It’s been a while, but I’m back on here. I know I keep promising I’ll write more often but money motivates, and having just spent money on another 3 years of hosting and the domain name, I’d better make use of it! It all came around last month when Fatcow.com, my previous hosting company, told [...]
Archive for February, 2009
Japan chooses cheat as baseball ambassador
Posted By Dave on February 28th, 2009
efore I go on with this article, I will say my baseball knowledge is minimal. From what I can gather it is a sport not dissimilar to rounders, where people more often than not on some sort of stimulant or banned substance try to hit a ball out of the ground. Have been to one professional baseball game in my life (LA Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks I believe) which was an experience, but a relatively dull affair. And I’m hardly what you would call an avid baseball viewer don’t like watching it on Japanese TV due to the fact that the TV networks seem to show only the Yomiuri Giants games (as they pay the networks the most money). All that being said, this story did catch my attention and is worth reporting.
Am sure most of you outside Japan doesn’t know this, but the 2nd World Baseball Classic (also known as the WBC) starts in 5 days time with Japan taking on China. This 16-team event will culminate in the final matches on March 21-23rd. Now I don’t really want to go into the competition here because frankly I have absolutely no interest in it. Japan however, does. And yesterday it appointed a guy called Sadaharu Oh (see right) as its special ambassador for Japanese baseball. When I read the name I swore it rang a bell but couldn’t recall when I’d heard of him. A little research and the joys of Wikipedia helped me though. He was the coach who stopped 3 foreign baseball players in Japan from surpassing his record of home runs in a season. I’ll let Wikipedia explain this one…
On three occasions, foreign-born players have challenged Oh’s single-season home run record of 55 and faced Oh-managed teams late in the season. On every single occasion, Oh’s pitchers refused to throw strikes to them.
In 1985, American Randy Bass, playing for the Hanshin Tigers, came into the last game of the season against the Oh-managed Giants with 54 home runs. Bass was intentionally walked four times on four straight pitches each time. Bass reached over the plate on the fifth occasion and batted the ball into the outfield for a single. After the game, Oh denied ordering his pitchers to walk Bass, but Keith Comstock, an American pitcher for the Giants, later stated that an unnamed Giants coach had threatened a fine of $1,000 for every strike that any Giants pitcher threw to Bass. The magazine Takarajima investigated the incident and reported that the Giants front office had likely ordered the team not to allow Bass an opportunity to tie or break Oh’s record. For the most part the Japanese media remained silent on the incident as did league commissioner Takeso Shimoda.
In 2001, American Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes, playing for the Kintetsu Buffaloes, hit 55 home runs with several games left. The Buffaloes played the Oh-managed Fukuoka Hawks on a late weekend series in Fukuoka. Rhodes was intentionally walked during each at-bat. Hawks catcher Kenji Johjima could be seen grinning as he caught the intentional balls. Again, Oh denied any involvement and Hawks battery coach Yoshiharu Wakana stated that the pitchers acted on his orders, saying, “I just didn’t want a foreign player to break Oh’s record.” Rhodes completed the season with 55 home runs. Hawks pitcher Keizaburo Tanoue went on record saying that he wanted to throw strikes to Rhodes and felt bad about the situation.
In 2002, Venezuelan Alex Cabrera hit 55 home runs with five games left in the season and his team played Oh’s Hawks. Oh told his pitchers to throw strikes to Cabrera, but most of them ignored his order and threw balls well away from the plate. After the game, Oh stated, “If you’re going to break the record, you should do it by more than one. Do it by a lot.” In the wake of the most recent incident involving Cabrera, ESPN listed Oh’s single-season home run record as #2 on its list of “The Phoniest Records in Sports.”
Needless to say, none of this will be mentioned in Japan and the appointment of a great player and coach will be praised to high heavens, as Japan shows the world how strong its baseball traditions and teams are. He has been appointed by the Foreign Minister to meet foreign digitories and spread the word about his country’s sport. But would you want the special ambassador for your favourite in your own country to be someone who has bent the rules in order to prevent a foreigner from taking his personal records? Well, would you? Let me know.
Posted in Japan stuff
High school skirt length posters criticised
Posted By Dave on February 28th, 2009
Well after my report on immoral goings on at my place of work this week, this latest news story I spotted seems quite appropriate. In Niigata prefecture in mainland Japan there have been posters put up recently advising schoolgirls to wear longer skirts. A couple of years ago on my old site I wrote about Okinawa holding the mantle for shortest skirts in Japan (with Hokkaido, bizarrely with it being the coldest prefecture in Japan, coming second). But then Niigata came along and stole Okinawa’s thunder, leaving it only with the drunk driving, domestic abuse, and lowest salary titles.
