Here is the Open Thread for this week.

This is the place to talk about politics, policies, and cultural issues if that is what turns your crank, or just about anything else you might have on your mind.

Rules are very loose for open thread posts, and usual restrictions concerning topic matter do not apply.

Newsweek has an online article about whaling, focusing on Japan and the upcoming International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting. It is an interesting topic which pits national sovereignty against international consensus with no easy or obvious solution.

The Japanese delegation at the IWC parley is expected to lobby other countries to relax the moratorium on worldwide commercial whaling that the body imposed in 1986. No other country has been quite as prepared to risk international opprobrium over this issue as Japan, which is allowed to kill up to 1,000 whales a year for “scientific research” under a loophole in the IWC ban. Tokyo wants the body to acknowledge the right of individual countries to engage in whaling along their own coastlines and has threatened to walk out of the IWC and unilaterally resume commercial whaling if a compromise can’t be worked out by the end of next year’s IWC meeting in Portugal.

Most of the world’s whale populations have benefited from the IWC moratorium, which took effect more than 20 years ago (some species have seen 3 percent to 8 percent growth). One of the most endangered species of all, the blue whale, has shown signs of a modest comeback: Relentlessly hunted by Japanese whaling fleets off Chile’s southern shores as recently as the late 1960s, blue whales have returned to those waters in recent years, and at least 250 individual animals have been photographed and identified. That has inspired plans to create a large marine reserve to protect their breeding ground, which is centered off the northern coast of Chile’s Chiloe Island.

Japan’s insistence on its right to pursue whaling operations infuriates environmentalists and leaves others scratching their heads. Though polls show that most Japanese don’t care much for whale meat, a hardcore minority does and defends whaling as a time-honored tradition that is worth preserving. Japan has ceased hunting endangered humpback whales, but Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has justified the yearly slaughter of hundreds of whales on the grounds of scientific investigation. Advocates of the IWC ban dismiss that contention out of hand, arguing that it isn’t necessary to kill the giant mammals to study them. Tokyo’s case is further undermined by evidence of whale blubber turning up on sushi menus and in Japanese school cafeterias. “You wouldn’t know this wasn’t commercial whaling because all the whale meat from scientific whaling is sold on the market,” says David Phillips, executive director of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute, which has lobbied for stronger conservation measures at previous IWC conferences. “And the so-called science is mostly unnecessary.”

The New York Times has an interesting article on Japanese energy technology. What always leaves me scratching my head is how this environmentally-minded country has such lousy windows and insulation which leads to more heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer (and thus more energy consumed and greater expense). I’d also love to see an accounting for all of the energy consumed by the millions of ubiquitous vending machines!

Now, with oil prices hitting dizzying levels and the world struggling with global warming, [Japan] is hoping to use its conservation record to take a rare leadership role on a pressing global issue. It will showcase its efforts to export its conservation ethic — and its expensive power-saving technology — at next week’s meeting in Japan of the Group of 8 industrial leaders.

“Superior technology and a national spirit of avoiding waste give Japan the world’s most energy-efficient structure,” Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said. Japan “wants to contribute to the world,” he said.

Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less. It is also the only industrial country that sustained government investment in energy research even when energy became cheap again.

Japan consumed half as much energy per dollar worth of economic activity as the European Union or the United States, and one-eighth as much as China and India in 2005. While the country is known for green products like hybrid cars, most of its efficiency gains have been in less eye-catching areas, for example, in manufacturing.

Corporate Japan has managed to keep its overall annual energy consumption unchanged at the equivalent of a little more than a billion barrels of oil since the early 1970s, according to Economy Ministry data. It was able to maintain that level even as the economy doubled in size during the country’s boom years of the 1970s and ’80s.

The Tokyo Design Festa is a semi-annual event where artists, craftsmen, performers, musicians, film-makers, and what-not gather from all over the world to exhibit their creations.

It’s a weekend of artistic chaos!

It’s up for votes on Current TV.

Help a Blogger out, why doncha?

