Note the poll on your right asking when you think Aso is going to announce that he’s stepping down and having elections. You can read a good insider story right here, “Prime Minister Aso on the Brink in Japan” at the Big in Japan blog for some background information on some of Aso’s recent gaffs….
A recent internet poll by the Goo search engine (link in Japanese) has rated the top 10 things that Japanese men feel show their status. Car Job Educational Background Watch Qualifications and Licenses Suit Where they shop or eat Where they live Beautiful wife or girlfriend Shoes Number five is probably unique to Japanese because…
I got the email today from Amazon Japan and Citibank Japan informing me that the Amazon Credit Card was going to end as of December 15,2008.
Sometimes things happen in movies and everyone in the audience just thinks, “No one would ever do anything like that in real life.” I think this is one of those things that’s hard to believe anyone would ever really do… So here’s the scene… It’s about 7:20am on August 6th in Saga Prefecture. Husband walks…
A poll done by Nepro Japan, a huge mobile products company, shows that 88% of people in Japan use their cell phones while in transit. Here is a link to the Japanese description of the poll (pdf). The sample of 4,614 people consisted of 41% male and 59% female respondents. 42% of the total were…
At 12:30pm today in Tokyo’s well-known Akihabara area a 25 year old man went on a rampage leaving 14 men and 3 women injured or dead. One police officer is also among the injured. A 25 year old man first drove into pedestrians with a rental car, then got out and began stabbing people with…
Here’s the scoop on the drama, just in case you don’t actually have a tv under the rock in Japan where you live… but maybe that’s too extreme. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Japan who don’t know about Gokusen. So here’s the ad for the show… if you’re even slightly interested, I…
A long story can be told very short here. The District Court judge from Utsunomiya was arrested for sending emails from internet cafes and other places asking a woman in her 20s to go out with him. One bit of interesting information that shows the extent of the wackiness of the stalking is that he…
So a kid got a capsule toy out of the vending machine here. The capsules toys are called “gashapon” in Japanese… you can find them everywhere. Some of them have interesting toys or balls, most of them are very disappointing. The kid, 2 years and 10 months old) got a ball out of a machine…
First a bit about the hydrogen sulfide suicides… I don’t really want to get into details, but in a nutshell, there are two readily available products for the home that you can easily buy which, when mixed together, produce enough hydrogen sulfide to kill people. Recently, there have been so many suicides using this method…
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…
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…