Hokkaido Shimbun: Otaru civil engineering contractor enters music business
Otaru-based civil engineering contractor Chuwa Kensetsu has launched a music business that will involve recording at its newly built studio and producing young musicians. Although a number of Hokkaido construction companies have expanded their areas of business to welfare and agriculture due to a reduction in the number of public works projects being implemented, the Hokkaido Constructors Association says that this is the first time they have heard of a construction company entering the music business. Chuwa Kensetsu has installed a prefabricated studio measuring around 100 square meters fitted out with recording equipment worth about five million yen at its building materials yard in Otaru City. The Music Department is staffed by company president Masato Nakata and another of the company’s ten employees along with three contract workers...Chuwa Kensetsu...has decided to diversify its business due to the recent decline in the number of public works projects available by making use of Nakata’s background as a drummer...more...

Yomiuri: MSDF fails to intercept missile in test
A Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer failed to intercept a dummy ballistic missile in space above the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii in a test held Wednesday afternoon local time, according to the Defense Ministry. The Aegis-equipped Chokai test- fired a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) at about 4:20 p.m. to tail the mock live missile fired by the U.S. military, but failed to intercept the target. This was the second such test following the Aegis destroyer Kongo's successful interception of a sea-launched missile in December. The MSDF knew what time the U.S. military would launch the missile in the previous test, but were not given this information in Wednesday's test. It is believed the failure will have a major impact on Japan's missile defense plans. The test is thought to have cost about 6 billion yen...more...

Interesting comment here from Rear Adm. Brad Hicks, the Aegis system program manager for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency:

“The missile, until the very end of flight, had excellent performance.”

ZakZak has an article (Japanese) on Tenga, the adult goods company which, it maintains, has revolutionized the way Japanese men spend their nights and even drawn the attention of US business magazine Forbes. Tenga has now unveiled the company's new Egg series which is described as "easy to use and easy to throw away". Packaged to look like an eggbox, each egg contains a lubricated silicon sheath which will provide the user with "new sensations". CEO Koichi Matsumoto says Tenga has aimed to overturn the generally low quality image of adult goods as just a spongy hole packaged with some lotion. Instead, he has placed a stronger emphasis on design and reaped the rewards. In an industry where a product selling 50,000 is considered a hit, the company has shifted 4 million units. Saying "sex knows no borders", Matsumoto explains how the company now does business in 47 different languages and also produces larger sizes for overseas markets (the article says "外国基準のビッグサイズも製造販売"). The company's success has certainly won it a higher public profile in Japan. Singer and actor Masaharu Fukuyama mentioned Tenga on his radio show while comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto revealed himself to be a satisfied customer. Perhaps the greatest tribute the company's focus on design received was to have its products featured in European editions of GQ magazine alongside the iphone.

CJournal: Finding women between the frames
As a feminist film scholar of representations of women and modernity, Catherine Russell's publication of a book on a male filmmaker whose entire body of work was produced in Japanese, a language she does not speak, may seem mystifying. "The films are quite remarkable," said Russell of how her initial expectation of viewing a handful of available prints turned into an odyssey tracking down the 67 available films of the 89 Naruse Mikio made. "The women tend to be strong characters, they don't die or get raped." Naruse's films span nearly four decades, starting in 1930. As she writes in her preface to The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity, Russell chose to use the cinema of Naruse to chart Japan's "headlong rush into modernity and the flight from the anxious memory of the Pacific war and its traumatic aftermath." Because of his dedication to films about women and for female audiences, Naruse’s cinema offers a unique picture of the changing gender roles during this period..."The further back you go, the fewer people understand the language," Russell said of the major shifts that the Japanese language has experienced since the ’30s. Even so, Russell admits that the dialogue itself is not very complex. "It's mostly 'I love you', 'I hate you', 'my son got run over by a train'"...more...