But this plan is drawing some criticism, as Kyodo News reported:
Are short high school uniform skirts in bad taste? Posters urging high school girls to wear longer uniform skirts are causing controversy in Niigata Prefecture.
A group of teachers in charge of student counseling and guidance produced three kinds of posters and delivered them to all high schools in the prefecture in December in an effort to lengthen uniform skirts, which they think are currently too short and “lack good taste.” The teachers are also concerned that students wearing short skirts could become targets for molesters and other crimes.
One of the posters reads, “You can smarten your mind and your skirts if you’re motivated.”
But the response from students has been cool, with many saying that devoting such attention to their skirts makes little sense.
In the 1990s, the combination of miniskirts and ‘‘loose socks’‘—baggy socks worn like leg warmers—became hugely popular among high school girls. Although the fad for loose socks has passed, short uniform skirts are still popular among high school girls.
Many high school girls roll up their skirts at the waist, rolling them down when schools conduct uniform checks. Some school girls resort to sweat pants underneath so they can continue to wear short skirts during the cold winter months.
Hiroshi Uchikawa, the principal of Koshi High School in the city of Niigata, who heads the group of teachers in charge of student guidance, said, “We’d like students to think about the issue through the posters, rather than ordering them to change the length of their skirts. There are some moves to make skirts longer,” he added.
A 16-year-old high school student walking in front of Niigata Station said in reference to the effort to make uniform skirts longer, “It makes little sense. We wear short skirts because everybody does, rather than because they look cute,” she said.
Think this story is worthy of a bit of commentary so let’s see where we can start. First of all, they seem to be making a correlation between motivation and the length of a girl’s skirt. Yes, the women’s revolution is a long way off in Japan. This first comment is a joke though. My school was pretty much the only one i 2005 to adopt the prefecture’s recommendation that schools in Okinawa try to increase the length of school skirts. One of the biggest protesters against this movement and the crackdown on skirts was also one of the most motivated and skilled students I have had the privilege to teach. She researched her arguments and tried presenting them to the senior staff-members at school, who dismissed her before she had even started (hence why she came to me about it). There is absolutely no way you can question her motivation in life, and that has been evident since then.
The teachers being concerned that short skirts can make the girls targets for molesters and other crimes is a valid point, but that isn’t the fault of the girls that they get molested. It’s like the “Well she looked like she wanted it” excuse in a rape defence. If that’s the case then maybe all girls in Japan should be dressed in a burqa so they don’t attract the attentions of others.
The loose socks thing is a strange phenomenon and one that passed in a lot of places i the early 21st century in Japan. Okinawa is always a little slow to catch up though and the fashion is still seen all over the prefecture. Some of the socks they wear can be up to 2m long! Yes, that’s two metres of sockage attached to their leg using “loose sock glue”. The mind boggles. While we’re on the topic of fashion, the sweatpants under skirt thing is something that I have never seen on other countries. In Okinawa, due to the warm weather, the sweatpants are replaced by shorts but it still looks laughable seeing a girl waiting for the bus in a skirt that is about 6-8″ long and then a bright red or blue pair of shorts underneath, going down below her knees.
Final point on fashion rules at Japanese schools, and they do seem very strict in some areas ad lax in others. Students are definitely not allowed to wear any sort of make-up, be seen with any type of jewellery (rings are out, as are even clear plastic earrings used to keep the piercings open) and hair is not allowed to have any sort of colouring whatsoever, but boys’ ties can be tight or not, top shirt buttons undone, and trainers are perfectly acceptable footwear to go with uniform. What you will find most students do is have one pair of trainers for just about their entire school life. When they go to certain rooms in the school they need to take their shoes off. Instead of untying the laces and tying them again, they will just crush the heel of the trainers so they don’t have to spend seconds tying them again. This may be practical in their little world but it does have the minor side-effect of making some of them look like they are homeless!
Last comment does a very good job of summing up a lot of Japanese society in one quote. “We wear short skirts because everybody does, rather than because they look cute.” And that is the thing here. Styles adopted and opinions made because it is what everybody does, rather than because of their individual opinions. Indeed individuality is very much frowned upon in favour of conformity on the whole. It is changing ever so slightly these days, but at a veritable snail’s pace.
