Tag: Japan

Oct 03 2007

Profiles in Literature: Haruki Murakami

Greetings, literature-loving Dharmenians!  Last week we let ourselves be absorbed into the beautiful incomprehensibility of Job, and nearly every commenter had a different take on that crotchety Old Testament god.  This week we’ll zip ahead thousands of years to a writer who’s still churning out novels today – how’s that for a flash forward?

Here’s a situation to consider: it’s the middle of the night in an abandoned temple in the middle of metropolitan Japan, and Colonel Sanders (yes, that Colonel Sanders) is telling you that the fate of the world relies on your flipping over a rock.  There’s nothing underneath the rock, and nothing seems to happen when you move it, but the man from the chicken bucket seems awfully insistent.  What do you do?

Welcome to the wonderful, weird, and occasionally horrifying world of Japan’s most (internationally) popular novelist.

Sep 29 2007

Road Kill and Japanese News

Monday September 24

Fukuda defeats Aso in LDP presidential race
Yasuo Fukuda scored a convincing win in the Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election Sunday but will immediately face a host of problems as the nation’s new leader.
Fukuda received 330 votes in Sunday’s vote while Taro Aso, the party’s secretary-general, received 197 votes.

All LDP Diet members as well as representatives of the 47 party prefectural chapters took part in Sunday’s vote.

In a “Shocking” development to those men from Mars Yasuo Fukuda will be the next Prime Minister of Japan.

Animals become a growing menace on roads
Despite the efforts of highway operators, animals are still entering roads and causing an increasing number of traffic accidents, some with deadly consequences.

Fences have been set up and other measures taken to keep the animals off the streets, but those steps have had limited success.

“It is difficult to prevent all types of animals from entering the roads because their ways of living are different,” said an official at an expressway management office. “Monkeys, for example, can climb over fences.”

Ah! Road Kill Japanese style. They had better adapt West Virginia’s Road Kill Laws “QUICK”

Sep 25 2007

What Did You Expect?

That’s the question one must ask concerning certain events and individuals when one considers past actions and statements.

Sep 22 2007

Rocks, Alan Greenspan and the News From Japan

This is the first in what will be a weekly look at news from Japan and occasionally Korea. One thing you’ll discover your not the only ones with strange people, weird events and idiot politicians

Tuesday September 18

He may be the underdog in the race to become prime minister, but with his love of comic books and streetwise talk of pop culture, Taro Aso has plenty of support among Japan’s disillusioned youth.
“Aso understands the youth culture,” said 16-year-old Riku Shimoda, one of those who turned out to hear the two candidates vying to replace Shinzo Abe stump for votes in the neon-infested, teeny-bopper haven of Shibuya.

If one were watch the usual campaign rally in Japan 85% of those attending are middle aged or older. So its unusual for a candidate to attract any interest from the younger generation.

WASHINGTON – Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his new book published Monday, blames the Japanese government for causing a decade-long economic quagmire that followed the burst of an economic bubble in the early 1990s. In “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” he says Tokyo’s reluctance to take bold action to resolve the bad-loan problems at Japanese banks, such as liquidating the assets of doomed banks, was more for “cultural” reasons than “economic” ones.

I know many people admire Alan Greenspan. However anyone with a rock rolling around inside their head could have told you that the economic malaise was the fault of Japanese government policy.

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