Madplanet

3.14: White Day --> Pi Day

For reasons that should now be abundantly obvious from the format used to express the fourteenth of March in the headline, there are moves afoot to designate White Day “Pi(e) Day”. Actually, not all the reasons are abundantly obvious; another factor is Pi’s unendingness (my brain is failing to supply the correct term for this), which has been pressganged into symbolising eternal love [excuse me while I find a receptacle to spit in].

Fans of the Asahi Shimbun’s website will be unsurprised to learn that this trend is both irredeemably minor and the brainchild of an industry group, in this case the Japan Pie Association, about whose very existence I am highly sceptical.

I should say that the Mathematics Certification Institute of Japan had already claimed the day as Maths Day in acknowledgement of the English-speaking world’s Pi Day. But the 14th March event most closely associated with love and togetherness in Japan may in fact be the Meiji government’s 1873 decision to officially approve international marriages.

Local voting rights: If you insist...

Hatoyama, as ever on the back foot, says that he won’t push during this Diet session to pass a bill giving foreign permanent residents the right to vote in local elections.

This issue makes me uncomfortable. A fellow Englishman, one Alan Higgs, may have been the first foreigner in Japan to sue the government for not letting him vote (or rather the mental distress he suffered as a result), but I’m afraid I don’t grok his frustrations. (The courts didn’t either; they summarily dismissed his motion and two appeals, I suspect while stifling giggles. Wikipedia’s worryingly extensive J article has details.)

Rather, I accept my inability to vote as a non-citizen. It makes me uncomfortable to think that there are noisy protests occurring because the DPJ is trying to give me a right I don’t want. I understand the idea of giving local voting rights to zainichi Koreans, sure; and they were the original intended recipients, not all holders of permanent residence. But I suspect targeting just that community would have made the issue even more heated and politicized than it already is.

For myself, I’d prefer more relaxed rules on dual citizenship. That’d solve far more problems, and through the front door rather than the back.

Transforming badgers

Another excellent post in Pink Tentacle’s series on Japanese urban legends. This time, the focus is on the Meiji era. Badgers transforming into phantom trains? Electric power cables insulated with virgins’ blood? The Tentacle giveth.

Google Editions: To Japan in October

Google’s Editions e-book service will launch in Japan this October. Several publishers are interested, with PHP already signed up to contribute 1,000 titles. Interesting to see that Google’s moved ahead of Amazon here.

We cannot abide mistakes. We cannot abide simply knowing that a mistake exists.

Next time someone describes themselves as “detail-oriented” or “anal”, you can ask them to reference themselves against a new benchmark. In a university English exam administered in January, one question incorrectly stated that vinegar was brewed using hops. The examining body has issued a correction, changing “hops” to “barley”, even though it wouldn’t have affected candidates’ ability to correctly answer the question. Now that’s dedication.

Breaking News: Hometown Mayor Thinks Mao Asada Skated Short Program Better

Of course he bloody does. Stop wasting our time by writing about it.

Today's obscure dead person

Hiroshi Yamamoto, senior advisor to the Nippon Bartenders’ Association, died on the 22nd of a ruptured aneurysm of the thoracic aorta. Just in case you’d missed that.