Free Republic

London (agencies) A Desperate dad last night begged medics for help because he is turning naturally into a woman. Pub singer Terry Wright said: “I am a man, not a woman. And I do not want to be a woman. “I just want to get my life back to normal.” Father-of-five Terry, 60, started losing his hair and beard ten years ago. Since then he has developed smooth skin, hot flushes. And kids living nearby taunt him by calling him “She-Man”. Blood tests have revealed Terry has abnormally high levels of the female hormone oestrogen. But doctors who have examined...

This is hilarious. I cant believe they get by with this stuff over there. LINK

TOKYO — Japan celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning. For this is the land of a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world. The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908. The proportion of children in the population fell to an all-time low of 13.5 percent. That number has been falling for...

Japanese balloon bombs: A forgotten history Posted: May 2, 2008 10:47 PM CDT Balloon bombs, sent aloft by Japanese during WWII, reached West Coast, and one proved deadly With hundreds never recovered, still a rare chance of risky encounter By Christian Boris, KTVZ.COM In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese military launched bomb-carrying balloons to strike the American homeland. Many balloons landed in Oregon, including one that killed six people in Klamath County. On May 5, 1945, a group of Sunday school students encountered a balloon bomb snagged in a tree near Bly in Klamath County. Thirteen-year-old Joan Patzke attempted to...

Conan the dog joins the priests at Jigenin temple at prayer time Attendance at a Buddhist temple in Japan has increased since the temple's pet, a two-year-old dog, has joined in the daily prayers. Conan, a Chihuahua, sits on his hind legs, raises his paws and puts them together at the tip of his nose. "He may be showing his thanks for treats and walks," says a priest at Jigenin temple on Okinawa island. Priest Joei Yoshikuni would like Conan to meditate, but "it's not like we can make him cross his legs", he says. "Basically, I am just...

17th century Japanese village uncovered in Cambodia Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 07:01 EST PHNOM PENH — A site of a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century has been found in the outskirts of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, a Japanese archaeologist said Wednesday. Hiroshi Sugiyama, chief research fellow at Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, said that based on research since 2004 and analyses of excavations and documents, the site in Ponhea Lueu Commune, about 25 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, is a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century. Based on on-site research, excavations and...

A letter that a young girl in Japan sent into the sky in a balloon some 15 years ago has been found on a fish hauled from 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below the Pacific. A fisherman found the still legible piece of paper sitting on a sticky flatfish in his catch on Thursday, along with a torn-off string and the fragment of a red balloon. He opened the folded paper, discovering it was a handwritten letter from a six-year-old girl at an elementary school in Kawasaki, 150 kilometres (93 miles) away from where the fish was caught off Choshi port....

SIERRA VISTA — Four years before Pearl Harbor was attacked, a local man sailed on a U.S. Navy ship that was bombed and sunk by Imperial Japanese warplanes. The incident happened on Dec. 13, 1937, as the USS Panay was evacuating U.S. embassy personnel from Nanking, China’s capital of that era. It was a city under siege whose downfall became the infamous Rape of Nanking. The Panay was a gunboat that belonged to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, whose 1930s peacetime mission included protection of American lives and property from pirates along the lawless Yangtze River, under a treaty with the...

Japanese-built Prius carries energy bill18 minutes ago WASHINGTON - When Congress sent an energy bill to President Bush for his signature, it arrived in a Japanese-built Toyota Prius hybrid — a move that rubbed two Michigan Republicans the wrong way. "It is a huge slap in the face, calculated I believe, just to demonstrate their complete disregard for the domestic auto industry," said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich. To Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., it was a "slap in the face of every American auto worker." They said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., could have provided the same symbolism by sending the...

12/7/2007 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- More than 200 U.S. forces at this air base in Southwest Asia attended a memorial retreat in honor of the 2,340 killed and 1,143 wounded in the Dec. 7, 1941 attacks on U.S. military installations on Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. "We have come here today to pay honor and homage to our nations' heroes, the fallen and survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor," said Brig. Gen Charles Lyon, 379th Air Expeditionary Wing commander. "Let us never forget there is a price to pay for freedom. It doesn't come free" "Dec. 7th, a day...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2007 – It’s been 66 years, and tears still well up in the eyes of Robert Bishop when he thinks of that day. Robert Bishop stands outside the U.S. Capitol, where he and 13 other Pearl Harbor survivors and about 100 others including family, friends, servicemembers and members of Congress met for a remembrance ceremony sponsored by the White House Commission on Remembrance and the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund in partnership with the AMVETS and the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. Photo by Fred W. Baker III  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. He was a 20-year-old...

