アピタ
Huge Apita stores are a fixture in central Japan - they sell a little bit of just about everything - food, home furnishings, clothes, kitchen ware.
Apita is part of the vast Uny retail group which also owns Piago supermarkets, Circle K / Sunkus convenience stores, and the Kyukyu Ichiba 99 yen shops. There are Apita stores from Hokkaido in the north to Kyoto and Shiga Prefectures in south western Japan.
Uny also have a giant store in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. The company, which began trading in 1950, has its headquarters in Inazawa, just north of Nagoya and a workforce of over 34,000 people including part-timers.
Uny
Tel: 0587 24 8111
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Apita Stores
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Odori Park Sapporo
大通公園
Odori Koen neatly divides central Sapporo in to two. North of the 105m-wide, 13-block east-west park is Sapporo Station and south is the entertainment district of Susukino with its bars, strip joints and the Ramen Yokocho food alley.
The park was originally designed as a fire-break and is a welcome patch of green in the concrete sprawl of the city. At the eastern edge of the park is the 147m-high Sapporo TV Tower, which was designed by Tachu Naito, who was also responsible for the similar-looking Tokyo Tower.
Sapporo TV Tower was completed in 1957, followed by Tokyo Tower a year later. the digital clock was added in the 1970s. There's a viewing platform at 90m reached by a lift with fantastic views of the city, especially beautiful during the Snow Festival at night. Buy a ticket at the ground floor shop.
Odori Park is the site of Sapporo's main festival - the Snow Festival - held annually in February as well as the Lilac Festival in late May and Bon dancing in August.
Odori Station is the intersection station for Sapporo's three metro lines: the Namboku Line (Green), Tozai Line (Orange) and the Toho Line (Blue).
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tatsuya Ichihashi Arrested in Osaka
市橋達也 リンゼイ・アン・ホーカー
Tatsuya Ichihashi (now 30 years old), the main suspect in the murder of Lindsay Ann Hawker, a 22-year-old English teacher from Britain, has been arrested by the Japanese police in Osaka tonight.
Ichihashi, who has been on the run since the murder, was thought to have had plastic surgery in Nagoya last month, surgey which included lip-thinning and cheek implants.
Earlier this week it came to light from fingerprint analysis that the suspect had worked as a construction worker installing home solar panels in Ibaraki, Osaka for about 14 months until early October. Japanese police believe Ichihashi may have been attempting to escape abroad as he had documents for a pending passport application and an English-Japanese phrasebook in his company dormitory.
Ichihashi or "Dai-chan" as he was known to co-workers left the company on October 11. His former colleagues related how he never removed his hat, always bathed alone and had an aversion to being photographed.
Ichihashi was picked up at Osaka port at around 6pm while waiting for a ferry to Okinawa.
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Takase River Art Exhibit Kyoto
高瀬川京都展覧会
Kyoto's Takase River is a narrow canal that runs parallel to Kiyamachi Dori (street) from Nijo-Kiyamachi down to Fushimi, in southern Kyoto. It dates from 1611.
It has willow trees on one side and is quite graceful, no matter how out of hand the nighttime revelry may get on Kiyamachi itself.
In the last couple of years, the canal has also served as a venue for outdoor art exhibits.
Last fall, sculptures suddenly blossomed in the shallow waters. The name of the work, an odd English translation, and the name of the artist were posted on small signs next to each of the many pieces.
Now, once again, the river is growing art.
Kiyamachi is one of Kyoto's best known nightlife areas, with bars and restaurants and brothels and boutiques. At night, students and young people and lovers fill the narrow streets.
During the day, though, the the street is quiet. Around noon, delivery trucks arrive with the vegetables and meat, beer and spirits that the bars and pubs will serve that night.
A few salaryman with time on their hands gazed at the works, expressionless.
Come evening, the drunks and college students - perhaps with livelier expressions - pay even less notice.
The works include statuary, abstract art, large insects, and others.
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Monday, November 09, 2009
Kyoto Imperial Palace Special Opening
京都御所特別公開
To mark the twentieth anniversary of the ascension of the current Emperor, the Kyoto Imperial Palace has thrown open its gates to visitors.
What is known as "Gosho" in Japanese is a massive park just north of downtown that contains the former royal residence. It was the imperial family compound for more than 500 years until 1869 when the royal family decamped for Edo (Tokyo).
Normally, the palace is open only on New Year's Day. (The park itself is open 365 days of the year, twenty-four hours a day.)
The grounds within the palace are spacious and filled with many buildings, most of which were rebuilt in 1855 following many fires.
The structures range from Heian to Muromachi in design.
For the anniversary, many imperial items are on display, including painted screens, fabrics, etc.
Moreover, on the afternoon we went, men in period costume were playing kemari, a soccer-like game.
Entrance is free, and the grounds so large that in spite of many other visitors on the Sunday we visited it never felt cramped.
This Tuesday is the final day.
Details
November 1 - November 10
9 am - 3:30 pm (last admittance; you will be asked to leave at 4:30 pm)
No charge
Public Transportation
Karasuma Subway Line from Kyoto Station to either Marutamachi or Imadegawa Station.
