Influenza reached the "alarm level" for the first time this season after an estimated 1.73 million flu cases were reported last week, an increase of more than 50 percent from the previous week, the health ministry said Friday.
According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, about 5,000 medical institutions throughout the country reported an average of 35.95 flu cases in the week starting Jan. 23, exceeding the alarm level of 30, ministry officials said.
The average has surged from 22.73 new flu cases per institution, which was the "alert level," the previous week. It also eclipsed last year's peak of 31.88.
The number of new flu patients was estimated at about 1.73 million, up from about 1.1 million the week before.
The Type A Hong Kong flu virus accounted for about 90 percent of these cases. As this virus has not seriously hit the country for the past four seasons, most new infections have been among children who have not built up their immunity to it.
Ah, Valentine's Day. It's just around the corner, so have you thought about how you'll express your love for your favorite inanimate object? Humans are so passe.
Japanese retailers have a suggestion. They're setting geek hearts aflutter with a pretty, ageless female android who's looking for love.
Clutching a bag and cell phone, she seems to be waiting for a suitor.
"Android falls in love? She is waiting for you" reads the writing on her glass box at Takashimaya Department Store in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.
The special Valentine's display features Geminoid F, the photogenic robot developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and colleagues.
The mechanical lady was modeled on a real woman in her twenties. She sits in her glass room at Takashimaya and greets shoppers.
Based on data from an embedded sensor array around her, the android reacts to people in the vicinity. She moves her shoulders and neck, and changes her facial expression, smiling or yawning, depending on what's going on.
"Retailers would like to use real fashion models in their store windows, but it isn't practical," Ishiguro told IDG News. "Mannequins, however, don't really look human. Using an android like this realizes the store windows of the future."
Geminoid is an air servo-powered humanoid with eye, mouth, head, and shoulder mobility. It can also be remote-operated so that it acts as a surrogate for a distant user, reproducing his or her facial expressions and voice.
Ishiguro developed the machine in collaboration with ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, and Kokoro, a Tokyo-based entertainment firm known for its Actroid androids. He also made an android copy of himself, the original Geminoid.
The professor's latest experiment will also give him a chance to study how shoppers react to the fembot when tens of thousands pour in over the weekend. Expect some heavy breathing.
"What is this android feeling when you look at it?" Ishiguro mused. "That's quite fun to imagine."
No doubt she's wondering whether an ardent admirer will bust her out of that glass cage and carry her off to a love hotel.
Geminoid may be far from perfect--she can't walk and needs a large air compressor just to move her head. But what are such flaws to a real Romeo?
After all, as Shakespeare wrote:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
The Supreme Court on Thursday handed down the nation's first ruling on publicity rights, saying celebrities' names and photos are protected under publicity rights, but rejecting a compensation demand by the plaintiffs in the case, singing duo Pink Lady. Presiding Justice Ryuko Sakurai said in the ruling: "Celebrities' names and images can help sales by attracting potential customers. They are protected under publicity rights." By clarifying the status of publicity rights and providing a guideline on what constitutes a violation, the ruling will likely be seen as a wake-up call on using celebrities' names or images in publications and on the Internet without permission. Pink Lady had demanded that Kobunsha Co. pay them compensation of 3.72 million yen, saying the use of their photos without their agreement in a magazine published by the company infringed on their publicity rights. More...
Seems Pink Lady did not discover their presence on Youtube yet, but then they were already Obachan of 46 and 47 in this video from 2004, so what would one expect...
A photo of a school lunch served at public schools in Tokushima city (bread, one weiner, milk, and corn soup):
It’s supposedly due to mismanagement of funds. The bread in the photo is made from rice flour, making it significantly more expensive than typical bread. It’s basically a subsidy for rice farmers. The leftover money is spent on very simple foods.
Over at Itai News, we can see that Japanese netizens were pretty surprised by the sad-looking school lunch, which looks far worse than meals served in Japanese prison cafeterias. Adult males require more calories than little kids, but the prison food still looks a lot nicer.
