Kumamoto International Archive

Archive of the Kumamoto International Facebook group, 2011–present.

Kirk here with very recent news about a man with a knife who was arrested in the Central Ward of Kumamoto City without injury to anyone. According to the report, he took his knife directly to a koban (police box) that happened to be empty so he picked up a phone (a hot line to the main station?) to contact the police and said "I might kill someone. Stop me." After his arrest, he said he wanted to commit suicide. This occurred at the Shinmachi Koban, which is about halfway between Kumamoto Station and Kumamoto Castle.
Whenever I hear news like this, I feel glad that most ordinary people here don't have access to guns.
熊本市中央区の交番で刃物突きつけた疑い４０代の男を逮捕｜NHK 熊本県のニュース
１７日夕方、熊本市中央区の交番で４０代の男が刃物を突きつけたなどとして銃刀法違反の疑いで警察に逮捕されました。逮捕されたのは、熊本市の…

Kirk here with some rather surprising information about a turkey that "works" in Minamata. Earlier today, Carlton posted an inquiry about where one might eat turkey in Kumamoto. Of course, I had no idea, but I thought I might be able to find something via Google. I came up empty-handed with regard to restaurants that serve the bird but I didn't find this article about a lemon grower who "employees" a turkey to keep the weeds and bugs at bay. This way, the lemons can be grown without pesticides. The idea seems to be similar to the use of ducks (アイガモ) in rice paddies to avoid pesticides.
The lemons might function as a nice garnish to a turkey dinner but, alas, I don't think this fellow will be on the menu.
If anyone has any ideas about where or how one might enjoy a turkey dinner here in Japan, please navigate to Calton's post and share your leads there.
［あんぐる］お給料は「Ｔｈｅ草」　七面鳥農法（熊本県水俣市） / 日本農業新聞公式ウェブサイト
熊本県水俣市の果樹農園「Ｍｒ．Ｏｒａｎｇ・・・

Carlton here. The American in me would like to eat turkey on Christmas. Does anyone know of any restaurant in Kumamoto city or close proximity that might be serving that next Saturday the 25th? Thank you in advance for any tips.

Kirk here with a share from KumaVisit about the Christmas Market downtown. I only occasionally get around to sharing posts from KumaVisit and other outstanding pages so, if you like what you see, be sure to "like" the page. :)
https://www.facebook.com/kumavisit/posts/3015514712033488

Kirk here with news for boy-band fans. This group will come to Kumamoto for performances on the 19th and 20th of February next year.
Kumamoto hasn't had a new case of COVID-19 for over a month. At this rate, concerts like this should be able to go ahead as planned. Let's hope Omiron doesn't change things.
SixTONES' new track 'Rosy' is Spider-Man: No Way Home's theme song for Japanese release – watch
SixTONES are making their way into the Spider-verse. On 10 December, the J-pop act released the YouTube version of 'Rosy'. The new track is off th...

Kirk here with an announcement and request for volunteers from Yoriko Sakuma:
Looking for volunteers for signature campaign for a Vietnamese technical intern trainee who was charged with abandoning the corpses of her babies after she gave birth to stillborn babies in isolation.
Ms. Linh, gave birth to stillborn twins alone in a dormitory without telling anyone and spent one day with them after the birth. The next morning, Ms. Linh was taken to the hospital and arrested for the crime of violating her burial duties for her actions on the day of the stillbirths. The district court sentenced her to "8 months in prison, with a 3-year suspended sentence”, but she appealed to the high court, saying that she had neither abandoned nor hidden the babies. You might have seen our signature campaign on this case at Change.org, but now we are going to have the campaign near the entrance of Shimotori in Kumamoto City on December 18th from 2pm until 4pm. We’re looking for volunteers to help us. If you can join us as volunteers, please send me a message or email me at [email protected]
If you’d like to know more about this case, please visit at https://ninshinjapan.weebly.com/mslinhisnotguilty.html
If you cannot volunteer but you can sign the petition, please visit at https://bit.ly/3Hocs6s
Firma la petición
We request a verdict of “not guilty” of Vietnamese technical intern trainee, Ms. Linh

Kirk here with some airport news. I think renovation work on the airport is scheduled to be completed in about a year and a half. I'm not sure if this installation will be part of the new facility or if it's just temporary.
Huge 'One Piece' character panels installed at southwest Japan airport - The Mainichi
MASHIKI, Kumamoto -- Two large panels depicting characters from popular manga series

Kirk here with some thoughts about voting rights for noncitizen residents. In Japan, the number of localities that allow foreign residents to vote in plebiscites (public referenda, propositions, etc.) and/or local elections is small but growing. In my own country, New York City seems to have joined the club. (See URL at end of article.)
I wonder if something like this might not come to pass someday in Kumamoto. The non-Japanese community is small enough as to not be very threatening. On the other hand, Kumamoto seems to be rather conservative in comparison to Tokyo and the other communities that are allowing non-Japanese residents to vote. 🤔
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14481165
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/nyregion/noncitizens-voting-rights-nyc.html
Tokyo suburb to grant voting rights to foreign residents | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
Foreign residents of the western Tokyo suburban city of Musashino are to be granted the same rights as Japanese to vote in local policy matters under the terms of a proposed ordinance on referendums.

