Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Takeshima
South Korean netizens are apparently up in arms over their president’s choice of shoes that she wore when throwing the opening pitch of the third game of the Korean Series baseball tournament in Seoul on October 27. Her fashion crime? President Park Guen Hye had the “audacity” to show up wearing a Japanese brand of sneakers!
Released earlier this month, the latest iteration of Apple’s operating system for mobile devices, iOS 7, boasts a sleek, vivid interface that is certainly quite a departure from previous iPhone software. Although the majority of Apple’s customers will likely be more than satisfied with both the OS’s stylistic and functional changes, some Korean citizens have taken issue with iOS 7’s Maps application, which refers to the islets located between Japan and Korea – over which there has been much debate – by the Japanese name of Takeshima.
All around the world, young and middle-aged adults have fond childhood memories of giant robot cartoons. I can remember watching Autobots brawl with Decepticons over their endless hunt for energon cubes. Meanwhile, South Koreans were enjoying Robot Taekwon V.
Robot Taekwon V was such a hit that even today the Korean government uses its robot protagonist’s likeness to promote the nation’s claim to ownership of the Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo in Korea, Takeshima in Japan), a disputed island that has recently renewed some tensions between Korea and Japan. However, a recent plan to erect a statue of Taekwon V has been met with strong resistance from South Korean net users who feel that instead of being intimidating, the statue would cause Japanese citizens to laugh.
Japan and Korea have not been on the best of terms recently, thanks mostly to a territorial dispute over literally a couple of rocks known as Takeshima to the Japanese and the Dokdo islands to Koreans.
As so, now may not be the most welcoming time to visit Korea if you’re Japanese, and vice versa.
To cite an extreme, in Korea there is even one net cafe that has gone so far as to post a sign outside reading: “No Japs Allowed.”
But if you read the fine print, you’ll notice that the management isn’t being completely unreasonable with the ban.
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Starbucks Japan unveils new sakura cherry blossom collection for hanami season 2026Train station platform ramen store closes its doors on half a century of history in Tokyo
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Starbucks Japan releases first-ever Hinamatsuri Girls’ Day FrappuccinoCherry blossoms begin blooming in Japan with record-early starts for sakura seasonStudio Ghibli adds new Mother’s Day gift sets to its anime collection in Japan
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We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
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