Stories about Japanese from January, 2008
Japan: Videotape from 1995 Monju reactor leak
The infamous Monju fast-breeder reactor leak of 1995, an accident that long ago earned itself a place in the history of nuclear power in Japan, has returned one more time to haunt government and industry officials with images they had hoped they would never see again. More than ten years after the original incident, a never-before-seen video has finally come out, released on YouTube by a group called News for the People in Japan (NPJ) and also posted by blogger tokyodo-2005 at his blog.
Japan: Insider trading at public broadcaster NHK (Part 1)
Japan's public broadcaster NHK faces yet another controversy, with revelations of insider trading by three NHK employees on shares of Kappa Create Company. This first part of a two-part series features a translation of two very popular posts by blogger and economist Ikeda Nobuo, once an employee of NHK, who provides details about the 20-year-old pre-broadcast reporting system that led to the news leak.
Japan: Illegal or Harmful?
Blogger Sakiyama Nobuo, a social activist who has covered the area of web censorship in Japan for many years, early last week responded to a conversation initiated by fellow blogger Minakata Tsukasa on the topic of the regulation of so-called "harmful" websites. The blog entry provides a useful overview of the current state of legal controls on Internet content in Japan, something which may come in handy in the future.
Japan: The Whistle of the Middle East
The sport of handball is receiving the kind of attention from the media and general public it never has before in Japan, as well as in Korea. The dispute came to light when Korea and Japan together appealed to the International Handball Federation for replay of the Olympics qualifiers of...
World's Eyes on Obama
As his ratings continue to slip in the primaries, US presidential hopeful Barack Obama's popularity is on the rise among bloggers around the world. Global Voices Online editors and contributors joined hands to bring us the reactions of bloggers from Japan, Haiti, Republic of Macedonia, Pakistan, India, Ukraine, Singapore and Chile in this article.
Japan: Turn off the lights
Since their introduction in the 1970s, convenience stores, popularly called konbini, have developed into a prominent feature of the Japanese landscape. Now the number has grown to about 45,000 stores, 94 per cent of which are running 24-7, offering everything from food, to beverages, to snacks, to ATMs, to ticketing and utility bill payments, you name it.
Japan: A new car? No thanks.
Word on the street is that the Japanese economy isn't doing too well, with sluggish car sales apparently a major culprit. Who is to blame? Some say the kids, who have apparently lost the urge for material things. Whatever the reason, Japanese bloggers didn't seem terribly surprised by the news.
Japan: Changing New Year Celebrations
New Year's Day is the most important holiday for many people in Japan, where anything "first of the year" bears a special value: first day of the year, first sunrise, first dream, first sales...
Japan: The other side of the chasm
From the perspective of global communication, one may say that the world today is divided into two groups: those who are connected to the Internet and those who are not. The "chasm" between these two worlds was the topic of a post last week at the Uncategorizable Blog, where the question was posed: How does the world of Internet users look to someone who is not connected? In a post entitled "The other side of the chasm," blogger essa draws on the relationship between uni- and multicellular life, and the relationship between humans and their dogs, to suggest a possible answer.
