Madplanet

3.14: White Day --> Pi Day

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:37:00 +0900

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...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:33:00 +0900

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.

"All Nippon Airways (ANA) — which has the same problem — has begun sewing computer chips into its..."

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:30:07 +0900

“All Nippon Airways (ANA) — which has the same problem — has begun sewing computer chips into its stewardess uniforms so that errant skirts, jackets and hats can be tracked from space.”

- Japan Airlines faces boom in black-market demand for stewardess uniforms - Times Online

Transforming badgers

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:34:26 +0900

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

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:32:42 +0900

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.

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:27:00 +0900

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

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:19:40 +0900

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

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

Just so you’re aware, your subscription to the Asahi...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:13:11 +0900

Just so you’re aware, your subscription to the Asahi Shimbun paid for a journalist to write an article about Toto’s cellphone strap in the shape of a robot with a toilet for a head.

[Japanese article link]

Given the approaching hayfever season, a boiled sweet with the...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:22:00 +0900

Given the approaching hayfever season, a boiled sweet with the name 花粉プラス　はなのど飴 (lit. “Pollen Plus Nose and Throat Lozenges”) sounds like just the ticket.

However, despite the promising name, once you look closely you find you’ve been dumped flailing into a world of ambiguity. 花粉プラス turns out to reflect the fact that the sweets contain honey-bee pollen, while the use of hiragana for はな presumably allows the maker a penalty-avoiding ambiguity—is it a nose lozenge or a flower lozenge?—while allowing them to imply that it’s the former. So the product name could also be parsed ”Flower Throat Lozenges with Added Pollen”. At this point, one is inclined to think: shit, I’ve been had. The bastards.

But no, for there is yet another twist to our tale; start investigating the ingredients, and one finds that they all have supposed anti-hayfever or sinus-clearing properties. So it’s more a case of wink-wink-this-helps-your-hayfever-but-without-FDA-approval-we-can’t-say-so than it is trying to sucker the unwary with a product name that seems like it treats what ails them but doesn’t.

However, I should state here for the record that, effective or not, they taste terrible.

Bonus: each of the main ingredients gets a tagline to show what it’s there for: the honey-bee pollen is to maintain health, etc. etc. Hop extract, however, is there because it’s 話題の成分 (“the ingredient of the moment!”). Hmm. So was quicksilver, in it’s day, and we found out how far drinking that got you.

Today's obscure dead person

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:34:21 +0900

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.

You know you want these pants

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:47:03 +0900

You know you want these pants:

More information here.

ANA goes the Ryanair route on domestic drinks

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:45:07 +0900

ANA goes the Ryanair route on domestic drinks:

ANA is to start charging for everything but water and tea in economy class on domestic flights. The Asahi article linked to notes that this is a growing trend, particularly among discount airlines. Problem: ANA is not a discount airline. If it adds paying for drinks to the litany of hassle that already accompanies getting to the airport and into one’s breathtakingly cramped seat, then I have another reason to take the shinkansen.

ANTICA OSTERIA CARNEYA カルネヤ - 牛込神楽坂/イタリアン、ハンバーガー、イタリア料理 [食べログ]

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:13:28 +0900

ANTICA OSTERIA CARNEYA カルネヤ - 牛込神楽坂/イタリアン、ハンバーガー、イタリア料理 [食べログ]

BoufeALaMode

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:13:28 +0900

BoufeALaMode

ビストロ・ド・バーブ Bistorot de Bave - 牛込神楽坂/フレンチ、フランス料理 [食べログ]

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 04:13:28 +0900

ビストロ・ド・バーブ Bistorot de Bave - 牛込神楽坂/フレンチ、フランス料理 [食べログ]

Article - Meatrea, Japan's first meat theme park

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:47:00 +0900

Article - Meatrea, Japan's first meat theme park:

I like meat as much as the next omnivore, but the phrase “meat theme park” makes me vaguely nauseous.

Kibardindesign

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:31:43 +0900

Kibardindesign

中村玄

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:31:00 +0900

中村玄:

Collagen-rich chicken takikomi-gohan and soba next to the tracks in Ebisu, housed in an apartment block.

Ice alert following days of snow

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:10:22 +0900

Ice alert following days of snow:

Shared by Gareth Edwards
For goodness’ sake. What next? “Vomit alert following hours of neat gin?”

Severe weather warnings of widespread ice for the whole of the UK are issued following days of…

Promotion for Japan’s stationmaster cat

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:10:00 +0900

Promotion for Japan’s stationmaster cat:

“This is the first time in the world for a cat to become an executive of a railroad corporation, a company official said.”

Yes, we’d have assumed that. Like stories about how a bacterial organism has just become Minister of Finance or a pair of underpants has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, one just knows somehow that it hasn’t happened before.

Madplanet

3.14: White Day --> Pi Day

Local voting rights: If you insist...

"All Nippon Airways (ANA) — which has the same problem — has begun sewing computer chips into its..."

Transforming badgers

Google Editions: To Japan in October

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

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

Just so you’re aware, your subscription to the Asahi...

Given the approaching hayfever season, a boiled sweet with the...

Today's obscure dead person

You know you want these pants

ANA goes the Ryanair route on domestic drinks

ANTICA OSTERIA CARNEYA カルネヤ - 牛込神楽坂/イタリアン、ハンバーガー、イタリア料理 [食べログ]

BoufeALaMode

ビストロ・ド・バーブ Bistorot de Bave - 牛込神楽坂/フレンチ、フランス料理 [食べログ]

Article - Meatrea, Japan's first meat theme park

Kibardindesign

中村 玄

Ice alert following days of snow

Promotion for Japan’s stationmaster cat

中村玄