No doubt these posters will be stolen from schools and wherever else they are put up, most likely by the same people who are stealing boy’s baseball uniforms (happened last week and culprit was a university student) or women’s underwear (happens every week in most places in Japan). If anyone has a picture of one of these posters, let me know as I would love to add a pic or 2 to this article.
Japanese high school drunken orgy shocker!!!
Posted By Dave on February 25th, 2009
Thought that post might get your attention! Bet the number of spam I get shoots right up after this post too. Want to know more? Well you clicked the link so I’ll assume you do. On Monday classes were going on as normal with nothing exciting or out of place at all. But then in the afternoon I was told that after school there would be a serious emergency meeting due to something that has happened at the school, and all teachers & students should be present. I immediately got quite excited about this as it’s been a good few months since we had an “incident” at the school. Maybe a theft of school property or vandalism? Possibly drugs found on a student during a random search? Well, not quite…
Apparently some of the residents who live close to school have seen students after school who may or may not be smoking, and the have seen cigarette butts in the vicinity of the school. The have also seen kids dropping litter and a beer crate was found not far away from the school. And horror of horrors, some immoral students have been seen… well for want of a better word, kissing!!! These revelations seem to have shaken the school to its core so the kids had a serious dressing down about the effects of drinking, smoking and getting along with members of the opposite sex. I can understand the issue if there was drinking and smoking going on at the school gates, but to complain because a couple of students have been seen kissing is surely goign a little too far.
So here’s hoping that the talk will have done good and that drinking, smoking and kissing will once again only be allowed to take place in the usual establishments: hostess bars.
Tired of walking your dog?
Posted By Dave on February 23rd, 2009
Does taking your dog for a walk everyday file you with doom and gloom? Do you long for another way of getting Fido his daily exercise while 
enjoying the luxury of being in your own vehicle? Well it looks like Daihatsu has a solution.
Combining men’s loves of dogs and cars has often been a tough game of compromise, but now you can attach the dog to the back of your car! As you can see from this picture I found in a Daihatsu car catalogue, it’s a stroke of genius. You get to keep comfortable in air conditioned luxury in your car, and man’s best friend gets exercise as he knows that if he stops or slows down, his carcass is just going to be dragged all the way to the shops. I mean really, what could possibly go wrong?
Honestly though, I’m surprised I’ve not been driving around when I start to see canine entrails on the road. Then when I catch up to the next car in front of me I see the remains of a dog who decided that travelling at 70kph wasn’t really sustainable for a toy poodle for any extended period.
I’ll give it about 3 months until I hear of this happening.
Germany under the Third Reich: A colour photography special (4 of 4)
Posted By Dave on February 22nd, 2009
Here is the fourth and final part of my photo feature on Germany in the 1930s and ’40s under the command of Hitler and the Third Reich. I hope you’ve found the photographs included in these posts as interesting as I have while looking through them. Looking through some of the pictures, you have to wonder whether the photographers had any idea of what they were documenting on film, and how the Third Reich had changed Germany and was changing the world.
Do let me know if you enjoyed this series and if so I’ll try to provide similar posts in the future.
Part 1 of this collection is here.
Part 2 of this collection is here.
Part 3 of this collection is here.
Strange… just as I was about to click to publish this post I hear Japanese nationalistic music and one of the uyoku dantai (right-wing extemist) black vans drives past showing the old flag from pre-WWII.
Posted in General
Germany under the Third Reich: A colour photography special (3 of 4)
Posted By Dave on February 20th, 2009
Time for part 3 of this special feature on photos of Germany under the command of the Third Reich in the 1930s and ’40s. The photos are in chronological order I believe, and you can see the mood darkening as the cultish leadership takes control of the country. Hope you’re finding these shots and a look back into world history as interesting as I am.
Part 1 of this collection is here.
Posted in General
Please use… what?!?!
Posted By Dave on February 20th, 2009
Saw this sign a while back in Hokkaido and for a split second I had a “What the hell… moment”. I’ll let you see the sign and then I’ll explain.
Any guesses what this could. It’s from a hotel cafe of course! It was breakfast at the hotel cafe and they had a self-service buffet. You have to be a little twisted to understand the bad English here but hopefully you can.
More Engrish to come soon!
Posted in Engrish!