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Sunday, November 08, 2009
Japan This Week 8 November 2009
今週の日本
Safety Agency Rebukes Toyota Over Floor-Mat Issue
New York Times
Matsui Goes Wild, and So Do His Fans in Japan
New York Times
Lindsay Hawker murder suspect reported to have had face surgery
Guardian
Japan, U.S. to avoid bases feud for Obama visit
Washington Post
Un delirante filme japonés cierra hoy la Semana de Terror
El Pais
The rise of Japan’s 'girlie man' generation
Times Online
Demography vs. demagoguery: when politics, science collide
Japan Times
On the Dawn of a New National Ainu Policy: The “‘Ainu’ as a Situation” Today
Japan Focus
Au Japon, "une étoile tombée du ciel"
Le Monde
Three hurt in rare Japan shooting
BBC
Japan tunes in to watch Hideki Matsui make World Series history
Yahoo Sports
Last week's Japan news
Japan Statistics
Summer bonus payments at companies with at least five employees were 9.7% lower than those in the summer of 2008.
According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the bonuses averaged 363,104 yen this summer.
Source: Kyodo News
New car sales in October rose 12.6% from the same month a year earlier. That is the highest amount of growth in twelve years.
Source: Daily Yomiuri
Infant Mortality Rates, by country, 2005 (per 1,000 live births).
1) Singapore: 2.1
2) Sweden: 2.4
2) Hong Kong: 2.4
4) Japan: 2.8
21) England & Wales: 4.9
30) USA: 6.9
Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention
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Saturday, November 07, 2009
Tatsuya Ichihashi plastic surgery
市橋達也 リンゼイ・アン・ホーカー
On 24 March 2007, Tatsuya Ichihashi (now 30 years old), a physical fitness freak loner living in Chiba, supported by his rich parents, brutally murdered Lindsay Ann Hawker, a 22-year-old English teacher from Britain and put her body in a sand and compost-filled bathtub on his balcony. Ichihashi escaped from the group of nine Japanese police who had gathered outside his apartment to question him by running away barefoot, and since then, in spite of being on a nationwide wanted list with 10 million yen on his head (c. USD110,000, GBP65,000), the Japanese police have been unable to find him.
However, a breakthrough was announced this week. A doctor at a hospital in Nagoya brought it to police attention that a plastic surgery patient treated in late October was probably Ichihashi. While suspicion had not been raised at the time of surgery, the next day when processing the documentation, the doctor had noticed a scar from previous plastic surgery on the patient where a mole unusual in a male had been removed.
The police have just released before and after photos of Ichihashi. The sharp-eyed, reasonably good-looking slayer has transformed himself into what looks like a low-browed Neanderthal halfwit.
Rumors that he had escaped to the Philippines, a well known refuge of Japanese criminals, are obviously unfounded.
How is he managing to survive, and how is he paying (in cash) the hundreds of thousands of yen required for multiple instances of plastic surgery? Are the police monitoring possible communication between him and his rich parents? (Dad’s a doctor, mom’s a dentist.) Japan is a very difficult place to hide. The physical size of the place means you can’t travel far, there are police everywhere, no shortage of security cameras, whatever you do when it comes to anything remotely official requires ID, and Ichihashi’s photo is prominently displayed at almost every police box (or koban) in the country. (They even have an artist’s impression of Ichihashi in drag!) Perhaps this new mugshot will see overdue justice done soon.
Any sightings of Ichihashi should be reported to the police at 047 397 0110.
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Friday, November 06, 2009
Life in the Cul de Sac
黒井千次
Life in the Cul de Sac
by Senji Kuroi
Stone Bridge Press
ISBN: 1-8806-5657-4
216 pp
What began as a series of interlinking short stories, Kuroi has woven into an unsettling whole in this novel of Japanese suburban dis-ease. The various families in the titular cul-de-sac, whom we visit several times over the course of a few years, spend almost as much time speculating about their neighbours as they do preoccupied with their own problems.
Kuroi spikes his prose with hallucinatory moments that he purposely does not set off from the mundane reality that has spawned them, leaving the reader momentarily off-balance and forced to work out whether they have actually happened, or are merely the product of a character's febrile imagination. Is the old well under the house overflowing, filling the kitchen? Does the little girl from next door have a thousand needles crammed into her mouth in a grotesque parody of an ancient Japanese vow of truthfulness?
Richard Donovan
Buy this book from Amazon USA I UK I Japan
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Tenpin Bowling in Japan
If a recent visit to a local bowling alley in Hoshigaoka in Nagoya is anything to go by, the sport is making a comeback after a slump in popularity in the late 1990s.
Bowling was all the rage in 1970s and 1980s Japan, with most towns of any size having at least one bowling alley, but seemed to suffer a slump in popularity in the "lost decade" of the 1990s.
All the equipment at Hoshigaoka Bowl was imported from the US and there are child-friendly devices to keep your kid's bowls in the lane. Food and drinks can also be bought.
Hoshigaoka is on the Higashiyama Line of the Nagoya subway. Hoshigaoka Bowl is right outside the subway station in the Hoshigaoka Terrace mall next to the Mitsukoshi department store.
Hoshigaoka Bowl
Hoshigaoka 16-45
Hoshigaoka-motomachi
Chikusa-ku
Tel: 052 781 5656
bowling.or.jp
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Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Just Japs
A reader sent in this image of a men's clothing store in Cape Town - Just Japs.
Strange name for a chain of shops. There is also an "Australian importer of high performance Japanese motor vehicles, parts and accessories" of the same name.
Just Japs
Shop 6205
V&A Waterfront
Tel: 021 419 5373
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