Road Rules / Real World type show set in Japan? DO WANT!!!
The season premiere of the summer replacement reality/game show "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" was Tuesday night at 9 and boy was I surprised at what it turned out to be. Unlike MXC (which is basically Takishi's Castle remixed, and what is basically remodeled Wipeout airing on ABC as well) this is so much better. Labels: Japan, television
Standard rules apply of course. Cast of characters, some annoying, some rude, some old, some young, some sexy, whatever are all put in a home and they compete in games in order to win prizes or not be eliminated.
The twist of it all happening in some kind of meta Japanese game show is just crazy and so very welcome.
I'll miss that Kid Nation isn't back for a second season over on CBS, but this is absolutely must watch for any Japanophile.
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Randomness
>> I had a dream last night that at the nightclub I was being toyed with by this Asian couple. The seme noted I was checking out his uke and because he was the evil type, he demanded his uke service me. In the process, the uke got a huge gash on his back rubbing up against an exposed piece of metal or something in the tight confines of the back room or booth or something. While I'm putting pressure on the guy's wound asking for someone to call 911, the seme punches me in the face knocking me out thinking that I'd done him harm. It was rather anime-like to be sure. Labels: boys, DJ Kaze and Tatsuo, dreamscape, Elf, Heretic, Japan, sex
>> I keep losing my PRO status in Wii Bowling in the Heretic League. I keep bouncing around 1000 and it's frustrating. The game is already hard enough playing left handed with right handed settings. Not to mention the fact the Wii box is about 4 feet to the right of the television really screwing up your orientation.
>> Finally for now, didn't get to see Elf yesterday. We called off our going to WETbar since it was going to be 25 dollars. Tonight is DJ Phil B. from San Fran. It starts early (9pm) and Kaze and Tat will be there. Hopefully it'll be a good time. I could use some fun rather than going through the motions.
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So ronry.
TOKYO - She is big-busted, petite, very friendly, and she runs on batteries. Labels: Japan, sex, technology news
A Japanese firm has produced a 38 cm (15 inch) tall robotic girlfriend that kisses on command, to go on sale in September for around US$175, with a target market of lonely adult men.
Using her infrared sensors and battery power, the diminutive damsel named "EMA" puckers up for nearby human heads, entering what designers call its "love mode".
"Strong, tough and battle-ready are some of the words often associated with robots, but we wanted to break that stereotype and provide a robot that's sweet and interactive," said Minako Sakanoue, a spokeswoman for the maker, Sega Toys.
"She's very lovable and though she's not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend."
EMA, which stands for Eternal Maiden Actualisation, can also hand out business cards, sing and dance, with Sega hoping to sell 10,000 in the first year.
Japan, home to almost half the world's 800,000 industrial robots, envisions a $10-billion market for artificial intelligence in a decade.
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Japanese kids loev their cell phones.
TOKYO - Japanese youngsters are getting so addicted to Internet-linking cell phones that the government is starting a program warning parents and schools to limit their use among children. Labels: crime drama, health news, internets, Japan, loli, shota, technology news, youth news
The government is worried about how elementary and junior high school students are getting sucked into cyberspace crimes, spending long hours exchanging mobile e-mail and suffering other negative effects of cell phone overuse, Masaharu Kuba, a government official overseeing the initiative, said Tuesday.
"Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children without giving it enough thought," he said. "In Japan, cell phones have become an expensive toy."
The recommendations have been submitted from an education reform panel to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's administration, and were approved this week.
The panel is also asking Japanese makers to develop cell phones with only the talking function, and GPS, or global positioning system, a satellite-navigation feature that can help ensure a child's safety.
About a third of Japanese sixth graders have cell phones, while 60 percent of ninth graders have them, according to the education ministry.
Most mobile phones in Japan are sophisticated gadgets offering high-speed Internet access called 3G, for "third-generation."
But the panel said better filtering programming is needed for Internet access to protect children.
Some youngsters are spending hours at night on e-mail with their friends. One fad is "the 30 minute rule," in which a child who doesn't respond to e-mail within half an hour gets targeted and picked on by other schoolmates.
Other youngsters have become victims of Internet crimes. In one case, children sent in their own snapshots to a Web site and then ended up getting threatened for money, Kuba said.
