Super Typhoon

The biggest typhoon to hit Japan in years is currently wreaking havoc in southern Japan. It’s on course to hit the Tokyo area in a day or two. If you’re in Japan, take care! Typhoon storms, like hurricanes and cyclones, are dangerous!

The “Copperfield” of Japan

Do you like to watch magicians? I do. I like magic shows.

There is a famous magician in Japan named 高山セロ (Cyril Takayama). He’s of French-Japanese descent but he was born and raised in America.

セロ (Cyril), as he’s known in Japan, does amazing magic tricks at seemingly random locations around the streets of Tokyo. He does such things as throw a deck of cards at a window where they become imbedded inside the glass or pull food from a picture in a menu.

It’s quite dramatic and amazing to watch!

Since Cyril is “half” French and was born in the U.S., as a gimmick, he speaks a mixture of English and Japanese in his act.

Here’s a video of Cyril at a coffee shop in Tokyo in which he puts a “magic” marker into a poster-menu and uses it as a “tap” to fill a cup with coffee for a customer:

And here’s one where he “pulls” a hamburger from a picture of the burger in a menu-board at a fast-food restaurant:

In this one he visited a clothing store in Korea and stunned the store clerk when he “magically” tried on a shirt right in front of her (Cyril doesn’t speak Korean, so he spoke entirely in English):

The oldest person in the world has died

Kama Chinen, of Okinawa, Japan, was born on 1895 May 10 and she became the oldest person in the world on 2009 September 11 at the age of 114.
(Click here to read the post I wrote when she became the “World’s Oldest Person”.)

It was just reported that she died a few days ago on 2010 May 2. Only eight days before her 115th birthday.

Kama Chinen, 1895 May 10 - 2010 May 2, R.I.P.

Now the World’s Oldest Person is Eugenie Blanchard from France. She was born on 1896 February 16…about nine months after Kama Chinen was born.

Sporting event news

Did you watch the 2010 Olympics women’s figure skating event?

It was probably the biggest event of these Olympics in both Japan and Korea.

Japan’s best skater 19 year-old Mao Asada competed against Korea’s star Kim Yu-na, who is also 19 years old.

Of course, both Japan and Korea were sure that the skater from their country would win the gold medal for this event.

In the end though, Korean Kim Yu-na won the gold and Japan’s Mao Asada won silver. Canadian Joannie Rochette got the bronze medal.

Asada Mao is in the black dress.

Mao Asada tried her best and she did two “triple axel” jumps. It’s her signature jump and she is the only current women’s skater in the world who can do that particular jump.
She executed the triple axels perfectly, but she tripped up and almost fell at another point during her rountine and it cost her points.

Mao Asada skating in the 2010 Olympics women's figure skating event.

The 2010 Olympics will be over tomorrow. Japan currently has a total of four medals from these games…two silver and two bronze.
It looks like Japan won’t be taking any gold from these games.

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Also, tomorrow is the day of the annual “Tokyo Marathon“.

32,000 people will running 42 km through the streets of Tokyo.

This year a friend of mine will be running in the marathon.
ガンバレヒデキさん！ (Good luck, Hideki!)

***
And the pitcher from the Japanese baseball team, the Chunichi Dragons, Maximo Nelson (from the Dominican Republic) was arrested yesterday for bringing a bullet in his luggage in the airport in Okinawa (where he was going for his team’s spring training).

Japan is very strict with it’s drug and firearms laws.

***

Speaking of Okinawa, there was a very big earthquake in Okinawa this morning.
Hopefully everyone is OK.

***

Different subject, but I finally admitted that my eyesight isn’t what it used to be and got eyeglasses yesterday.
So, now, for the first time, I wear glasses for reading.

I can’t deny that I’m getting older. 😦

A few headlines

A few of the major news headlines in Japan right now:

• Tatsuya Ichihashi, who was a fugitive in Japan accused of murdering a British English-language teacher named Lindsay Hawker near Tokyo in 2007, was finally arrested today in Osaka.

  He has had plastic surgery done in an obvious attempt to alter his appearance to try to remain on the lam.

  The father of Lindsay Hawker was interviewed via telephone in England by the Japanese television news media and he expressed his relief that his daughter’s accused murderer has finally been captured after over two years.

• U.S. President Obama is due to make an official visit to Tokyo this Friday and Saturday.

  Before his visit, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invited him to visit their cities…as they are the only cities to have been hit with atomic bombs by the United States.

  Hiroshima and Nagasaki have invited every U.S. President since the end of WW2 to visit their cities…but due to the potential of an uproar in America if they did visit, every President has declined the invitation (former Presidents have paid the cities a visit, but never a sitting President)….until now.