Animator Miyazaki embarrased by prime minister
The Associated Press November 20, 2008
TOKYO: Academy Award-winning animation filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki said Thursday that he is merely embarrassed by Japan's comic-loving prime minister....
...Miyazaki, 67, scoffs at the idea that is being pushed by Prime Minister Taro Aso that Japanese animation, comic books and other creative content can be its strength, rather than the usual historical exports of autos, electronics and other more tangible products.
Aso, who became prime minister in September, is a connoisseur of Japanese "manga" comic books, and he has tried to boost his popularity by wooing comic-lovers. But some of that tactic appears to be backfiring as his support ratings plunge and some local magazines have started criticizing him as shallow and overly pop.
"It's so embarrassing," Miyazaki said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, in answer to a question about Aso's publicly asserting his love for manga...more...

Telegraph: Japanese PM Taro Aso offends doctors
Speaking in a meeting with prefectural governors to discuss a shortage of doctors, Mr. Aso said, "I understand that hospitals in rural areas are having trouble getting doctors. There are many who lack a fair degree of common sense. Their values are very different." Toshio Nakagawa, head of the Japan Medical Association, told a press conference later in the day, "It is incredible that Prime Minister Aso has made such a comment. We must verify what he meant and see what we should do"...Asked later to explain his comments about the doctors, Mr. Aso managed to give a less then fulsome apology, saying that he was sorry if he had offended and that he was sure that doctors with common sense would understand what he had meant. "Many of my friends are doctors but I have always felt that they were on a different wavelength to me," he told reporters...more...

Bandai is releasing a new product called Beer Shampoo. The gimmick here is that your supposed to mimic the high jinks of trophy-winning baseball players who shake up bottles of beer and spray then over each other. It's part of a series of novelty products which already includes bubble bath in the form of 10,000 yen notes so you can bathe in cash.

Man, that boy Steve is just all kinds of awesome. This is his latest post - scans from Egg magazine:

http://www.hellodamage.com/tdr/archi...in%20punch.htm



Gotta love the fact that one of the "foreigners" is a big, bulky, Mike Tyson-looking mofo.

Plus, behold the men's fashion:



Yo...bitches! Hard to be too menacing-looking when you're all cross-eyed n' shit.

Japan's magazine market remains in crisis with several long standing titles ceasing publication this year. However, one genre appears to be bucking the trend: the celebrity gossip magazine. Trans Media is widely credited with pioneering this segment with the introduction of Gossips, which appears monthly and has now been running for a full year. Other publishers have followed suit with titles such as Celeb Scandals, InCeleb, Celeb Times, Girl's Talk and Girl's Gossips. They deal almost exclusively in news and pictures of overseas celebrities, covering much the same ground as OK! magazine which itself announced the launch of an online Japanese edition earlier this year. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie appear on a regular basis while the Olsen twins have also graced many a cover. One newer title, Slappy!!, already causing waves by eschewing the use of the words "Celeb", "Gossips" or "Girl's" in its name, has attempted to add some Japanese news to the mix but industry insiders think that market is already saturated. One editor believes the explosion of gossip sites on the web and access to overseas TV shows on DVD are factors behind the success of these new magazines. However, while sales figures are hard to come by, it seems likely that the magazines serve only a niche market.

Variety: Trio offer Japanese shows on Joost
The NTV network, comedy talent shop Yoshimoto Kogyo and ad agency Dentsu are partnering to offer Japanese comedy and variety shows to U.S. auds on broadband. The service is a first of its kind for the Japanese broadcasting biz, which has long been hampered by rights issues from beaming programming abroad. Starting in December, the partners will launch an ad-supported service called "Japanese Humor -- Owarai" in the U.S. on a specialized broadband channel on the U.K.-based Joost site. They will begin with 105 episodes of six shows, for a total of 35 hours of programming. Joost, NTV, Yoshimoto and rights holders will divide the ad revenue. The trio plan to offer other programming internationally via broadband.