Cell phones tend to be more personal tools than personal computers. Parents find that what their children are doing with them are increasingly difficult to monitor, Kuba said.
Some Japanese children commute long distances by trains and buses to schools and cram-schools and parents rely on cell phones to keep in touch with their children.
Parents typically pay about 4,000 yen ($39) a month for cell phone fees per child.
Japan boasts a relatively low crime rate compared to other industrialized nations, but some people are concerned that the Internet could be exploited for serious crimes.
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A suicidal farmer in Japan poses danger to others.
TOKYO (AP) - A Japanese farmer who committed suicide by drinking pesticide vomited the poison at a hospital before he died, releasing toxic fumes that sickened more than 50 people, the hospital said Thursday. Labels: health news, Japan, suicide
Doctors were trying to pump the 34-year-old man's stomach when he threw up, spraying his rescuers with chloropicrin, causing 54 doctors, nurses and patients to develop breathing problems and eye sores.
Ten of them were hospitalized themselves, and 90 hospital personnel had to be called in to help with the emergency Wednesday night, said Tomoko Nagao, spokeswoman for the Red Cross Kumamoto Hospital in southern Japan.
The most severely injured was a 72-year-old pneumonia patient, whose condition worsened after exposure to the fumes, Nagao said. The hospital's emergency ward was closed and firefighters called in to decontaminate it.
The doctors were not wearing protective gear and were unprepared because the paramedics who brought the farmer to the hospital had not identified the pesticide, said a local police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of protocol.
The incident came amid a string of suicides in Japan by people mixing household chemicals to create lethal fumes. Many bystanders in recent months have been sickened by fumes that escaped into adjoining rooms, apartments or homes.
Seishi Takamura, a doctor who treated the farmer, said he could not stop coughing after inhaling the fumes, which smelled like chlorine, Kyodo News agency reported.
Chloropicrin is a highly volatile pesticide with a pungent odor that can cause breathing difficulties and sometimes death when inhaled in large amounts.
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The Anime Money Shot Heard Round the World
Labels: anime, epic, Japan, new york city
Of the many happy campers at the record-demolishing (and economy-confounding) Sotheby's auction last night, Takashi Murakami may have been the happiest. Drawing stares from art-world veterans — one told us she'd never seen an artist show up to watch his own work on the block — the Japanese Pop maestro sat in the back of the room with a serene smile as My Lonesome Cowboy, his larger-than-life sculpture of a boy waving an ejaculate lasso, brought in $15.2 million — quintupling the artist's previous record at auction. (The signature piece, an edition of which is currently on view at the artist's Brooklyn Museum show, was sold by his former dealer Marianne Boesky.) "Oh, it's not surprising," Murakami said as he huddled with his Paris dealer, Emmanuel Perrotin, after the auction. Pretty gratifying, though? "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said. "Basically."
Another contented observer of the auction, albeit from the astral plane, was Robert Rauschenberg. Two days after the artist's death at 82, his painting Overdrive did, as speculated, set a record, bringing in $14.6 million. (All Sotheby's figures include their commission, which is about 10 percent atop the winning bid.) The big winner of the night, however, was Francis Bacon, whose triptych set a new record for the artist when it went to a phone bidder for a staggering $86.3 million. ("Be brave," auctioneer Tobias Meyer had exhorted the buyers calling in, presumably from oversees. "Look at the Euros.")
There were some surprises at the sale, however. Most notably, a massive Rothko failed to draw a single bidder. (Sotheby's, which devoted a full eight pages to the work in the night's catalogue, had forecast it would earn more than $35 million.) "We've seen an inevitable moving towards bigger and bigger," Nick Lawrence, the Freight + Volume gallerist, said. "When will it get to where the center cannot hold?" But on a night that drew out many of the major players, it appeared that the center was holding just fine for the time being. "At first I wondered whether the famous irrational exuberance might be at work," said writer Anthony Haden-Guest, who is working on a book about the history of the thrumming market. "But no, it started real strong, though it molted a bit towards the end. I think it's certainly remarkable."
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Passion Play.
