Random Japan

Can I have some more fries? For the next 60 minutes, you can have as many as you want!

Japan is home to some of the strangest collaborative promotions you will ever find. There’s been everything from Mountain Dew combining powers with a chip company to convenience store teaming up with a menstruation website. Many times the promotions are endless and maybe even seem pointless! But the new collaboration between Docomo, the cell phone company, and Lotteria, the burger shop, is a month of blood clot-forming, salt-coma inducing greatness. This campaign is going to make people who like to talk on their phones and also people who like to stuff their face with French fries very, very happy!!!

Beginning on July 24 and lasting until August 31, customers at Lotteria can buy a medium French fries at 270 yen (US$2.66), or a combo that includes a medium fries, and get all-you-can-eat French fries for 60 minutes! That’s a French fry lover’s dream! It goes by the dynamic name of “potehodai x kakehodai campaign”. The term hodai 放題 means “all you can…whatever”.

stats

• 76.2Percent of Japanese people who are worried about the country’s “aging infrastructure,” according to a government survey
• 359Number of Japanese executives who earned ¥100 million during fiscal 2013—a record—according to Tokyo Shoko Research

GOOD RIDDANCE

• Remember that goofy old guy in Gifu who filed a lawsuit claiming emotional distress because of NHK using too many foreign words in its programs? Judges on the Nagoya District Court threw out his case.
• Authorities at the National Police Agency are blaming novice middle-aged and elderly mountaineers for the record number of mountain climbing accidents last year.
• Officials at the National Consumer Affairs Center are warning college students to be aware of scammers peddling “expensive DVDs about investing in the stock market.”
• Sentence of the Week: “An Iran-bound ship from China intercepted in late 2012 was found to be carrying a pile of carbon fiber made by Japan’s Toray Industries Inc. and likely earmarked for use in Iran’s nuclear program, a U.N. report released Friday said.” (via Kyodo)

Crying Man
Gets A Visit From The Police


Holes In Condoms?
Holes In This Mans Head 

What's The Best Way To Promote The Olympics?
Casino's

Japan's Shinkansen: Revolutionary design at 50

BBC -- JUL 16

Fifty years ago this year, the first Shinkansen bullet train shot out of a station platform in Tokyo.

Nine days before he declared the 1964 Tokyo Olympics open, Emperor Hirohito presided over a ceremony that witnessed the first white-and-blue 'bullet' train streaking from the Japanese capital at 210km/h (130mph) past Mount Fuji and on to Osaka in record time. Sprinting along a brand new, dedicated high-speed passenger track, featuring the fewest possible curves and shooting through 67 miles (108km) of tunnel and over 3,000 bridges, this was no one-off exercise to publicise the international games. The Tokaido Shinkansen (-New Trunk Line') would become not just the world's fastest and most advanced, but also its most intensely used main line railway.

Today, the latest, snake-like, 16-car Shinkansen trains leave Tokyo for Osaka up to every three minutes, each offering comfortable seats for 1,323 passengers and cruising at 270km/h (168mph).