Kagoshima Governor Asks Why Girls Are Taught Trigonometry

Shouldn't we be helping lady brains
get even better at making cute food?

Yuichiro Ito, the governor of Kagoshima, asked, "What's the point of teaching high school girls about sines, cosines and tangents?" at a meeting with the prefectural board of education.

He later said, "I meant I've never used any of them. It was a slip of the tongue." I can totally relate to the guy. It's weird that I always talk about how women are lesser beings... Whoops! Another classic slip of the tongue. I meant I'm a lesser being, or whatever.


Source: Mainichi Shimbun

Also, mad props to @Mulboyne where I first saw the story.

C-SPAN

I'm sure you all know that I'm one of the biggest C-SPAN fans this side of Mt. Fuji. That's why I was so excited to see that they've come to their senses and finally opened clothing store in Japan. It was pretty radical. I will say they might want to hire some new clerks. Everyone just acted confused/scared when I started screaming, "Where are the Lindsey Graham socks?! Or which ones do you think he would like to receive for a gift?!" They eventually showed me some socks, but they wouldn't match Lindsey's eyes at all.

New Name for Car Wash

I saw this truck delivering a car wash the other day.

I noticed they had a pretty cool name for the car wash.

Can we all agree that this is what we'll car washes from now on? I mean, you can say just "car beautician" or "car wash machine" for short, but... I don't know, tell people saying only "car wash" is some sort of ethnic slur or something. Let's make the world a better place to live in for our children!

Teruki Goto

Political posters in Japan are often humorous, but this one for the guy running for the mayor of Chiyoda takes it to a different level. You probably couldn't tell from the poster, but this man is likely clinically insane. He's right wing... mostly. Like, he thinks the Nanking Massacre is a fabrication told by foreigners. He wants less foreigners in Japan. Japan should restore its traditional values. That kind of jazz.

But he also has thoughts that don't seem conservative at all. For example, all women should receive free birth control until age 25. This is especially surprising because almost no one in Japan uses birth control and most of the talk is about how to increase the birthrate.

Then he has thoughts that aren't really on anyone's radar. He wants to popularize the use of surgeon robots. He wants to develop a medicine that cures baldness. He thinks Japan should win the FIFA World Cup. You know, the kinds of things mayors control.

He has opinions on everything. If you can read Japanese, you should check out Teruki Goto's site. I've only read maybe 5% and already found these cool facts

Cherry Head Politician

Did you guyz see this picture of a politician wearing a giant cherry on his head? The man is the lieutenant governor of Yamagata prefecture and he was speaking at the city hall in Sendai. The purpose of the meeting was to plan for the "World Conference on Disaster Reduction" which will be held next year in Sendai (a city itself ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011).

So why was he wearing a cherry on his head? The most obvious answer is he was pointing out that attempting to avoid disasters is futile. After a few more trips around the sun we will all be dead, and it won't be many more trips around before no one remembers who you were. None of this means anything. Why do we wear ties, sit up straight, and pretend we are doing something meaningful? Look,  you can wear a cherry on your head. It doesn't matter. When you look at the big picture, nothing will change from what we do here. No one will remember even that a crazy man was wearing a cherry. What are we doing? I have a ton of whiskey in my car. Who's with me?

No, wait, kind of the opposite. He's just an idiot trying to appeal to cherry farmers in his home prefecture.

Source: Yomiuri Online

Communist Poster

The communist party in Japan is still alive and sort of well. They only have 8 and 11 members in the lower and upper houses respectively, but their posters can be seen all over the country.  They claim to be Marxist, but they're just a normal left wing party. You'd think that at some point they might want to change the name, but apparently there's not too much of a stigma associated with the term "communist." Either that or the Japanese are just super into gulag culture.

The poster above is typical of their recent one's which often depict cartoon characters (I'm pretty sure Stalin used similar tactics). The dork lady is saying, "We won't forgive black companies!" Black companies are just companies that break labor laws, like having workers work more hours than are legal and the likes. The current laws don't seem to be enforced at all. Anyway, that four-eyes commie-scum has a point. Still, the counterpoint is so easy to make, "Go back to Russia! Oh, and by the way, only whores wear all purple! I spit on you and your children!"

Taro Aso Suggests Learning from Nazis

Photo by Valeriy Yevseyev via Wikimedia Commons

Taro Aso, a former Prime Minister, had some interesting ideas about changing the constitution. Here's a quote from Nikkan Sports: "ドイツのワイマール憲法はいつの間にか変わっていた。誰も気がつかない間に変わった。あの手口を学んだらどうか" Here's a crappy English translation: "No one was aware when the Weimar Constitution was implemented. No one noticed the change. How about we learn from that trick?" Aso was referring to the changes Hitler made to the German Constitution. The LDP wants to make several constitutional changes, many of which don't have popular support. Aso isn't just some old crazy guy. Currently he is the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan (kind of like the Vice President, but he doesn't automatically become the Prime Minister if Abe dies). I will say that the other quotes were ambiguous. Perhaps he was trying to say we shouldn't do what the Nazis did, but he did a really bad job of explaining that. Also, why would you ever bring up that your own party is acting like Nazis? For the record, I don't actually think they're being Nazis.

