hmmn

A fascinating story from the August 15th edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review on the smuggling of seafood from Russia to Japan, controlled mainly by the Japanese yakuza and the Russian mafia. According to the Japan Fisheries Association, the illegal trade pulls in roughly $1.2 billion (USD) a year. Because so much fish is [...]

Last week the Japanese government and the Bank of Japan announced that it would introduce three new currency bills into circulation in fiscal year 2004. The new 1,000-, 5,000-, and 10,000-yen bills are the first new currency designs in roughly 20 years. Ostensibly the bills are being introduced in an effort to thwart counterfeiting, and [...]

An interesting story at the New York Times about the various right-wing (or uyoku in Japanese) sound trucks that ply their message at near-deafening levels in the streets of Tokyo (and I’m assuming, in other major Japanese cities as well). The article puts forth the suspicion on the part of some that the groups that [...]

The other night we watched on television the thrilling upset of the Italians by South Korean in the World Cup, and yesterday I spent a fair amount of time catching up on the fallout from this match via various web sites. The Italians somewhat predictably have been claiming a “conspiracy” against them on the part [...]

Slate recently published a good roundup of international media coverage on the recent incident involving North Korean asylum-seekers being forcibly and illegally removed from the Japanese consulate in Shenyang, China by Chinese police. A fascinating video (available here from the BBC — Real Player needed) was taken of the incident (apparently by a South Korean [...]