Why Not

Mom, You Were Right

Recently eaten: chicken cordon bleu
Recent annoyance: flurries, okay, but where's my blizzard?

I am certain that this is my Mom's worst nightmare. between leaving the stove on and leaving the door unlocked, she is probably tearing her hair out right now. On a somewhat related note, what is with the photo they posted with this article? They couldn't find one generic photo of a fire in Japan? They had to use the one of a car bomb?

Fire station burns after cooking mishap (via YahooNews)
A blaze broke out at a fire station in Japan this week after a firefighter left a cooking stove burning as crew members left the station to respond to emergency calls.

Most of the duty staffers were out on a call when their colleague, alone at the station and cooking dinner for the crew, was himself called out.

In his haste to respond to the call, he forgot to turn the stove off, said Seiji Hori, a Nagoya City Fire Department official. Ten fire trucks from other stations put out the fire, Hori added.

At Least My Rented Mom Loves Me

Recently eaten: meatless lasagna Recent annoyance: everything seems to be going haywire in advance of the Inauguration crowds (water main breaks, traffic, suspicious vehicles etc.)

This turns my deep-seated fear that my parents have been secretly paying my friends for years on its head. What if I was paying my own friends to hang out with me and laugh at my stupid jokes? Isn't this the premise of many a teen movie where the handsome jock gets paid or accepts a bet to date the dorky girl?

And then there's this guy at Rent-a-pal.

Rent-a-friend in Japan (via BBC News)
In Japan, now back in recession, the economic situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse in recent months. But the Japanese still like to use their money to have fun, as Duncan Bartlett has been finding out.

Lola - or Rora - to give her a slightly more Japanese pronunciation - is a beauty and she knows it.

Customers pay by the hour for her company. Usually they just want to stroke her, but as a special treat for favoured clients, she will lie back in a chair, close her eyes and pose for photographs.

Lola is a Persian cat who works at the Ja La La Cafe in Tokyo's bustling Akihabara district. It is one of a growing number of Cat Cafes in the city which provide visitors with short but intimate encounters with professional pets.

Don't Let the Japanese Jinx the Election

Recently eaten: beef stew
Recent annoyance: pushups

Seriously, Japanese people, do not jinx this. Everyone know that the night before a possible snow day, you have to do your homework. If you don't, you'll definitely have to go to class.

Japan's Obama town sets to party for U.S. namesake (Yahoo)
Dancing, singing and playing the guitar, residents in the sleepy Japanese fishing port of Obama are readying to party for Barack Obama before Tuesday's U.S. presidential election.

Around 50 men, women and children wearing "I Love Obama" T-shirts practiced hula dancing over the weekend for the Honolulu-born Democratic candidate, hoping he will win the vote and one day visit the town as U.S. President.

Too Fast, Too Simian

Recently eaten: crispy pork boudin balls
Recent annoyance: the people who walk their dogs outside my window at midnight every night

Classic story: Japanese chimp learn to ride a segway. Rides like the Devil.

Calling Dr. Zaius

Recently eaten: turkey sandwich
Recent annoyance: boring Friday

This is exactly the kind of stuff that will get us in trouble when the monkeys and apes take over the planet.

No business like monkey business at Japan tavern (Reuters)
Good help proving hard to find? A Japanese tavern is relying on monkey business to keep customers happy.

The Kayabukiya tavern, a traditional "sake house" north of Tokyo employs a pair of Japanese macaque called Yat-chan and Fuku-chan to serve patrons.

The younger of the two monkeys, Fuku-chan, hands out customers a hot towel to clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan.

What Are You Gonna Do Now, Godzilla?

Recently eaten: back on the oatmeal, bleh
Recent annoyance: I didn't even know I had a gland in the middle of my neck!

This guy may be older than the earth, but "old man strength" has long been revered in Asian culture. It's always the bearded old master who kicks a-- all over the place. Enjoy this fantastic video about Japan's new prime minister. Too bad that with great old man strength also comes great senility.

Japan's badass new prime minister (BoingBoing)

Crime of the Century

Recently eaten: egg white and turkey breakfast burrito
Recent annoyance: where did the plague of mosquitoes come from?

Mayberry was a fictitious place. a sleepy little town where bumbling police wouldn't add up to dead bodies or the complete takeover of organized crime syndicates. No, it kind of resembled another place called Japan. A place where plugging your rice cooker into someone else's outlet gets you a face burning with shame and a funny little cartoon re-enactment.

Electricity Theft in Japan (Japan Probe via BoingBoing)

Melon-choly

Recently eaten: dry roasted almonds
Recent annoyance: dripping ceiling

My mom used to tell me that if I swallowed the seeds from a watermelon, a watermelon plant would grow out the top of my head. This doesn't have anything to do with the melon story below, just that my mom used to tell me terrifying stories.

Japanese melon sells for more than $6,000 (CNN)
There's nothing better than a sweet, juicy watermelon on a hot summer's day, right?

A marine products dealer in Japan plunked down a record $6,125 for this melon.

