American serviceman arrested for squeezing Aomori Prefecture teen’s breasts
TOKYO (AP) — A U.S. serviceman has been arrested for the alleged sexual assault of a Japanese woman, the latest in a series of criminal accusations sparking anger against American military bases in Japan.
Top watched dramas of 2007
#1 “Karei Naru Ichizoku” (30.4%)
#4 “Dondo Bare” (24.8%)
Top 10 anime characters
… that Japanese want to be:
Good news for Jpop lovers: Google, copyright body strike deal allowing cover songs on YouTube
Closet pop idols breathed a little easier Thursday after the announcement of a deal between video site YouTube and a large recording rights body, allowing punters to record and post their own versions of songs by major artists like Mr. Children and Spitz without fear of legal reprisal.
Japan Rights Clearance Inc. (JRC) announced that it had made a comprehensive contract with YouTube’s parent Google over the use of about 5,000 recordings that JRC manages.
It is the first time that Google has struck a contract with a rights management company in Japan over the use of music.
Under the contract, Google will pay an undisclosed royalty to JRC on behalf of YouTube users. In turn, JRC will no longer ask Google to delete videos of users’ cover versions of songs by JRC artists, except where they defame the artist.
However, users can still be accused of violating the Copyright Law if they post footage from music TV programs or music DVDs without permission, since those copyrights are also shared by broadcasters and record companies.
A similar deal between Japan’s largest rights management body, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and video sites run by Yahoo! Japan Corp. and two other companies has been in place since July last year.
Click here for the original Japanese story
Tokyo International Anime Fair 2008
(Tokyo, March 27, 2008) The 4-day-long world’s largest anime fair expects to have more than 100,000 visitors from around the world. The event will open to the public on March 29.
Boomerangs come back in space, Japanese astronaut found
Doi holds a boomerang on board the International Space Station. (Photo courtesy of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas — Japanese astronaut Takao Doi has thrown a boomerang in space and found, to the surprise of many, that it does come back.
Is this the low of the Japanese society and its education system ?
2 schoolboys face arrest for violence at school, peeing from building
FUKUOKA — Two junior high school boys face arrest after vandalizing school property, spitting on other students’ parents and peeing from the school building, police said.
Talking about the making of Hana Yori Dango - The movie
The upcoming movie, of course. It will be the final piece of film about HYD.
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4 years since the end of HYD2, and Tsukushi and Doumyouji prepare to get married . . . when Tsukushi’s precious super-expensive wedding tiara is stolen. Recovering the item requires the help of F4 and trips to Hong Kong and Las Vegas.
What does it take to become the food capital of the world ?
A while back, there have been numerous reports about the Michelin’s Restaurant guide for Tokyo, which pretty much crowned the city as the food capital of the world. Newsweek has this one article about the controversies surrounding the rating, and most interestingly, why the rating might be true after all. Below is the list of several things that restaurants in Tokyo did to prepare for their food. Believe me, those will be among the most meticulous (and borderline ridiculous) steps you’ve seen.
- 82-year-old owner, Jiro Ono, has spent the past 50 years perfecting his technique … and is famous for wearing gloves whenever he leaves the restaurant, even in summertime, to make sure he never loses his magical feel for fish.
- The water to make fragrant dashi broth is trucked in several times a week from a well owned by the restaurant’s parent establishment from to Tokyo.
- The bonito flakes that flavor the soup come from fish caught off the southern island of Kyushu and are carefully sliced to a thickness of one third of a millimeter.
- Top-quality kombu kelp is from Hokkaido in the north, dried in temperature-controlled storage, then in the open air, for more than a year before it makes it to Tokyo.
- Aspiring chefs also have to memorize everything from countless brands of rice and miso (soybean paste) to the myriad types of plates and bowls that go with different sorts of food. “There are plates that cannot be used during certain seasons,”. The challenge seems all the more daunting considering that the Japanese notion of prime season, or shun, can be as fleeting as a week; bamboo shoots, for example, have a shun of just 10 days.
- Even a $7 bowl of buckwheat noodles (at the century-old Kanda Matsuya soba restaurant) is made by hand, and served in broth freshly prepared each day from a base that’s rested for 10 days.
You can read the full article from here.
Does it even worth it ?