Probably cheering himself up by stabbing chickens.

Futenma is a US military base in Okinawa. There was an agreement back in 2006 between the US and Japanese governments. At this time, the majority party in the Japanese government was the Liberal Democratic Party (自民党). Since last year, when the Democratic Party of Japan (民主党) became the majority party, this agreement has been in shaky waters, the DPJ, Okinawans, and many other Japanese citizens didn’t really agree with the plan to keep the base on Okinawa and (with this in mind) the DPJ informed the US government that it wanted to renegotiate the already signed agreement. While the US gov’t was annoyed since this type of thing usually doesn’t happen, anywhere, I get the feeling that hardly anyone in America even knows about this.

Recently, the Japanese government (headed by Hatoyama) agreed to keep the recolcation within Okinawa, to the ire of both DPJ members and Okinawans. Since this time members of his party have been calling for the resignation of Hatoyama, which is finally here. Although, like many recent PMs, there have been some small scandals but I liked Hatoyama as a PM much more than some of the recent ones. One of his biggest issues, I feel, is that he just wouldn’t get rid of the scummy meatbag liked by very few, Ichiro Ozawa. While I don’t really know the details as to why they finally decided to keep things the way they are, I have a feeling that pressure by both the US and Ozawa could have been the cause. I would say the best thing about this resignation is that Ozawa has also resigned; may he constantly have kidney stones.

Hopefully nexty has a better fashion sense.

Foreigner stabbed to death at apartment, Filipino man faces arrest

TSU, Mie — A foreign man was stabbed to death at an apartment in Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, law enforcers said. They are seeking an arrest warrant for a Filipino man in custody.

According to police, at around 7:50 p.m. on Sunday, a foreign-looking man came to a police box in Suzuka city, Mie Prefecture, saying there had been a fight in the apartment next to his and a man was lying in the corridor outside.

Police went to the apartment and found a man in his 40s to 50s lying in the corridor with stab wounds to his left abdomen and chest. The wounded man, also a foreigner, was taken to the hospital but confirmed dead. No weapon was found.

Investigative sources say that prefectural police questioned a Filipino man in his 50s who lived in the apartment building and had fled but was found nearby, and are now seeking a warrant for his arrest.

According to investigators and local residents, the victim was not a resident of the apartment complex, but was an acquaintance of the man now in police custody. From around 10 a.m. on the day of the murder, several foreigners had apparently gathered in the room to drink, and at around 7:30 p.m., when a neighbor who had heard quarreling stepped out into the hallway, the victim was found lying on the ground. An autopsy is being performed to determine the exact cause of death.

The apartment, about 1.5 kilometers southeast of Hiratacho station on the Kintetsu Suzuka line, is located near an auto-related factory. According to a former resident of the apartment building, some 80 percent of its residents were foreigners.

(Mainichi Japan) April 19, 2010

So what happened?

It’s a me, Italian stereotype.

Sumo wrestling is very Japanese. Along with other very Japanese things (kendo, judo, tea ceremony, etc.) sumo has rules and etiquette that should be followed. Some of these rules seem to be inconsequential (winning celebration rituals, how to accept prize money) and yet if you break them you will still be penalized. In the world of Sumo, when a wrestler becomes a grand champion (yokozuna) there is another set of responsibilities that they should follow. This can cause problems with your naked career if you sometimes feel punchy and other people are in your vicinity.

Asashoryu, one of the best sumo wrestlers, has had a great career filled with a flurry of incidents. Besides breaking some of the rules mentioned above, there was a big lawsuit alleging that he paid other wrestlers so that he could get a perfect victory and an incident where he faked injury. While it’s unknown if he actually paid off people (I say he didn’t), he definitely overstated his injuries since he was seen playing soccer.

A picture from sumo’s short-lived, but hilarious, breakdance competition.

There are people saying that people have been unusually harsh towards Asashoryu because he is from Mongolia. Like every country, there are old cranky people that hate others because they’re different (and sumo fans are older on average), but this doesn’t factor in to anything said by the Sumo Association or any new programs. The reason why they’ve been so harsh are easy to understand given correct context; sumo is waning in popularity, there have been other scandals with sumo recently, and the rules for sumo and yokozuna are many and the punishments are strict. These issues cause more and harsher punishments to try and keep order in fat man world; the situation is further exacerbated by the fact that Asashoryu has broken lots of little rules and some big ones. Given all this, I would say that even though some of the punishments have been more severe than they should have been, it’s easy to understand the reasoning behind them.