Kirk here sharing some information from the Kumamoto Booklovers group. The text that follows is from the group and merely copied and pasted by yours truly:
Happy Holidays everyone! Any book worms, book collectors, book obsessed, etc people out there looking for a place to share their ideas, discuss and enjoy new friendships? Booklovers is always looking for new members to join our discussions. We've taken a brief break through the pandemic but are looking to come back stronger than ever in 2022. We'll be holding a meeting (online or in-person, depending on the situation) at the end of January and discussing the book Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. Hope to see some of you around!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/331427137782/

Kirk here with a note about Kurokawa Onsen. An article entitled: "11 best illuminations and light displays in Japan" lists the illumination at Kurokawa Onsen you see in the picture as 5th on their list:
https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/things-to-do/best-illuminations-and-light-displays-in-japan

Kirk here with some local news (a lecture addressed to kids at Mifune High School by Kyoko Nishikawa) that has national and international implications:
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14499575
Out of curiosity, I took at look a the following Japanese article to see how her comments were summarized in Japanese:
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/0651380f3c1d543ecc90d8df8d6a15ec3d6efdc3
According the Japanese text, she seems to have been telling the students that Japan was pursuing a just war because the goal of the Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was to help the people of Asia prosper economical and to achieve independence from colonial powers. Of course, it is correct to observe that that is how the Japanese government sold the war effort to the public at the time. But, if anyone believes that that was in fact the primary objective of the government as a whole, well, if you believe that I know of some swampland in Florida you may wish to purchase.
The statement was remarkable in part because she was once a senior vice education minister and her speech, given in a prefectural school (not a private school), is at odds with the Ministry of Education's official position.
By the way, one more connection with Kumamoto is that her husband was the mayor of Tsunagi-machi:
https://www.town.tsunagi.lg.jp/common/UploadFileOutput.ashx?c_id=3&id=1093&sub_id=1&flid=2792
University chief justifies Pacific War in high school lecture | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
The Kumamoto prefectural board of education has confirmed that a university president and former Diet member defended the Pacific War as a just cause in a lecture she gave to high school students.

Kirk here trying to find an appropriate balance between providing information that may be of interest to Kumamoto's international community while, at the same time, being sensitive to the rights and interests of members of that community that have been accused of criminal activity.
For the past few days, RKK has been reporting on the arrest of a non-Japanese resident of Kumamoto on suspicion of inappropriate sexual behavior at a local onsen. Until today, I decided against posting about it because I couldn't see much value in doing so. Today, however, RKK reported that their video about the arrest has gotten far more traffic on the web than other news items. One reason may be the salacious nature of the news itself. I'm afraid, though, that another reason may be that anti-foreign denizens of the internet have taken an interest is spreading the news as confirmation of their xenophobic stance. So, in that sense, I felt that non-Japanese residents of Kumamoto should at least be aware that this sort of news is going around. According to the last report I heard, by the way, the accused person is denying the charges.

Kirk here with a little inquiry about language exchange possibilities. An English student of mine mentioned that he found it hard to get motivated to study English when he didn't have anyone to talk to. A few other students use HelloTalk (mentioned in this article) and that might be a solution. The article also indicates that Facebook can be used for language exchange.
Whether the actual exchange occurs on Facebook or on another platform, I wonder if this page might not facilitate such mutually beneficial exchanges. Personally, I'm married to a native speaker of Japanese so my needs are met, but I'd love to see the page function in this way.
Please share your thoughts and/or experiences with online language exchanges in comments.
10 Top Language Exchange Apps & Websites [2021 Update]
If you want to speak a new language with confidence, you should get as much speaking practice as possible. Anyone who has mastered a second language knows this to be true. It’s pretty much the only “trick” for faster language learning that actually works! But if you’re learning a language th...