Shinji (and that IS his real name, I checked) did show up last night. Looking very good with a fresh hair buzz and wearing two shirts. Not that it did him any good. Because after two drinks we were headed back into the rest of the nightclub where a dress code was enforced. Labels: boys, Heretic, Japan, personal
Shirtless, we danced and had a good time. We have a very obvious chemistry together that was made all the more apparent in our visit to the dark room. Unlike last time, there wasn't talking, there was action.
You know me, I DO kiss and tell and he is a delight to make out with. With such great parity, he kisses so nicely. And I was quite happy to be all up against him, though did not take it farther than that. (Well I started to but, he said nuh-uh and I respected that.)
But then something very strange and difficult to understand happened. He told me to go away. I hadn't said or done anything suddenly wrong, unusual, or offensive. So I really didn't get it. Still, I did leave him alone.
He left the place without my knowing. And of course, I just was slowly simmering. While I don't know him very well yet here in the early stages of whatever this is, I still was peeved enough to call him at 3 after the place closed. I mean, I know I don't own him or nothing, but I thought I deserved some kind of explanation. He answered, surprisingly, sleepily sounding. He said that he liked me and I liked him and that he went home. I told him I didn't understand why he told me to go away and he didn't answer it really.
Maybe he wanted to enjoy the company with some of the others in the dark room and didn't want me to see. A kind of weird chivalry?
Regardless, I told him goodnight. I should have said that I wanted to see him again, but I was still confused and burned. We'll have to see how this thing goes.
EDIT: After thinking about it today, I've decided that I probably was overthinking about it. LOL. Ironic isn't it? The things I do know is that I don't know him that well but the time that I have spent with him, he's not played any games, given me any stories that didn't make any sense, or whatever. I think it was the right call to call him and ask him what was up, but I am definitely not wanting to be overbearing. I'll give him a call tomorrow and see if I can get to hang out with him again this weekend. After all, he did go when invited last night, "even if there is rain or storms", we made out so so nicely, and "You like me and I like you."
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Nihonjin Kareshi Boshu-chu
I met a boy last night. A rare sort, you see, because he's Japanese. There are only two other Japanese gay boys in this city that go out that I know. Tatsuo and Jun. Labels: boys, DJ Kaze and Tatsuo, epic, Heretic, Japan, personal
I couldn't quite hear the name he gave me other than his Americanized name. Terry. Heh. But it could be Shinjiichi. I know it sounded quite a bit like Shinji in there somewhere.
He seemed to be into me. We sat in the corner of the back bar at Heretic for a couple of hours. And he always came back after saying, "I'll be right back" which is a good thing.
He's new to the city. 3 weeks.
Very fun to talk to. Lots of laughing, and real interest going back and forth. Towards the end of the night, I was trying to get him to come back on Wednesday. I explained the shirtlessness rule and he professed his shyness. Yet when we passed by the dark room, he seemed highly curious. I explained that part of the place and he grabbed my arm and pulled me into the corner. Sadly (or perhaps for the best) we didn't do anything but talk back there.
I got his number, and after he said he had to leave, I asked if he wanted me to walk him to the front. (We were all the way in the back of the large nightclub) He said yes and at the door I kissed him just to the side of his mouth.
He told me that I should call him to see about us seeing each other on Wednesday night.
I'm trying not to get too giddy about this, but holyhell that's fucking awesome.
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Duel Love on the DS in Japan
You know, I'm fairly certain that the Yaoi BL PC market is doing much more amazing things than this DS back massage mini-game. But hey, watch and enjoy anyway right? Labels: Japan, video games, yaoi, you tube
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Love letter from Pico?
I received an email from someone named Pico earlier today. Labels: DJ Kaze and Tatsuo, Japan, March 11, shota
It was in Japanese and my friend Tatsuo wasn't home, so I ran it through an online translator with mixed results.
I wonder what it could mean?
(Update: From the tag-board, Rei Ray: From what I can -kinda- get, it's an invitation for a play-date. I'm only learning kindergarten level Japanese though. :x I'll ask my Vinny-Kun 'bout it. x3
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"Hey that's no loli! What the fuck man?!" -- Pedobear
TOKYO - A Japanese man was arrested for trespassing this week after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl's uniform and a long wig, local police said. Labels: /b/, bizzare news, Japan, loli, school news, trap
Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the Internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the daily Asahi Shimbun said.
