Saturday, May 2, 2015

Random Japan

Would you vote for this man?







Elections are a serious business everywhere in the world. In Japan, as election time draws near, huge boards go up around town where each local candidate has a square for their poster. (Also, since door-to-door canvassing is forbidden, they instead drive around with a loud-speaker at all hours of the day shouting about how great they are, which is totally not annoying at all.)
But don’t worry, this isn’t a boring politics post! Apparently not everyone takes the decision to stand as a candidate as seriously as they’re expected to.
The first stage of the 18th unified local elections took place on April 12, with further mayoral and assembly elections on April 26, and one candidate’s poster on a board in Akihabara, Chiyoda Ward, caught people’s attention.


STATS

  • 70: Percent chance that a magnitude-6 earthquake will hit the Kanto area over the next 30 years.
  • ¥300,000: Winning bid for a pair of mangos at the first fruit auction of the season in Miyazaki.
  • 88: Percentage of Japanese job seekers who say they would be willing to accept an overseas employment offer.

NOT ALL FUN & GAMES

  • It was revealed that the storied Chichibunomiya Rugby Stadium in Aoyama will be turned into a parking lot for the 2020 Olympics.
  • Meanwhile, a group of 30 lawmakers from the main ruling and opposition parties are pooling their efforts to end discrimination against sexual minorities by the start of the Games.
  • Police in Nerima-ku busted a local man for cultivating marijuana after his downstairs neighbor complained of a water leak, which turned out to be from the growing operation.
  • Cops in Osaka arrested a 73-year-old woman for inviting elderly men to karaoke and then drugging them and stealing their money.

Keep The Body


To Bad It Was At 1 AM


Busted
 

Art of the Japanese company apology: It's all in the bow

ARTS & CULTURE 
Imagine you’re the head of a U.S. fast-food chain in Japan that has been scandalised by a tooth-in-french-fries disaster. How do you repair the damage? Bow deeply—and be convincing.
So it was for Sarah Casanova, the Canadian president of McDonald’s Japan, whose less-than-textbook corporate mea culpa last month was an attempt at the tightly choreographed script routinely used by crisis-hit organisations.
With cameras rolling and reporters at the ready, apology press conferences are a must-do piece of theater for Japanese firms that wandered from the straight-and-narrow in a country that has a dozen expressions for saying sorry.




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