But what if you had to pay six grand for it?

A marine products dealer in Japan plunked down a record $6,125 (¥650,000) Friday for a black Densuke watermelon -- grown only on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

Premium melons regularly go for eye-popping amounts there. Only three years ago, someone shelled out about $3,000 for one.

The one that sold Friday had dark green skin -- nearly black -- making it look more like a bowling ball than a fruit.

The nearly 18-pound (8 kg) watermelon, grown only on Hokkaido, was one of 68 sold as part of the season's initial harvest this year and is one of only a few thousand available each year.

As for the buyer, he said he wanted to support local agriculture, according to an official with a local cooperative.

This Ain't Your R, Kelly Video

Recently eaten: asiago bagel
Recent annoyance: bums who pee on the bus

This "in-the-closet" story refers neither to LGBTQ issues or the latest installment of R. Kelly's music video hip-hopera. We're talking about full-on gremlins in your closet...stealing your food...and living undetected. I am kind of okay with this lady living up in my closet if she picks up around the house while I am gone.

Japanese woman caught living in man's closet (Yahoo News)
A homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Police found the 58-year-old woman Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man's closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said Friday.

The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months.

One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home Thursday after he had left, and he called police believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed.

"We searched the house ... checking everywhere someone could possibly hide," Itakura said. "When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side."

The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean."

"Closets, lies and videotape"

A Fitting End

Recently eaten: stir fry
Recent annoyance: lockjaw

I know most people have some grand idea of what they're going to put on their tombstone (see Royal Tenenbaum's epitaph), but I kind of like this macabre little Hello Kitty. It says I am dead, but also was very cute in life.

Hello Kitty tombstones in Japan

I Can Smell Your Fear

Recently eaten: turkey burger with red pepper relish
Recent annoyance: if it's so bad for me, why does it taste so good?

What's next? A fire alarm that slaps you in the face, pours a bucket of cold water on you, and gives you a wet willy?

Horseradish fire alarm
A new type of fire alarm in Japan has been developed using the pungent smell of horseradish.

The device is drawing attention as a new way to warn people with hearing disabilities.

Medical equipment manufacturers have developed a technology to extract components of the strong odor of horseradish, seal them inside a can and spray them out.

Shiga University of Medical Science Hospital cooperated with the makers and carried out experiments to see if the horseradish smell can wake up people from a deep sleep.

Fourteen people, including those with hearing disabilities, took part in the experiments.

In the experiment, 13 out of the 14 subjects woke up in less than two minutes after the smell reached their noses.

The people with hearing disabilities were particularly quick to wake up, with one person emerging from sleep in just 10 seconds.

Assistant professor Makoto Imai at Shiga University of Medical Science says the experiment was useful to ensure that the new device allows those with hearing disabilities to escape during an emergency.

The makers intend to put the fire alarm on the market in two years.

In The Bag

Recently eaten: banana bread pudding
Recent annoyance: typhoid marys at work who spread their sickness around

Ah, that bundle of joy! No, I don't mean the baby, I mean the rice. Only the cray6 Japanese could come up with a such a bizarre birth announcement. Does the rice come with a prize baby inside? Is the rice made of shredded baby?

All That and a Bag of Rice

Running of the Bullsh*tters

Recently eaten: arepa de carne
Recent annoyance: HSV

I love these blind psychological experiments. Here, some crazy Japanese tv show test to see if the world champion competitive walker will run for his life.

Lazy Sunday

Recently eaten: chawanmushi lunch special (kind of like mushroom jello)
Recent annoyance: Comcast billing me for cable they never installed

Is it just me or are people getting lazier and lazier these days? First there was that guy in Germany who wanted to be eaten by a cannibal, now people in Japan can't even kill themselves. This trend of laziness is getting worse than ever. As if the Japanese aren't replacing us with life-like robots anyway.

Japan's cyber-suicide trend takes bizarre twist
Police in Japan have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a woman who had paid him to kill her after contacting him through the internet.

Kazunari Saito allegedly fed a large quantity of sleeping pills to his victim, Sayaka Nishizawa, before suffocating her at her apartment in April, local media said.

Nishizawa, 21, had contacted her killer days earlier via his mobile phone website, which he had set up to sell sleeping pills to people who were contemplating suicide.

But in a bizarre variation on Japan's cyber-suicide trend, Nishizawa reportedly paid Mr Saito 200,000 yen to kill her, imploring him to stay with her until he was certain she was dead.

Police initially attributed her death to suicide, but launched a criminal investigation after noticing that her keys and mobile phone were missing. They tracked Mr Saito down after examining Nishizawa's email correspondence.

Reports said the woman had sent a message to Mr Saito's website in early April, saying: "I want to die. How can I die?"

Mr Saito, an electrician, replied: "I will give you lots of sleeping pills. I will help you."

Mr Saito, 33, allegedly visited her apartment in Kawasaki, near Tokyo, in mid-April and fed her 20 to 30 sleeping pills before suffocating her with a plastic bag. Her body was discovered by her father four days later. It was not immediately clear why Nishizawa had wanted to die.

