Average Hours Actually Worked in Japan and Elsewhere

Hours per year per person in employment (Japan highlighted).

Japanese create levitating chair for elderly

CNET:
"Researchers at Japan's Kobe Gakuin University are developing a levitating chair that hovers on a small cushion of air. The floating chair is being developed for elderly Japanese by Tsunesuke Furuta and others at the university's rehabilitation department."

創造的な観念

創造的な観念が困難である非常に複雑なプロセスです。
正式なものにして制御します。明らかに、複雑なも
創造性の文脈、特定のパターンを考えて現れることがあります。
このような観測パターンに頼っての"組織"を助けるかもしれない
がされているルートを推進し、創造的なプロセス
生産性の高いアイデアをリードし、それらを回避する実証済みのこと
しないでください。

Falling Cherry Blossoms as Cliché

"...the Japanese retain a high regard for convention and relatively low regard for originality. This means that clichés are endlessly repeated and stereotypes welcomed. Despite the many exceptions to this generalization there remains a tradition which insists upon such invariables. The Japanese film is filled with them: falling cherry blossoms for doomed lovers, dark glasses for bad foreigners.... The Western film is, to be sure, equally replete with clichés and stereotypes, but whereas the Japanese accept these as a matter of form, the Western audience tends to decry them."

Donald Richie: Japanese Cinema (1990)

The Story of Saiunkoku - Saiunkoku Monogatari - 彩雲国物語

Saiunkoku Monogatari will be published in Monthly Asuka starting this month.
The Story of Saiunkoku: The Complete Season One

Democracy This & Democracy That

"'The best place to watch the election campaign? Shibuya Station Square. It's a madhouse.'
That was the answer I received from the political reporter of the Nippon Times. The campaign for the first free general election in twenty years, and the first in Japanese history in which women were permitted to vote as well as run for seats in the Diet, was in full swing. It was April, 1946.
I took the subway and headed for Shibuya Square. The Place was certainly a bedlam.
Never were people drawn with such magnetic force by a single word - Democracy. Never did so many orators speak with such bombast and ardor on a subject about which they knew so little. It was a good thing for most of the candidates that the public knew even less than they about democracy.
To every candidate democracy was the difference between victory and defeat. So all the major factions used the word "democrats" with their names. The Socialists were the Social Democrats; the center party called itself the Democrats; the extreme rightists were named the Democratic Liberals. The Communists couldn't very well call themselves Democratic Communists, but they also claimed they were the strongest upholders of democracy.
I never heard so many orations on democracy, and I doubt whether so many were ever delivered at one time at any given place. In an area about a hundred square yards, the various parties set up platforms, each equipped with a gigantic loud-speaker. Because the place was so small and crowded, the speakers practically drowned each other out, and the only words you could hear were democracy this and democracy that."

Kimpei Sheba: I Cover Japan (1952)

Asahi Shimbun Logo <朝日新聞>

Close-up of Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun logo. Click the picture to see it bigger.

Newsweek Japan Issues 2010 | Hatoyama Missing

Prime Minister Hatoyama is not included to Newsweek Japan's cover. Outrage!

Japanese Real Estate Appraisal - バブル経済 Edition

"At the beginning of the 1980's, the value of all the real estate in Japan was about equal to that of all the real estate in the United States. By the end of the decade, it had become almost four times as valuable, although Japan's population was only half as big and its economy only 60 percent the size of America's. The official estimate of its value, at its peak in 1990 was 2,389 trillion yen ($23.89 trillion). At that point, Japanese real estate accounted for about 50 percent of the value of all the land on the face of the earth, while representing less than 3 percent of its total area. Theoretically, the people of Japan could have sold their small group of islands and bought the rest of the world with the proceeds."

Peter Hartcher: The Ministry. The Inside Story of Japan's Ministry of Finance (1997)