Friday afternoon, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake widened Japan, sped up the Earth’s rotation and tilted it’s axis. A massive tsunami then followed, as did hundreds of aftershocks – some as powerful as “normal” tremblors themselves. Several shoreside towns and villages in the Tohoku (north-eastern) region were either heavily flooded or washed away entirely, and power, water and telephone services were disrupted thoughout the region.

Two nuclear plants near the epicenter of the quake – Fukushima 1 and 2 – are currently in crisis. Another reactor in Tokaimura (of the infamous criticality incident) apparently had some trouble but has since cooled. The Fukushima plants shut down automatically when the first quake hit, but the cooling systems – which need constant power to function – failed after the tsunami flooded the basement where the back-up generators were held. Tepco, which runs the reactors (and has been less than transparent regarding problems with the Fukushima reactors in the past), and the government have attempted to quell public panic over the possibility of radioactive leaks and contamination while giving conflicting signals, first by widening the evacuation zone around the plants and then by passing out iodine tablets to local residents to help fight radiation sickness.

Since the nuclear plants provided a significant portion of electricity in the eastern region of the country, Tepco has ordered scheduled blackouts to preserve power (which are preferable to uncontrolled rolling blackouts.)

The New York Times, BBC, the Yomiuri and Japan Times are being continually updated.

What you can do: Donate to charities working in Japan. Charity Navigator has a dedicated page with a list of charitable organizations with operations in Japan, along with ratings for each charity and links for donations. Japan Subculture has a list of charities in Japan that are accepting donations. If you’re in Japan, the Yomiuri is organizing cash donations for quake victims.

Image via.

British satire is a tricky thing. Since the days of Oscar Wilde, the style has been humor with tongue planted so firmly in cheek as to cause disfigurement, while pointedly exposing truths about society or politics.

Sometimes British humor doesn’t even translate across the pond, as we saw just recently with Ricky Gervais’ sharp roasting of (and instant backlash from) the coddled Hollywood elite (though he did defend himself admirably).

Is it “too soon” for certain subjects to be skewered in a satirical way? Probably. Would the Brits take kindly to a satirical representation of the Blitz? Probably not.
It’s easily still “too soon” for any comedy regarding the Holocaust (although Gervais got very, very close.)
Is it valid to use pointed satire to try and make sense of senseless tragedy? Perhaps, perhaps not.

But the recent kerfluffle over the QI comedy show mentioning Tsutomu Yamaguchi is a case of misplaced outrage. At no point did Stephen Fry or the other panelists make fun of Mr. Yamaguchi – they were marveling at the incredible odds that someone could survive not one but two atomic bombs.

All they had was the Wikipedia version of Tsutomu Yamaguchi’s incredible life story, so how could they even make fun of him? Indeed, Mr. Yamaguchi was simply a catalyst for their humor. The butt of their jokes was in fact the British rail system (and were, in a roundabout way, complimenting the Japanese on having functioning train service right after an atomic bomb wiped out a city. I don’t think that’d be possible anywhere else – and certainly not in the UK.) Satirists satirize what they know, just as writers write what they know. And isn’t it worth something that the viewers in the UK learned about Mr. Yamaguchi’s bizarre fate?

This site (Japanese) has a line-by-line translation and explanation of the relevant dialogue.

So while in fact we may argue one way or another with regards to the limits of satire, decorum, offense, truthiness and the appropriate ways of dealing with the fallout of catastrophic disasters, in this particular case it was a cultural misunderstanding, and something was clearly lost in translation.
Obviously one can’t help but be offended, but why not save the outrage for something that’s truly meant to be offensive? (Like, say, YouTube comments. No, really, don’t read them).

I think the only solution is to start showing Red Dwarf, Little Britain and the second season of Extras on a constant loop in the Press Clubs in Nagatacho.

Let’s end things on a lighter note – here are some funny British animal voice-overs:

(h/t: Our Man in Abiko)

Did you know that apologizing is practically an art form in Japan? This nifty little video illustrates which level of bow to use depending on what kind of apology the situation warrants. They start from a simple “Sorry for bumping into you” mini-bow all the way to “Excuse me while I go commit seppuku” face-in-the-mud bow.