It’s sad that he’s had to leave the ring and start wearing normal clothes again, but if he wanted to stop having episodes that lead to embarrassment of himself he needed to quit. Now he can do all the things that he did before without repercussions. Well, maybe except for the breaking the nose thing (this is the one that made him quit).

Even though Japan is much better planned for earthquakes there was lots of preventable damage that occurred during the Kobe earthquake. You would have thought that the even would have caused people to make some obvious changes (bury power lines), but unfortunately that hasn’t happened. They have made transportation routes safer, but for some reason they refuse to acknowledge the glaring defect.

For Haiti, Kobe, and everywhere else that has been hit by an earthquake in January let’s shake our tables in remembrance.

Is Sean Hannity a cross-dressing hooker in Thailand? Why won’t he tell us?

Fortunately, this isn’t the only True American™ that is outraged by this. Genuine Patriots like Bill Brasky Bennett also disagrees. Of course, there are people on youtube who are also angered that Obama would even try to respect any other culture. How dare he? Doesn’t he know that we are better than anyone else and that we will stay that way for all time? This is exactly why it’s important to have a whi, er Republican in office.

By the way, Hannity isn’t correct when he said that a newspaper in Japan refused to show the picture because they were embarrassed. However, there was probably no need for me to say that as you most likely knew that (I hope you don’t expect truth from someone like him).

You can read the story and comments at Japan Today or you can just read below if you don’t feel like clicking.

Photos of U.S. President Barack Obama bowing to Japan’s emperor have incensed critics in Washington, who said the U.S. leader should stand tall when representing America overseas.

Obama on Monday was in China, having wrapped up the Japan leg of his Asia trip two days earlier. But Washington’s punditocracy was still weighing whether or not the U.S. president had disgraced his country two days earlier by having taken a deep bow at the waist while meeting Japan’s Emperor Akihito.

Political talk shows have played and replayed the moment from the second day of Obama’s week-long Asia tour, which set the blogosphere on fire and chat show tongues wagging.

“I don’t know why President Obama thought that was appropriate. Maybe he thought it would play well in Japan. But it’s not appropriate for an American president to bow to a foreign one,” said conservative pundit William Kristol speaking on the Fox News Sunday program, adding that the gesture bespoke a United States that has become weak and overly-deferential under Obama.

Another conservative voice, Bill Bennett, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program: “It’s ugly. I don’t want to see it.”

“We don’t defer to emperors. We don’t defer to kings or emperors. The president of the United States—this coupled with so many apologies from the United States—is just another thing,” said Bennett.

Some conservative critics juxtaposed the image of Obama with one of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who greeted the emperor in 2007 with a firm handshake but no bow.

“I’ll bet if you look at pictures of world leaders over 20 years meeting the emperor in Japan, they don’t bow,” Kristol said.

Some said the gesture was particularly grating coming after Obama’s bow to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah at a G20 meeting in April.

The U.S. president’s Asia trip comes just over a year after he won election to the White House, and is designed to shore up U.S. power in a region increasingly dominated by rising giant China.

But back home, Obama’s bow in Japan seems to have grabbed much of the attention being paid to the trip.

The gesture appears to have touched a particularly raw nerve among Obama critics who said the president has hastened America’s decline as a world superpower by being too apologetic and too deferential in his dealings with other world leaders.

While most of the commentary about the bow in Japan was decidedly negative, some political observers, like longtime Democratic activist Donna Brazile, came to the president’s defense.

“I think it’s a gesture of kindness,” she told CNN, adding that the bow appeared intended to show “goodwill between two nations that respect each other.”

Meanwhile, an unnamed, senior Obama administration official told the Politico.com news site that the president had simply been observing protocol.

“I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base,” the official told Politico.

“I don’t think anybody who was in Japan—who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnessed his bilateral meetings there—would say anything other than that he enhanced both the position and the status of the U.S., relative to Japan,” Politico wrote.

“It was a good, positive visit at an important time, because there’s a lot going on in Japan.”

Article below.

ICHIHASHI ARRESTED BY POLICE IN OSAKA
Tuesday 10th November, 09:10 PM JST

OSAKA —
Police on Tuesday night arrested the suspect in the 2007 murder of a British woman after fingerprints confirmed he is Tatsuya Ichihashi, a 30-year-old fugitive wanted in the case.