When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said.
They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process. A school clerk pursued him and stopped him at a nearby riverbank, the paper said.
Police confirmed the arrest of the man in school uniform and wig but declined to give further details.
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Weeaboo? Did I hear somebody say Weeaboo?
The vacant Macy's department store at Gwinnett Place mall will be transformed into a giant Asian ethnic shopping destination, developer George Thorndyke announced Wednesday. Labels: China, Japan, Korea, local news
Korean retailer Mega Mart will lease the 240,000-square-foot space, at Pleasant Hill Road and I-85 in Duluth, for its first U.S. store, according to Thorndyke.
The plan does not affect the existing Macy's, which occupies space that formerly housed a Rich's department store.
The store's 75,000-square-foot first floor will serve as a grocery. The second floor will offer clothing, housewares and other department store-type goods, while the third floor will have a food court and event facility.
The move accelerates a trend of Asian-themed businesses in the Gwinnett Place area, including the Gwinnett International Farmers Market and other grocers, chasing an increasing number of affluent Asians and Asian Americans living in Gwinnett County.
Thorndyke said the store will also seek to cater to non-Asian customers, with products labeled in English and with English-speaking employees.
By the time the store opens in the spring of 2009, the former Macy's will have been vacant for nearly five years.
"We're excited about this, the mall's excited, the tenants out there are excited," Thorndyke said.
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Shota liek expensive alcohol
TOKYO - A teenager who posed as a wealthy playboy and went on a spending spree at a Japanese area nightclub has been arrested after trying to skip out on his bill.
Authorities say that over the course of six hours Wednesday night the 16 year old boy ordered two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne as well as 60 glasses of whiskey, beer and cocktails.
Police say when it was time to pay the bill, which had ballooned to $3,490, the boy told the staff he had no money.
A police spokesman says staff at the club were shocked to learn the boy's age because he seemed mature and experienced when ordering drinks and talking with hostesses.
The spokesman says the teen was dressed in casual clothes, but obviously successfully gave staff the impression of a rich young man.
Alcohol consumption is prohibited for those under 20 in Japan.
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Sexy Replicants of the future!
If you're younger than 35, you'll probably live long enough to put David Levy's prediction to the test. Levy says that by 2050 we'll be creating robots so lifelike, so imbued with human-seeming intelligence and emotions, as to be nearly indistinguishable from real people. And we'll have sex with these robots. Some of us will even marry them. And it will all be good. Labels: Japan, sex, technology news
Levy lays out his vision of a Brave New Carnal World in Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, which, despite its extended riffs on sex toys through the ages, is a snigger-free book. Levy's no Al Goldstein. Rather he's a 62-year-old British chess master turned artificial-intelligence expert persuaded that robot sex can brighten the lives of many, many unhappy people. "Great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7,'' he writes on the final page of the book. What's not to like?
"Chess'' and "sex'' aren't words that normally share the same sentence, but in Levy's case, the one led to the other. A keen chessman since boyhood, by the time he got to St. Andrews University he played at the international level. At the university he got interested in computers and the challenge of programming machines to play chess. Eventually he earned international recognition for his work on chess-playing computers and natural-language software, and in the mid '90s headed a team that won the Loebner Prize, widely regarded as the world championship of conversational software. Today he owns a firm that develops electronic hand-held brain games.
Designing computers that talk like humans naturally led to the larger question of how humans interact with robots, which are nothing more than computers with arms and legs and a head. The Japanese have taken the lead in developing "partner robots,'' machines that, for example, might do household tasks for elderly people. But if you could invent a robot that serves cocktails, could you not invent a robot that would make a superior bedmate?
It sounds like a mighty tall order. A machine with skin that feels like ours? With our physical dexterity? And, most important, with a mind like ours - imperfectly rational, sometimes emotionally intelligent, sometimes emotionally dumb?
"I think it's a reasonable assumption,'' Levy said in a telephone interview from his home in London. He lays out his case in a voice that's calm, rational, almost flat, more geeky than goatish.
"If one looks at the advances in technology in the last, say, 40 or 50 years, they've been immense, and the more we learn about the science and the technology, the quicker it will be to discover even more within that science."
