Japanese golfer Ryo Ishikawa dresses up his caddy to look like him so the sweet couple can have fabulous "Pair-Look." More fun is his driver's head cover skips on by putting it UP THE BUTT of the Ishikawa doll.
daylife.com, February 7, 2010..."final round of the Northern Trust Open PGA golf tournament at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles."
NYT: Cult of the Living Doll in Tokyo
In the West, a somewhat condescending verdict on Japanese women has long been that they are too submissive and doll-like. For close to a decade, the Japanese media have exhorted women to fight against this image by toughening up and coming into their own. In the past year, however, that kind of talk has been increasingly fallen on deaf ears among some young women who actually aspire to look like dolls. They are divided into two distinct genres: the increasingly popular “Mori,” or forest, girls, and the “Ageha,” or swallowtail butterfly, girls. The forest girls wear layers of thin cottony dresses, thick tights and boots, unpretentious makeup and cloth tote bags, the intention being to resemble a handmade doll from some romantic, Black Forest setting. Forest girls unobtrusively made their debut in the Tokyo pop culture scene last spring, although at first it was hard to distinguish them from the similarly clad eco girls. But as the months went by the differences became clearer. Forest girls want to be discreet and to obliterate sexuality altogether, while eco girls are natural, sporty types who back solid environmental policies and a healthy dose of sensuality....
...The Ageha, or swallowtail butterfly, girls, began to appear in 2008 and show a similar mistrust of the real world. Their aim is to look as much as possible like the blow-up figurines men buy online, only with flamboyant makeup...Like most Japanese women, doll impersonators stop short of cosmetic surgery. According to the cosmetics and beauty journalist Yuko Ito: “The Japanese woman has a thing about going under the knife. They think it’s a sin against their parents. This is why they would rather opt for cosmetics and dramatic clothing. It’s also the reason behind the astonishing range of cosmetics available in this country”...[There is a]downside for wannabe dolls: Few men are actually willing to knock on their doors. Both Moris and Agehas remain minorities, too cultish for the layman to understand and too technically difficult to easily emulate. Consequently they have about them the whiff of a secret society...more...
The papers have been covering a recent development near the Imperial Palace. The 5km route around the palace is popular with runners and joggers and many go around in groups. One count on a weekday in October between 6pm and 9pm logged 4,500 runners going past. Recently, police and Chiyoda ward official have been fielding complaints from ordinary pedestrians that runners are beginning to hog the pathway. They say that the groups seem to expect people to keep out of their way when it ought to be the runners who should watch where they go. As reports of minor collisions began to rise, the authorities sided with the strollers and have now posted signs around the grounds reminding runners that the route is not a designated track so they should steer clear of pedestrians. The have also distributed leaflets to running clubs and put up posters at some of the running stations which have popped up along the route.
Source: Yomiuri
A young Kobe man decided to end it all by jumping off a pedestrian bridge. He got his timing wrong, however, and ended up landing on a freight lorry which was passing underneath. The driver says he thought he heard a thud but assumed it was just his load shifting around. He continued driving a further 20km to the warehouse where an employee found the stricken man, who had escaped with minor injuries, clinging to the top of the truck.
Source: Yomiuri
Xomba: Doraemon Doll Laid to Rest in Elaborate Funeral
A Doraemon doll was laid to rest today in an elaborate Thai Buddhist funeral ceremony that spared no expense and cost the owner of the plush toy 200,000 baht (about $6000 US). Plubplueng Ngamchareon, a 48 year old Thai woman received the Doraemon doll from a Buddhist monk when she was in the hospital being treated for cancer three years ago. After her recovery she began to have dreams where the Doraemon doll would appear to her and give her advice and sometimes lottery numbers. She attributed her recovery, health, good fortune in business and occasional lottery winnings to her Doraemon doll; which she had come to think of as her own child. The doll even went to school! The woman hired someone to bring the doll to school every day where it had its own locker. (Whether or not the doll received good grades is unclear at this time.) In October of 2009, the Doraemon doll visited her dreams once again to say goodbye and told the woman that he was dead. The doll instructed the woman to prepare his funeral. As is tradition, the 'body' was laid to rest at the temple for 100 days and the funeral culminated in today's cremation ceremony which was attended by a hundred people, including his kindergarten classmates.