Hikikomori Stabs Brothers & Kills Self For Being Told “Work!” sankakucomplex.com (Note: banner ads NSFW)| Jan 31, 2012
A hikikomori who carved up his brothers with a kitchen knife and then hanged himself after his twin brother dared to tell him to get a job has been highlighting the dangers of hikikomori interventions…
Police in Tokyo’s Suginami city learnt of the incident when they received an emergency call from an unemployed 75-year-old woman who reported that “my son is waving a knife around and stabbed his brothers!”
The catalyst for the incident was apparently the elder brother (45) lecturing his hikikomori sibling (45) and telling him to get a job, which caused him to fly into a rage and attack him. Their younger brother came upon the scene (42) and was then attacked himself. More...
Mainichi: Writer talks of 'underground reality' of Japan's foreigners in new book
The myth that Japan is a homogenous society lost its veracity long ago. With the growth of globalization, the sight of foreigners living and working in Japan is certainly no longer a rare occurrence. However, how much do we know about the real lives of Japan's foreigners? This is the question that Kota Ishii, a spirited non-fiction writer, raises in his new book, "Nippon ikoku kiko -- zainichi gaikokujin no kane, seiai, shi" (Journey through foreign Japan: The money, love, sex and death of foreigners in Japan)...more...
Jake Adelstein, Japan's hard-hitting reporter on the Yakuza gangster beat takes on his toughest controversy yet...Hello Kitty's confused citizenship!
Kitten-Sized Controversy: Is Hello Kitty from London or Japan? The Atlantic Wire | Jan. 27, 2012 --- by Jake Adelstein and Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky
TOKYO --- A controversy is brewing among Japan’s fanatical followers of Hello Kitty: Is the character who has been plastered on everything from stickers to face massagers to toasters to panties to deodorant sprays and long officially described as an English citizen actually a Japanese national? According to the official biography from Sanrio, the Japanese licensing company that controls Hello Kitty, the cute, mouth-less cat was born in London and her real name is the British-sounding Kitty White. But 38 years of character mythology has been thrown into dispute after the publication of Hello Kitty’s Guide to Japan in English and Japanese (ハローキティの英語で紹介する日本) in which the iconic mascot describes Japan and its culture to the outside world and seems very, very Japanese.. can read Japanese and speak the language fluently. Kitty is so knowledgeable about Japanese culture and traditions that the reader can only surmise she is either Japanese or an amazingly bilingual Japanese studies scholar...more...
News report of the Kyoto incident and discovery of the abandoned taxi.
Police have apprehended a foreigner suspected of hijacking a taxi in Kyoto. The man is alleged to have attacked a taxi driver outside Kyoto Station, asking for money. He then ran and hijacked a second taxi, eventually abandoning it at a resort complex in Hyogo, some 140km away. Local police received reports of a strange-looking foreigner wandering along a road not far from the resort. When a officer went to question him, the man lashed out with what may have been a saw or a knife with a serrated edge. He was arrested, and is believed to be the same man who attacked the driver in Kyoto. Early reports suggested he had a French-sounding name but the more recent bulletins says he didn't give his name but is a 28 year old American.
Japanese Government Hasn't Kept Any Minutes of Disaster Response Meetings Since 1995 Kobe Earthquake
It was only 4 days ago that Japan's PM Noda said "it is regrettable" that there were no minutes kept for the government response team's meetings ever since March 11, 2011 earthquake/tsunami/nuke accident.
Then it turned out that Miyagi Prefecture and Iwate Prefecture didn't quite keep record of their disaster response meetings either.
Now it turns out that the Japanese government hasn't kept any minutes of disaster response meetings since the 1995 Kobe earthquake...
Sake-Drenched Postcards
"The girls in Shibuya are the ones making the scene in Japan," Rai says of the ultra-fashionable district of Tokyo in which her theater is located. "But they have a very peculiar sensibility. Rather than thinking in words, they react to music and art." Classy...
