Posts Tagged “Japan”

I was walking around with my parents at Apple Hill today, looking at bunches of apples, pumpkins, and various crafts when I saw the headline “Manga comics losing longtime hold on Japan” in a copy of yesterday’s USA Today that was in a trash bin. So I made a mental note of it, checked out the article when I got home, and apparently there is a big problem of sorts. Sales fell the fifth consecutive year in 2006 and manga magazine sales are far from their 1995 peak of 1.34 billion with a figure of 745 million last year, about a 44% drop. The reporter noted that that high year was when Weekly Shonen Jump stopped carrying Dragon Ball. There were four likely causes given that primarily involve the habits of young Japanese people.
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One of the rules in baseball that may not be obvious to casual baseball fans is that a batter can run to first if the catcher drops the third strike (i.e. the ball is not “legally caught”) and fails to tag him out when first base is open or when there are two outs. It still counts as a strikeout for the pitcher and the runner gets to stays on base if he reaches. (This has sometimes led to MLB pitchers getting four strikeouts in an inning.)

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=SiS2-t5s4ig[/youtube]

Well, during a tournament game between teams from Yokohama and Tokai, the Yokohama catcher dropped what would have been the third strike to close out the inning and the entire defense walked off the field toward the dugout. As the Tokai batter was walking back to the dugout, someone told him to run to first. He did and then went to second, then to third before scoring all the way home. The two other runners on base also scored, making it a three-run strikeout and expanding Tokai’s lead to 6-0.

At least the umpire was nice enough to explain the situation and outcome to the crowd.

[from Japan Probe]

To promote the upcoming release of the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie on September 1st, Frito-Lay of Japan started selling (on July 9th) bags of Doritos with a few different Eva designs featuring Rei and Shinji. The two single character designs can be found on both 50g and 90g bag sizes but only the Puchi Eva designs from the figurine series are on 50g size bags. The chibi characters get the smaller bag! This promotion isn’t that different from the cross-promotion branding that occurs when blockbuster films launch in America – examples from this year are Shrek 3 and Spider-Man 3.

An post on Japan Probe mentions that the tax office of Oharu in Hokkaido has put up for sale rare figures owned by a toy retailer who didn’t pay his taxes. The unopened figures included characters from Sentimental Graffiti among other ’90s love simulation games. The department uses online auctions site like Yahoo! to sell other seized items like cars and paintings and back in February, over 100 bids were made for four figures with the highest bid at 7,250 yen. Another ten sets are currently being hocked and bids will be accepted until May 1. Don’t ask me where, though – if you’re interested, you should be motivated enough to search for them yourself. Let this be a warning to all you collectors out there, especially if you’re running a business.

OK, on Friday I turned into the Education Abroad Office at my college my enrollment packet for a summer abroad program (Japanese Culture in Film) to take place in Kyoto, Japan, from June 29 to July 28. I was told I am fourth on the waiting list since it filled up quickly so I’m hoping people drop in the next couple months. Not damn likely but I can still hope.

So my backup plan for overseas learning this summer is Düsseldorf, Germany, during the month of August and taking a course called “Germany under Hitler’s Third Reich”. And I know a good amount of German so that might help me get around there better than not knowing kanji and walking around Japan. Still, I know a friend who was the first one to sign up for the Kyoto trip so I’d prefer to go there than Deutschland, at least for this summer.

Anyway, I set up a separate blog to document my attempts and experiences with the study abroad program. There’s only one post there now but it should pick up around mid-April as more stuff happens. Wish me luck, guys (and gals)!

Maybe the pure power of the aniblogsphere can influence the situation…or not…

That’s right, I’m bringing back “This Week in Akiba” and this edition covers stuff from February 5th to the 11th.

First off, cake boxes were spotted featuring a caricature of failed prime minister candidate Taro Aso, Rozen Maiden characters, and the Engrish sentence “It is a sponge cake that used fresh milk and the egg enough”.
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[via Engadget]

Akibablog has some photos of “Sony Sauce” (a pun of the katakana for the word “source”) made by a company called Bulldog. It mocks the Sixaxis’s Emmy win-that-wasn’t and plays on the console’s resemblance to a George Foreman grill. The “20GB” version has been discounted from 499 yen to 399 while the “60GB” has an open price but has a recommended sales tag of 599 yen. Ken Kutagari’s proud face on the front just to seem to give it a little bit of officiality, doesn’t it?

NOTE: image not from the upcoming game.

According to ANN, Ideafactory is making a Ouran Host Club romantic adventure game targeted at women for the PS2, due to come out in spring 2007 in Japan. I guess this isn’t exactly a case of life imitating art but more like games imitating anime and manga since Renge, the host club’s self-imposed manager, went to Japan because she was a fan of a relationship game (a parody of Tokimeki Memorial) featuring lookalikes of the host club’s members. I hope the characters have the same voices and I wonder if Haruhi would be available as a love interest…

[via kottke]
The Washington Post has an article about how the old method of making kimonos from scratch is dying in Japan, particularly in Kyoto’s Nishijin district. Many are being made in China and those kimonos are made in Japan are woven with cheaper imported silk rather than Kyoto silk.

Here is the main problem:

Fewer Japanese are marrying today than ever, and those who do largely shun traditional white wedding kimonos in favor of Western-style dresses. A declining birthrate, meanwhile, has meant fewer babies, which in turn has meant fewer sales of kimonos for children’s coming-of-age rites. Nationwide, kimono sales have more than halved in the past decade.

The reporter uses 102-year-old Yasujiro Yamaguchi, one of the last master weavers in Nishijin, as a narrative focal point through the article. He is one of only three left who can create a kimono from scratch, which means planning and weaving it with his own hands to “infuse the intended wearer’s personality”. All three are over 70 and none have any apprentices.

The kimono is one of the few things that I can think of as distinctly Japanese alongside Shintoism and samurai. If one looks at the kanji for the word (??), kimono literally means ’something worn’. It’s a symbol of traditional Japan and subtle beauty. I think this quote from Yamaguchi says it best:

“The kimono is not just about our country,” [Yamaguchi] added. “It is about the Japanese race — our daily rituals, our history, our religion, about who we are as a people. We have to do anything we can to protect the kimono, even if that means making them overseas.”

Okay, last week I forgot to do this feature because I was busy with other stuff. I also guess I could blame it on a lack of interesting stuff that week but I’m not going to do that. I did manage to make a banner and picked out some good stuff to highlight this week.
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