Jury Trial in Japan

Those of you who played the 4th Ace Attorney (逆転裁判) game would be aware of the new jury system being implemented in Japan, first proposed in cabinet review committee in 2001 and subsequently passed into law in 2004.

After five years of policy fine-tuning and mock trials, Japan held its first post-war jury trial on Monday. The system consists of a hybrid of six layman jury members (裁判員) and three professional judges (裁判官) and is reserved for serious crimes such as murder. A majority opinion has to be supported by at least one of the three judges in order to stand.

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Learning French — Help Required


My impression of the French

I’ve been taking French lessons at Alliance Française de Singapour for some time now and I have sadly not been making much progress. Maybe I’m just getting too old for it but this foreign language thing seems a lot harder than it used to be. Either that or I am getting lazier to study. There’s no way to tell.

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New York Times: Love in 2-D

Found a semi-interesting somewhat sensational NYT article on 2D love in Japan. (You can get a login from bugmenot.com) There’s a Boing Boing blog post on it too. Predictably, it didn’t take long before commentators started to sound the paedophile alarm. Cue the righteous condemnations.

Honestly speaking, this topic has been way overdone, though most of it in unintelligible babblings on 4chan and friends. But of course, “look at how weird Japan is” is always a favourite hail Mary for desperate newspapers on their death beds. There is some degree of irony in the fact that the article was written by the blogger of TokyoMango.

“I think we should all pray to God that he gets over his silly delusion…” I think this Boing Boing comment sums up the whole thing perfectly. It’s interesting how 2D love is almost universally looked down upon with scorn or pity every time the topic is returned from the grave by yet another newcomer. Somehow, people’s brains shut down whenever the words “protect the children” show up, leading to massive groupthink exercises and delicious hypocrisies.

P.S. Nemu is just bad taste though.

[ Read the original article on New York Times ]

Posted in Otaku | Tagged , , , , , | 25 Comments

Israeli Conscription


Image shameless stolen from Rachel Papo’s gallery

Sometimes diving around in the polluted ocean of Digg nets you a rare surviving coral or two. The frequency of this rare occurrence is inversely proportional to Digg’s user base. And so the dance between culture and counter-culture continues on for eternity.

But anyway, someone recently posted a picture from a photo album of female Israeli military conscripts by Israeli photographer Rachel Papo. Little things on the net like this really help to expand one’s global outlook. This reminds me of an interesting experience I once had in Osaka.

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DaiCon

DaiCon

I was in an apartment somewhere in Malaysia, sitting on the floor of an under-furbished room with two vicious felines plotting the death of my sleeping bag. The stench of cat feces permeated the air, but fortunately my nose was blocked.

You have read the event coverages of DaiCon, the anime convention held in Cyberjaya, Malaysia last weekend. Now you can read the exhilarating story of how I spent my weekends at DaiCon and saw Minori Chihara live, based on the true story of the past three days of my life.

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Transformers 2 — Deconstructed

You’ve probably heard about it by now: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen isn’t exactly receiving raving reviews, as painfully punctuated by a pathetic aggregate score of 21% on Rotten Tomatoes which I suppose puts the movie well on the way to becoming the highest grossing piece of polished turd since Titanic.

But I wouldn’t go that far on the nerd rage scale for this one. After all, Transformers as envisaged by Michael Bay is a movie that cannot be judged using traditional benchmarks. Earning half a star out of five from the resident Straits Times critic may even be seen as a badge of honour. However, what really disappointed me was the fact that the movie failed to excel even within its own narrowly-defined spectrum of awesomehood.

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The Twelve Kingdoms — Epic Win

The Twelve Kingdoms
Do not feed the demon hounds

Why do I spend most of my time revisiting old titles these days? I have no idea. Maybe it’s just pure nostalgia, or maybe it’s just too much work for a lazy bum like me to get into something new. The Twelve Kingdoms is a series of novels by Fuyumi Ono first published in 1991 and subsequently adapted into an anime in 2002. All things considered, it’s almost as old as me. I think it’s probably one of the greatest stories ever told through anime. If only more people watched it.

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Maaya Sakamoto – We Are Kazeyomi!

We Are Kazeyomi

Maaya Sakamoto, the greatest singer/seiyuu in the history of the universe, held a live tour at the start of this year (2009) called “We Are Kazeyomi!” This was her first proper concert in the five years since she released her album Shounen Alice and her third since her debut as Hitomi in Visions of Escaflowne.

This is a story of what may be the greatest regret of my life. And oh yeah, the official concert DVD is out too.

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Posted in Blog, Music | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu 2 — Episode 01: Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu

And so it begins, just as the prophecies predicted (somewhat ambiguously). The thundering cries of male ecstasy shake the ground as hordes of frenzied fanboys awake from their winter slumber and descend upon the unsuspecting intarweb. As onslaught and carnage devastate 4chan, no one notices any difference. The absolutist doctrine of the Great One sweeps across the land, engulfing it in a chaotic whirlwind of moé and unleashing upon its innocent a renewed crusade. Throughout history, it has been called many names — ragnarok, apocalypse, rapture — but they are all one and the same. The end of time is finally upon us. The Second Coming of Haruhi.

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Posted in Anime | Tagged , , , , , | 24 Comments

Tytania — Space Opera Lite

Tytania

Tytania is a show that gives high expectations and fails to live up to them. It has so much potential for greatness but ends up squandering them faster than a glue-sniffing MIT grad. If Yoshiki Tanaka, the author of the original novels, were dead, he’d be spinning in his grave right now. But he isn’t, so he has to pretend on his blog that he likes the anime. It’s tough to earn a living.

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Posted in Anime | Tagged , , | 16 Comments