The Tokyo Design Festa - a chaotic ensemble of art

Tokyo Design Festa

Anime fan wearing an all handmade costume

Norimitsu Onishi reports in the New York Times that the Japanese government has recognized the indigenous rights of the Ainu people.

The Ainu had lived on Japan’s northernmost island for centuries, calling their home Ainu Mosir. But just as with America’s expansion West, the Japanese pushed north in the late 19th century in the first sign of their imperialist ambitions. Japanese settlers decimated the Ainu population, seized their land and renamed it Hokkaido, or North Sea Road.

And yet it was only a few weeks ago that the Japanese government finally, and unexpectedly, recognized the Ainu as an “indigenous people.” Parliament introduced and quickly passed a resolution stating that the Ainu had a “distinct language, religion and culture,” setting aside the belief, long expressed by conservatives, that Japan is an ethnically homogeneous nation.

The recognition — coming after decades of opposition by a government fearful of compensation claims — seemed timed to an international conference of indigenous peoples that Japan is hosting this week in Hokkaido. The Ainu’s lack of recognition could have proved embarrassing for Japan’s government, particularly since the conference also comes close to the Group of 8 summit meeting in Hokkaido next week.

In a study by the Hokkaido prefectural government in 2006, just under 24,000 people identified themselves as Ainu. Most were of mixed blood and lacked the telltale fair skin or hirsute features that distinguished older Ainu from the Japanese. But it is not known how many live outside Hokkaido since Japan has never conducted a nationwide census of Ainu.

“In Japan’s case, for better or for worse, the assimilation policies since the Meiji era were so successful that almost nothing remains of the Ainu’s traditional way of life,” he said. In 1869, one year after the start of the Meiji era, Tokyo set up the Hokkaido Colonization Board to encourage Japanese settlers to move to Hokkaido. The Ainu were eventually stripped of their land, forced to abandon hunting and fishing for farming, forbidden to speak their own language and taught only Japanese at school. That history — little known by the Japanese today and even among the Ainu themselves — was repeated later in Japan’s Asian colonies.

AskMen.com writes in to alert us to the results of their survey Top 10: Japanese Models, which focuses on Japanese “gravure idols.”

Other AskMen.com links that may be of interest are their Top 10: Playboy Japan Centerfolds and their Celebrity Profiles.

From the flower loving remora comes a link to an article highlighting the 20,000 hitsuji (moss phlox) plants that bloom at Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu, west of Tokyo each spring.

Off topic, but I thought this montage someone put together of 100 of his favorite movies was pretty cool.

My apologies to those who hate off-topic posts.

Via Gawker

When Japanese think of foreigners, they think of overly tall, blond Americans or Europeans with huge feet, trying to find their way to the right subway line. Even though some of us aren’t that tall (I’m only 5′9″), they apologize for having such small cars when you sit in the passenger seat, and likewise apologize for living in such a tiny hovel when you visit them at home, whether or not their house is really that small.

It’s also assumed that every foreigner will speak English, and it’s not uncommon to be told “sorry, I can’t understand!” by a Japanese person even though you’re speaking to them in their native language.

In actuality, the vast majority of foreigners living in Japan are not Westerners, but are from both Koreas, Brazil, Peru, and China. Officially, 1.5% of Japan’s population are resident foreigners, although that number doesn’t take into account people who are here illegally, so the number is probably higher.

Isesaki, the city we live in, has a much higher foreign population (3%) than average due to a lot of factories based here, which means a lot more choices when you want to eat ethnic. One of our favorite restaurants is a Peruvian place that serves the most heavenly pollo a la brasa.

Looking for a place to stay in Japan?

Check out Gaijin House Japan.

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Gaijin House Japan is, at its heart, a guide to guest houses - shared houses or apartment buildings where travelers and locals live together, sharing the facilities. Living in a guest house is a great way to start out in Japan as it is a wonderful opportunity for networking.

