Random Japan

Creative drawings to reply to wedding invites are all the rage in Japan right now 

Meg Murphy

How do you reply to a friend’s wedding invitation: with a simple check mark in a box, or a thoughtful work of art?

From filling out important documents to something as minor as holding a pencil or chopsticks, a lot of effort is put into doing things the “right” or “proper” way in Japan. While the correct way to reply to a wedding invitation (after having scrubbed out any honorific prefixes pertaining to oneself of course!) would be to tick the appropriate box to indicate whether or not you will be there, these creative artists went outside the box—literally!—to jazz up their invitations before sending them back to their friends.

POLICE BLOTTER

• In the first case of its kind in Japan, the MPD busted a man for accessing a FacebookACCOUNT using an illegally obtained ID and password.
• It was noted that the suspect’s computer contained “approximately 770 Facebook and iCloud IDs.”
• Administrators at Nihon University suspended a professor emeritus who admitted toborrowing ¥20 million from a former gangster.
• Tokyo police announced a plan to deploy unmanned interceptor aircraft to capture “suspicious drones.”

EASILY AMUSED

• It was reported that aquarium-goers in Osaka are being “wowed” by a seal that strikes a banzai pose with its flippers.
• The winner of the—deep breath—67th All Japan Inter-Middle School English Oratorical Contest was an Okinawan girl who gave a speech called “The Perfect Smartphone.”
• To combat an expected plunge in blood supplies, donation centers are trying toattract people with a “café atmosphere.”
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Scroll Recording Historical Hero’s Training With Pole Sword to be Shown to Public” (via Mainichi Japan)

Japan's Unruly Revelers
If You Count 5 As Unruly

They've Gone Wild
And It Isn't Pretty, But It Maybe Cute


Panel Setup To "study" Decline In Japanese Female Royalty
Really It's Meant To Insure Women Are Always Second Class

Buddhist temples seek slice of foreign tourism boom

Deep in a forest near Japan’s western shore, a 13th century Buddhist temple where Steve Jobs once dreamed of becoming a Zen monk has teamed up with a Tokyo skyscraper builder to seek the commercial enlightenment of foreign tourist dollars.

As a weak yen fuels record tourism, Eiheiji temple, local authorities and Mori Building Co, behind some of Tokyo’s glitziest retail palaces, plan to redevelop the site including an $11 million hotel nearby. From there, a new path will be built leading visitors to the spartan site that intrigued the Apple Inc guru.

Japan’s temples have long been business and tech-savvy, offering lucrative services like funerals while courting domestic tourists - a recent Eiheiji exhibition featured video from a drone operated by a monk. But compared to other parts of the world, religious sites outside centers like Kyoto have been slow to target mass foreign tourism.