It is very important to be aware of your surroundings during an earthquake - and you should pay particularly attention to what the black man is doing.:

Check out this website of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which provides information to gaijin (foreigners) about what they need to in case of an earthquake.

Stay close to black men in areas where walls might fall. They will hold up the wall and allow you escape.

Black men tend to spread rumours but become quite contrite when yelled at.

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

While much attention is given to peasant protest in China, with reports generally musing about a threat to the central government, mob violence in India does not get as much coverage. Perhaps that’s because the causes of it are often far more mundane. AsiaPundit can understand resorting to violence when property is seized, but this is incomprehensible.

Via India Uncut:

First, some idiots in Bangalore start rioting because a film-star they like is dead. Immense destruction of property takes place, a policeman is beaten to death, others also die in the violence. A psychiatrist gives soundbytes about this is “a deviant way of expressing love and affection” and “a kind of competitive destruction.”(This link via Richa.)

More at Dateline Bombay:

Yet, its the same city where thousands of youth, among others have taken to the streets following actor Raj Kumar’s demise. Pictures of mob violence are streaming in. The contrast between the engineers working in glass towers on cutting edge technology projects and the mayhem on the streets couldn’t be starker. At last count, four people including a policeman were dead. The policeman was killed by mob.

The 77-year-old Rajkumar gave up acting almost a decade ago. Its tough to believe that the youth pelting stones at policemen across the city today watched too many of his films, if any. None of the television images showed them to be grieving. Instead their faces showed the thrill one usually associates with the satisfaction of inflicting damage on the establishment. Many were performing for the cameras,leaping with joy.

Major IT companies including Microsoft, Infosys and Wipro have shut down their offices. Not really out of choice, considering that the option would be to see their beautiful campuses wrecked or the glass facades shattered. That happened anyway. The government is leading with a two-day state holiday that began yesterday.

Technorati Tags: asia, india, rajkumar, south asia

While China may be willing to crackdown on some intellectual property violations more heavily in light of the presidential summit, AsiaPundit does not expect it to allow a patent inspection on these babies:

A Chinese media report from last week indicates the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) now has at hand locally manufactured air defense missiles based on American Patriot missile technology, most likely used in the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) system. The technology was reportedly provided to the Chinese by Israel during the 1990’s.

The Patriot-like missiles were recently tested in north-west China with successful results, knocking down a reconaissance plane and a missile. According to the Donga Ilbo, the officer who led the tests commented, “This marks the official launch of the interceptor missile unit. We can intercept not only high-flying reconnaissance planes or missiles but also low-flying targets. Our accuracy is significantly high as well.”

Patriot missiles were deployed to Israel during the 1991 Gulf War to defend Israel from Iraqi missiles. At the time, Israel promised the United States not to transfer the technology to a third party. Reports from the early 1990’s suggest that the promise was not kept, and the PAC-2 technology became one of several missile technologies the Israelis sold to the Chinese.

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), China isn’t just manufacturing missiles based on the Patriot technology, but also using it to develop countermeasures against American Patriot systems. If that is true, that may prove to be a problem for the US and its Asian allies, particularly Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, taiwan, israel