Japan has confirmed that it will carry out its largest whaling programme in the South Pacific. The mission, expected to draw strong protests from environmentalists, will depart on Sunday and breaks a 44-year moratorium on hunting humpback whales. Japan's fisheries ministry said the fleet had instructions to kill up to 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks.

ISE, Japan, Oct. 26 — It was supposed to be a celebratory year for Akafuku, a confectioner that had been selling bean-jam sweets here since 1707. On its 300th anniversary, its top-selling sweets were still indispensable gifts to bring back home or to the office after a trip to Ise Shrine here, Japan's holiest religious site. Instead, Akafuku has become the latest Japanese food company to be exposed for lying about the contents of its products, tampering with expiration-date labels and recycling ingredients. For only the second time in its history, Akafuku, which was forced to halt production during World...

A postcard that a Japanese soldier mailed from a Southeast Asian battlefront during World War II has reached a recipient in Japan 64 years later, a university whose student helped deliver it said Saturday. Shizuo Nagano, an 80-year-old retiree in Japan's southwestern state of Kochi, received the card Friday — by way of Nagasaki, Arizona and Hawaii — said a statement from Mukogawa Women's University. Nagano's former colleague at a retail store, Nobuchika Yamashita mailed the card in 1943 from Burma, now called Myanmar, a year before Yamashita died at war at age 23, the university statement said. It said...

MEDIA ADVISORY, June 21 /Christian Newswire/ -- As Japanese culture becomes more prominent in American entertainment, mysterious and awe-inspiring tales of the samurai have become more familiar to the Western world. A new book, The Way of the Christian Samurai: Reflections for Servant-Warriors of Christ (ISBN 0-9772234-6-9) explores how the advice and stories of real samurai can help modern-day Christians. As Christians, we are called to be both servants and warriors for Jesus Christ. The samurai, whose very title means "one who serves," were skillful warriors of feudal Japan who devoted themselves fully to the service of their masters, willing...

Japan Lawmakers Take Out U.S. Ad on Comfort Women A group of Japanese lawmakers in a full-page ad in the Washington Post on Thursday denied the Japanese government and military had a hand in conscripting women from Asian countries as sex slaves for the Imperial Army during World War II. Titled “The Facts”, the ad published Wednesday claims “no historical document has ever been found” proving the direct involvement of the Japanese government and military, contrary to a recent U.S. congressional resolution sponsored by the Democrat Representative Mike Honda. The ad was co-sponsored by some Japanese academics, political commentators and...

TOKYO: About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting Chinese claims that Japanese soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people after seizing the Chinese city in 1937.

TOKYO (Reuters) - An 111-year-old Japanese just named the world's oldest man said he owed his longevity to steering clear of alcohol. "I don't drink alcohol -- that is the biggest reason for my good health," Tomoji Tanabe told reporters on Monday. He also told media he does not smoke and likes a glass of milk a day. Asked how much longer he wanted to live, the besuited Tanabe, a former local government worker, said simply: "I don't want to die." Tanabe, who lives with his 66-year-old son and the son's wife in Miyakonojo, about 900 km (560 miles) southwest...

A Japanese man who admitted to smuggling endangered butterflies into the United States and attempted to sell them was sentenced Monday to 21 months in federal prison. Hisayoshi Kojima, 57, of Kyoto, Japan also was ordered to pay more than $37,000 in fine and restitution, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns. Kojima was arrested last August at Los Angeles International Airport as part of an undercover investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Prosecutors said he brought rare butterflies collected from all over the world into the United States and sold them to investigators posing as interested buyers. They...

Did Hirohito play an active part in planning and conducting the war? Japanese emperor Hirohito expressed doubts about going to war with China in the 1930s and 40s, extracts from a diary of one of his advisers reveal. They show Hirohito was afraid the Soviet Union would intervene. The diary by Kuraji Ogura, who worked as a chamberlain to Hirohito in World War II, was found recently and parts have been published in Japan's media. The full text may help solve the debate about how much responsibility the emperor had for Japan's wartime action. South Pacific visit The document...

