FISH STORY (フィッシュストーリー) It’s bonkers. Genre busting. Typical of the quirky youth-orientated films that came out in the first decade of the new century; the type of movie adored by Japanese cinema lovers who were teenagers at the time. https://t.co/CCxH4aJJNF

The bass player Tetsu Yamauchi has died at the age of 79. He had retired from music in the 1990s to live a quieter life in Japan. The news at the moment is that he was killed in a bicycle accident. This needs to be confirmed.

...and suffers all the inevitable destruction as it could never out nuclear China. Indeed any land based installations would be destroyed even before the button was pushed and JPN would have insufficient sub based weapons to penetrate Chinese airspace. It's a dead end.

JPN had US nuclear weapons on its shores until 1972. US ships and subs with nuclear weapons are present in the geography and are able to dock in Japan. It is unlikely that JPN would be allowed to use the weapons without US approval. It might be given so Jpn acts as a proxy...

And yet you'll still find 'experts' on X who believe Sanae Takaichi is doing a good job because the cabinet ratings are high.

That's the spirit.

A Different Side Of Japan blocked me possibly because I called out inaccuracies in his posts and the source of the images he was using. Also he's always describing places as 'hidden gems' et al when in fact they're well known - a cliched travel writer's trope and exoticism.

When I first came to Kagawa in 1998 it was a Christmas-free zone! Not a hint seen anywhere. Now the Christmas Market has arrived.

These delightful hand-tinted picture postcards date from the early Showa era. Often sold in albums aimed at tourists, the rather crude colouring and rendition adds to their charm in my opinion.

I realise that I've been slow posting the final standings in J3 and where my local team Kamatamare finished. Well it was a disappointing 17th after a good start to the season as the graph shows.

The Society of Authors reveals its 2025 Translation Prizes shortlists, which include a dedicated award for translations of Japanese works.

A strategic plank in Takaichi's economic plan is to develop AI capability and hosting of data centres. It is already hitting hurdles as this Nikkei headline shows. Conversely, Beijing is accelerating its use of AI by the military eg to dynamically predict adversaries next moves.

Blimey he's now found something new to complain about. However his claim in the thread that @japanstartshere charges US$1K for an itinerary is incorrect. The fees are in the image. None at $1K and for the most typical vacation period it is $700.

Next up must be another piece from him on how Expo2025 made a profit.

Ironically his home country Ireland is an open market for foreign property buyers. On top of that foreign artists, writers, composers etc are exempt from paying income tax on their creative earnings.

Also his belief that foreigners push up house prices was refuted by the Nikkei. The data shows soaring prices are driven by housing-as-investment, not by “foreign buyers.” https://t.co/kO48mjSfUO…

He's waited 5 months to return to this topic. Back then I pointed out - reflecting the language he used, '...a reasonable definition of peers would be other G7 nations. Other than Canada that has some restrictions all the others are open markets...' @jakeadelstein @Uenochris

This is too complex a proposition for Lammy to understand I fear.

All true. It is disheartening to see so many self-described experts on X seemingly having missed that Trump and his team have clearly said in the past that they see a world with three spheres of geopolitical influence: the US, Russia and China. Forget Japan, forget Europe.

The Russo-Japan War started after Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur. This was the conflict where, for the first time, picture postcards were used for propaganda, and as a means for the world to see the conflict in colour reportage.