Truth of the Japanese Coast Guard

The following video clip that was leaked onto YouTube yesterday has been popular on Japanese twitterverse today.

A bird feeding fishes

Amazing video. A bird is feeding fishes. The fishes are perhaps carps.

Demonstration of a university worker in an oil drum

Last December, Kyoto University decided not to renew the contract of about 100 temporary office workers. A worker who is against the decision holded a demonstration in front of the main building of the university on February 26th, the day of its entrance examination, ...in an oil drum bath.

Real Aso?

According to the profile of Aso Taro posted on Mainichi [japanese], he is called 'a man of 1.5 meter radius (半径 1.5メートルの男)'. The meaning is..., if you get closer than 1.5 meter to him, you'll be fascinated by his magnetism. I don't know whether it's true or not, but the following video of Aso was really fun to watch.


[HT to manchingsakura]

Green algae in Quingdao city have found the way to go

In the Beijing Olympic, Quingdao (青島, Tsingtao) of China is hosting several events of the sailing competitions which will take place along the coastline by the city.

On July 1, Sankei MSN News reported that an algal bloom choked the coastline of the city and was threatning to impede the competition. In order to remove the green algae, 400 boats and 3000 people were mobilized for cleaning up the algal bloom. Perhaps, nutrients in the wastes flown out of the city caused the heavy algal bloom.




According to Asahi Shimbun on Aug. 1, the Quingdao City Communist Party stated that the algae were found to be green laver (Enteromorpha sp.) that is used for food in Korea and Japan and that they plan to export the algae to South Korea as a test for commercializing them.

I hope they never export the algae to Japan.

Mainichi Shimbun vs Japanese women

On June 21, the Mainichi Daily News decided to cease publishing the infamous WaiWai articles, responding to the criticism from Japanese people. Many of the articles in the WaiWai column had been taken from fictional stories from tabloids and skin mags published in Japan. Complaint from Japanese people was that, whereas many of the original Japanese articles were fictional stories, the MDN did not mention in their WaiWai articles the nature of the original articles. Since foreign readers do not know the nature of the magazines, they might think that the stories in the WaiWai articles were based on fact.

Foreigners who have enough knowledge on Japan also seemed concerned about the circulation of wrong knowledge derived from WaiWai articles. For example, Yudan Taiteki wrote in a thread on The Japanese Page,

by Yudan Taiteki on Tue 05.01.2007 5:12 pm
(...)
The one that I'm tired of seeing over and over again is this idea that it's normal for Japanese moms to give their sons oral sex during exam study time to decrease their stress. This concept is so absurd that you would think nobody could possibly take it seriously, and yet it seems like every few months I see someone bring it up as an example of how "messed up" Japanese people are. It apparently originated from a Waiwai article that was taken at face value despite a complete lack of sourcing (and plausibility), but because it fit in with this idea of Japan being a bizarre place, it was accepted without question.

Responding to this comment, doinkies and two_heads_talking wrote,

by doinkies on Wed 05.02.2007 1:30 am
I find it preposterous that there are actually doinks out there who think everything in WaiWai is real... :@ But since Mainichi never says that the WaiWai articles really come from tabloids, I suppose people think they are real news articles. -_-

Another thing WaiWai often does is post articles about some odd, weird or gross item or business and say that said item or business is "wildly popular" in Japan, but never actually give the numerical data to prove this claim. I suppose it's because if they did, then people would instantly see that their stories are nothing but exaggerations.

and

by two_heads_talking on Wed 05.02.2007 9:40 am
(...)
I had never heard that as Japanese, but I had heard it from nearly every other asian country.. mainly china, thailand and vietnam. I never much believed it, but figured it was one of the "urban legends" that just gets a face life depending on which race is used to fuel it..

One doink who thought that what was written in the WaiWai article was true was an Australian writer, Ben Hills. In his book, “Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysthanthemum Throne”, he mentioned the oral sex thing as a fact that was reported in the Mainichi Shimbun. Also there are tons of articles in Wikipedia that cite WaiWai articles.

The MDN issued an apology to readers for publishing "vulgar" articles, but it did not clarify the nature of the magazines that they used when they wrote the WaiWai articles, even though the latter was what had been requested by people.

Also made Japanese people upset was that, although the Mainichi announced punitive measures for people who had been responsible for the publication of the WaiWai articles, the Digital Media Division President was promoted the head of the Mainichi Shimbun Corporation on June 25, despite the fact that he had been the most responsible person for the WaiWai issue.

The most angry people against the Mainichi are Japanese women . They are trying to spread the information on how Mainichi had been making fun of Japanese women on the Mainichi's English-language Website. Also, they are making phone calls to the sponsors of the Mainichi, requesting to cease to provide on-line ad on the Mainichi's Website. Their effort seems to be successful right now. In the ad spaces on the Mainichi's site, I can find only internal links to Mainichi's own pages since last night. Also, even Japanese tabloids that WaiWai had been referring have started to make fun of Mainichi.

The Mainichi Shimbun is known among Japanese netizens to be the most active newspaper company in promoting the legislation of Internet censorship. Result of this "battle" may affect the fate of the Internet culture in Japan.

Update: It seems some doinks are actually doing that. Even this may become wildly popular among them in the near future.

Seven percent of Japanese eat the same food as dogs eat

Japan probe has a hilarious story about a report in the Telegraph, UK.

Japanese midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura decided to continue playing football with the Scotish Premier League champions Celtic, instead of returning Japan next season. Fans of rival teams, who are not happy about the decision, are targeting Nakamura with banners and chants saying "Nakamura ate my dog".

According to the Telegraph,

Celtic fans have been getting agitated about a banner brandished by Rangers fans bearing the legend 'Nakamura Ate My Dog'.
(...)
Dog, of course, is a Korean staple - at least, it was in more impoverished times - and the consequence of poor agricultural soil, although a recent survey revealed that seven per cent of Japanese respondents admitted to eating dog food, albeit a top-end brand associated with the British Royal Family. (emphasis mine)

The dog food survey mentioned in the report can be found at What Japan Thinks with the title: "7% of Japanese dog owners eat dog food". However, the title of the blog entry was a joke based on the answer to question 2 in the survey, where 7.1% answered that they feed dogs the same food as humans eat.

Q2: What sort of dog food do you usually buy?

Commercial ordinary dog food	78.1%
Commercial premium dog food	23.3%
Specially hand-made food	4.1%
Same food as humans eat	7.1%
Other	2.4%

Actually the author of What Japan Thinks wrote in the main text an excuse for the sensationalist title.

Please excuse the sensationalist but accurate story title; I’ve found recently that it’s the silly stuff that attracts the punters, and some serious but important surveys have had very little traffic. In fact, there’s a new premium dog food on the market that advertises itself as being not just edible, but in fact tasty for humans too!

It seems the reporter of the Telegraph found the title of What Japan Thinks when he googled to see if Japanese people eat dogs. He was able to find correct information that Japanese do not eat dogs, but perhaps he did not have enough time to read the main text of What Japan Thinks.

By the way, I guess 0.05% or so of Japanese has ever tried dog food.

When I was a high school student, I saw on the street one of my friend coming from the opposite direction. He was eating something in a plastic bag. When we get closer, I was astonished to find that he was eating dog food. He told me that he went to buy dog food for his pet but he was so hungry that he could not help picking up the food on his way home. He gave me one but I didn't dare to eat it.

Although I have never eaten dog food, I have eaten shika-senbei (deer-cracker sold in Nara Park) when I was a high school student. It tasted like taste-less cardboard.

(The videos are via 空)