Japanese metal stolen to 'feed China's Olympic boom' Justin McCurry in Tokyo Monday March 5, 2007 Guardian Unlimited (UK) A worker pushes parts of a motorcycle at a scrapyard in Guangzhou, southern China. Japanese authorities claim metal stolen across the country ends up with Chinese metal merchants. Photograph: Color China Photo/AP The next time Japanese children turn up at their local park to find that their slide has disappeared overnight, they could try blaming rocketing world metal prices. Stainless steel slides are among a growing list of metal objects to have vanished in Japan in a spate of thefts that...

TOKYO - Anyone who doubts that the Japanese army forced Asian women into sexual slavery in World War II should "face the truth," South Korea's foreign minister said Friday as outrage grew over comments by Japan's prime minister that there was no evidence of the enslavement. Women's rights activists in the Philippines and a group of lawmakers in South Korea also denounced the remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday that there was no proof that so-called "comfort women" were forced into prostitution during the war. But one of the harshest comments came from 81-year-old Hilaria Bustamante of...

For 62 years, Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he’d done, but to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience. Why else would he have returned so often to the obscure, mosquito-blown town in the southern Philippines where he had experience such misery during the Second World War? He set up war memorials, gave clothes to poor children, and bought an entire set of uniforms for a local baseball team. Last year, at the age of 83, he embarked on a gruelling pilgrimage to 88 Buddhist...

TOKYO - Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly declassified CIA records, released by the U.S. National Archives and examined by The Associated Press, document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The documents also show how ineffective the effort was, in the CIA's view. The records, declassified in 2005 and 2006 under...

CAIRO (AFP) - A Japanese archeological team has discovered three painted wooden coffins in Egypt, including two from the little-known Middle Kingdom period dating back more than 4,000 years. The sarcophagi were found in tomb shafts in the vast Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said on Saturday. "It is significant because of the discovery of two sarcophagi from the Middle Kingdom," said Japanese team leader Sakuji Yoshimori. The Saqqara burial grounds which date back to 2,700 BC and are dominated by the massive bulk of King Zoser's step pyramid --...

Why Japanese girls want Christmas romance By Colin Joyce in Tokyo Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 20/12/2006 Get yourself a wonderful boyfriend by Christmas; Best Christmas date spots; Christmas for lovers – the magazine headlines tell the story: all a Japanese girl wants for Christmas is the perfect date. In a country where less than one per cent of the population is Christian, Christmas has been reinvented as the most romantic time of the year. For many Japanese women being taken to an expensive restaurant on Christmas Eve is a crucial indicator of success, while having to go shopping with female...

HONOLULU - Sixty-five years ago, Takeshi Maeda and John Rauschkolb tried to kill each other at Pearl Harbor. This week, now both 85, they met face-to-face for the first time — and shook hands. The Japanese veteran gripped Rauschkolb's arm with his left hand and briefly hesitated, as if he was searching for the right words. Then he said, "I'm sorry." On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy navigator Maeda guided his Kate bomber to Pearl Harbor and fired a torpedo that helped sink the USS West Virginia. Rauschkolb, a Navy signalman, stood on the West Virginia's port side as...

SYDNEY (AFP) - A mystery over a Japanese midget submarine that went missing after attacking a ship in Sydney Harbour during World War II has been solved, an Australian television station has claimed. The submarine was one of three that slipped into the harbour on the night of May 31 1942 after being launched from a fleet of five larger Japanese submarines offshore. Two of the midget vessels were spotted and attacked, leading the two-man crews to commit suicide, Australian national archives record. The remains of those subs were recovered and a rebuilt composite is on display at the Australian...

Take anything you want.... You Drive Me Crazy

A town baseball field in Farmington, Connecticut may seem about as far away from the major leagues as you can get. But it's been witness to baseball history recently, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. The key to throwing a gyroball, says sportswriter Will Carroll, is a football-like spiral spin that's easy to learn but hard to master. Minor league pitcher Steve Palazzolo is learning to throw what some claim is the first new pitch in a generation. It's called the "gyroball." True believers claim it's almost un-hittable. "We know that a curveball curves and a slider slides and a...

THE SAMURAI AND THE AINU Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu. Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of...

The Japanese Jesus trail By Duncan Bartlett BBC News, Japan A Japanese legend claims that Jesus escaped Jerusalem and made his way to Aomori in Japan where he became a rice farmer. Christians say the story is nonsense. However, a monument there known as the Grave of Christ attracts curious visitors from all over the world. The Grave of Christ has become an international tourist attraction To reach the Grave of Christ or Kristo no Hakka as it is known locally, you need to head deep into the northern countryside of Japan, a place of paddy fields and apple orchards....

