· July, 2008

Stories about Japan from July, 2008

Formoz Festival 2008: Don't wanna say goodbye

Here is wikipedia's explanation of the annual Formoz Festival: The annual Formoz Festival, Spring Scream, and Gung-liao Ho-hai-yan Rock Festival are representative gatherings within Taiwan's indie scene. Of these, Formoz...

30 July 2008

Japan: Toyota's Just-In-Time System and the Akihabara Killings (Part 1)

When Tomohiro Kato killed 7 people and injured many more in Tokyo's Akihabara district last month, the details of his life became the talk of the Japanese blogging world. Among these conversations, the murders sparked a huge number of conversations on the country's temp worker industry, as Kato himself worked as a temp worker at a factory under Toyota. No single blog entry however attracted as much attention as did a post by blogger boiledema, published two days after the incident and bookmarked on Hatena by a staggering 1366 users. In this first part of a two-part series, we translate the first half of boiledema's original blog post.

27 July 2008

Japan: LGBT Youth Exchange Project

LGBT Youth Exchange [jp] is a joint project by the Center for Gender Studies at International Christian University in Tokyo and Youth and Play Services of the city council of...

23 July 2008

Japan: Communist Party gets boost from Nico Nico Douga

It is a long time since the Japanese Communist Party had any luck in Japanese politics, but with help from no other than Japan's popular video sharing site, Nico Nico Douga, this may be changing. A 51-minute video of a February 8th speech by Chairman Kazuo Shii of the JCP registered over ten thousand comments on the video sharing site, and there are now reports that interest in the party among people in their 20s and 30s is way up.

21 July 2008

Japan: Ban on Daggers and Double-edged Knives

Esotericlarity from Japundit comments on the recent ban on daggers and double-edged knives to prevent assault incident such as Akihabara massacre. The blogger wonders if the ban would be effective...

21 July 2008

Japan: Mainichi's “Foreign Staff”

In the latest step in a long and drawn out controversy, Mainichi newspaper has issued a 3-page official apology in response to the harsh backlash concerning its English-language WaiWai column. Blogger polimediauk responds to the news, questioning the tendency to divide foreign and Japanese staff at the English-language Mainichi site and treat them differently.

21 July 2008

Japan: Is it all over for Mainichi?

Nobuo Ikeda writes in English and in Japanese about the latest step in the drawn-out WaiWai controversy: after a string of earlier statements, Mainichi has issued a 3-page-long official apology,...

20 July 2008

Korea: Chopsticks… Rather Complicated…

Why does Korea use iron for chopsticks while other chopsticks countries use wooden materials? What is the history of the use of chopsticks? When do kids learn how to use it? Hyejin Kim answer these and other questions about this ancient eating utensil.

18 July 2008

Japan: Chinese Novelist wins Akutagawa Award

On Tuesday, the Akutagawa Award for Fiction, considered the most prestigious literary prize in Japan, was awarded to Chinese novelist Yang Yi for her work, “Tokiga nijimu asa”. Yang, who was born in Harbin and whose native language is Chinese, learned Japanese after she came to Japan in 1987. In this post, reactions to the award in Japanese and Chinese media, blogs and forums.

18 July 2008

Japan: Tokyo2point0

Serkan Toto from Asiajin reports on the two presentations in the Tokyo2point0 event. The first is about a Japan portal site Goo and the second is about Japan twitter.

17 July 2008

Japan: Cultural Difference

Harvey from Japan Newsbie explains the graphic representation of cultural differences between East and West from the MountainRunner site.

16 July 2008

Japan and South Korea: Dokdo

Matt from Gusts of popular feelings blogs on the reaction on the territorial debate between Japan and South Korea over Dokdo.

15 July 2008