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In Japan, Getting Plastic Surgery On Your Palms To Influence Your Destiny

By on July 18, 2013 in News 3

palm reading

Hazards of the procedure: the surgeon misunderstands palm reading, and inadvertently puts a curse on you. Fox News reports:

Japanese intent on changing their fate have begun having plastic surgery to alter their palms. The new trend relies on the ancient art of palm reading, or palmistry, the belief that you can tell a person’s future based on the lines on their palms.

Plastic surgeons have reported an increase in patients asking for operations to extend or add lines associated with luck or marriage. The surgeries cost around $1,100 and are performed with an electric scalpel.

Takaaki Matsuoka, a surgeon at the Shonan Beauty Clinic’s Shinjuku branch in Tokyo, said: “You have to use the electric scalpel and make a shaky incision on purpose, because palm lines are never completely straight.” Around 40 palm plastic surgeries have been performed at the Shonan Beauty Clinic alone in the last two years.

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Japanese Authorities Admit Fukushima Has Been Leaking Radiation Into Water For Two Years, And Cannot Be Stopped

By on July 16, 2013 in News 15

fukushimaVia the New York Times, a reminder to always take officials with a grain of salt when they issue statements denying that the oceans and air are being poisoned:

The stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima has probably been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for two years, ever since an earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant, Japan’s chief nuclear regulator said on Wednesday.

In unusually candid comments, Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, also said that neither his staff nor the plant’s operator knew exactly where the leaks were coming from, or how to stop them.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power, has reported spikes in the amounts of radioactive cesium, tritium and strontium detected in groundwater at the plant, adding urgency to the task of sealing any leaks. Radioactive cesium and strontium, especially, are known to raise risks of cancer in humans.

Until recently, Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, flatly denied that any of that water was leaking into the ocean, even though various independent studies of radiation levels in the nearby ocean have suggested otherwise.

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‘Psychic Attack’ Rumors Run Wild After 18 Hospitalized at Japanese High School

By on June 29, 2013 in News 35

psychic attackPsychic attack? Teen angst externalized? Via Who Forted?

Last Wednesday at the well-known prep school Kamigōri High in Hyogo, Japan, emergency services were called out and a reported 18 girls were taken to hospitals after what was described as a bizarre, hour long “state of panic” during which dozens of teen girls began hyperventilating.

The initial incident began when a first year student began complaining of a “bad feeling”. Her hyperventilating sparked a chain of similar events that affected [18 others].

Things got even stranger when rumors began spreading that the incident was actually the work of a psychic attack dealt from the first girl to exhibit the bizarre symptoms. According to the Aioi police department, it was well known amongst the other students that the girl displayed “supernatural senses” and they believed she was to blame for the hospitalizations.

The victims have since been released from the hospital and have shown no long term after effects.

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Mystery Shrouds the Ancient Oshoro Circle

By on June 26, 2013 in News 2

The Oshoro Circle has puzzled academics and laymen alike for years.

via The Japan Times s-oshoro01

In 1861 at Oshoro, southwestern Hokkaido, a party of herring fishermen, migrants from Honshu, were laying the foundation for a fishing port when they saw taking shape beneath their shovels a mysterious spectacle — a broad circular arrangement of large rocks, strikingly symmetrical, evidently man-made. What could it be? An Ainu fortress?

They would have been astonished to learn, as in fact they never did, that the Oshoro Stone Circle is a relic from a time before even war — let alone fortresses — likely existed in Japan.

Oshoro today is part of the city of Otaru, on its western fringe, 20 km from the city center and 60 km west of Sapporo.

The Late Jomon period (circa 2400-1000 B.C.) was an age of northward migration. The north was warming, and severe rainfall was ravaging the established Jomon sites, primarily in the vicinity of today’s Tokyo and Nagoya.

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Japanese Scientists Receive Approval To Create Human-Animal Embryos

By on June 20, 2013 in News 16

human-animal embryos

The Japan Times reports on mixing and matching the components of humans and non-human animals:

Proposed experiments with animal-human embryos cleared the first regulatory hurdle Tuesday as Japanese scientists seek permission for tests that could see human organs produced inside the growing body of an animal.

Researchers want to introduce a human stem cell into an animal embryo, to create a so-called chimeric embryo, which they can implant into an animal’s womb.

