Karaoke shops in Osaka are reporting that their shops are packed with students who are off school (and supposed to be at home studying) for the H1N1 influenza outbreak here. Some of the karaoke shop owners are troubled, saying they are concerned about the flu being passed on at these large gatherings, while other owners…
All schools from kindergarten to college level in Hyogo have been closed for the week. You have to feel bad for the kids who happened to be at schools for which this was just announced. Much of them went to school only to be sent home, and if Hyogo prefecture is trying to hold off…
I could have been way more creative with the title there, but this is the kind of story that people like to read. I’ll be very simple with it although I’m sure the story is much deeper than this… (it may not be though… it may just be the case of a bosozoku tough guy…
This story comes out of Chiba City… A 35 year old man, whom I can only assume is a bad teacher and advisor to the volleyball club at Mitsuwadai Junior High School in Chiba, beat up a 14 year old male student during a volleyball practice on March 8th. During practice, the teacher called out…
OK, I know the title of this post is a little wacky, but have you ever lived here? If you live here or do business here you might be looking at that title and nodding your head slowly with a sad-but-true look on your face. Check out this interview with Sean McAllister, the director of…
Today is a Japanese national holiday called Spring Day or “Vernal Equinox”. The Japanese name for it is Shumbun no Hi. It seems that Google Japan has gone with a nice theme that elicits images of Spring and Nature… using Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” as a theme for it’s logo. I have to…
I was talking to a friend the other day… I was very surprised that he didn’t know about some of the sites that host links to places where American tv shows are hosted. I think the biggest and most useful is SurfTheChannel. I would probably even use this site if I lived in the US…
**A little update: in 2009, Amazon began producing Kindle Wireless Reading Device (link goes to Amazon) that ship to countries outside of the United States, including Japan. One of my main reasons for wanting a Kindle in Japan (Japanese language books, full color manga) are still not offered. Also, if you live in a very…
This list to us comes courtesy of an article on Livedoor News. Japanese women were asked to list the “effeminate” things that men do. Please keep in mind that these answers came from Japanese women about Japanese men. We here at newzjapan aren’t saying this ourselves (although I’ve seen all of this behavior myself so…
A poll shows that 40% of Japanese elementary school children refuse to do #2 at school. Writer Yachiyo Murakami has begun writing a series of books to guide parents and children through their “second” toilet training. She was recently quoted as saying that the problem is that once parents get their kids to stop using…
I’ve commented on this phenomenon before. I sit here in Japan reading and watching the news. We’ve got the full gambit of news. Top stories include the brutal murder of a professor on a college campus, Diet members sneaking cameras into closed-door meetings, internet death threats against a champion Sumo wrestler, a sex scandal involving…
The reason I put “still” in the title of this post is because lately there’s been a sort of politically correct type of trend here. People don’t like people to talk about people being elite. They say that people should not talk about education and things like that… but the reality is this – Reuters…