poeple pay $100 for $7 mask in Japan.

Clearly Japanese are over reacting to swine flu. People are just too scared of the flue. If you see an Asian with a big mask at an airport the guy probably be a Japanese. (it had been like this everywhere even before over 100 cases ware confirmed) I really hope it will be coming down soon.

Here is a proof of this fuss.

687yen(about $7) of a box of mask, contains 60 masks; is sold out as its saying on the picture below. All masks are just sold out everywhere.



But dont worry! You can buy a mask on auction sites.
Here is one of them which sold on Yahoo Auction.

Final Price : 10,500 yen (about $100)
Rest Of Time : over
Bid : 25


I dint know selling masks is such a good business!!
Maybe I should bring tons of masks when I go back to Japan in coming July.

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Reaction in Japan to swine flu

From news on TV, it describes what swine flu is with nice computer graphics.

(title) What exactly swine flu is, and "the outbreak"
103 dead, strike Narita Airport in this holiday week.


VARY!
(mutation of pig and bird)


Goes pig to parson..


VARY AGAIN!


There is possibility the viruses goes person to person...


It reminds me of Biohazard Movie. This is like Zombie movie or something.
Japanese news media is always trying so hard to make people worried, even panicked.

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funny video from comedy show "ten, ten, ten.."

This video seems well-known but if you never watched you got to watch this :)

In this game, when they laugh they get hit. They are forced to watch a stupid fake English practice video.

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Even George Lucas loves japanese nerdy illustration?

Geek industry is huge in japan and it has still potential of growth. No wander, even in unrelated fields, people try to take advantage by using "Moe". (What dose "Moe" mean? that is one of very hard Japanese words to describe, let me put the reference link here Moe (slang) - Wikipedia)


Akita Komachi - that is a well-known rice brand. the package is normally like the picture bellow. It has very traditional, classic design on it.




but last year, Maybe the makers got out of mind, they made the special package for the rice, designed by the illustrator who is popular among geeks. (sounds like because his pictures are mostly sexual). You can see the package bellow. And believe or not, they sold lots of the rice with the Moe designed package.



More surprisingly, (that is why I am writing this post) George Lucas offered the illustrator for Star Wars Memorial Portfolio which involves a hundred famous illustrators form all over the world. He was picked by George Lucas him self and suppose to draw Moe pictures of Star Wars, he said in his blog. it sounds like they're making the portfolio is not announced officially yet.

Reference Sankei MSN News (Japanese)

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Kim Jong-il's son : that is natural Japan intends to intercept The Taepodong Launch

North Korea launched a missile over Japan. Of course, Japan is now pissed off.
(refer to CBC news)

Not many people thought that there would be some very bad thing happen (the missile fall down to Japan by their bad design of the missile or this is just a bluff or something), but I couldn't help worrying about my family in japan here far away from there.

Before it launched, Japan said "We are going to intercept the rocket if it goes over Japan" and North Korea said "then we are going to intercept back to japan". North Korea was determined to be stupid as usual.

But the North Korea President, Kim Jong-il's oldest son gave pretty commonsense-comments about the issue in a interview on Japanese News.

I found only pics and it shows below very small so click it to see the big picture. I also put English translation each seen from top to bottom but sorry if there are not proper translations.

(1)(reporter) Recently photo of your father is released, he looks like he lost lots of weights. (there is the rumor Kim Jong-il is ill) (2)(the son) Its better to lose some wights then gain wights, isn't it? (3)(the son) He must be very tired, he has been very busy. (4)(reporter) Do you think Japan is over reacting toward the rocket launch? (5)(the son) I think Japanese reaction is very natural for self defense.

This guy has visited to Japan without any permission from Japanese Government before. He immediately got caught by police at the Narita Airport in Tokyo and answered "I want to go to Disneyland in Tokyo" to the question "What is the purpose of visiting Japan?". He brought his family, He simply came to go to Disneyland with his family for his vacation. Maybe he could never imagine what would happen if such a important North Korean Person comes to japan with no permissions. Of course he and his family were sent back to their country immediately.

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Watch Japanese TV on the Internet.

I got sudden desire to watch Japanese TV show on the other day, and found the way to watch foreign TV show on the Internet. I can watch Japanese TV programs on cable TV but I have to make a contract for TV Japan Chanel and most of shows on TV Japan are from NHK which is a TV channel broadcasted by the government, so most of then are very educational. That's also good though, The shows I want to watch are not on the channel.

I found I can watch Japanese TV with TV Ants. It sounds like made in China. This P2P tool is very stable compare to others once you get the connection but sometimes it takes a while to connect and sometimes you just can't connect. You can watch not only Japanese TV. You can search on the channel list witch appears after you launch TV Ants. It sounds like there are secret channels that not on the searching list. I am asking a Chinese friend to let me know if she finds any on Chinese websites.

I am very happy I can watch Japanese TV on real time for free in Canada! Even though 17 hour time difference doesn't let me watch night-shows, I am enjoying afternoon-shows for house wives!



Official Web site (Chinese)
http://www.tvants.com/
It takes for a while to download it from this site, unbelievably heavy. You may download it more easily from flowing link.

TV Ants Down Load
http://tvants.en.softonic.com/



Here are japanese TV chanel URLs for people interested in TV shows in Japan.

Fuji TV
tvants://list.tvants.com/tvants/?k=b8169561515263ca67a79bd632ed8816
Ashahi TV
tvants://list.tvants.com/tvants/?k=fea37fa6c59646560c25687c2d2f4df7
Tokyo TV (lots of anime shows)
tvants://list.tvants.com/tvants/?k=12e45cca4a0c491872b49d47c499a251
TBS
tvants://list.tvants.com/tvants/?k=37d2e6d9f142b55c596ecc4f839b9fdf

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Go for run with KDDI cell phone for green seeds!

Au by KDDI which is one of Japanese cell phone companies has a unique campaign lately. I just saw the news on the Internet says that it is working so well.

The campaign called "Green Road Project" is the phone company collects money to buy seeds by phone usres jogging.

You go running or walking with the cellphone and leave "Run & Walk application" run on the cell to measure how far you go. You can give 1 Japanese Yen (about 1 U.S dollar) by 1 km jogging.

They also make their official website wider and now they are trying to set Guinness book of world record for the widest website.

Green Road Project Official Website.
http://au-ss.jp/pc/index.html

TV cm

(She is runing in a foreign country, the cell must be out of service area! That is weird)

The company collects money until the end of March and at their stores, they start handing out the seeds they buy with the money. So people have to plant the seeds. I wonder how many people actually seed them...why doesn't the phone company just donate the money to an environment protection organization? Well, it's still good to have such movement and it is cool the cell phone can measure the distance you have jogged!

Thay have collectd about 2,500,000 Japanese Yen so far.

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