  U.S. President Obama told the Japanese media that he will make an official visit to those cities while he’s in office. He said he won’t be able to visit them on this trip due to a tight schedule, but he will visit them on another trip to Japan before his Presidency ends.

• The U.S. military in Okinawa has arrested a U.S. solider on hit-and-run charges. The soldier hit an Okinawan man and left him to bleed to death in the street.

  The Okinawan public and government want the U.S. military to hand the soldier over to Japanese authorities to be tried in Japanese court.

  This case comes at a time when the people of Okinawa are trying to get some of the U.S. military bases in Okinawa moved off their island and relocated either to mainland Japan or a U.S. territory such as Guam or Hawaii.

• Also, it has been discovered that members of the U.S. military stationed in Japan have been abusing a privilege that official U.S. military vehicles have.
  An agreement that the U.S. military has with Japan is that official U.S. military vehicles traveling off of their bases on Japanese toll-highways on official military business can use special passes and travel without paying any of the tolls…the taxpayers in Japan (includes me) pay their toll-fares.

  Well, it seems that the U.S. military has been giving the passes to any members of the military who want to take a personal trip around Japan on their personal free time.

敬老の日

Today is 敬老の日 (Respect For The Aged Day).
(I wrote a short FAQ about it here).

My kids bought a small gift for their 94-year old great-grandmother. They took it to her house and paid her a visit.

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Yesterday we went to 上野 (Ueno, Tokyo).
As we were leaving 上野駅 (Ueno Train Station), we passed the Hard Rock Cafe, Ueno Stn Tokyo. We didn’t go in, but I noticed this poster outside the cafe:

I like the American rock band Mötley Crüe, and I know that they’re coming to this year’s Loudpark Heavy Metal Festival in October (see my “Festivals In Tokyo” page)…but according to this poster, they’ll be playing dates in Japan after the festival, too.

From there, we went to the big 「やましろや」 (Yamashiroya Toy Store), and then we went to a lake that has rental boats.

We rented a boats for our daughters and they had fun paddling around the lake for a half-hour.

Here are a couple of videos of the boats on the lake (none of the videos of my kids are online):

After that, we saw some people feeding the 亀 (turtles) and 鯉 (carp).
It was crazy. They started swarming to get the bread:

A nearby shrine:

At shrines in Japan, you can buy your fortune. After you read it, you tie it to one of these:

You can also buy an 絵馬…which is a wooden board that you write your wish on and then tie it near the shrine so your wish may come true.
Here are some people’s 絵馬 with their wishes written on them:

The shrine was setting up in the evening for the 祭 (festival) the next day (today):

My wife and daughters folded bamboo leaves into boats:

We stopped at an Okinawan store in Ueno to buy some Okinawan food. I really like Okinawan food.

This シーサー (Shiisaa) was outside the store. They are Okinawan mythological guardians (usually found in pairs):

And here’s an intersection in Ueno at night:

Time flies by!

This is the last couple days of my kids’ school Spring Break.

In Japan, the school year ends in March and the new one begins in April…so on Monday, my kids will be in 6th, 8th, and 9th grades (actually they’re called: Grades 小６年、中2年、 and 中３年 (“Elem 6th”, “Jr High 2nd”, and “Jr High 3rd” grades). In Japan, elementary school is grades 1 – 6, the junior high is grades 1 – 3, and high school is also grades 1 – 3.

I can’t believe how fast they grow up!

Next March (2009), my youngest will graduate from elementary school, and my oldest kid will graduate from junior high (Japan has Graduations and Opening Ceremonies for every school a child attends…from pre-school to college).

Then, next April (2009), my oldest will start high school. So this year she’ll be taking “high school entrance exams”. Not only college, but Japanese high schools also have entrance exams.

Stressful.

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In the news, there have been alot of violent crimes against Japanese people commited by American military servicemen stationed in Japan.

It doesn’t help the image of foreigners in Japan.

The most recent was a sailor in the US Navy stationed near Tokyo who stabbed a taxi driver in the neck with a kitchen knife.

Then there was the case in Okinawa in which a group of children of US servicemen attacked and robbed taxi drivers.

And a 14-year old school girl in Okinawa claimed an American Marine raped her.

There have been numerous other cases like these over the years…but it seems like there’s been a rash of them recently.

Hopefully, the pattern stops.

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Here’s a couple more videos I put onto my YouTube page (they’re both very short…and not very high quality. I’ll try to put better videos up in the future):

A sumo match at the 国技館 (I took this video with my cell-phone camera…it’s much clearer on a small phone screen):

And here’s a short clip of 流鏑馬 (Horseback Archery). It’s hard to capture with a camera…it goes by quickly—but “Yabusame” is very fun to watch. You should check it out in person if you ever get a chance (it happens a few times a year in Japan…actually one is coming up this month):