The hope is that this stem cell will grow into a fully-functioning human organ — a kidney or a liver, for example — as the animal matures. This would mean when the creature is fully grown, the organ could be harvested from the animal and used for transplanting into a person in need.

Unlike in the United States, there is little public opposition to research of this kind, with domestic media coverage overwhelmingly positive, reflecting relatively high levels of scientific literacy in the country.

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Eyeball Licking Sex Craze Sweeps Japan

By on June 17, 2013 in News 26

Pink eyeOculolinctus is the latest sex play technique to alarm doctors and prudes everywhere. From Medical News Today:

Eyeball-licking fetishism, also known as “oculolinctus” or “worming”, has become a popular way of expressing affection or inciting sexual arousal in Japan. Doctors warn that it is linked to a serious risk of virus conjunctivitis, other eye infections, and even blindness

According to the Japanese website Naver Matome, the oculolinctus craze in the country among young lovers has resulted in a significant increase in eye-infection cases.

Naver Matome first reported on eyeball-licking when a Japanese school noticed that children were coming into class wearing eye patches. Apparently, one third of all the twelve-year-old children at the school had engaged in oculolinctus.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, the oculolinctus trend was inspired by a Japanese emo band “Born” in a music video.

When the tongue makes contact with the eye, it is exposed to all kinds of infections and eye damage.

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Japanese Prosthetic Expert Makes Fake Fingers for Ex-Yakuza Members

By on June 12, 2013 in News 2

via Oddity Central Hardcore_Business_Manga

Shintaro Hayashi, a prosthetics maker from Japan, is helping out former members of the Yakuza, or Japanese mob, by creating fake fingers they lost during their life of crime, so they can get normal jobs easier.

The Yakuza organized crime syndicates are renowned for their strict codes of conduct and organized nature. When a member causes serious offenses, he is required to perform a ritual known as “yubitsume”, which implies cutting off his own fingers as a form of atonement. Usually, the left pinkie is the first one to go, but repeated mistakes can cause a sloppy Yakuza to lose several digits.

It becomes a stigma that signifies current or former membership in the Japanese mafia, and those who manage to leave their troubled past behind and become reformed citizens have a hard time finding jobs because of it. Most Yakuza try to conceal their missing fingers in public by keeping a fist, but there comes a time when they can’t hide their defects anymore, and that’s where prosthetics maker Shintaro Hayashi comes in.

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Is Yonaguni Monument The Japanese Atlantis?

By on June 9, 2013 in News 20

yonaguni monumentIs the breathtaking stone structure the work of a 10,000-year-old civilization, or is it somehow an illusion? Atlas Obscura explains:

The Yonaguni-jima Kaitei Chikei, literally translated as “Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography,” is an underwater mystery off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan. The massive underwater rock formation is speculated to have existed for more than 10,000 years, but whether the formation is completely man-made, entirely natural, or merely altered by human hands is still debated.

The monument was first discovered in 1986 by a diver. Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of the Ryukyu, explored the monument for nearly two decades. Kimura remains convinced that the site was carved thousands of years ago, when the land mass was above water.

According to Kimura, the Yonaguni’s right angles, strategically placed holes and aesthetic triangles are signs of human alteration. He also claims that carvings exists on the monuments, resembling Kaida script.

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Japanese Officials Upped Radiation Yardsticks to Dodge Compensation Costs

By on May 27, 2013 in News 3
Picture: Steve Herman (PD)

Picture: Steve Herman (PD)

Andrea Germanos writes at Common Dreams:

Japanese officials raised the level of acceptable radiation doses for evacuees of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to avoid increasing costs for compensation, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported on Saturday.

A 5-millisieverts per year dose, the same level of exposure used as a yardstick to relocate residents after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, was proposed at an unofficial meeting of ministers in October of 2011, seven months after the disaster began, they report.

But just weeks later, the yardstick was upped to 20 millisieverts per year.

… at a meeting on Oct. 28, joined by Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura and Tatsuo Kawabata, internal affairs minister, participants appeared reluctant to approve a yardstick other than 20 millisieverts. [...]

“The prefectural government could not function with population drain under the 5-millisievert scenario,” said a state minister who attended the meeting. “In addition, there were concerns that more compensation money will be needed, with an increase in the number of evacuees.” [...]

The Abe administration in March decided to release by the end of this year a set of protection measures for evacuees returning to areas with doses of up to 20 millisieverts.

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