Some contenders: “Let go of my gorram jacket before I get...
Japan: Creative manhunt methods
The An Englishman in Osaka blogger posts on the unique way Japanese police track down their most wanted.
Japan: Online language learning
Chris Bunting at Buyo shares his discovery of two free online Japanese learning tools: one mouse-over pop-up translator and a vocabulary-drilling role playing game.
Japan: China's military buildup
In Hostile Maneuvers, Reloaded, Curzon at Coming Anarchy traces increases in Chinese military spending since the 1990s in the context of Japan's ratification of the American Missile Defense Plan.
Japan: Tokyo's consecutive earthquakes
A series of small earthquakes in Tokyo every day this past week have left Jesse Jace at Chorus, Isolate, Confirm a little shaken up: “As if to punctuate the phenomenon with an extra-heavy bullet point, there was a sudden tremor no more than five seconds after I had the idea...
Japan: Territorial dispute with Korea
Tough talk can be found in The Marmot's Hole on a post which gives both sides of a territorial feud between Japan and South Korea which was refueled this week following Japan's announcement of a research expedition which will venture into the disputed territory.
Japan: Celebrity fanfare
Have you heard of the leather-clad hip-thrusting Japanese celebrity Razor Ramon Hard Gay? A post on the Gen Kanai blog gives a thorough introduction: “A group of fansubbers have started to do fansubs of Razor Ramon's Hard Gay comedy sketches. They have a wiki, and a forum and put their...
Japan: Yasukuni shrine visits
The Japundit links to a story in which recently-elected leader of Japan's Democratic Party Ichiro Ozawa suggests “that visits to Yasukuni shrine are the main cause of problems with Japan's neighbors,” a view which Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected. Next up is a review of writer Hillary Raphael's first...
Japan: Private education
Lee at Tokyo Times ‘pokes’ a little fun at the opening this past weekend of Kaiyo Academy, an all-boys boarding school modeled after Britain's Eton College.
Japan: Technology overload
“Laptop computers, mobile phones, hand-held devices, MP3 music players and even the occasional photocopy machine fill the carriage with a cacophony of unpleasantness. It's high-tech gone mad,” writes the Englishman in Osaka blogger of Japanese trains.
Guilt-Free Food Blogs Review
#1: From Japan, I was just really very hungry Milking the soy bean, part 1: learn how to make soy milk with no special equipment. Milking the soy bean, part 2: learn how to prepare tofu at home. Milking the soy bean, part 3: Okara This is the concluding article...
Conversation between prisoners
James Wong Wing On of Freedom in Solidarity has an excerpt from the memoirs of Sybil Kartigasu, a member of the resistance movement during the WW II Japanese occupation. The excerpt is a prison conversation between Kartigasu and another resistance fighter, Toh Lung San, who was tortured and later beheaded...
China: Human Rights
The Asiapundit observes that according to a think-tank run by the Chinese Communisty Party, Japan's human rights record is by far the worse of the two countries. “Actually,” the blogger continues, “the official website of the government-sanctioned Chinese Society for Human Rights Studies doesn't really keep official statistics on human...
Japan: Penis festival
“Is anything illegal in Japan?” asks one reader in response to MasaManiA‘s photo essay on the country's Shinto penis festival. [Contains nudity and explicit language]
South Korea: Cultural exchange
Occidentalism‘s Matt blogs on the resumption of a teacher exchange program between Japan and South Korea suspended a year ago with the escalation of a territorial dispute between the two countries.
Japan: Better economy
Lee at the Tokyo Times blog looks first to the Nikkei Index's highest close in five years, then to Japanese golf club membership fees as a sign of the country's recovering economy. “Mirroring the rise of land prices,” Lee writes, “the average membership cost of around 300 courses in the...
About our Japan coverage
Nevin Thompson is our Japan editor. Email him story ideas or volunteer to write.
