Posts

(Fiona) Unfortunately, the weather forecast for tomorrow is not good so the 3pm Tatsuda-yama Walk will have to be postponed until a future date. Let's try again sometime between Golden Week and the start of the rainy season - a very slim window of opportunity!

William My hometown is Los Angeles, where water is more valuable than gold. Kumamoto is blessed for its water. It literally spurts out here and there.

Kirk here reporting that for the first time in three years someone has been certified as a Minamata disease patient but 18 were denied, and one judgment was deferred (I'm not sure if that's the best translation). 350 remain unadjudicated.

Kirk with something has only the weakest connection to Kumamoto. This came up when I searched for news about Kumamoto because the Guardian pointed out that the kiwi yuru-kyara that greated New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, paled in comparison with the gold stardard of Japanese mascots -- Kumamon. I thought that perhaps Prime Minister Ardern might be on her way here for Kumamoto's water summit but, alas, no such luck.
Jacinda Ardern greeted by giant sad dancing kiwifruit during visit to Japan
Two large mascots, dancing to sorrowful music, helped welcome the New Zealand prime minister on her first trip overseas since the pandemic began

(Douglas) I am in the process of moving many of my videos from Vimeo to 2 newly created YouTube channels.
Gaijin-Eyes - YouTube
Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

Kirk here with some news on the wafer fabrication plant to be built in be built in Kikuyo-machi. The use of the phrase "wafer fab" to mean "a facility that manufactures (fabricates) silicon semiconductor wafers (chips)" didn't make much sense to me at first (especially since the article ONLY uses that jargon and never spells it out) but the phrase "wafer fab" led me to this video on the process, which I found to be interesting:
Construction of TSMC's wafer fab in Japan to start Thursday - Focus Taiwan
Taipei, April 20 (CNA) The construction of a wafer fab to be run by a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) joint venture will start on Thursday, according to Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. (JASM), the joint venture.

Kirk here with news from Tsuetate: "The streamers can be seen until May 6, and are illuminated in the evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m."
3,500 carp streamers gracefully 'swim' above river at southwest Japan onsen resort - The Mainichi
OGUNI, Kumamoto -- Some 3,500 carp streamers are gracefully

Kirk here with news about the 4th Asia-Pacific Water Summit, which will be held in Kumamoto City this weekend. Unfortunately, it's too late to apply to attend any of the events in person (the deadline was a few weeks ago) but I found this cool video about Kumamoto's ground water, something that makes it unique in Japan.
Water of Kumamoto-A Bridge to the Future- 4K Full ver. (英語) 熊本市
令和4年4月23日㈯・24日㈰に第4回アジア・太平洋水サミットが開催される熊本市は、豊富な地下水に恵まれた日本一の地下水都市です。地下水を育む熊本の雄大な自然。地下水を守り、地下水に支えられ、彩られる人々の暮.....

Carlton. I caught this on a news aggregation site and then checked it out on Facebook. It is self-explanatory and real.
This Account Collects And Shares Japanese Pictures Without Any Context (47 Pics)
Welcome to the Facebook page that shares random stuff from Japan intentionally put out of context to maximize weirdness. Not that being in context would necessarily make any of this less weird.

Kirk here with a detailed article about the plight of Ms. Le Thi Thuy Linh, which has been a topic of discussion on this page in the past:
FOCUS: Pregnant trainee in Japan feared being forced to return to Vietnam
A Vietnamese woman who came to Japan as a technical trainee and feared being forced to return home when she became pregnant,

Kirk here with another bird post. I Google "Kumamoto" from time to time in order to check up on recent news related to this community. Yesterday when I did that, a summary of Wikipedia's page for Kumamoto Prefecture came up and I happened to notice that the official prefectural bird was listed as "great tit," (which I later learned is "シジュウカラ" [shijuukara] in Japanese). That led me to check Japanese sources and I found that the official birds of Kumamoto Prefecture and Kumamoto City were reversed on the English Wikipedia pages. I've since corrected them and now the official bird for Kumamoto Prefecture is correctly displayed as "Asian skylark" ("hibari" in Japanese) -- the bird pictured on the right.

Kirk here with news about a survey conducted by the Tokyo Bar Association. The results probably won't surprise many long-time residents of Japan who don't look Japanese: Foreigners get questioned a lot just because they are foreigners. The law says that the we must comply with such questioning. OK. But it also says that the police only have the right to stop and question us when they suspect criminal activity. The notion that one's skin color or facial features are enough to make one a criminal suspect is what is called racial profiling. I think the Tokyo Bar Association took this up in part because it's an abuse of the law -- the police don't have carte blanche to stop anyone they like without good reason.
63% of people with foreign roots in Japan questioned by police - The Mainichi
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A total of 62.9 percent of people in Japan with foreign roots were questioned by police over the past five years, preliminary results

Kirk here with a little preview of the Zoom chat we have planned for Sunday. Kumamon seems to be up for it, but the last time I Zoomed with that bear I was a little disappointed because he really didn't have anything to say -- just a lot really genki gestures, which started to wear thin after a while. And we're looking forward to hearing a little more from Johnny about that movie he made -- if he feels like talking about it this time.

William My beat covers politics, technology, and the environment, not culture. That 八代亜紀 (according to my wife, pronounced "Yashiro," not "Yatsushiro" Aki) could have remained off my radar displays the depths of my ignorance.
八代亜紀 / Sweet Home Kumamoto
■八代亜紀　Newアルバム『哀歌-aiuta-』の情報はこちら↓https://columbia.jp/aki/八代亜紀　Newアルバム『哀歌-aiuta-』、2015/10/28発売！収録曲より「Sweet Home Kumamoto」　作詩/大友 博　作曲/Robert Johnson　編曲/寺岡呼人八代亜紀...

Kirk here with news of recognition given to researchers at Kumamoto University:
Kumamoto University’s Dr. Kenichi Miharada awarded this year’s Heisei Memorial Research Grant from the Japan Prize Foundation
The Japan Prize Foundation has awarded Dr. Kenichi Miharada from Kumamoto University's International Research Center for Medical Sciences (Japan) the 2022 Heisei Memorial Research Grant.

Kirk here with something that's not unique to Kumamoto but is as relevant here as it is elsewhere in Japan. As this post from Kuma Visit explains, the new 500 coins are cool, but you might not be able to use them in older vending machines:

(Douglas) Sorry to be late in remembering the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes.
2016 Kumamoto Quakes Revisited
To mark the 6th "anniversary" of the 2 powerful earthquakes that hit the Kumamoto area in April 2016, I have dusted off this video we made in May 2016.I have...

William As an Angeleno (the southwesternmost part of the US), I went to college in Maine (the northeasternmost part of the US). It was there I learned "culture shock." Clothing, food, behavior, climate, how people interact, even language - all was new to me. And my first two years there were both the most rotten and most productive of my life. After that, I found I could fit most anywhere.

Post

A blessed Easter to our Kumamoto International friends from all of us at KI.