Television has just become more evil.:

Sanrio, creator of Hello Kitty, has announced that The Cute One will soon be appearing in her own TV show with a number of her furry friends in more than 15 countries of Asia, Europe, and North America..

The name of the program is Hello Kitty, Stamp Village, a 26-part series about the adventures of Kitty and her companions in a forest.

Technorati Tags: east asia, japan, northeast asia, hello kitty

Keen!:

Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo held a training exercise this week, the aim being to practice capturing animals that may escape during a major earthquake; an Elephant near the Emperor’s Palace or a Giraffe in Ginza probably being the last thing that rescue teams would want to deal with.

Presumably being disorientated and afraid, any roaming beasts would be both dangerous and unpredictable, so this year’s exercise was made as authentic as possible – the latest advancements in make-up and synthetic material allowing officials to effortlessly achieve this. A tactic that proved hugely successful, as despite knowing that underneath the ultra-realistic gorilla suit was Suzuki-san from sales, the fear amongst the staff is practically palpable.

It can be assumed that the man in the monkey suit was paid for his trouble. With that, AsiaPundit notes that he would love to dress up as a gorilla and attack tourists and zoo staff. The next time the Ueno Zoo does this, it has a volunteer.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia

Two of AsiaPundit’s daily reads are having a blogwar* over whether or not Japan is set to ban the sale of used electronic equipment.
Cory of Boing Boing notes:

As of April 2006, it will be illegal to sell used electronics that are 5 years old or older in Japan. Akihabara News says that this is part of a pattern of restriction of the sale of used goods that prevails in Japan, where manufacturers have been able to convince the government to sweeten their profit-lines by banning re-sale of goods.

Mutantfrog retorts:

So foreign sales will not be restricted at all. This is no surprise, considering how common sales of used Japanese vehicles are overseas. For example, in the Philippines all of the buses seem to be bought used from Japan. The very first bus I rode as I stepped out of the airport had a plate mounted above the windshield saying that it had been a Kyoto city bus that was refurbished by the Keihan Bus Company in around 1980. Second, companies can use what seems to amount to fake leases to get around the sales restrictions.

But there is more to it. Domestic non-lease sales are not being flat-out banned anyway, they are simply requiring an inspection.

Corey deflects:

Lots of you have written in to point out this site, which purports to debunk this article. However, if you read it, you’ll see that in the guise of "protecting consumers," this Japanese law will limit the resale of used goods to giant retailers that presently make all their money from new goods, while shutting out user-to-user sales of electronics, pawn shops, market stalls, charity shops, etc. In other words: the sale of used goods will be at the discretion of the companies that stand to lose the most from the sale of used goods.

(*n.b. blogwar is an acceptable term for anything from a vicious flamewar to a polite debate.)

Technorati Tags: asia, blogwar, east asia, japan, northeast asia

Singapore’s blogger emeritus mr brown takes notice of how a sex ’scandal’ involving a Nanyang Polytechnic student is being blamed on bloggers.:

Poly student in homemade sex video gets counselling

Teachers in other schools say many teens use phones to capture made photos, sex clips

One of the boy’s girlfriends, also a student at the (secondary) school, was not ashamed of her (nude) photos being circulated.

“She was proud of it. She said it was artistic.”

Veteran youth counseller Carol Ballhetchet said: “The new technology makes it all very easy and with celebrity bloggers revealing it all, it has become acceptable, even cool.”

While AsiaPundit would be pleased if Miss Izzy had helped it become acceptable and cool for Singaporeans to take their clothes off, he suspects that isn’t the case. As mr brown says of Ballhetchet’s comments:.

Give. Me. A. Freakin. Break.

Sure, before bloggers took their clothes off on their blogs, people were all conservative and there were no other places where young people could be influenced by the glamorization and normalization of this exhibitionist behaviour.

For more details on the MMS ’sex scandal,’ Miyagi has a fine roundup and IZ has the merchandise.:

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, singapore, southeast asia