littlebird comments

I wanna be prevailed upon to eat three squares of chocolate per day for 12 weeks ! Sounds really rough!

Japan produces some fairly good chocolates, used to be better. American Hershey's is poor quality -- their grinders aren't good enough and the result is gritty. Try Cote D'or (Belgium), easily found in Japan and quite nice for the price!

I think that it is interesting that Tokyo Governor Ishihara, with his right-wing nationalist views, is the same age as Yoko Ono, liberal avant-garde artist (also featured in a recent JapanToday article) Two famous Japanese, and they have very different views on nuclear issues.

Go Yamaha!

I was very skeptical about "robot care" for patients until I realized that its purpose is to LIFT. I think this is a great idea -- protecting the human caregivers from back injuries, which once they happen, can be lifelong problems.

We are not talking about personal interaction here, just lifting ability.

Robots that talk and move to comfort the elderly are a sort of creepy idea. It seems to me that article was up just a few days ago, and maybe some people are confusing the two?

Just speaking artistically, this is a marvellous photo. It looks like dark moody Symbolist painting.

Commemoration of an old sad day, by a newly sad country.

Well written article, especially for such a young writer. However this is the 2nd article in the last few days, on this site called JapanToday, which seems completely oblivious to the radiation-in-food problem, one of the greatest concerns of so many people in Japan.

This is really sad, especially for the child's parents and friends. But I think the polar bears, losing their natural environment and their normal food sources, are getting hungrier. And someone higher up in the camp organization should have realized that. In this case, if every person couldn't be armed, they probably shouldn't have been out there.

Maybe Shoko Asahara needs a Norwegian psychiatrist!

@Mr. Dog: Don't be so uptight, let people wander off-topic now and then! The moderators are strict enough without group policing as well.

There's gotta be a prenup in there somewhere.

And, if he turns 69 before she has her next birthday, she's only 1/3 his age. Plenty of time for a second husband!

Welcome back, Goshujin-sama! Let me cool you off with some water!

Yeah, where are the butlers?

This seems to be a sensible article, but if it really originates in Japan, some Japanese names of drugs (katakana brand name and/or name of the chemical -- sometimes very hard to match up with western information) would be helpful, since there are many foreigners who use Japanese national health insurance.

Actually, to be a lot blunter, how many of you have changed your parent's urine-soaked clothes and futon or wiped the excrement from their bodies? This is the kind of situation we are talking about here, I'm sure.

Tragic. He probably wasn't making enough money to pay for their physical care any more, and couldn't do it himself and still run the business. There are thousands upon thousands of old people falling through the social care "net" in this country. The guy probably had every intention of dying too, but once in the water his body fought back. I think it's very hard to drown yourself. That's why trains are popular...

Great stuff! NHK gave a good visual report last night. I bet it's design school students (like Yubaru said), though one comment on tv was that it probably was not dress designers, because it was paper sprayed red, not red cloth...

I'm waiting for the next color!

This is a great idea. I hope Santa can visit a lot of kids in a lot of evacuee shelters!

I want to know if they will be putting vending machines in these schools) once they reopen...

I just watched it live on BBC. It makes me so sad. Foxie, I remember that too! (oops, age showing)

Typhoon winds and rain -- It really DOES depend on your locality. It blew and rained like crazy off and on yesterday and last night where I am (Shizuoka-ken). Would NOT want to have been out in that.

NHK has to present the news for the whole country, and apparently feels a strong responsibility to warn residents, just in case. (paternal attitude of government -- like train announcements not to forget things). And there were landslides, road washouts, and a serious sea-wall break down south, after all. There was some amazing footage of huge waves hitting the piers and shore, though NHK always has really bad luck with filming "live typhoon views" around their studios! :-)

But yeah, I'm always amazed at the numbers of cases of people trying to fix roofs or clean up something during the worst of it, and then they get injured. A bit "duh"...

Ningen-nabe! Noooo thank you!

People worry about getting radiation from Fukushima, then they go and do this? ...DUH!...

OK, probably not the same people.

This prefectural official's statement has got to be one of the stupidest suggestions I've seen this summer. The complete plan isn't explained here (as it was in the original article). Besides the impossibility of getting home and back in 2 hours, the employees are expected to use their OWN personal vacation time for this ridiculous scheme! So every week they in effect lose a day of their own vacation time, real nice!

This is scandalous: your average J. family, company workers and Tohoku evacuees sweating it out while luxury and high-end boutiques dump frigid air out their front entrances. Have a look:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/06/tokyos-luxury-retailers

"Antiphlogistic analgesic"? Sure has a catchy ring to it!

Either they figure that the Japanese aren't as put off by Woods' recent behavior as western viewers, or they are intentionally making a joke with "rabu" and "love"...

Actually, it's a good product. Just dumb gaijin-use advertising, but that's hardly unusual.

High boots in 35 degree heat! But they are cute I guess. The next pretty face is a sort of eternally renewable national treasure...

It was on last night's news. It was being held out on an athletic track, some sort of reddish rubber running surface, and the center was not grass either, but covered over. The reporter held an electronic thermometer a few cm above the track and measured 51 degrees celsius... And the kids were standing and standing in the sun, there was no shade, not even in the stands.

Is this some sort of psychological holdover from WWII thinking patterns -- you do what you're told to do, follow the plan, don't question the sense of it, even if it makes you sick? Is there a connection with the heat-stroke deaths that are happening in homes -- the government and media tell us to save electricity so WE WILL SAVE, even if it kills us...?

@ifd66 -- Exactly! And I think most English language sites say mineral water is not recommended for babies anyway.

@cleo -- in fact a bit pervy isn't it!

Aah those poor folks up where it was -5, what a way to start your day.

We can hope and we can argue, but I'd say it wouldn't hurt to check over our disaster supplies once more.

Bread and circuses.

Ooh, just realized you got the left side of the home page fixed. Much better!

Bravo Teachers!

Do Tasers come on long sticks? If not, by the time someone jabbed him the attacker could have already done a good bit of teacher slashing.