Random Japan

Man in China sells fake clouds, makes pretty good money doing so

Meg Murphy

As a child I was always taught to believe that having your head in the clouds was a bad thing; that it was important to keep your head on your shoulders and your feet on the ground to be successful. But this man from Henan Province in China has blown that way of thinking out of the window with his magical cloud-making machine, which has been drawing in a continuous stream of wowed onlookers, and in turn some big money as well!

Have you ever looked up at the clouds and wondered what it would be like to lie on them and roll around? Imagine how fluffy they’d be! Of course, then comes the crushing realization that clouds are really nothing but droplets of water and ice crystals, so wouldn’t feel like fluffy mounds of cotton at all…

STATS

• ¥26.2 billion: Net loss by McDonald’s Japan in the first six months of 2015
• 9: Years since the company had suffered a loss in the January-June period
• 340: Wallets stolen from students at a summer camp in Nagano operated by cram school operator Waseda Academy

THIS JUST IN

• A plan by The Peninsula Tokyo hotel to zip guests around in a private helicopterhas drawn opposition from shop owners in nearby Ginza.
• Officials in Seoul opened the Center for Japanese Studies, which will analyze bilateral ties and “advise on South Korea’s medium- to long-term diplomatic strategy.”
• Last year was the first since the NPA began keeping track in 1989 that more elderly people than juveniles were the subject of “police actions.”
• Cops in Nagasaki busted two men for forging a driver’s license in an attempt to gain entry to a pair of AKB48 concerts. The shows’ organizer had restricted admission to one performance per person.

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Free Whisky
From Suntory

59% of 'salarymen' find family life more exhausting than work

KUCHIKOMI AUG. 22, 2015

A family seems like such a good idea. A spouse you love, a child or children to link you to the future, a home that is a refuge from the myriad cares of the outside world – and so on and so on. Why does it turn out so disastrously?

That must be qualified. There are, presumably, happy families out there – you just have to look for them.

Spa! (Aug 25) doesn’t. On the contrary, its theme is family unhappiness – more accurately, family “weariness.” It polls, first of all, 2,000 married men aged 30-49: “Does your family make you tired?” Yes, say 1,180 – 59%. The 41% who say no are a minority, but a not insignificant one – so it’s not all bad. Spa! then pursues 500 among the 1,180, probing for details. As you read them, you can’t altogether suppress the thought, the heartening minority notwithstanding: What a life-crushing, soul-stifling institution the family is!