Posts Tagged “Japan”
Most anime otaku know about Akihabara. It’s otaku heaven - between the electronics, anime, maid cafe’s and stores selling things related to all of the above, you can’t go wrong in Akihabara.
And most of us know that statistically Japan is incredibly safe. But then you read articles like this one that remind you nowhere is 100% safe.
From Khabrein.info:
TOKYO, June 8 (KUNA) — Seven people were killed and 11 others were wounded Sunday in central Tokyo after a man hit pedestrians with a truck and stabbed them with a knife.
The incident took place around 12:30 p.m. (03:30 GMT) in the Akihabara district, a busy shopping area known as “electric town” and a center of Japanese subculture, which are popular among young people, comic and animation fans as well as foreign tourists.
Police arrested the man, 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato from Shizuoka Prefecture, eastern Japan, and seized a survival knife he was carrying.
Kato told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people. “I am tired of the world. It didn’t matter whom I would kill,” he said, according to a police spokemsan.
According to witnesses, Kato ran away from his truck after hitting several pedestrians and started stabbing people at random.
The Akihabara attack occurred on the seventh anniversary of a stabbing spree by a man at Osaka’s elementary school in 2001, which left eight children dead.
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A timelapse of Japanese designer Hiroshi Yoshii creating a cute anime monster in 3D. If you’ve ever been interested in working in anime in Japan, pay attention!
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In order to reward those of you who have set up subscription donations, we’ve decided to go back to splitting the lessons in half. There is still plenty of great free Japanese to be learned here, but to those of you who donate your hard-earned money to keep us podcasting, we thought it only fair to thank you by making 1/2 the lesson private.
Japanese Lesson #75
In this lesson I talked about a great blog post on the site “The Life Nippon” which can be found HERE. You’ll also learn a valuable lesson about how to respond appropriately when someone says they aren’t feeling well. It’s a common mistake made by English speakers, so pay close attention!
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This guy is pretty smart - except for the part about having his two ex-wives rent the cars for him using their real names and IDs!
From GPS Tracking systems:
After all the stories of stolen GPS units, and thieves getting caught stealing vehicles outfitted with GPS tracking systems, comes a tale with a twist.
Mitsuhisa Kobayashi had two ex-wives rent cars for him. He would then place a GPS tracking device in the car and make a copy of the key. With the ability to track its location, and a spare key, stealing the vehicle later was easy. So easy in fact, that he stole eight of them.
Kobayashi was in possession of three of the eight stolen cars when he was arrested by Nishinomiya Police Station in February. He told investigators: “I wanted to drive my favorite cars. I sold the other five cars on the Internet.”
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From the Mainichi Daily News:
SAPPORO — Two prized local melons fetched a record price of 2.5 million yen for the pair during the season’s first auction at a wholesale market on Tuesday.
“I had expected Yubari melons would fetch a high price, but I didn’t expect the figure to be this high,” said a startled broker at the Sapporo City Central Wholesale Markets in Sapporo’s Chuo-ku.
The pair of melons, which weigh 3.9 kilograms in total, fetched the record price of 2.5 million yen after 100 melons were put up for auction on Tuesday.
Soon after the bidding started at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, with a starting price of 2 million yen per set, Sapporo-based wholesaler Ibi bid 2.5 million yen a set.
After the successful bid, the melons immediately went on sale at a retail store run by Ibi near the wholesale market for 1.25 million yen each.
Takeo Fukawa, 24, manager of the store, said, “I wanted to support Yubari,” referring to the financially struggling Hokkaido city where the namesake premium melons are grown.
The hammer price for Yubari melons during the season’s first auction has been on the rise over recent years, fetching 600,000 yen for a pair in 2005, 800,000 yen in 2006 and 2 million yen in 2007 — the year after the city of Yubari became an organization designated for fiscal reconstruction following financial difficulties.
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This lesson is for you intermediate listeners and you beginners who want to test your vocabulary. Listen carefully and write down any words you don’t recognize.
Japanese Lesson #74
As I mentioned in the show, here are links to follow us on various social sites:
Paul
Facebook
Twitter
FriendFeed
MySpace
Hitomi
Facebook
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Many of you may recall a podcast we did a long time ago where I talked about the need for missionaries to head to Japan. I took a lot of heat for bringing religion into the podcast, but the fact is Japan has the 2nd highest suicide rate in the world. There are a lot of very sad people who are searching for answers.
From Ars Technica: Japanese police ask ISPs for help in reducing suicides
Japanese police are apparently trying some desperate measures in order to stop a string of suicides by asking ISPs to remove information on how to carry them out. Almost 50 suicides have been attempted within the last month using a newly-popular method of extracting hydrogen sulphide out of bath salts and detergent, the instructions for which are easily found on the Internet.
“Generating hydrogen sulphide is not illegal under current laws, but the risk is high for third parties to inhale the gas and, in worst case scenarios, die,” the National Police Agency said in its statement, according to the AFP. The organization apparently sent the request to not only ISPs, but cable providers and other telecommunications companies as well. However, the request is only that: a request. Internal Affairs Minister Hiroya Masuda told the press that the government was not interested in blocking the questionable content, as it would mean “excessive restrictions on freedom of expression.”
It’s no secret that Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. The country had 48.4 suicides per 100,000 people in 2004, according to the World Health Organization (that number is second only to Russia’s, with a surprising 72.3 per 100,000 in 2004). It’s a problem that Japanese officials have taken seriously for some time now, but are still trying to figure out ways to fix. Unfortunately, suicide is one of those issues that cannot simply be fought by blocking information from a single source, like the Internet. People have been killing themselves for thousands of years. If there’s a will, there’s a way—Internet or no.
In fact, research recently published in the British Medical Journal even noted that, while suicide information is plentiful online, suicide rates of those between the ages of 15 and 34 in England have dropped over the last decade, right alongside the blossoming of the Internet age. If England can somehow find a way to reverse the trend, there’s hope for Japan, too. Education and outreach are much more productive methods of reducing the suicide rate than simply blocking or removing online information.
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I found this on Lifehacker.com the other day. It’s a collection of secret “tips” from Japan. It has things like fixing scratched CDs, a better way to clean a stinky toilet and how to keep your bathroom mirror free from fog. I love little Lifehacking tips, and the fact that these are from Japan make them that much cooler. Click on the image for more info.
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