Smart money never bets against technological advances, but it helps if you stack the deck. "The automaton simulates man when man has been defined in an automaton's way," literary critic Hugh Kenner wrote. Is that what Levy does?
"I take a pragmatic point of view," he said, "partly because in my original field, computer chess, that was how the problem was solved." Not by making machines that thought like chess masters but by making machines that beat chess masters. Similarly, Levy thinks, robots need only "simulate" human intelligence and emotions "to the point that they are absolutely convincing." If you can't tell whether the thing is man or machine, what difference does it make? You'll treat it as if it were alive. The rest is philosophical hairsplitting.
So who will avail themselves of 21st-century sexbots?
Sad cases, for one, people so physically unattractive or anti-social or isolated or emotionally crippled that they have trouble finding human romance. People who love their computers more than their fellows. Hey, they're out there already.
"They're lonely; they're miserable," Levy said. "I think society will be a much better place when they have an alternative that satisfies them without doing any harm to other people."
Add in those who have a satisfying sexual relationship but are simply curious and somewhere between 20 percent and 50 percent of the population will experience man-machine mating at least occasionally, Levy predicts.
He respects the fact that plenty of people, out of moral or religious conviction, will contemplate this with horror.
"But by and large," he said, "it will be very good for society, very beneficial, and I think that will be the majority view within a relatively short space of time."
Sexbots may put prostitutes out of business, he notes.
Near the end of the book Levy alludes to a set of vexing questions. If robots become utterly humanlike, must we not treat them as more than machines? So if you marry a robot, can it inherit your estate? If you catch it boffing the mail carrier, can you toss it out with heavy trash? If your robot pops your neighbor in the mouth, who does your neighbor sue?
Levy admits he doesn't know the answers.
"There are lot of questions here that need a great deal of discussion and consideration from people who are much wiser than I am in the field of ethics, philosophy and law. Clearly the law makers and the lawyers are going to have a field day debating these issues."
He expects the impetus for creating sexbots to come from the sex-toy industry rather than, say, MIT. Already a Japanese sex-doll manufacturer has announced plans to market a doll with electronics in it, and Levy has read that Japanese companies are working to produce sex robots for people living in outlying fishing villages.
"I think the Japanese are probably working on this more than one would realize from the little that's been published so far," he said.
Levy has been amazed at the publicity the Love and Sex With Robots has generated since its release last month. He's done a dozen radio interviews and a TV interview. Howard Stern raved about the book. So far, no hate mail.
Would Levy himself have sex with a robot? He doesn't have to ponder the question.
"If there was a robot of the sort I describe in the book, I would certainly want to experience using it for sex, and I wouldn't regard it as anything untoward," he said. "I would do it out of curiosity. Not that I have a need for a new sex partner. I'm happily married."
And the wife would be OK with this?
"Yes, yes, and if she wanted to try one I wouldn't have a problem with that. I would regard it as genuine scientific curiosity."
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Amateur party people.
New Years Eve is one of the only nights of the year where the non-professional party people try to have a good time. I'm all for sharing the love (and the dance floor) with them, but some of you bitches need to know when to say when about three cocktails before you fall into me. And I'm talking about actual girls. Seriously! You're coming into our gay nightclubs, all fine and well, but don't make complete asses of yourself. You're pissing me off! Labels: alcohol, boys, clubbing, DJ Kaze and Tatsuo, drugs, holiday news, Japan, NaNoWriMo, personal, pixiesticks, shota, The Body Shop, WETbar, works, yaoi
On a more positive note: Kaze and Tatsuo's hospitality was so wonderful. I felt very loved while spending our third New Years Eve together as friends. I ventured to their home, which is very lovely. We watched part of the Japan 4 hour annual New Years Eve concert. Tat gave me more Japanese candy! Yum yum yum.
WETbar is where pretty much all of the girls taking spills with their drinks in hand took place. But it was also where we rung in the actual New Year. Who would have thought this time last year Britney Spears would have had made such a disgraceful fall only to be reclaimed as a diva the pretty boys all love singing and dancing to?
I didn't win any of the cash money drop, but then again, I wasn't really trying. And I wasn't dancing so much either. This was because there really wasn't much space to do anything other than perhaps survey the carnage.
