UPDATE!
There is a new report from the lindsayfincher.com blog dated March 9th, 2010, which seems to show the hotel’s “reconstruction” may have been completed only from one viewing angle.
“This is the closest we came to the Ryugyong, when we visited the Victorious Fatherland Liberation Museum.”
–March 9th, 2010 lindsayfincher.com
A constant source of amusement to the Japanese (and the rest of the world) is North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel–aka the ‘Ruin Ryugyong’– that has been left uncompleted for more than 20 years. In the past year it has reported several times in the press that a foreign cellphone company has resumed construction on the hotel. Here’s a CLEAR photo of the Hotel Doom, before and after. View the full-size photo, 571×869 px.
The recent contruction was done soley to enclose the Ruin Ryugyong in glass and make the hotel less of a laughing stock of Architecture. You have to say it now looks impressive (even though the inside is an unlivable concrete shell because the lack fixtures, mechanicals, crooked elevators and insufficient strength to handle any occupancy).
However, it is good to remember that North Korea’s Hotel Ryugyong is still taller than any building in Europe or JAPAN. For example, Japan’s tallest building, Yokohama Landmark Tower is only 295.8 m (970 ft) but the Hotel Ryugyong is 330.02 m (1,100 ft). So remember…
Back in 2007 I wrote about Pyongyang North Korea as a better Tokyo with a great YouTube video (below) of a fictional/humorous take on Pyongyang North Korea with a Disneyeque Hotel Ryugyong.
NPR is running a great slideshow of The Jobs Of Yesteryear – Obsolete Occupations, “as computers and automated systems increasingly take the jobs humans once held, entire professions are now extinct.” Sadly, the list didn’t include the tongue-in-cheek profession my father put in his obituary, “draftsman” (rather than being an architectural/civil/environmental engineer).
However, little does NPR know that in high-tech Japan, most large department stores in major cities still have cute-squeaky elevator girls. Often there are TWO girls for the elevator: one who remains outside the elevator and another who operates the carriage. Being squeaky cute is never an “obsolete occupation” in Japan.
Japanese consider Unko (poop) as good luck since it also means “Lucky Kid”.
According to the Rinkya blog you can, ” Squeeze these poop balls to de-stress, they even come scented… not a poo scent–but banana, peach, apple and chocolate!” As a traditionalist, I would go with chocolate color and scent shown on the right.
Buy ‘em via Rinkya.
The Karate Kid 2010: Same, same? No, no! by Jess Hemerly at 9:54 AM March 4, 2010
… the 2010 [remake] version of The Karate Kid looks like it tries to be faithful to the 1984 version … instead of the lovable maintenance man and gardener Pat Morita (RIP) we get maintenance man Jackie Chan; instead of Ralph Macchio’s Danny LaRusso, the Jersey boy in LA, we get Will Smith’s son as Dre, the Detroit boy in Beijing; and instead of karate we get kung fu.
… This comes across more like “all look same.” Karate has its roots in Chinese kung fu, but the martial art has evolved over a really, really long time and is not the same, neither culturally nor in practice. Japanese and Chinese cultures are not interchangeable yet the toss-up between film names would make it seem that way, at least as far as Hollywood’s marketing arm is concerned.…more…
If you view the trailer of The Kung-Karate-Fu Kid remake above, you’ll notice the cultural change does make it a different movie. You’ll notice that the Kid, Wil Smith’s kid Jaden Smith, looks waaay too young for his unnamed love interest in the film too. More interesting is that all the Mainland Chinese actors are unnamed on the official site and on IMBD.com.
(Damn those teen growth spurts—Love conquers all, even age and height.)
Speaking of cavemen…
For breakfast today I had Tohato Food’s, MAMMOTH MEAT, “A Prehistoric Period Experience Snack.”
The package of Japanese crackers were smoked flavor and sort of tasted like beef jerky flavored mammoth. Don’t worry, Tohato Foods assures on the package that, ” This snack food that is inspired by mammoths…No mammoth meat is included.”
