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Sometimes interesting things happen in Japan. Of course Kyoto was blessed with the presence of George W. and Laura Bush - I guess Laura learned calligraphy (wow!) - and of course the Emperor's youngest and only daughter got married to a commoner - and she will have to relinquish her title -though its not like she'll be poor: the government is required to give her a lump sum payment of 152 million yen (which is about 1 million dollars roughly) when she leaves her parents' home, to "allow preservation of dignity of a former member of the imperial family." Here's some stories about that:
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/photospecials/graph/051115wedding/ ; http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200511160093.html
my friend said that it would be interesting to see the Japanese perspective on the marriage of a princess to a commoner - but most of the articles I can get in English are written by foreigners here in Japan (the Asahi Shimbun and Japan Times for example). I am going to ask my students today in my advanced free conversation class for their perspective. I think that the royalty in Japan interests older people much more - its a symbol of times that no longer exist here, and a symbol of a lifestyle that people don't have anymore.
but on the more absurd side, there's been a rash of cases involving teens committing murder (or in the case of a girl in Shizuoka, attempting to murder her mother). The most frightening was this one:
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/face/news/20051118p2g00m0dm005000c.html