Global Voices Online

“Hatta Yoichi” (八田與一) is a Japanese animated film about a Japanese engineer who was responsible for the development of irrigation systems in southern Taiwan. Sponge Bear comments on an article discussing how Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou has used the release of the movie to improve relations between Taiwan and Japan.

Neojaponisme has a blog post about the protocol for Japanese record labels to pull their artists' CDs from stores when they are arrested on drug charges or for any other anti-social acts.

Lisa Katayama at Tokyo Mango brings our attention to a new Japanese magazine for people living with facial scars, called “My Face”: “The magazine will include interviews, medical information, and advice on how to fight discrimination at work and at school for the estimated one million people in Japan who suffer from facial injuries or deformities.“

Pink Tentacle has translated into English all of the “Top 60 Japanese words/phrases of 2009″, released by publisher Jiyu Kokuminsha: Included are plenty of references to Japan’s recent political shake-up, the ailing economy, and the blurring of traditional gender roles.

Anpontan's post about the word “obamu” (オバむ) , a Japanese word play that's a verb form of “Obama”, was picked up by James Fallows at the Atlantic and is making its way across the blogosphere, although very few Japanese people actually seem to have heard of the word, as Daniel Krieger at cnngo reports.

Ingmar, at Demotix, uploaded some pictures he took on Friday, when President Obama arrived to Tokyo to meet the Emperor and PM Hatoyama. The photos show the arrival of Obama at Suntory Hall.

The Kirai blog describes what happened at his company after an employee caught a case of H1N1: “Notice that from his perspective, he is NOT a victim, he is the culprit of having caused so much trouble to the company: because he couldn’t work for one week and we had to wear a mask and worry about our health.“

Ed Jacob posted an English translation of an article “about how there was pretty much no garbage in Japan’s Edo Period because almost everything got recycled“.

Teddy Jimbo has posted both English and Japanese videos of U.S. President Obama's speech on Asian policies, given in Tokyo today.