Ichihashi, who had altered his appearance through cosmetic surgery, was taken to Suminoe police station. He is currently only wanted on a technical charge of abandoning the body of language school teacher Lindsay Hawker, who was 22 at the time of her death, at his apartment. Chiba prefectural police said they will upgrade the charge to murder.

Ichihashi was taken into custody on the second floor of Nanko ferry terminal after police received a phone call at 6:44 p.m. from another passenger at the terminal saying that a man resembling Ichihashi was sitting by himself. Two police officers arrived at first and approached Ichihashi who was wearing a gray jacket, black cap and sunglasses. Two other officers arrived shortly after.

Witnesses told NHK that Ichihashi remained calm and could be heard telling the police his name. He had been reportedly waiting to board a ferry for Okinawa after coming from Kobe earlier in the day.

Ichihashi was transported from Shin-Osaka station to Chiba by bullet train later Tuesday night.

NHK also aired comments from Ichihashi’s parents. His father said they were relieved to hear that their son had been taken into custody. They expressed sorrow for the Hawker family and urged their son to explain clearly what he did.

Meanwhile, Hawker’s father Bill told TBS in a telephone interview on Tuesday night that his nightmare is finally over. “I very much look forward to seeing Ichihashi across a courtroom, so I can look him in the face,” Hawker said.

The case has attracted widespread public attention as Ichihashi, who media reports once suggested had killed himself, was found alive and with a new look after undergoing plastic surgery on several occasions.

Ichihashi escaped from police officers when they called at his apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, in March 2007 and then found Hawker’s body inside a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony. The police later distributed fliers and offered a 10 million yen reward for information leading to his whereabouts.

Hawker’s family also visited Japan to ask for help in resolving the case, but no significant progress had been made over the last two and a half years.

The case took a sudden turn when Ichihashi showed up at a clinic in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, in late October for another round of plastic surgery. The police soon released a photograph of his post-surgery face with double-fold eyelids instead of single, a higher nose bridge and thinner lips, and it was widely displayed.

It led to numerous further discoveries about him, including his attempt to receive another plastic surgery operation in Fukuoka Prefecture. He was also found to have lived and worked at a construction company in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, for over a year up until this October.

By the way

Builder James Anthony Dean-Willcocks charged held over race-hate killing

By Lisa Davies and Gemma Jones From: The Daily Telegraph Sun Oct 11 23:53:46 EST 2009

A BUILDER celebrating his 23rd birthday allegedly bashed an elderly man to death in a drunken race-hate crime.

James Anthony Dean-Willcocks, of Illawong, was yesterday charged with the murder of Magno Alvarado, 67.

Residents of Elouera Rd, Cronulla, told police of being woken about 5.30am on Saturday by a male yelling: “F … off back to Japan”.

According to a statement tendered by police to Parramatta Bail Court, a man was heard to cry: “Help, help”.

One witness said he went to his balcony and allegedly saw a man “fling the victim on to the footpath, pick up the victim, shake him and throw him to the ground”.

The accused then allegedly punched Mr Alvarado in the head and body as many as 10 times.

Another witness said he saw the victim thrown to the road, and Dean-Willcocks on top of him, punching him.

Police will allege Dean-Willcocks was heard yelling “Ya Jap”.

Another described seeing Mr Alvarado tackled, “body-slammed” and punched many times.

One witness told police he yelled at Dean-Willcocks to stop and asked what he was doing.

“Mate, he’s Japanese and he deserves it,” the accused allegedly answered.

It is understood Mr Alvarado was Filipino.

Stunned onlookers prevented Dean-Willcocks leaving the scene until police arrived. Mr Alvarado was taken to hospital but died about 2.30pm on Saturday.

After Dean-Willcocks – wearing no shoes, and only one sock – was arrested, police noted he was intoxicated.

He has since told police he has “no recollection” of the incident and his last memory was “some time in the early hours of the morning” while he was at the Mercure Hotel in the city.

Dean-Willcocks said he did not know how he got to Cronulla.

He made no application for bail and will appear in Central Local Court tomorrow.

I’m not saying that Indonesians are dumb, but when religion gets involved people can easily act retarded or dangerous.

Anyways, if you would like to know more about her then you might want to use your good friend Google. The full article is below.

