The story is that some high school kids were walking around in Osaka at around four o’clock in the morning and saw a father and son riding around in a convertible. The kids made a comment to the effect of, “You know those idiots must be cold!” The father and son then yelled something to…
Thanks to the simple instructions here:Japan It Up! WordPress in Japanese and English I ws finally able to mix up Japanese and English on this blog. My other blog BigDaddyJapan uses a Japanese version of WordPress so mixing English and Japanese is no problem. Now both blogs can have bilingual elements so I’m pretty happy…
Here’s a list of May First’s fastest rising keywords according to Goo (one of the major search engines in Japan) If this post goes well, I may make it a regular feature to explain some of the hottest search engine keywords in Japan just as a way of showing what kinds of topics are on…
Our own little holiday from the gasoline tax ended yesterday. As I pointed out in my previous post, I was looking forward to seeing if the gas prices would return to their March levels or if they’d go higher. Needless to say they went higher… I haven’t heard much talk about why, but that in…
So I bought myself about 33 liters of gas today for about 122 yen per liter. That’s a pretty good price for today, and an amazing price for tomorrow. The newspaper’s warning us that prices might go up to 160 in some places. Prime Minister Fukuda even came on air to apologize and thank the…
I have to admit that I was a little worried that this would end with another “illegal disposal” type charge, similar to the one that Hiroshi Nozaki was charged with in January, 2000. In that case, he was convicted for disposing of the body of a 27 year old Filipina. Details in a previous post…
With the extremely successful opening of an Ikea store in Kobe, there was a lot of talk about how the old boys, namely the department stores, home centers, and furniture stores were going to handle coming up against a very unique ad campaign, very low prices, and an international brand. Well, this first, very short…
Some people on the internet have been reporting that while people with Chinese flags were allowed to enter the goal area for the Olympic torch relay in Nagano, people with the Tibetan flag were not. According to this report, about 200 Tibet supporters were led to the back side of the park and told that…
So I’m watching tv tonight, having dinner… I’m watching Kin-Suma(Kinyobi Smap) and they were doing a profile of different women with interesting careers. One woman was a woman who test drives the new models of Nissan cars. Another woman was an ex-champion table tennis player. Yet another woman came on wearing a black suit. A…
Continuing from the previous post here is are worst ten for life expectancy in Japan. Just an obvious observation, but if you are a man in Japan and you want to live the longest life you can, maybe Aomori Prefecture is not the best place to settle down! Check out the list below. Worst Life…
The longest life expectancy in Japan belongs to the women in Okinawa Prefecture’s “Kitanaka Gusuku” A village which has about 16,269 people. The life expectancy is 89.3 years. The shortest life expectancy belongs to men in Osaka Prefecture’s, Osaka City. Specifically, in Nishinari Ward! These guys only get to enjoy life until they are 73.1…
I’m referring to some news making the rounds in the Japanese media, one article about the shoplifting epidemic in Japan. (in Japanese) “Hon no Manbiki, Nenkan 40 oku-en” or “Book Shoplifting, 4 Billion yen a year” One quote at the bottom says it all, “People’s feelings toward shoplifting as a crime have thinned.” That is…