Kirk again. I just posted about an accident that occurred in Yatsushiro where the driver is suspected of having stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake -- an all-too-common kind of accident.
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/6439497996123578
The following article is about an innovative manufacturer in Tamana with a solution -- a single-pedal system in which the same kind of confusion can't occur.
Hopes on Onepedal Growing for Preventing Car Accidents
Tamana, Kumamoto Pref., Aug. 19 (Jiji Press)--Orders are flooding in for a device, called Onepedal, which wa…

Kirk here. There have been quite a few incidents reported in the media in recent years of accidents that occurring when elderly drivers accidentally step on the accelerator instead of the brake. That's what seems to have happened at this hardware store (home center) in Yatsushiro.
https://www.tku.co.jp/news/?news_id=20211209-00000013
In connection with this incident I've made a separate post about a manufacturer in Tamana that has come up with a pedal that makes this kind of error virtually impossible:
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/6439518342788210

Kirk here with an English summary of something that was published in Japanese. The gentleman in the picture is a Mr. HOTTA Yoshihisa of Amakusa, age 101. The article is about the anti-war book that he recently published based on his own experiences during WWII. The article mentions that he has been a skilled typist for decades and wrote the book on a computer.
One occasion for the article may be the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor -- the start of the war between the U.S. and Japan. There have been a lot of TV shows that look back on what transpired. I saw a show in which a man who actually dropped bombs in the attack on Pearl Harbor (now 103 years old) spoke thoughtfully about the mixed feelings he has lived with since the end of the war: feeling that he did his duty, on the one hand, and, at the same time thinking, about how the American soldiers who died at his hands were not really any different than himself. (That was on the TBS show 報道特集 and may be available on their archives soon.)
I often feel that the generation that actually experienced WWII in significantly more anti-war than following generations. That was the case with my father. Those of us who have never experienced such horror need to pay careful attention to the messages that generation is leaving for us.
https://kumanichi.com/sites/default/files/2021-12/IP211206TAN000107000_03.jpg
https://kumanichi.com/articles/491669

Kirk here looking back on things that happened on this page in 2021 with some thoughts about how to move forward in 2022.
As those of you who read the page regularly have surely noticed, there was a good deal of friction about editorial policy in 2021. I was sorry to see things become acrimonious at times and to see editors leave the page but I felt that everyone involved was motivated by a sincere interest in making the page better. In other words, even when I saw people at loggerheads, I felt that those involved were trying to do what was right or appropriate but that they just had different ideas about what that would mean in practice.
One suggestion I have for 2022 is to assume goodwill. Even if someone (me, another editor, or a commenter) has written something that you find to be irritating, inappropriate, or just plain wrong in in some way, assuming that the person meant well might make it easier to respond kindly, even when you need to point out a problem or concern.
I should be upfront and say that I haven't always been able to practice what I preach in this regard. There have been many occasions in the over two-decade history of this forum in which my emotions have gotten the better of me and I've responded to situations in ways that I regret. So, what I've written here is as much a reminder to myself as it is a suggestion to other participants.
I'll post a few more thoughts I have about issues that came up in 2021 in the coming days.

Kirk here with something that may be of interested to people who need to control their blood-sugar level but would still like to enjoy some sweets.
Here's a page from the store's website with a Google map showing the location:
https://tenmando.com/pages/shop
And, if you prefer to read Japanese, here's an article from the Kumamoto Keizai Shimbun about the shop.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14479905
Confectionery’s bittersweet solution to blood-sugar fear | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
KUMAMOTO--A Japanese-style confectionery shop here does more than cater to customers with a sweet tooth. Its other objective is to revive the pleasure of eating something sweet for those suffering from diabetes and other illnesses linked to blood-sugar levels.

Kirk here with a heads up about Christmas markets, one at Hanabata Hiroba (downtown, near the castle) and one at Kumamoto Station. The dates and times are listed on the website with enough English and Arabic numerals (dates and times) to make things clear enough even if you can't read the Japanese text.
https://xmas-kumamoto.com
Reviews are welcome! If you get a chance to go, please write a note about what you liked or didn't like.
Finally, here's an article (in Japanese) from the Kumanichi:
https://kumanichi.com/articles/490673
クリスマスマーケット熊本 | CHRISTMAS MARKET KUMAMOTO
◆HOT WINE & DRINK（クリスマスマーケット熊本）ホットワイン特製のオリジナルホットワイン。寒い冬空の下で飲むホットワインは気持ちまであたたかくします。スパークリングワインやソフトドリンクなど […]

Kirk here with a share from Yoriko Sakama. As many of you will recall, we've discussed this important issue on the page several times.
https://www.facebook.com/yoriko.sakuma.1/posts/10159787690413817
Firma la petición
We request a verdict of “not guilty” of Vietnamese technical intern trainee, Ms. Linh