Yesterday was Ice Cream Day, tomorrow is Mother's Day but, according to the Japan Memorial Day Association - who gave us Tom Cruise Day - it is Geology Day today and you can celebrate it with a box of chocolate fossils on sale at the National Science Museum in Ueno.
The Yomiuri carries a report (Japanese) that the Imperial Household Agency has strongly objected to renovation plans at the Palace Hotel which is across the road from the Imperial Palace. Currently, the hotel has ten floors and is around 30m tall (right) but the new planned building will be 23 storeys and 100m tall. The Agency complains that this will give guests on the upper floors a prime view of the hospital on the grounds of the palace which is used by the Emperor and other select members of the Imperial family. The view from the top floor of the old structure is obscured by trees so it has never been a concern before. The hotel claims that they will be using smoked glass which will not allow guests to see into the hospital rooms but the Agency maintains that even the small possibility that someone might circumvent those measures is unacceptable. They say that the right to privacy for the Imperial family is paramount and also note that a nearby tennis court will become visible which will raise security issues. The hotel's public relations department says it will make an announcement shortly but, for now, has no comment.
Asahi: Japan to sign international parental abduction treaty
Japan will sign a treaty obliging the government to return to the rightful parent children of broken international marriages who are wrongfully taken and kept in Japan, sources said Friday. The Justice Ministry will begin work to review current laws with an eye on meeting requirements under the 1980 Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the sources said. The government plans to sign the treaty as early as in 2010. The decision was reached amid criticism against Japan over unauthorized transfer and retention cases involving children. The governments of Canada and the United States have raised the issue with Japan and cited a number of incidents involving their nationals, blasting such acts as tantamount to abductions... Under the convention, signatory parties are obliged to set up a "central authority" within their government. The authority works two ways. It can demand other governments return children unlawfully transferred and retained. But it is also obliged to find the location within its own country of children unlawfully taken and retained, take measures to prevent the child from being moved out of the country, and support legal procedures to obtain the return of the child to the rightful parent. A court, in principle, must hand down an order for the return of the child to the place of habitual residence within six weeks of the claim. Sources said the Japanese government will likely set up a central authority within the Justice Ministry, which oversees immigration and family registry records. The ministry has decided to work on a new law that will detail the procedures for the child's return...more...
This Chunichi article (Japanese) says that it is not only pressure from the U.S. and Canada which has caused a rethink. More Japanese men are marrying women from other Asian countries and there are increasing incidence of children being taken away by the mother to China or the Philippines. These countries are also not signatories to the convention but if Japan signs an international treaty then there may also be more room to negotiate settlements in those cases.
"Hennako-chan is a black comedy comic about a girl with psychic powers and was serialized in weekly magazine “Shukan Josei” from January 1991 to August 1994."
Hennako chan decides that if her sister's new foreign boyfriend likes Japan so much then she ought to help him become more Japanese. If you go to the Gonzodoga website, they have added an English subtitle function not available directly through YouTube. The clip above is "Hennako-Chan #1"
Asahi: Guinness honors oldest marathoners
An octogenarian and his 78-year-old wife here Wednesday received a certificate from the Guinness Book of Records recognizing them as the world's "oldest couple to run a marathon." Shigetsugu Anan, 83, and his wife Miyoko ran the Ibusuki Nanohana Marathon in Kagoshima Prefecture on Jan. 13 at a combined age of 161 years, 82 days. They crossed the finish line together after running the 42.195 kilometers in 7 hours, 36 minutes. Married for 56 years, the couple applied to Guinness in February. "I couldn't have made this record alone," Shigetsugu, a veteran runner, said. Miyoko, who was running her first marathon, said, "I was able to finish the race because I was with oto-san (Papa). It's like a dream."
With the ageing population, Japan ought to be holding quite a few of these "world's oldest" records over the coming years.
Three Japanese-Canadian actors have written a play called "Sexual Practices of the Japanese" for their group Theatre Replacement. They have been performing it on and off for a couple of years now and is currently on a short run in Toronto. There's a description of the work here:
"...[They] look outward, toward Japan itself, exploring some widely held notions about the Japanese and their sexual proclivities. And instead of exploding stereotypes, the play underlines them...In place of geishas we meet the kogals, those sexualized, mini-skirted young women in school uniforms featured in Asian pornography, played in giggly, flirty concert by Manami Hara and Maiko Bae Yamamoto. They also portray the female employees of the Matsukawa corporation, a high-tech business whose uptight, obsessive, sexually repressed president neglects his wife, bullies his female underlings, and “relaxes” at a bathhouse-cum-brothel. Intercut with their story is Yamamoto’s narrative of a schoolgirl on a crowded commuter train suffering the indignity and abuse of a man in a suit surreptitiously masturbating as he presses up against her in the crush..."