Dole has introduced Japan’s very first banana vending machine. It uses a conveyor system to deliver your tasty tropical treat with minimal bruising. This is great news for all those salarymen and OLs who may still be obsessed with the banana diet.

A PR spokesperson for Dole in Japan says they hope hurried consumers will choose fresh fruit over typical packaged convenience store fare.

So if you find yourself in Shibuya Station near the Hanzomon Line and a monkey with a gun confronts you, asking, “Do you have a banana?” you can say, “Yes, actually. Let me just hop over to this vending machine and get you a whole bunch for just 390 yen. Now, please, put the gun away.”

No big surprise here – lovably alien-like fashion plate and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio “Bird” Hatoyama has resigned, due to being atypically wishy-washy and indecisive.

And by “atypically” I mean “totally – almost comically – typical.”

Hatoyama is the fourth consecutive PM to resign within a year of taking office.

(Quick! Can you name the last 3? Ha! Didn’t think so.)

Current Finance Minister Naoto Kan is the favored candidate to become the next PM.

I’m certainly going to miss his UFO-riding, sun-eating, Tom Cruise-lovin’ ex-Takarasienne wife.

… from that Scary McCreeperson robot voice simulator. He also defends his previous “racist Chinese” accent as simply brain damage.

If this doesn’t make you laugh, something is wrong with you.

I adore Lady Gaga. (Haters to the left! The video for “Telephone” was epic!)

And so do her Japanese fans.

Here’s just a small sampling of several dozen pics of fans as they head to Yokohama Arena for Gaga’s concert over on TokyoFashion.com. I love the Tokyo street fashion sense mixed with Gaga’s crazy stylings.

Head over to TokyoFashion.com to see the rest.

… well, specifically Visual-kei, but one can extrapolate, non? It’s epically long, but a very fascinating read. Strap on your seatbelts, kids.

An excerpt:

“SATOH-SAN: Keeping the fantasy intact is the biggest priority. If there is no image, no fantasy, the band will never get big.

TDR: You mean, if the guys talk to fans, and let slip that they’re working the midnight shift at 7/11, or living on ramen and pachinko, it’ll be hard for the fans to picture him as a bisexual 17th century British vampire space-man after that?

SATOH-SAN: You understand this phenomenon very well!

(cut)

TDR: So they’re not supposed to be sexy?

SATOH-SAN: No, they’re sexy, but they don’t exist in the same universe as the fans. They don’t have chlamidya (sic), they don’t worry about child support payments, they don’t have girlfriends or baby-mamas. They don’t have a stinky van. The fans don’t want to think about that! They want a dream, (not a man or a woman), they want a higher being, a look out of a fairy-tale. That’s why we do all the makeup and hair. It’s not about the guitars or playing A-flat in a Lydian mode.”

Rock on.

So last night was the highly-anticipated showdown between Kim Yu-Na of South Korea and Mao Asada of Japan. After the short program scores, Kim was in the lead, and thanks to a flawless free skate in which she set a world record under the ISU judging system she won the gold medal.

Immediately after finishing her free skate program she burst into tears of relief. Probably because she won’t have to deal with enraged “fans” that had previously sent her angry hate-mail for earning less than the gold medal in other competitions. Given the recent spate of high-profile figures in Korea committing suicide due to public backlash, here’s hoping Kim can take a breather and enjoy the moment. (This should also keep any angry Korean fans from threatening to blow up another embassy.)

Kim’s main rival was the Japanese champion Mao Asada. Mao ended up in second place due to a couple of slip-ups on the ice. However, she became the first female skater to successfully perform two triple-axel jumps in the same ISU program. Which is impressive in its own right. I mean, could you do anything that cool that at 19 years old? Yeah, me neither.

Mao still packed a sad at the medal ceremony and later told reporters that she regretted her mistakes during her free skate program. Hey, cheer up, Mao. At least you have your very own hina doll. Maybe Mao can commiserate with Evgeni Plushenko, then secretly have both their medals dipped in platinum.

So on the medal podium, there was Kim crying from relief, Mao looking like she was ready to cry then cut a bitch, and poor Joannie Rochette crying because now she can finally mourn her mother. God, what an emotional event.

It doesn’t matter, ’cause the French can make something as ridiculous as dressing up like a comic book character look chic and uber cool.

More pics of French people generally being fabulous in costumes that rock over at io9.