A jaunt over to The Body Shop afterwards was filled with ALOT more fun than usual. While I've discussed at length how the after-hours club has simply not lived up to any expectations, last night they really put on a barn burner. Sure, it was mostly filled with the sketchiest of the bunch (partly because another after-hours party at Center Stage was shut down by the po-po), but it was the most fun I'd had there in a while. And perhaps for the first time, The Body Shop felt like a real club.
Today I've spent mostly resting. It was a really long final day of 2007, but I'm glad to say that I survived a particularly troublesome year.
I've also been slowly chipping away at editing down my winning entry for NaNoWriMo written back in November. It's a novel called "Later, Skater" and I'm really fond of it. Editing isn't a easy chore to say the least, but I really feel good about this project and hope it will be successful.
Glad to have each and every one of you to start off this new year. 2008 could end up being one of the most dramatic in the world we live in, but one thing will remain constant: Pixiesticks.org will still stand tall as one of the best places for yaoi and shota.
So stick around and Happy New Year.
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Too silly to not post, even on holiday break.
The cute cuddly white cat from Japan's Sanrio Co., usually seen on toys and jewelry for girls and young women, will soon don T-shirts, bags, watches and other products targeting young men, company spokesman Kazuo Tohmatsu said Friday. Labels: Japan
"We think Hello Kitty is accepted by young men as a design statement in fashion," he said.
The feline for-men products will go on sale in Japan next month, and will be sold soon in the U.S. and other Asian nations, according to Sanrio.
The usual bubble-headed shape of Hello Kitty was slightly changed for a more rugged, cool look to appeal to men in their teens and early 20s.
For example, a picture of the cat on a $36 black T-shirt has the words, "hello kitty," instead of the usual dots for the eyes and nose.
Hello Kitty is one of mascot-obsessed Japan's biggest "character" hits, decorating everything from a humble eraser to a $48,000 diamond necklace.
The planned products mark the first time Sanrio is developing Hello Kitty items especially for males, Tohmatsu said.
But Sanrio had tried a "limited edition" collaboration in men's clothing with designers in Tokyo's chic Harajuku section earlier this year, and they proved popular, he said.
"Young men these days grew up with character goods," said Tohmatsu. "That generation feels no embarrassment about wearing Hello Kitty."
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WETbar deserted the weekend before XMAS
Labels: clubbing, DJ Kaze and Tatsuo, Japan, WETbar
DJ Gomi was spinning to a mostly empty WETbar last night. There were light crowd all over due to the traveling before the holiday. But even the rain couldn't dampen the fun I had hanging out with an overly chatty DJ Kaze and Tatsuo. They truly are some of the best friends I only get to see in the nightlife.
Except on New Years Eve this may change.
For the first time, I believe I'm going to be going to their house earlier in the evening in preperation for a club going oddessy that I have never attempted before in my life. 12 straight, or rather, not so straight, hours of party! WETbar 10pm-3am, Bodyshop 3am-7am, Heretic 7am-noon. Can we do it? Is it insane? The likely answers are yes and yes.
But back to Gomi. The extremely attractive DJ who got his roots basically from Junior Vasquez wasn't the powerhouse that I thought he was going to be. Of course, a DJ typically needs to feed off what the crowd gives them and well all I could manage was to melt into a pile of transfixed goo looking up at the cutie in the booth.
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"I Am Legend" truly Legendary.
I saw "I Am Legend" at 1am on Friday morning with Colin at Atlantic Station. We enjoyed some of my Japanese candy I got from my secret stalker over on the message boards over on HSX. Mmmm. Green tea Melty Kisses. Labels: colin, food, Japan, movies, personal
As for the movie, well, it's pretty epic. Will Smith as the last man on earth after a virus comes and causes everyone else to become zombie/vampire type things is a great remake concept from "Omega Man" or "Last Man on Earth."
But it's not without problems.
Parts are really dull. Many don't like the ending -- though I didn't have a problem with it other than maybe it was rushed. And the creature effects aren't exactly great in my opinion.
That didn't stop it from becoming the highest December grossing movie ever. Yeah, Lord of the Ring fanboys, that's right... Poor Mr. Frodo.
