Random Japan

Tokyo Disneyland Hotel adding new rooms that let you stay with Alice, Belle, and Cinderella

With Japan’s  love of travel and fictional characters, it was really only a matter of time before hotels started offering rooms based on popular animated franchises. You can always count on Disney to have its finger on the pulse of travelers, and sure enough the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel has a block of rooms decorated with the cast of its classic films.

It’s been six years since the hotel opened, though, and management has decided it could use a little sprucing up, So next year the character rooms are being renovated, with some returning favorites getting new amenities plus the hotel debut of a few more.

GETTING LOOPY

• Officials at JR East unveiled the design of their spiffy new Yamanote line carriages, which will go into operation next fall.
• The new train—dubbed E235 Kei—will retain the lime green color scheme that we’ve all come to know and love.
• One change will be to increase the number of courtesy-seating areas per 11-car train, from the current 20 to 29.
• The redesign also includes wider doors to accommodate passengers with baby strollers or large pieces of luggage.

BAD LIEUTENANTS

• Police in Aomori arrested 9 of the 20 members of the municipal assembly in Hirakawa city for corruption related to a mayoral election in January.
• An academic who specializes in Aomori politics ascribes the affair to “the mentality of the people in the Tsugaru region, who enjoy conflict, winning and losing.”
• Psychologists are fretting about the increasing number of universities that set up bocchi seki in their cafeterias—seats for solitary students who “don’t want to share tables with other people and feel self-conscious about others’ gaze when they eat.”
• Sentence of the Week: “A man was arrested on suspicion of molesting a teen on a train in Saitama Prefecture after a police officer on board noticed something was amiss and asked the girl if she was being molested using a text message on his smartphone.” (via Mainichi Japan)

He Attacked The Seats With A Knife
The Offense Must Have Been Great

The Harmful Haiku
It Praised Article 9


A League Of Its Own
The Booze Nation

Timing is everything in SDF’s recruitment drive

Oddly timed enlistment blitz spurs youth unease despite J-pop spin

BY TOMOHIRO OSAKI

STAFF WRITER

Most regard it as ironic, but some call it sinister.

The Self-Defense Forces have launched an annual recruitment drive in the same week that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe handed Japan’s troops a new role.

On Tuesday, the day Abe said the Cabinet had decided to reinterpret the pacifist Constitution, the Defense Ministry launched a major campaign for new recruits, with TV commercials and online videos soliciting applications.