An American Marine who became known as "the Pied Piper of Saipan" after single-handedly persuading more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers to surrender during the war for the Pacific in 1944 has died at the age of 80. Guy Gabaldon was brought up as a tough Chicano kid in the barrios of eastern Los Angeles and signed up for the Marines on his 17th birthday. He arrived on Saipan, a Japanese-held island in the Marianas, as an 18-year-old Marine Private First Class, only 5ft 4in tall, but managed to use street Japanese picked up from a foster family back home -...

A Japanese fisherman is reported to have been shot dead by a Russian patrol boat, near a disputed island chain. Japan's foreign ministry said that, if confirmed, the death was unacceptable. It also demanded the release of three surviving men from the Japanese boat, who are thought to have been detained by the Russians on a nearby island. Both Tokyo and Moscow lay claim to the four small islands, which Russia calls the southern Kurils and Japan the Northern Territories. The ongoing dispute has prevented the two nations signing a peace treaty to formally end hostilities from WWII. The islands...

HISTORY has been turned on its head at the Shrine today with the re-birth of the famous 39th battalion in the Australian Army after 63 years. About 40 old Diggers proudly witnessed their volunteer unit returned to the army's order of battle on Kokoda Day, the anniversary of them taking on a huge Japanese force at that New Guinea village. They have lived to have the satisfaction of seeing the battalion, down to just 42 fit men after months of savage fighting, finally gain justice after high command abruptly disbanded it in 1943. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20059157-661,00.html

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2006 – Thanks to the work of Japanese defense forces in Iraq, Iraqi security forces are now ready to take control of the province where Japanese troops worked, President Bush said here today. "The people of Japan can be proud of the contribution their self-defense forces have made in the war on terror, and Americans are proud to serve alongside such courageous allies," Bush said at an arrival ceremony for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the White House. Koizumi announced June 20 that Japan would withdraw its roughly 550 soldiers, engaged in reconstruction and humanitarian...

6/28/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- For the first time since its formation in 1954, members of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force are actively deployed to a combat zone. They are helping with humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts in Iraq. "I feel the responsibility of this valuable work for the world and am proud to take part in this operation," said Col. Atsushi Nishino, commander of the JASDF Iraq Reconstruction Support Airlift Wing. "(Our mission is crucial) because reconstruction and stabilizing Iraq is important for global stability and peace, not only in the Middle East." Their primary mission here is...

TOKYO, June 22 (Reuters) - Japan would take part if the international community imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, Japan's foreign minister said on Thursday, but added that it was too soon to be talking about such action. Foreign Minister Taro Aso also told Reuters in an interview that he had urged Iranian officials to seriously consider a U.S.-backed package of incentives to stop its nuclear activity that could lead to atomic weapons, saying the offer was supported by the Group of Eight and other industrialised nations. "It is not constructive to talk about sanctions now, before they...

HUNT, Idaho - The National Park Service wants Congress to remove the word "internment" from the name of a national park commemorating a World War II prison camp for Japanese-Americans. In a management plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument finalized this week, the Park Service says the term legally means imprisonment of civilian enemy aliens during wartime and does not accurately reflect the government's forced relocation of thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. The agency wants the name changed to Minidoka National Historic Site, which would match with the only similar prison camp under its protection, California's Manzanar...

While the government hopes it can curb the falling birthrate by offering families more financial assistance, one expert says it's the lack of sex, not income, that lies at the root of the country's population problem. Kunio Kitamura, executive director of the Japan Family Planning Association Inc., an entity under the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, said the real problem is the growing number of "sexless" couples. A survey conducted last year of 936 people, aged 16 to 49, conducted by JFPA and Jichi Medical University in Tochigi Prefecture shows that 31 percent were "sexless" -- which the Japan...

Japanese researchers discover remains of what appears to be 4,800-year-old temple in Peru 06/20/2006 The Asahi Shimbun CHANCAY, Peru--Japanese researchers said they have discovered--with the unintended help of looters--what appears to be a temple ruins at least 4,800 years old that could be one of the oldest in the Americas. The temple is believed to have been built before or around 2600 BC when Peru's oldest known city, Caral, was created, the researchers said. The ruins were found in the ruins of Shicras located in the Chancay Valley about 100 kilometers north of Lima. The team started full-scale excavation work...