Mr Saito confessed to the killing while being questioned about illegally supplying sleeping pills to other visitors to his website.

"She asked me to do it," he was quoted as saying. "She asked me to watch over her until the end, so I killed her."

He set up the website in June 2006 and continued to post messages up to 10 days before his arrest. He offered to "do anything" for money, including murder and drug-assisted suicide, and asked users to email him on his mobile phone.

Websites aimed at people contemplating suicide first appeared in Japan about five years ago. Although people who kill themselves together after meeting online account for a tiny proportion of the 30,000 Japanese who commit suicide every year, police are disturbed by the apparent appeal of the websites to young people and women.

In March last year, the bodies of nine people "most of who were in their 20s" were found in two suspected group suicides in the space of a week.

Finally, A Teacher That Gets Results

Recently eaten: brown rice, beef stir fry
Recent annoyance: unwieldy hormones

This is what's wrong with America today. If I threw a chair, and a tiny one at that. at one kid, do you think they would name me teacher of the year? Heck no. I'd be thrown into high security prison before that kid lost another baby tooth. I'm moving to Japan.

Chair throwing coach named 'super teacher'
A Japanese teacher who threw a chair at his students was named "super teacher" by the local board of education despite having been reprimanded several times for using corporal punishment, a news agency said on Saturday.

The 52-year-old high-school teacher in Kyoto has been awarded the title every year since 2005 in spite of a history of aggression in the classroom because his strict teaching methods improved his students' performance.

He was punished three times between 1997 and 2001 for physically attacking students, including throwing a chair at the volleyball team he was coaching, and was again accused of corporal punishment this year, Kyodo news agency said.

The teacher, who was not identified in the news agency report, resigned on Friday, having been on medical leave since the latest accusation. He was selected as a role model due to his "outstanding achievement in leading the volleyball team", Kyodo said, citing board officials.

Japan's school system has been at the centre of heated political debate for some time. Some politicians have demanded stricter discipline at Japanese schools, including harsher forms of punishment, to improve overall standards.

But others say that school children are already under too much pressure due to a heavy workload, a strict exam system and frequent cases of bullying.

Welcome to the Crab Rock

Recently eaten: linguine with shrimp and roasted tomatoes
Recent annoyance: sweating right out of the shower

If crabs were eating your island home away, maybe you should consider a time share somewhere else.

Crustaceans eating away island of Hiroshima
An island off the coast of Higashihiroshima is crumbling away due to countless crustaceans that have made holes in its rocks and caused its highest peak to completely disappear.

The rocky Hoboro Island has become a breeding ground for huge numbers of creatures known in Japanese as nanatsuba-kotsubumushi, a type of isopod. The surging number of insects has caught the attention of local researchers.

"It's rare, even on a global scale, to hear of biological erosion that has proceeded on such a large scale and at such a rapid pace as to alter the landscape of an island," said Yuji Okimura, an emeritus professor at Hiroshima University.

According to land records of Hoboro Island compiled in 1928, the island was 120 meters long, and its highest point stood 21.9 meters above sea level. In a photo taken between about 1955 and 1965, the island had two rocky peaks, and vegetation was growing on the highest of the peaks.

Now, however, the highest peak has almost completely vanished, leaving only one rocky protrusion about 6 meters high. Because of this, most of the island is submerged at full tide.

Local residents had said the island was getting smaller every time a typhoon passed through. Last year, Okimura and other researchers conducted an investigation of the island. They found countless nanatsuba-kotsubumushi bugs, which were making many holes in the rock as they built nesting areas. The island is formed from tuff, a type of rock that consists of volcanic ash, and the holes that the crustaceans have made have left the island exposed, allowing the sea to wash away the rock, researchers found.

The same phenomenon has not been observed at other nearby islands.

"I guess the nature of the terrain on Hoboro Island is soft, which makes it easy to dig holes, and on top of that there is an abundance of food for nanatsu-kotsubumushi," Okimura said.

They're Coming to America?

Recently eaten: lentil soup, rice
Recent annoyance: a watch band that needs a hole between holes because it doesn't fit quite right

Wow, we have got to get ourselves to THIS America! Looks better than DisneyWorld

What's A Robster Craw?

Recently eaten: rosemary chicken sandwich
Recent annoyance: the one fruitfly that has made it into my office

Here's some old-time family fun! Catch aa live lobster and somehow get it home and into that steaming pot of boiling water without getting the business end of those pinchers.

Vending machine game for winning live lobsters

Un-break My Heart

Recently eaten: salmon, artichokes
Recent annoyance: people in grocery stores who cannot drive their carts properly

What kind of competition is this? I mean, it's not exactly hard to make a little baby cry especially if you look big enough to eat one of them. Is sumo wrestling so commercialized that instead of actually competing in the sport itself, they have taken to making little babies cry? Well, I wholeheartedly support this new direction that the sport is taking.

Sumo wrestlers making babies cry

"If I had to guess, I'd say female."