shirokuma2011 comments

That's a dangerous stretch of road, even for cars. Too bad Hawaii refuses to pass a helmet law.

What a sad thing for the families, who accompanied them to Hawaii... :-(

That's either the best polar bear costume I've ever seen, or they found a really tame polar bear.

Content-wise, Hulu's getting incrementally better. Their selection of movies is still full of holes, but I guess negotiating deals with the major studios takes time.

So, JAL had "gone went bust" huh? Gosh darnit!!

That was the second one today in the same approximate location--another at about 12:35 this afternoon at a 5.5 magnitude (both only barely a 1~2 shindo in Tokyo, though).

Gee, I guess he wasn't as "former" as he'd thought...

The NHK Special series generally run from 9 p.m. JST... no information on NHK's site about this series, yet... Except for live broadcasting during and shortly following the disaster, NHK has been surprisingly critical, almost evenhanded (by NHK standards, anyway) in its coverage of both the government and TEPCO in relation to the March 11 disaster. While some of their field work can be a little wooden, at best, their vast resources mean they can find, and spend more time with, stories that might be missed by the other broadcasters.

I'm looking forward to watching this series.

At first glance, I thought it looked kind of 19th-century, but from a discussion on TV among some bridge design engineers, it turns out this is a fairly radical design... it's just not as "pretty" as some other bridges being designed these days...

I tried reading a sports page article about a cricket match once, and it might as well have been written in Greek for all I could understand of it... Sano's going to have to work hard not only to attract young players, but to educate the public about the game, its rules, and its terminology.

Actually, I find Kamei a scarier prospect than Ishihara. At least Ishihara has his clear-cut principles--whatever you may think of them.

Well good luck with that.

I know someone who tried this and said it actually tasted pretty good. But then, he's hardly a gourmet...

Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada has instructed ministers to create summaries of the meetings by the end of February, an official at the Cabinet Office said.

An order which by its very nature will render those "summaries" useless, since they'll likely be created out of thin air by bureaucracy flunkies who probably weren't even present at the meetings to begin with...

He not only mocked Ishihara, he announced that he was only "going through the trouble" of accepting the award, after having been rejected several times in the past, to avoid confusion in the ranks of the metropolitan government and among the people of Tokyo. It was the strangest press conference I've seen here since the infamous "My mind's a blank, my mind's a blank!" performance by the owner of Kitcho's Osaka branch a couple of years back...

This guy did just about everything but spit on the trophy... or medal... or whatever they gave him.

They can do what they want, I suppose, or what their bodies tell them to do. I'm sure that it's not entirely an unconscious thing, but I don't find the "grunting" (they're more like real screams in some cases) all that annoying. Still, it makes the matches a little embarrassing to watch, at least on TV.

$13 billion in net profit in one quarter... whew.

I live about a 10-minute walk from this new retail spot and go there all the time--the hat shops are particularly nice, with lots of variety and helpful staff. You can find some great made-in-Japan handcrafted gifts, too--everything from woodworking to leather to glass and pottery. During the week it's not very crowded, bicycle parking is nearby, and of course it's right between the two stations, so it's convenient even if you're coming from out of the neighborhood.

All in all, a wonderful break from the otaku bustle of Akihabara and the seedy surroundings of Okachimachi.

(And the hamburger steak at Boo is worth the slightly inflated price!)

Never mind the calories, I'm going to skip it just because it looks darned messy to eat... :-)

Amazon went through this three years ago when the Kindle DX first came out; after two years of trials at various universities, it was declared a bust--mainly because no educator wants to be forced to choose textbooks by platform/OS rather than by content, but also because of the device's interface limitations (many of which the iPad overcomes). Even the three major textbook publishers involved in the trials concluded that a diffusion of platforms would make universal adoption of e-textbooks difficult at best, a pipe dream at worst.

And of course, any textbook created on Apple's platform can only be sold through Apple... (they said as much in their announcement).

(And yes, I have and enjoy using my iPad 2.0)

My supermarket (Life) had dozen-packs of domestic eggs on sale last week, I didn't even notice there were two extra until I got them home...

Some of the funniest (at least to my taste) comedians, and comic duos, in Japan don't get much TV time, but they're out there, for sure. I think foreigners here tend to focus on what's on the tube (the one without the YOU), where a ubiquitous group of about 50 mostly Yoshimoto players show up everywhere, show after show, regurgitating pretty much the same old shtick. The more cerebral, even surreal comedians don't do well in that environment...