There are several mammoth meat flavors, which you check out on the official Tohato Foods website.
Despite the World of Warcraft connotation, Japanese of mammoth meat goes back a long way and is found in Japanese manga, anime and video games, especially in comedic genres. In the game First Human Giatrus. Manga meat in the series differs slightly from the “manga meat” depicted today. The meat is depicted as that of a mammoth, cut in round slices with hair left on the skin. (Wikipedia)
OurManinAbiko.blogspot.com
Holy crap, who would have thought the real world (you know the one of falling newspaper circulations and no ad revenue) would have entered the Pravda of Japan, the Daily Yomiuri. Well, the hard times have unofficially hit. Here’s what Our Man knows:
1. The boss has been told to trim staff by 25%
2. The paper will be going to one edition in April from the current four …more…
For more than a decade Tokyo had four English-language daily newspapers, The Japan Times, The Daily Yomiuri, The Mainichi Daily News, and The Asahi Shimbun. The Mainichi Daily News stopped printing almost 8(?) years ago and now has a minor daily news site. The Asahi Shimbun in English for the past five years just reposts content from the International Herald Tribune and doesn’t put much effort into translating Japanese news. If the The Daily Yomiuri closes, only The Japan Times will be left, which is shame because the Japan Times has increasingly become lighter in content.
BOTTOM LINE: Japanese news in English will slow to a trickle and Japan will fade from the world’s consciousness.
scare-the-daylife.com-out of you - TOKYO – FEBRUARY 25: Male waiters, wearing woman’s clothes, serve customers at New Type cafe…[snip]…women customers saying they enjoy communicating with friendly waiters and male customers enjoying talking with the waiters who they can relate to as both men and women.
Like the jobs you never thought existed, cross-dressing Japanese pretending to be French maids serve primarily women at this maid cafe. Weird but what the hey, is anybody getting hurt by this? Nope.
Pantie Tug Of War Party Game
According to the Rinkya blog, this Japanese party game involves two people putting a pair of panties on their head that are connected by a cord and then, “you tug away!” trying to rip off the other person’s panties.
You can purchase the panty pull “game” via Rinkya blog (it’s rather inexpensive).
The 3yen’s correspondent, “Den4,” has sent us this warning about a new Cow Piss (aka Calpis) with the introduction of Coke’s “Moo Moo White.”
JapanToday.com — Feb. 23, 2010…Shibuya Center-gai Burger King as a promotion for Coca Cola’s new “Fanta Moo Moo White” carbonated dairy-based drink. To lend support, former yokozuna Akebono…more…
At least Akebono got to have some fun during the promo…
Visit the official site at http://fanta.jp/, which should only be up until April.
Maybe Coke is recycling another faux CowPiss product for the US market they tried last July—Vio “Vibrance” Drink—a blend of skim milk, natural fruit flavors, sparkling water, and cane sugar, which the 3Yen covered in:Coke ‘invents’ Cowpiss.
Evidence of Mad-Hatter syndrome in Japan. That is, this charming Japanese guy wants his heavy metal laden whale blubber* that everywhere else in the world is considered toxic waste. Japanese whale and dolphin meat is tainted with mercury levels ranging from 3.25 to 200 times over the maximum levels set by the Ministry of Health of Japan.
DayLife.com 2010-02-23
A demonstrator opposing Australia’s decision to seek international legal action against Japan over its annual whale hunt in the Antarctic, holds canned and packaged whale meat while protesting in front of the Australian Embassy in Tokyo…
*Yes, yes, I have been served and have eaten whale and dolphin here in Japan. The whale “bacon” (blubber) shown in the bottom of the above photo is terrible, but the worst tasting cetacean is dolphin, which has a bloody-gamey taste. On the other hand, the red meat of whale tastes like fairly good beefsteak.
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There are several mammoth meat flavors, which you check out on the official 