Just a couple fun facts on Aso:
* He's Catholic, which is very uncommon in Japan. Just more bragging rights for Catholics.
* He's a huge idiot. He has been ridiculed for not being able to read basic kanji (that most children could read).
* His family's coal mine used POW labor during WWII.

There's a bunch of other stuff about this guy that's crazy. Look it up if you care.

Political Posters

There was an election on Sunday (LDP won. Read a real newspaper is you actually care). That means all the cars driving around screaming support for someone or other will go away. Now there will only be cars screaming about how they are collecting trash, or that they have mochi for sale, or that Japan should move politically to the right, or that Jesus is the only true god, etc. All the beautiful political posters will come down as well. That's not true. They'll still hang on businesses and private homes, but Japan has all these specially designated areas for posters where you can see everyone running in a particular place. Those will come down.

It will be hard to say goodbye to so many handsome faces.

Savvy Politics

While American politicians seem to be concerned with playing ads on television, their Japanese counterparts no how to get out their message with a lot less money. For example, the side of a porta potty seems to be a wonderful place to tell the world about your political views. Here we see a DPJ poster, but somehow they're still behind in the polls.

Married Couples and Surnames

When a Japanese person marries a foreigner, he/she has the choice of changing or keeping his/her name. Apparently that's not the case when two Japanese citizens marry. They must have the same surname. Usually the woman takes the man's name, but I have met several couples where the man takes the woman's name (this especially happens when a woman with no bothers marries a man who has a brother). I think it was also more common in arranged marriages (again, if a family had a business and no son, they would make their daughter marry someone to take over the business). Since 1996, there have been surveys taken to gauge the support of changing the law to allow separate surnames in families, and for the first time since 1996, more people supported keeping the law than revising it. You can read about it in English here, or read a more detailed account in Japanese here. It was very close with 36.4% against the change and 35.5% for allowing couples to keep their own surnames. A strong competitor, as seems to be the case in most Japanese polls, was "no opinion" with 28.1%. Also, people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s supported a change while old people (who hate their grandchildren, I assume) were against the change. Just another statistic showing that there are too many elderly people in Japan. 53.3% of women in their 20s supported the change, but they're just the most likely people to get married, so who cares what they think.

Boring Political Update

The LDP (a center-right party) completely destroyed the DPJ in the election, so Shinzo Abe will be the next prime minister. The LDP won a majority of the 480 seats in the lower house by themselves, but when their seats are added up with their ally party (Koumeito) they won a two-thirds majority. This gives them the power to overturn any veto from the upper house. Basically, the upper house is now just a bunch of dudes sitting around that have no power at all. Seems like a pretty odd system.

Also I read that the turnout was about 59%, which is tied for the lowest turnout since WWII.　It is about ten points down from the election in 2009. Seems like a pretty high low.

Shinzo Abe

 Photo from wikimedia commons                                                                   

There's going to be an election in Japan on December 16th. It is thought that the prime minister will almost surely be Shinzo Abe. I have read, however, that over 40% of voters are undecided, but only about 10% say they support the current party in power. Anyway, I thought I should share some fun facts about Mr. Abe.

*Abe was prime minister of Japan once already from 2006-2007 (a few weeks short of a year).

*Abe was wildly unpopular as the prime minister, and his administration was wrought with scandals. Among them: 

   1. The minister of health gave a speech in which he repeatedly referred to women as baby making machines. (I know what you're thinking, "What's the big deal?" But even though that phrase sounds perfectly natural in English, I guess it sounds a little rude in the original Japanese.)

   2. One cabinet member committed suicide.

   3. Another cabinet member was involved in a political funding scandal.

   4. In response to these problems, Abe created a new cabinet. A week later another member was involved in a financial scandal.

*Abe doesn't believe that "comfort women" in WWII were forced to "comfort" Japanese soldiers' "private parts."

*Abe claims that he resigned not because of his unpopularity, but because of his chronic diarrhea. (I've read a couple different places that he had to go over 30 times a day). Since then, he has found a new medicine and has his illness under control. I'm sure it won't resurface after he's a wildly unpopular prime minister again.

*His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was prime minister in the late 1950s. Kishi was arrested and accused of being a class A war criminal, but was not convicted, so I'm sure he did nothing wrong in the war. (I'm still having trouble figuring out why China hates Japan).

So, in conclusion, he seems like a really good guy and he promises to take a hard stance against China. Maybe our dreams of participating in WWIII will be realized. I think Abe is kind of like the Abe Lincoln of Japan. I mean, both of their names are Abe (though pronounced differently), and they were both forced to leave office before their time (one by being shot in the head, and one from the runs. Same diff.).      

   

Political Poster

Look at this handsome devil. How could you not vote for him? What a cool pose. You can tell he must be tough. This guy is in the Democratic Party (a center-left party), but he's super conservative. He's one of those dudes who basically thinks there's no proof that Japan did anything wrong in WW2. One problem I have with American conspiracy theories is that they usually only make Americans hate each other instead of making the most populated country in the world hate us.