Renting an apartment in Japan for the first time can cost as much as 6 times the first month’s rent! By comparison, guest houses are a much better deal. With only a small deposit and no extra fees, they provide safe, clean, affordable accommodation while searching for an apartment or on a short term stay. They come equipped with kitchen facilities, Internet access and laundry facilities, and each room is usually furnished with a small fridge, TV and a futon or bed. Since the actual features and overall quality of each guest house can vary enormously, however, a resource like Gaijin House Japan can make the difference between a successful and a miserable stay in Japan.

Gaijin House Japan’s main feature is a continually updated series of articles on every guest house across the length and breadth of Japan. We allow travelers to comment on the guest houses they have stayed in, thus providing an “in person” view of Japanese guest houses - the good, the bad, and the dirty!

What Gaijin House Japan also does is give the smaller guest houses a chance for exposure. It seems when you search for a guest house, you always see the same ones showing up, usually big corporate ones with high advertising budgets. Gaijin House Japan was created to show what is really out there, giving equal time to large corporate guest houses as well as small family-owned “hidden gems”.

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Gaijin House Japan
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Here is a video of singer/songwriter Kayoko Takamichi doing Haru, a song from her Greener CD that we featured on Japan Talk #114 last Saturday.

JAPUNDIT has become quite the talk of the Japanese Internet, which has been boiling over with anger over the now-defunct Mainichi Wai Wai.

It seems that someone has picked up on this JAPUNDIT post that quotes from a Wai Wai column we found particularly amusing because it was so incredibly outlandish. Of course, we intentionally inserted the Wai Wai name into the report as a signal to readers that the information contained in it was at the least sensationalized and the most totally made up.

Most of the comments I have seen seem to take issue with the Mainichi for allowing such things to be published under their name in English. Though Wai Wai sourced much, if not all, of its material from Japanese language weekly magazines, most of the ire seems directed against the fact that it was presented in English for the world to see. I did not see much talk of anyone taking issue with the weekly magazines.

Some are saying that Mainichi should be prosecuted for promoting underage sex.

One comment said that since such information is printed in the newspaper, everyone will believe it.

One girl wrote about how, when she read this report while riding the bus, she burst into tears, and ended up crying herself to sleep that night out of shame.

Another young lady declared that she hated the way “Europeans and Americans” were talking about this story, and then went on to complain that the JAPUNDIT slogan (Japan - A whole lot more than raw fish) made her mad because it is insulting to Japan!?!

Blogging sure is fun, isn’t it?

The other day it was a maid cafe in Culver City, now we get word that naked sushi has made its way to Clearwater, Florida.

CLEARWATER — Chef David Keir looks out over the crowd in the dark, smoke-filled lounge, then slowly slides the model’s black kimono off her body.

She’s wearing the smallest of G-strings and tiny flower-shaped pasties. Slowly, she lies down on a small upraised stage.

Illuminated by an overhead light, Keir, 35, places bamboo leaves covered with bright sushi rolls on her nearly naked body. First on her right upper leg, then her left thigh and, finally, her chest.

A line of customers, almost 30 deep, waits in eager anticipation for the free sushi and the accompanying show.

Though the practice seems tame compared to some of the stuff you can freely download on the Internet from U.S. sources, naked sushi seems to leave a bad taste in the mouths of some Americans. Protesters shut down a naked sushi show in Seattle, claiming it was demeaning to women. Clearwater officials have checked out their local version of naked sushi, however, and have declared they see nothing wrong with raw fish in the raw.

[P]olice have checked for violations and didn’t find any.

And officials with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which licenses restaurants, say Keir hasn’t violated health requirements.

Even Mayor Frank Hibbard, who convinced Hooters’ owners in 2006 to reword a sexually suggestive billboard, says he’s letting this one go. He says little about the event other than, “I wouldn’t eat sushi off anyone’s body.”

Chef Keir claims that his naked sushi presentation is “my expression of art.”

“Every time Picasso had a girl pose nude in one of his paintings, was that demeaning? No, I don’t think it was,” he says.

Inside the Dirty Martini, the patrons, half of them women, agree.

Thanks to Mr. Pink.