So where does this $1.7 billion end up? In the U.S. Treasury? Split among the governments of the countries involved? Certainly not to the Nigerian government, one would think... it would be nice if it went to efforts at eradicating such corruption, but that's probably wildly optimistic...

And imagine the eight of them in a hotel room pre-departure, getting ready for their flight... ugh... "You guys got everything?" "Uhh, let me check..." "No, no, don't..."

I dunno, a 55-inch TV costing thousands of dollars hardly sounds like a "gadget" to me...

I thought Snapykey's "invisible keyboard", a completely new interface for text input on mobile devices, was pretty cool.

He was actually jailed on a total of ten charges, including robbery, attempted murder, the previous escape attempt, destruction of property (presumably the patrol car), etc.

This is actually the first successful (so far anyway) escape from a prison in Japan in more than 22 years (excluding juvenile reform centers, etc.), and while the prison had security cameras, etc., only one guard was posted to keep track of 50 or so surveillance monitors. Definitely a sense of "it can't happen here" in a facility where it's probably never happened before.

He won't have much luck getting out of the country without a passport, but he may have access to accomplices, etc. who could take him in--provide him with some warm clothes, perhaps--and keep him under wraps, so to speak...

So had he planned from the beginning to steal an ambulance, or was his son actually sick, and if so, what happened to the boy?? Was there even a son at the scene in the first place?

The school has been in business almost 35 years, has a good reputation, and most of the students I see (daily, since they gather outside our apartment after classes) seem to be just regular kids from all over the world. Hardly a front for the "ejaculation business", as someone so indelicately put it. If one of the other students was responsible, obviously he's anything but a "regular kid", but who knows these days?

Like most other Japanese language schools in the city, this one also struggled considerably after 3.11, but they seem to have been on the rebound lately, though a lot of the dorm rooms across the street still appear unoccupied...

I hope the school is able to recover from this tragedy and go on with its work, though I imagine the potential for lawsuits claiming neglect of duty to guard the welfare of the students could be as damaging as the crime itself.

What a sad day for the students' families...

Right across the street from me (both the school and the dorm)... media people camped out till all hours, despite which this story got all of a couple of minutes on yesterday's evening news shows.

What ever happened to shooting to disable??? Not in Texas, I guess...

Most public transportation infrastructure plans are, in the end, driven by politics. JR isn't the only entity who'll end up profiting from this, only the most obvious one.

Well no, two women, actually.

And for heterosexuals in this day and age to continue to claim that same-sex marriage is destroying your "family values" is just ludicrous. You don't now, nor have you ever, needed help from the LGBT community--you undermine your own values very nicely on your own every time you have unwanted children, cheat on your spouses (after a vow before GOD to be faithful, no less!), mistreat your families, or advocate discrimination against another group of human beings. All of which, oddly enough, has been going on far longer than there has been any public movement for or against same-sex unions.

This young man puts it very well: tinyurl.com/7fbdhls

Note to DS:

A couple of points: first, Ueda had a "student visa", yet works as a graphic designer. Is that legal, or a violation of the visa. Second, her visa expired in July. She has been overstaying for nearly half a year. Again, a possible reason to deport.

The article makes no reference to Ueda being employed, except as a student. And while her visa may have expired in July, she can remain in the U.S. legally as long as her application for another status is still in process--at least, until the authorities say otherwise.

Note to USNinJapan2:

I may have worded it poorly, but my point was that, in general, I've found it relatively easy to acquire and maintain long-term residency in Japan, which means I have fewer concerns about maintaining a relationship with someone here (I speak only of my own experience). Certainly some bi-national gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. get by in a similar fashion--the foreign partner finds an employer willing to sponsor a long term work visa, or is eligible for one on his/her own, which may eventually lead to a green card application (though this has become significantly more difficult in the past ten years), or comes from a country whose citizens are able to apply for the annual green card "lottery" and after one or more attempts, actually gets chosen, etc.--but the couples written up in these kinds of "torn asunder" features generally face more significant obstacles, then look at heterosexual bi-national couples who are able to remain together legally solely on the basis of their relationships (sure, documentation requirements are strict for them as well, but spousal visas don't require the foreign spouse to work or go to school, either) and wonder why they can't do the same.

In my view, the word "marriage" in a religious sense needn't even enter the discussion--the federal government need only recognize legal unions in a civil sense.