They still call them presidents. DeVry University recently changed head honchos. The old president, John Skubiak, 56, stepped down and a new president, David Pauline, 49, was appointed to succeed him. Honcho, by the way, is a Japanese word. Each neighborhood is divided into small sub-units or groups of residents. On a rotating basis, people are appointed to collect community funds, organize community events, and such. These people are called the honcho. DeVry presidents do much more than preside over small community events, to be sure. But, they are not called CEOs-- even at fopros. DeVry is one of the...

In about 13 years Toyota has gone from a brainstorming session to creating and selling and teaching the world there is another way. 1993 - Toyota initiates the G21 project to develop a small car with better mileage that can be sold anywhere in the world. 1994 - Executive VP Akirhiro Wada insists the car needs to set a new standard for mileage and recommends a hybrid engine. 1995 - The Prius prototype debuts at the Tokyo motor show-- but will NOT start. Toyota responds by moving up the production deadline by one year. 1996 - Toyota's US division wins...

Business Financial News reported Japanese dealers have cut the number of GM dealerships that handle GM cars. The question is what took them so long - GM cars have never been popular in Japan. The reason is simple - they don't fit! The streets are too narrow, and American cars are too fat. Yanase & Co. has about 26 dealerships of their 160 total that try to sell GM cars. The exact number that they will cut has not been determined. GM, for its part, says it will stop selling Opel models in Japan - I think it's because those...

Do you want to embarass a Japanese? Ask him to sing Japan's national anthem. It is indeed a real sleeper. It is old - no problem with that - but it is also outdated. Its title is Kimigayo. The words can be translated something like - "May you reign for a 1000 happy years Rule on lord/friend/lover till the pebbles by age grow and unite to great rocks with moss all over its strong sides." Doesn't that give you goose bumps? Problem is - it became somewhat of a nationalistic and militaristic anthem, and the lord came to represent the...

I admit, I wasn't overly impressed with Yamanaka Shunji's various designs until I read the specs on this one. It is an eight-wheeled vehicle that he and Chiba Institute of Technology's Furuta Takayuki designed. Nissan also pitched in to see how robotics and automobile technology can get along. The vehicle can make a 360-degree circle, move diagonally, and - get this - even climb stairs. I am guilty, too. I have often accused the Japanese of not being very creative. They are amazing at copying and approving on previous designs -- and then mass-producing them while maintaining quality. But my...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Japanese spacecraft that landed on an asteroid found a ball of rubble held loosely together by its own gravity, unlike other asteroids that have been visited, according to reports from the mission published on Thursday. The spacecraft Hayabusa, whose name means "falcon" in Japanese, hovered over the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa last autumn, taking several measurements before landing briefly on the orbiting gravel pile. Itokawa has two parts resembling the head and body of a sea otter, according to Akira Fujiwara and his colleagues in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Previously studied asteroids appeared to be...

May 26, 1924: Coolidge signs stringent immigration law http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=presidential&month=10272957&day=10272991 http://tinyurl.com/h9uwu On this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signs into law the Comprehensive Immigration Act, the most stringent immigration policy up to that time in the nation’s history. The new law reflected the desire of Americans to isolate themselves from the world after fighting the terrible First World War in Europe, a war that exacerbated growing fears of the spread of communist ideas. It also reflected the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in American society at the time. Many Americans saw the enormous influx of largely unskilled, uneducated immigrants during the...

Chirac denies claims of £30m paid into secret Japanese bank account By Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 10/05/2006) President Jacques Chirac took the exceptional step last night of denying allegations that he had a secret Japanese bank account into which £30 million had been paid over a number of years. Mr Chirac, who rarely responds to allegations questioning his financial propriety, "categorically" rejected the suggestion in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé that he had ever possessed such an account. A French intelligence chief, Gen Philippe Rondot, was alleged to have told investigating judges that the large amounts were paid...

WASHINGTON, May 3, 2006 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Fukushiro Nukaga, Japan's minister of state for defense, met at the Pentagon today to continue discussions about realigning U.S. forces in Japan, including moving 8,000 Marines from Okinawa. Today's session followed the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting session May 1 at the State Department. At that meeting, informally known as the "two-plus-two" session, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Nukaga and Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso to discuss the two countries' alliance and ongoing efforts to update it for the 21st century. During a press...