Japanese porn star stirs controversy in Indonesia over comedy film
JAKARTA —
A plan to make an Indonesian teenage comedy film starring Japanese porn star Maria Ozawa has stirred controversy in the world’s most populous Muslim country, drawing a mixed reaction ranging from street protests to messages of support posted by her many fans on the Internet.

Maxima Pictures, a Jakarta-based film company, said the ongoing controversy ‘‘has scared’’ Ozawa, who had been scheduled to arrive here Wednesday for several weeks to film a comedy film titled ‘‘Kidnapping Miyabi.’’

Ozawa is well-known in Indonesia as ‘‘Miyabi,’’ a name she used early in her career as a Japanese adult video actress.

‘‘Ozawa is so worried over the controversy. We have already announced that we will put her in a purely comedy teenage movie, without any sex scenes at all,’’ said Yoen K, an executive producer at Maxima Pictures.

Yoen said he just returned from Japan to renegotiate with Ozawa’s management in light of the current unfavorable developments that will possibly cause a delay in filming.

‘‘But we still want to release the film on Dec 31 so it will be a Happy New Year movie,’’ he said, adding that he did not want to disclose details of the new filming schedule for fear of triggering further opposition from some elements of the public.

Ozawa’s agent in Tokyo said that negotiations with Maxima Pictures are still underway and they will publicly announce their decision whether to proceed with the plan or not as soon as possible.

Metro TV on Monday aired footage of a protest against Ozawa held by dozens of students of an Islamic boarding school belonging to the largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama in the central Java town of Kudus.

Gossip shows on various television channels have covered the pros and cons surrounding the plan to make the film, which was written by a popular teenage comedy writer Radika Ditya.

Last Friday, under tight security involving the deployment of antiriot police, more than 100 members of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) staged a noisy protest in front of the office of the film company, which later accepted six representatives of the militant group for a dialogue.

‘‘Reject the arrival of Miyabi, the destroyer of our nation’s morality,’’ read a large banner carried by the protesters.

However, Minister of Religious Affairs Maftuh Basyuni said Indonesia could not bar somebody who wishes to come to the country.

‘‘As long as she is not here for porn movie, it is alright. The most important thing is that it will be not against the law,’’ he was quoted by the leading online media portal Detikcom as saying.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI), a council of Indonesian Islamic clerics from across Indonesia, urged the film company to cancel its plan.

‘‘If someday we approve the film, many teenagers will see it. Then after that, they will idolize her and we are worried that they will eventually seek out her porn films,’’ Amidhan of MUI was quoted as saying by Detikcom.

Minister of Woman’s Affairs Muthia Hatta and Minister of Communication and Information Muhammad Nuh have also voiced their opposition, with Nuh saying, ‘‘Creativity is not supposed to ignore social sensitivity.’’

The controversy has led Ozawa’s fans to rush to her support through Internet postings, with some male commentators dismissing those opposed to the Japanese porn star’s visit as being ‘‘hypocrites,’’ suggesting that they actually like her movies but don’t want to admit it.

The controversy has also boosted sales of pirated DVD movies featuring Ozawa in Jakarta’s Glodok market where they are prominently displayed to attract consumers, many of whom come to buy the illegal DVDs after seeing news coverage of the Ozawa controversy on TV.

‘‘Kidnapping Miyabi’’ would feature a plot in which Ozawa as a Japanese actress will be ‘‘accidentally kidnapped’’ by three Indonesian teenagers upon arrival at Jakarta’s airport after being chased by hundreds of fans. The story would end up with her being stranded in the city and opening up a lingerie shop there.

Another producer of Maxima Pictures, Odi Mulya Hidayat, said his company prefers Ozawa to other Indonesian or Japanese actresses to attract more audiences.

Citing an Internet survey, Odi said Ozawa has ranked at the top of the list of most ‘‘Googled’’ celebrity names in Indonesia in the recent years, defeating Pamela Anderson, who comes in second.

Born in Hokkaido on Jan 8, 1986, to a Japanese mother and a French-Canadian father, Ozawa started her adult film career in 2005 and has gained popularity not only in Japan but overseas.

Besides adult videos, she appeared in 2007 in the popular Japanese TV drama ‘‘Mission Section Chief Hitoshi Tadano’’ and last year, in a Taiwanese horror movie called ‘‘Invitation Only,’’ in which she played a supermodel. She has also appeared in music videos.