Asahi: As Japanese property prices fall, interest rises among Chinese investors
Japan's real estate market may be in a slump, but that's not deterring Chinese from scooping up properties. Chinese money -- that is from Chinese living in Japan -- is making its presence felt in a big way... At a seminar on real estate held in Yokohama's Chinatown for Chinese investors in mid-October, all the 40 seats were taken. Masao Kaneko, a senior official of Mitsui Real Estate Sales Co., explained to the audience, "Now is the chance to look for good real estate deals"...The seminar was organized by the London-based HSBC Group... However, Japanese financial institutions have been cautious about extending loans to Chinese investors. For example, the city of Kawaguchi in Saitama Prefecture has many Chinese residents who work in companies and universities in the Tokyo metropolitan area. But a sales promotion staff member of a major Japanese real estate brokerage said: "About 70 percent of clients are Chinese. Even so, we have to tear up half the applications because they can't get a loan"...The problem is that "banks do not extend loans to them if they do not have permanent residency status," the man said. Japan's three megabanks all say that permanent residency status is not an absolute requirement for them to extend loans. That may be so, but as an employee of one of the banks explained: "(If they don't have permanent residency status) we don't know whether they will continue to live in Japan. When we screen them, we cannot help but be cautious." In 2009, HSBC began to provide loans to foreign nationals without permanent residency status if they had financial assets of 10 million yen or more. "We can chase them to the end of the world with a single telephone call," said Koichi Hori, senior vice president in charge of mortgage products and personal financial services at HSBC Premier...According to Minoru Hayashi, president of [a] real estate company, "We need investors who have no trouble getting loans from banks. If we avoid them on the ground that they are foreigners, we will not be able to survive"...more...
OK, maybe it's pushing it a bit regarding Japan-related content, but Southeast Asian countries -- notably the Philippines -- have seen a spate of killings of poor karaoke singers, particularly those who botch "My Way."
As a staple of my tie-tied-around-head-like-kamikaze-warrior-corporate-wage-slave-after-work-party days, many's the time I've belted out a version of this song that would have Ol' Blue Eyes rolling in his grave to such an extent you could use him as a fan in summer.
Anyway, the Japanese gave us karaoke and the article is written by a Japanese journalist.
Just watch out anybody else who's forced into singing "My Way" at your next corporate shindig. Your life may be in your hands.
Herald Scotland: Pensioner is youngest person to be awarded 10th Dan in judo
The Second World War was just ending when eight-year-old Edinburgh schoolboy George Kerr took his first steps on to a judo mat in a community centre in Lorne Street in Leith. “My father wanted me to go into boxing,” he recalled. “I tried, but I wasn’t very good. So he decided I should try judo. I thought, ‘I’ve let the old man down a bit so I better stick at this’. And that’s how it began – I was trying to please my dad!” His father would have been proud on Saturday when Mr Kerr, now a sprightly 72, became the youngest person ever to be named a 10th Dan. It’s the Japanese martial art’s highest honour and one that’s been held by only 15 other men since it began in the late 19th century. Of the six other living 10th Dans, three are Japanese, two are Dutch and one is French. The only other Briton who made the grade was Charles Palmer, who died in 2001. The honour was conferred on Mr Kerr by the International Judo Federation at a ceremony in Paris in recognition of a lifetime contribution to the sport as competitor, coach, referee and administrator. “I was humbled and slightly embarrassed about the award,” he said. “It was hard to accept, in a way, because I always think of the great teachers I had in Japan who haven’t made it to 10th Dan yet”...more...
Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore Airlines Ltd. will delay introduction of its 11th Airbus SAS A380 after a Japanese contractor failed to deliver seats on time, joining a growing list of airlines suffering from design glitches at the supplier.
The carrier’s plan to overhaul first-class cabins in Boeing Co. 777-300s are also affected, Singapore Air spokesman Nicholas Ionides said. He didn’t say when the A380, due last month, will enter service. No flights have been disrupted.
“If airline seats don’t meet any sort of requirement, they’re illegal and have to be fixed,” said Hans Weber, president of San Diego-based Tecop International, who has advised the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority. “It’s black and white -- you either meet the requirement or you don’t.”
Equipment flaws ripple through the airline industry as manufacturers rely on thousands of suppliers to meet safety standards and delivery schedules. Singapore is among carriers including All Nippon Airways Co., Continental Airlines Inc. and Japan Airlines Corp. with delays on Airbus or Boeing models or forced seat changes after supplier Koito Industries Ltd. failed to deliver on time or according to specification.
Koito spokesman Yoichiro Kuroiwa said an axle in a new seat design failed a safety test in Japan, pushing back by six months All Nippon’s plan to take new planes. He declined to discuss other airlines. The company is based in Yokohoma.
