news

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