Barack Obama
A pretty major difference between anime and western animation is the amount of detail Japanese productions put into character profiles and backstories. For just about any significant anime character, you can be sure the creators have decided on things such as a family name, exact height in centimeters, favorite food, and, in the case of sex-appeal female characters, bust, waist, and hip measurements.
If nothing else, characters almost always have an official birthday, even if there’s never an episode highlighting it or any other part of the story affected by, for instance, Attack on Titan’s Levi being born on December 25. Now, a fan-produced website has compiled a database of anime birthdays, allowing you to plug in your own to see which characters you could conceivably share a cake with.
Confusion broke out online in Japan recently as people weren’t sure what to make of a comment uttered by US President Barack Obama on 25 November. During a speech regarding immigration reform in Chicago he cited Japan as an example of a country which doesn’t “have problems with certain folks being discriminated against.”
In Obama’s mind, the remark must have been an innocuous comment meant to lighten the crowd. Little did he know that it would wind up mentioned in the Japanese press and through a chain of misunderstandings would lead some to comment: “Look at that. So he admits the evils of immigration after all!” It’s as if Aaron Sorkin wrote an episode of Three’s Company.
Last week’s US midterm elections drew the attention of the whole world, including Japan. NHK covered the whole spectacle in detail, but the usually serious broadcaster went with a bizarrely cartoonish, over-dramatic banner that showed America’s most senior politicians looking like characters in a beat-’em-up game a la Street Fighter.
Taro Aso might be remembered by some as the last prime minister to serve during the revolving-door era of political leadership that occurred in the last decade in Japan, with the country being led by five different men between 2006 and 2012. During that time and elsewhere in is political career, however, Aso has also become well-known for his numerous gaffes such as saying he wanted to make Japan a country that “rich Jews” would want to live.
Now serving as Deputy PM and Minister of Finance, Aso’s legacy of inappropriate comments lives on. Following the recent visit by US President Barack Obama, the former prime minister felt it was time to give his two cents about the American leader.
President Obama made headlines during his visit to Japan, not for his diplomatic mission, but for his first order of business: dining at arguably the best sushi restaurant in the world. Greenpeace was angry about him consuming endangered bluefin tuna, but everyone else seemed to look upon his choice in Japanese dining experience favorably, many extremely jealous of the opportunity to consume expertly crafted sushi.
But aside from raising the hackles of environmental organizations and causing the world to crave raw fish, President Obama also had some other unexpected influences on the country of Japan. From the invention of new hashtags to the accumulation of trash around Tokyo, let’s take a look back at the Obama Effect on Japan.
After President Barack Obama ate at a famous Tokyo restaurant that serves rare bluefin tuna, the environmental organization Greenpeace issued a statement saying he should have made more “responsible food choices.”
“As a role model, people will naturally follow you. The global appetite for bluefin tuna has destroyed this species, pushing it to the brink of extinction. It needs to be protected,” Casson Trenor, Greenpeace’s oceans campaigner, said in a statement to Business Insider.
President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe just finished a meal at Tokyo’s Sukiyabashi Jiro, one of the best sushi restaurants in the world.
Sukiyabashi Jiro is headed up by 89-year-old master chef Jiro Ono. In addition to his restaurant’s three-star Michelin rating, Jiro is widely regarded as the world’s top sushi chef and was featured in the 2011 documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.”
Notices like the one above, which was posted on Twitter, have been popping up at major stations around Tokyo such as Shinjuku. It notifies commuters that coin lockers will be unusable from 19 to 25 April as a terrorism counter-measure.
How exactly does shutting down coin lockers prevent terrorism? The answer is quite simple… but a little confusing.
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