What the heck is wrong with Japanese people? They made a pizza with hot dogs in the crust.

In Asbury Park, New Jersey:

The Associated Press

BARNEGAT, N.J. - It’s the case of the nonexistent ninja. Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

Police tell the Asbury Park Press the man was late to a costume-themed day at a nearby middle school.

The lockdown began shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday and lasted until 9:30.

It’s beer for astronauts, and Sapporo is going to brew it with barely grown in space (or at least from the lineage of space barley).

So Sapporo is going to brew about 100 bottles of the stuff which will only be available to astronauts on the space station.

The question is will NASA allow them to drink it?

And what does a hangover feel like at 0 gravity?

Customs officials at Narita Airport were doing a test of their ability to find drugs. They put 142 grams of marijuana in a passengers bag as it was coming off the plane and let the drug sniffing dogs loose to try and find it. The problem is the dogs couldn’t find the weed and the guy who planted it forgot which bag he put it in. Doh!

I’d like to see the passengers face when he/she opens that bag and finds a big sack of weed sitting there.

Full article

SNL did a Japanese version of the popular US television show “The Office”. What do you guys think about this? I thought it started out really funny but then kind of creeped me out towards the end.

View the video here (it’s a flash video at hulu.com)

Takashi Murakami’s life sized hentai action figure has sold for $15,161,000 according to Sotheby’s website.

The piece of part of his show currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum. I went to see it a couple of weeks ago and it’s a really fun show.

A picture of the piece is below (NSFW):

It’s not completely off topic, there’s sushi.

I’m a big fan a fuel cells and I was excited to hear that 2200 homes in Japan are now using fuel cells to generate electricity.

The Japanese government is strongly supporting this fuel cell technology. So much so that it has earmarked $309 million a year for fuel cell development and plans for 10 million homes–about one-fourth of Japanese households–to be powered by fuel cells by 2020.

According to this stupid website, Japan is #58 on the list of things white people like.

Here I am thinking I like Japan for the culture and the people, and now I find out I’m actually predispositioned to liking it!

(Thanks Dave Chappelle)

Pileus is working on an Internet enabled umbrella that will allow the user to check out websites while their walking down the street, by looking up at the underside of the umbrella. It works by using a small projector to put the image on the inside of the umbrella. It’s enabled for Google Maps and Flickr.

It’s not quite ready for mass production yet as the projector is still pretty bulky and power-hungry, but it looks really cool.

I’ve been playing around with Google Maps recently and came across this mapplet. It’s really cool, you can pick a podcast from whatever part of japan you’re interested in and play it right then and there.

I’ve also made a map of my favorite places in Japan.

I came across this transcript of 9/11 hearings by the Japanese Parliament. I was hesitant to post it because I’m not one for conspiracy theories but it’s interesting to read. Yukihisa Fujita leads the questioning in to the events of that day and questions Japan’s role in the War on Terror.

Sakaya (324 E 9th St, between 1st and 2nd; 212.505.7253) just opened … it’s a shop that sells only sake, something that I’ve never seen in New York City. It sounds like a good idea I guess, since it’s really tough to buy a decent bottle of sake at your average liquor store. Even the more upscale wine shops don’t carry any good varieties.

I haven’t been yet, but I plan on making a visit this week. I’ll report back on prices and selection.

According to this Washington Post article Japanese people are blogging like crazy these days. According to the article 37% of all blog posts last year were written in Japanese, beating out English language posts by 1%.

It should come as no surprise that one of the popular items that people are writing about is food.

Consider, for example, the remarkably harmonious blog that Junko Kenetsuna has been writing five times a week for the past three years about her midday meal.

With understated precision, she calls her blog “I had my lunch.”

In a recent dispatch from a Vietnamese restaurant in Tokyo, Kenetsuna wrote: “The soup has a distinctive chicken flavor and the bitterness of pear, which gives you much sensation in your mouth.”

The article also notes that Japanese blogs rarely bash other people or organizations and are generally more polite.

There’s also a video to go along with the article.

This is really funny. The first picture shows a couple of Japanese employees fueling a small airplane. Scroll down to see the same action being performed in China. Yes, it’s racist but I don’t care.

The difference between Japan and China.

This is from the Atlantic magazine.

It’s starting to get cold and I’ve been dreaming of ramen (or more correctly raamen). Problem is, there’s no good ramen in NYC and I’m not going to be in Japan for a couple months.

What to do? Hmm. I’ll make a ramen website!

Here it is: TastyRamen.com

For all the ramen lovers out there, it will get you in the mood.

Fanta commercials are some of my favorite commercials in America. They have a bunch of latin ladies each wearing a different color, dancing and singing about their favorite drink: Fanta!

Here are some Japanese Fanta commercials.

I like the American versions better.

According to Ars Technica, the new version of Mac OS X is selling like crazy in Japan (and beating the pants of of Microsoft Windows Vista).

Maybe this is a good time to post one of those Japanese Mac commercials.

Hi-Definition pictures have been sent back by the Japanese moon probe named Kaguya and are available as a video on the JAXA website here.

This is the first time the moon has been photographed this closely in Hi-Def.