hmmn

Gen Kanai points to this article by Norimitsu Onishi for the International Herald Tribune about Monday’s train derailment in Osaka which has left 96 people dead (as of this writing) and hundreds injured. Onishi wonders if the ultimate blame for the accident might not lie with Japan’s attention to punctuality, which he claims borders on [...]

Adam Greenfield, who has just shuffled off these islands of Japan, sums up his two-year stint here, using the new Roppongi Hills project as metaphor: Here is where I see the greatest, saddest parallel between this building project and my daily experience of contemporary Japan: in the clamor of these voices, and all the superlatives [...]

The above is a full page ad that was published in yesterday’s Yomiuri Shinbun, sponsored by the hugely popular Japanese boy-band, and television mainstay, SMAP. “MIJ” stands for “Made in Japan,” and the ad is a admonishment to Japanese to feel proud of themselves, and of the recent achievements of some Japanese in the fields [...]

We just experienced what I assume was a very minor earthquake, but which seemed to last an inordinately long time. And of all the earthquakes I’ve felt in Japan (there have been many, including a decent-sized 4.3 magnitude one just yesterday), this is the first one that was accompanied by an aftershock (that I could [...]

Now my father is in the biz, so I know mistakes can obviously happen in any newsroom, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how some editor (or intern?) substituted Japan for Hong Kong in the headline for a story of yet more SARS-related deaths in Hong Kong, as pictured above (the [...]