(Source: unicorniallychromantic)
Reblogged from Ying Jun.
May 23, 2013, 5:41am
Yuichiro Miura, 80, becomes the oldest to scale Mount Everest. Miura explained his attempt to scale Everest at such an advanced age: “It is to challenge (my) own ultimate limit. It is to honor the great Mother Nature.”
Yup, it’s on the news every morning over here.
Reblogged from YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF.
May 23, 2013, 5:33am
“Dezaki began his final lesson with a 1970 TV documentary, Eye of the Storm, often taught in American schools for its bracingly honest exploration of how good-hearted people — in this case, young children participating in an experiment — can turn to racism. After the video ended, he asked his students to raise their hands if they thought racism existed in Japan. Almost none did. They all thought of it as a uniquely American problem.”
—
American teacher in Japan under fire for lessons on Japan’s history of discrimination
There is Racism EVERYWHERE, humans are all in some ways inherently racist, so learning and talking about it can’t be a bad thing.
February 23, 2013, 8:05pm
Hand Drawn Maze on A4 Paper Took 7 Years to Make
Via Spoon and Tamago:
Some people have hobbies. Other people are obsessive. But when the two cross paths, this is what you get. Japanese twitter user @Kya7y recently unearthed an incredibly detailed maze that her father created almost 30 years ago. When pressed for details, the father explained that he spent 7 years creating the map on A1 size paper, which is about 33 x 23 inches.
Whoa.
Reblogged from prosthetic knowledge.
February 06, 2013, 3:55am
A Japanese pop star has been forced to cut off all her hair and make a tearful public apology after being caught spending the night with her boyfriend.
Minami Minegishi, 20, made the dramatic gesture after a tabloid magazine printed pictures of her leaving his house last week.
In an emotional four-minute YouTube video, now viewed almost 5million times, she asks for forgiveness and displays her shaven head, a traditional act of contrition in Japan.
A member of the popular girl band AKB48, Miss Minegishi explained she decided to cut off her long hair immediately after seeing the photos of her leaving 19-year-old Alan Shirahama’s house with her face hidden behind a surgical mask and a baseball cap.
The band has a strict policy that members should not be involved in any romantic or sexual relations and the group’s management agency demoted her to ‘trainee level’ yesterday, according to the band’s official blog.
She said she had been ‘thoughtless and immature’ and had considered quitting the group in shame.
‘I know this is being over‐optimistic, but I want to stay as Minegishi Minami of AKB48 if possible,’ she said. ‘It was all my fault about this. I am very sorry.’
She ends the video by saying: ‘As a senior member of the group, it is my responsibility to be a role model for younger members.’
Made up of girls in their teens and early twenties, AKB48 are one of the biggest musical acts in Japan and have sold millions of CDs and DVDs including an estimated £126million in sales in 2011 alone. (via)
Some things are good about Japan, some things are bad. This is in the latter category.
Reblogged from YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF.
February 02, 2013, 7:39pm
Things the world wants to know how to do
By Gideon Lichfield
Quartz: December 29, 2012Google published its annual Zeitgeist survey a couple of weeks ago, which tracks the year’s most popular searches in different countries. It breaks them down by category—people, movies, shopping, etc.—and for most countries, one of the categories is “How to…?” We took the top result for each country that had this category and translated them where necessary. (In a couple of cases, we weeded out spurious results caused by quirks of language.)
There’s some interesting variation. The most pressing challenges for many nationalities are kissing or slimming, but the Japanese are evidently obsessed with making their cellphones last longer, Colombians with cupcakes, and Russians with not being quite so mean to each other.
Most popular Google searches beginning “How to…”
Argentina: how to update Facebook
Australia: how to love
Brazil: how to remove Facebook
Canada: how to rock
Chile: how to make a family tree
Colombia: how to make cupcakes
Czech Republic: how to lose weight
Denmark: how to kiss
Finland: how to get a fever [for the purposes of sick leave]
France: how to lose weight
Hungary: how to kiss
Ireland: how to draw
Israel: how to make money
Italy: how to have sex
Japan: how to save [battery] power
Kenya: how to abort
Mexico: how to vote
Netherlands: how to survive
New Zealand: how to screenshot
Nigeria: how to love
Norway: how to write
Poland: how to delete Facebook
Portugal: how to lose weight
Romanian: how to kiss
Russian: how to become nicer
Senegal: how to address an envelope
Singapore: how to rock
Slovakia: how to pick up babes [i.e., women]
South Africa: how to kiss
Spain: how to install WhatsApp
Sweden: how to make out [i.e., kiss]
Ukrainian: how to lose weight
United Kingdom: how to draw
United States: how to love
Japan needs to learn about INSULATION. This whole country wastes millions of kWh of energy every day heating rooms without any insulation. The technology has changed, there’s plenty of options. And yet, here we are.
Reblogged from YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF.
January 02, 2013, 9:01pm
kottke.org: Japan is a land without guns (and shooting deaths)
Max Fisher on firearm ownership in Japan.
But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world’s least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides….
Reblogged from kottke.org.
December 15, 2012, 9:55pm