Here are the estimates for the box office in North America from this weekend:
1. "I Am Legend," $76.5 million.
2. "Alvin and the Chipmunks," $45 million.
3. "The Golden Compass," $9 million.
4. "Enchanted," $6 million.
5. "No Country for Old Men," $3 million.
6. "The Perfect Holiday," $2.97 million.
7. "Fred Claus," $2.3 million.
8. "This Christmas," $2.3 million.
9. "Atonement," $1.85 million.
10. "August Rush," $1.8 million.
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LOL. Japan.
Greying Japan has a new weapon to scare people into saving for their retirement -- an exploding piggy bank.
The "Savings Bomb," which goes on sale in Japan next week, "explodes" and scatters coins if users fail to save for a long time, toy manufacturer TOMY Co Ltd said Thursday.
The battery-powered toy -- designed as a cartoon-style, ball-shaped black bomb with a skull and crossbones logo -- lights up, makes a noise, shakes violently and scatters coins if it is not topped up for a long time.
"Users must pick up and collect the scattered coins and reflect on their laziness," the Japanese company said.
Japan has the world's oldest population and one of the lowest birthrates, raising fears of a future demographic crisis with a smaller pool of workers financially supporting a growing number of elderly.
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Japanese cult draws police attention.
Police raided the headquarters of a secretive, female-dominated cult yesterday after one of its followers was beaten to death, allegedly for failing to carry out a group ritual properly. Labels: crime drama, Japan, religious news, women
Detectives believe that about ten followers of the Kigenkai cult subjected Motoko Okuno, 63, to an hour-long ordeal of kicks and punches, and there are fears that the cult may have carried out more violent attacks in the past.
Four hundred police officers raided several of the sect’s premises and hauled in for questioning more than 20 of its leaders - all women. Several of those led away from the cult’s compound were teenagers.
Detective initially suspected Ms Okuno’s husband, daughters and son-in-law, who all said that the violence was the result of persistent family quarrels. But when they discovered that the family were all members of the sect, they began to focus their investigation on the cult itself.
One of the cult’s many rules is that when a person becomes a devotee, their whole family must join and it is believed that Ms Okuno, who owned a sushi restaurant, was coerced into the sect. Police further suspect that Ms Okuno was attacked at one of the cult’s properties, which include an elaborate Shinto-style shrine. Her husband, 35, remains under suspicion and has been rearrested for destroying evidence.
The public image of religious sects in Japan has been forever coloured by the atrocities of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which was responsible for releasing sarin gas on the Tokyo underground in 1995. The gas killed 12 people and injured 3,800, and Shoko Asahara, the cult’s leader, awaits the death penalty for masterminding the attacks.
Another Japanese cult known for displaying bizarre behaviour is the Panawave Laboratory, whose devotees expected Armageddon in May 2003 and draped trees and river banks in white sheets to protect themselves from it.
The Kigenkai cult, whose main office is in the northwestern prefecture of Nagano, is thought to have about 300 followers across Japan and has been active for more than 35 years. For the past decade, it has been officially registered with the Ministry of Education as a religious institution. But what began life as a relatively straightforward group of fortune-tellers has, say critics, evolved in a stranger direction.
Residents of Komoro, the town nearest to the group’s headquarters, take a dim view of its activities, which include making votive offerings to the local river by hurling fruit, vegetables and fried food into it. The group is notorious for its methods of extracting “donations” from followers: it has been known to sell ordinary pebbles as so-called “spiritual stones” for about £1,200 each.
The cult also offers a mineral elixir called “kigensui”, which, it says, cures diseases such as cancer. The bottles, which sell for about several hundred pounds, are thought to contain little more than normal water. Soaks in a full bath of the supposedly magical liquid are also available for a price, and many members take them because cult rules forbid them from visiting mainstream doctors.
The cult’s religious convictions are based loosely on Shintoism, the traditional animist belief system of Japan that makes deities out of trees, waterfalls and other natural phenomena.