The company in the play is trying to create the world's best sex toy while there's also a scene about a girl's fetish for Ichiro Suzuki and another scene in a love hotel. Theatre reviewers have come up with some excrutiating lines, such as:
"...Each one acts with a subtlety and depth that lingers in the mind the way a perfect piece of sashimi haunts your palate long after the flavour has gone."
Asahi: Hu shows mettle in pingpong friendly
Chinese President Hu Jintao went up against a formidable opponent in Tokyo on Thursday: Japanese Olympian Ai Fukuhara. In the closest he got to pingpong diplomacy, Hu played a friendly rally with Ai-chan, 19, who ensured that he had his moments. Earlier, in a speech at Waseda University, Hu, 65, stressed the importance to China of improved relations with Japan...As a security measure, most Waseda students were not informed of the event in advance... After the speech, Hu tried a different approach to improving bilateral ties by playing table tennis with Fukuhara and others from Japan and China. While Hu showed off a smash or two, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda could only stand by and watch, apparently taken aback at Hu's ability...more...
Mainichi: Man arrested over theft of radioactive material in Chiba
A man who stole a container with radioactive material in it from a company here and apparently dumped the substance in a river in Yokohama has been arrested, police said. Tomonori Iso, 40, was arrested on suspicion of stealing a container of iridium 192 from a storage room at Non-Destructive Inspection Co., in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture. He has reportedly admitted to the allegations against him. "I had a private grudge against the company. I dismantled the container and threw it into a river and the sea in Yokohama," he was quoted as saying. The container, part of a radiation transparency testing device, has not yet been found. In addition to the theft, police are also investigating a possible violation of a law on the safe administration of nuclear reactors...The container, which weighed about 20 kilograms, held iridium with a radioactivity level of 370 gigabecquerels, sealed off in the form of pieces of metal. When dismantled, a fatal amount of radioactivity could reportedly be released, officials said...more...
IHT: Opponents try to block unveiling of memorial for a Korean kamikaze pilot
For decades, Tak Kyung-hyun (left) and 17 other Korean pilots who flew kamikaze missions for the Japanese in World War II have been widely viewed as traitors at home. A half-century after his death, Tak's Korean hometown is looking to change that legacy with the first memorial in South Korea to a former kamikaze. But as the unveiling approaches, opposition is growing from conservative residents who still harbor strong resentment against Japan's brutal colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. The 16-foot-high (4.6-meter-high) stone memorial, now covered with a tarp, was scheduled to be unveiled in the southeastern city of Sacheon on Saturday, the eve of Tak's death 63 years ago...The project had attracted little controversy until a group of activists began demanding this week that the city cancel the opening ceremony, threatening to disrupt the event and take down the monument. "He was a kamikaze, an aggressor," said Lee Sun-bok, head of a group opposed to the memorial. But Hong Jong-pil, a South Korean historian working on the memorial project, said the pilots should be seen as victims of the colonial period. He cited recent studies finding they did not volunteer for their suicide missions but were pressured or forced. "It's time to save those who have been lost in the black holes of history," Hong said...The state-run Korean Tourism Organization is backing the memorial, which it plans to promote to Japanese tourists...The project's driving force is a Japanese actress who has long sought to foster friendship between Korea and her country. "It's something the Japanese should do," said the 51-year-old actress, Fukumi Kuroda, who proposed the memorial and paid the bulk of the construction cost...more...
Yomiuri: Education ministry plans to train 'super science teachers'
The Education, Science and Technology Ministry plans to train "super science teachers" specializing in science education at primary, middle and high schools, with the aim of getting children interested in science at an early age, it has been learned. The ministry will train and bring into schools specialist science teachers who have graduated from science and technology universities, have a deep understanding of science and have the teaching ability to make science easy for children to grasp. The move comes in light of an international survey showing a notable drop in Japanese children's interest and performance in science. The ministry will include funds for the establishment of training courses for specialist science teachers at institutions such as science and technology universities and postgraduate schools in its budgetary request for the next fiscal year...more...
Sake-Drenched Postcards
"The Japanese public does not have a high interest in eating whale meat," she said, citing data to indicate that stockpiles of whale meat in Japan has been steadily increasing over the past 20 years, reaching 5,000 tons in 2005. Harpoons High, Consumption Low
