Japan Probe

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 to withdraw from a tournament in Tokyo. Errani…..had previously cited only personal reasons [...]

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 by Sato Mitsuru, who was commissioner with the Sato Fisheries [...]

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 area, interacting with locals and spreading awareness about the show. The clip below shows [...]

Image: What the Media Told Us The Chairman of the UNSCEAR has announced that the health effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster will be relatively small because radiation was leaked into the sea instead of the air, and because evacuations of residents were carried out promptly: The fact that some radioactive releases spread over [...]

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 how people in other countries call the sea to the east of Korea by a “pro-Japanese” name. [...]

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 [...]

Somebody hacked the YouTube account of LDP lawmaker Shoji Nishida and put up ads for Russian camgirls: The video has already been taken down, but caused much consternation when it was discovered early in the morning on Jan. 30. According to Nishida’s representatives, it is believed that someone hacked into Nishida’s YouTube account — which [...]

A man brings coffee and a gramophone to Tohoku (video by Mackenzie Sheppard): A short vignette of Yoshi Masuda–a coffee enthusiast who is sharing his passion for coffee with victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. — Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe) Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

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? To armor up and fight upon the field of honor? Or perhaps to learn [...]

As human beings, we need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. Luckily, the Japanese Diet is moving to protect this nation’s water supply from potential threats: The legislation to be sponsored by lawmakers of both parties aims to prevent the purchase and uncontrolled development of reservoir areas by foreign capital. The move [...]

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 lazy” to farm fruit? Now that he’s no longer employed by the U.S. government, Maher [...]

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-inflicted blow came in the dark as he rushed to try to pick [...]

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 begins. A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing [...]

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 team from the university’s Earthquake Research Institute were based on intensified seismic [...]

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 Japanese earthquake data that compares the number of quakes per year to the total [...]

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 available at stores across Japan starting on February 2nd. [hat tip to J.L. Gatewood] [...]

Part I: Visa status announced, then deleted 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 Johnson’s refusal to disclose his visa status had [...]

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 the country. Randoseru are tough, super-expensive backpacks that all elementary school students are expected [...]

Throughout rural Japan, trusting farmers leave their fruits and vegetables at unattended stands by the side of the road for hungry passers-by. If you take anything at these stalls, you’re meant to just drop a coin into a box as payment. What’s a bit more unusual is the unattended stand shown in this video: The [...]

Kyoto’s famous statue of Takayama Hikokuro (1747-93) has been vandalized: At around 5:50 p.m. on Jan. 20, a woman spotted a man standing on the plinth of the bronze statue of Takayama Hikokuro in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, and pouring white paint on it. The man fled the scene by bicycle. The woman alerted officers at [...]

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 a large group of media cameras and a handful of Rangers [...]

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 drop in non-tourist foreign nationals entering the country: According to government figures released [...]

A TV news report about the arrest of a Thai “new half” (ladyboy?) who was arrested for scamming Japanese tourists: Nice t-shirt! The suspect approached a Japanese tourist on the streets of Bangkok, claiming to be a Korean tourist who had lost her passport and money. She said she would soon be receiving money from [...]

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 journalist that wrote articles critical of the Japanese establishment: “As a freelance journalist in post-meltdown Japan…..I was taking risks more than [...]

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 mentioned in connection with these extremists? Paul Watson and his organization do not openly resort [...]