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10 Things I Learned at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2007
10. There is going to be a new yaoi convention. Calling itself Yaoi Jamboree, it will be held in Pheniox, Arizona in June. The details are really kinda sketchy right now, but the official website for it is right here. One of the companies that are putting that thing on is Everything Yaoi. Labels: anime, Fang, Japan, manga, pixiesticks, shota, yaoi
09. Speaking of new companies putting out yaoi product. Iris Print had a really sweet looking booth. Check out what they have to offer in the more light shounen-ai department at BoysLove Books. I do like their "Likes Boys" shirt very much.
08. Continuing on the yaoi theme: The 7th Annual Yaoi After Dark panel was much improved over the previous year. Pulling in probably its most huge and diverse crowd yet, the three hour long fiesta seemed tighter which is a very good thing when we're talking about cock and ass. Features included the usual yaoi paddling, a rundown of what's upcoming in manga, The Dating Game, a trivia game, a short preview of the video No Money, and Lainey speaking of just how much has changed over the 7 years in the fandom. Unfortunately, shota is still not allowed to be discussed.
07. One of the things that I absolutely haaaaaaated about the panel didn't have to do with Lainey at all. (So hopefully that means I can be spared any wrath this time around.) While there weren't any horrible fanfics this year, instead preceeding Yaoi After Dark was some bastardization of American Idol. Changing the words to songs to make them "Yaoi" versions is certainly my idea of Yaoi Hell, to be sure. It's safe to say that if Simon was there, he'd have bent them all over a chair and fucked the shit out of them for such a horrible idea. He's sooo seme, you know.
06. Greg Ayres is the shittiest DJ on the face of the earth. Now, I don't know this to be a fact persay, but that's pretty much what every. single. person. who walked by the table where I was hanging out with Fang and Nemo had to say.
05. In alot of ways, Anime Weekend Atlanta is simply Really Expensive Babysitting. I'm sure their staff would agree, considering overwelmingly many people went to the convention and didn't view a single frame of anime.
04. Video game freaks really should invest in getting their own convention. While most conventions have some video game stuff going on, there is absolutely no more room for you at AWA. Not that I mind you being there. It's just overwelmingly obvious that you're multiplying and AWA doesn't seem to want to make proper accomidations for what you love.
03. Lainey broached a subject I hoped I wouldn't have to hear for another couple of weeks. She talked about she was "getting too old." But, fortunately she also mentioned she'd do it until they had to wheelchair her into the panel, so that's good. I'm turning 29 next month and while I certainly started to get the feeling I was one of the older people in the room, the love for the yaoi is just too strong to let go!
02. Pixiesticks.org fans are the BEST FANS EVER! I know I may come across initially as chilly, but I swear it's actually that I'm lost in a sea of just stuff going on around me all the time. I love fans of the site. And I loved getting to meet some of you at the convention. You make me extremely glad I came.
01. As it was last year, Bishounen artists Fang and Nemo were my favorite thing at Anime Weekend Atlanta. Despite seeing them on New Years, I still am so saddened I only see these two typically once a year. While we keep promising that will change, I wholeheartly adore both of them. They make me feel very happy. (In my pants.)
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A Neko in Superbad is fine too.
Labels: /b/, boys, Japan, movies
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Heat wave also in Land of Rising Sun
TOKYO (AP) - Japan sizzled through its hottest day on record Thursday as a heat wave claimed at least nine lives and threatened power supplies strained by a recent earthquake, authorities and media reports said.
The mercury hit 105.6 degrees in the western city of Tajimi in the afternoon, breaking a previous national record of 105.4 degrees set in the Meteorological Agency said.
In the Hachioji region of Tokyo, temperatures reached 101.7 degrees, breaking the previous record of 101.3 degrees for August.
Nine people died from heatstroke, including an 84-year-old man and a teenage boy who had been taken to hospital two days ago in Tokyo, Kyodo News agency reported. Three others died from heatstroke Wednesday, it said. Many were hospitalized.
Tokyo Electrical Power Co. warned of a power shortage as people turned up air conditioners.
The company has been firing up old thermal power stations and buying electricity from rivals after a strong earthquake in mid-July ravaged its largest nuclear power reactor, reducing its electricity output by more than 10 percent.
Across the country, vacationers sought refuge indoors at the height of the summer holidays.
Rail tracks were bent out of shape in the sun, and authorities struggled to deal with fire alarms set off by rising temperatures, according to news reports.