• 100,000 people protested the
  U.S. military presence on the
  island of Okinawa today
• 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed
  in Japan, more than half at the Okinawa base source

• legal Despite a 1986 ban, Japan was allowed (controversially) to continue killing hundreds of whales yearly for research purposes.
• illegal However, some of that whale
  blubber has found its way to Korean and American sushi restaruants. Hmm, whale-y. source

• Why? Because they say we can’t. The Japanese business newspaper is following the lead of a lot of newspapers worldwide by adding a paywall, but their paywall is way beyond that of, say, the Wall Street Journal. First, you have to submit a written application to link to the site (which we didn’t do). And second, they’ve gone and disabled the copy function on their site. Why? Because they’ve seen American papers open the floodgates and lose readership as a result. source

• 44% of Japanese citizens have no idea what party they’ll vote for in the upcoming upper house election
• 24% the highest amount of support any other party gets; hm, think the Japanese people like tea? source

• 70% of Japanese dogs in pounds each year get put to sleep
• 6%-9% of British dogs in pounds see a
  similar fate source

• 1.2 meter waves in Japan’s first tsunami in 15 years source

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• The last 24 hours have been crazy seismically. There was a 7.0 earthquake in Japan yesterday, and now this 8.8 earthquake in Chile (just upgraded by the USGS, which tracks quakes) sounds especially scary. It’s already prompted tsunami warnings in neighboring countries. We’ll keep you posted. It’s already quite awful. source

• ten the number of brush strokes to write “Toyoda” in Japanese
• eight the number of brush strokes to write “Toyota” in comparison

• Why does this matter? Well, the number ten in Japanese resembles the plus sign, which apparently was seen as a bad omen due to the fact it also resembles crossroads. Also, “Toyota” sounds better than “Toyoda,” according to the company, which seems reasonable to us, kinda. Akio Toyoda feels shame on his company. 🙁 source

• 200,000 hybrids to be recalled? source