James's Feed - Page 1 of 45

Some Japanese netizens have a theory about this man, who has often been seen accompanying the South Korean pop group KARA: They think he’s the same person as this ruffian who clashed with police outside the offices of Chongryon (Chosen Soren), an or...

The Tokyo Gate Bridge will open to traffic next week. To celebrate the opening of a new Tokyo landmark, a special running event was held there yesterday. Here’s a video of about 5,500 runners crossing the bridge: Some specs: The bridge, which links...

Italian tennis player Sara Errani has confessed that she skipped the September 2011 Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo because she was afraid of radiation: Sara Errani has admitted fears of a radiation leak after last year’s tsunami in Japan forced her...

A Japanese news report about a group of 15 Chinese “trainee” workers who survived the March 11th tsunami, went back to China, and are now coming back to Tohoku to once again work in factories: Among the group are five workers whose lives were saved...

If you watch Nihon TV’s Zip! morning show, you probably recognize the dog in the picture above. It’s Zippei (ジッペイ), a cute and fluffy Samoyed dog that travels around Japan as the television show’s mascot. Every day, Zippei visits a different are...

For the last several years, South Korean ultra-nationalists have been lobbying publishing companies and governments around the world, demanding that “East Sea” replace or be written alongside “Sea of Japan” in maps and books. They are angry about ho...

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 tha...

Just stumbled upon Castle Tintagel, a business near Mejiro station in Tokyo that offers lessons in medieval European swordfighting. Here’s a YouTube video about it: Ever wanted to be a medieval knight? To learn how to fight with sword and shield? T...

Remember Kevin Maher, who lost his position in 2011 as director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs after American students told the Japanese media that he had called Okinawans “masters of manipulation and extortion” who were “too...

The cover-up has come to an end! Prime Minister Noda has removed his eye patch: He’d been wearing the patch for the last two weeks: Complete with patch – more surgical than piratical — the premier later explained to reporters that the self-inflict...

The trailer for “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” a short documentary about the aftermath of the March 11th disaster: Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season be...

If you’ve been watching the news the last few days, chances are you’ve heard about that researchers are now saying that Tokyo is facing a 70% chance of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in the next four years: The preliminary calculations conducted by a tea...

Are you wondering how a group at the Tokyo University Earthquake Research Institute (ERI) calculated a 70% chance of a Magnitude 7 quake occurring in the Tokyo area within the next four years? If so, take a look at the above plot of historical Japane...

Kentucky Fried Chicken has brought its famous Double Down sandwich to Japan. Who needs bread when you can have healthy pieces of fried chicken instead? It’s currently available only at the KFC near Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. Double Downs will be a...

A quick update on the ongoing tale of Christopher Johnson, a freelance journalist whose Narita Airport “Gaijin Gulag” story has been picked up by several major news websites (The Economist, Boing Boing, Reddit). In my last post, I noted that Johnso...

Serial killer Jason is on the loose again, only now he’s donating school supplies to orphans. In early 2011 Japan was treated to the heartwarming story of “Tiger Mask”, an masked hero who donated dozens of randoseru backpacks to orphanages across th...

A couple days ago, pitcher Yu Darvish signed a $60 million deal with the Texas Rangers. When he arrived in in Texas, he was wearing a very strange shirt: Darvish arrived about three hours earlier at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, where he was greeted by...

2011 saw a gigantic decrease in the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan: The number of foreign visitors to Japan in 2011 totaled an estimated 6,219,000, down 27.8 percent from the existing record of some 8,611,000 in 2010. There was also a dro...

On January 18th, the Economist’s Banyan column copy-pasted Christopher Johnson’s sensational account his detention and deportation from Narita Airport. According to Johnson, immigration authorities may have singled him out unjustly because he was a...

In response to yesterday’s blog post about the existence of racism and prejudice among opponents of Japanese whaling, some readers complained that I was focusing too much on the words of a anonymous internet lunatics. Why should Sea Shepherd be ment...

The Australian has printed an excellent opinion piece by Brendan O’Neill (“Shades of open prejudice in war on whalers“). He argues that prejudice and racism are behind the views of some anti-whalers: The attempt to transform Sea Shepherd’s cynical s...

Tommy Lee Jones has been cast as General Douglas MacArthur in an upcoming film about the American occupation of Japan: “Tommy will bring strength, intelligence, and gravitas to the portrayal of, a legendary American hero,” producer Gary Foster (“Ghos...

A search is underway for Matt Johnson, an American man who disappeared after apparently going on a hiking/camping trip to Mt. Fuji: Johnson has been an engineer in Eaton Corp.’s vehicle business unit in Galesburg since 2003, according to a company s...

A news report about beautiful cloth Jizo figures that have been put on display at a Buddhist temple in Kesennuma: They are on display at Jifuku-Ji, a temple that stands amid the rubble of a city that was devastated by the March 11th tsunami. A mark...