Japan feeds

Nearly 3,000 Tibetan exiles took part in a peaceful rally here on Wednesday to mark the 51st anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. Participants of the rally led by the Dalai Lama's representative in Nepal, Thinley Gyatso, marched through the Bouddha area on the eastern outskirts of Kathmandu and then listened to message of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, read out by Gyatso.

A vocational film school in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, is set to become Japan's first accredited university specializing in filmmaking from April next year, with the goal of becoming an academy of motion picture arts drawing students not only from Japan but other Asian countries, the school said. ''We hope to make the university a major movie hub, gathering young Asians,'' said Tadao Sato, head of the Japan Academy of Moving Images.

Three women, who are among the seven crew members of space shuttle Discovery slated to lift off April 5 for the International Space Station, called Tuesday for more women to engage in space-related jobs. At a preflight news conference held at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency made the call, along with fellow female astronauts Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and Stephanie Wilson.

A group of high school students in Tokyo are collecting signatures from people to support a world without nuclear arms to submit to the review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May in New York. Five of the group, consisting more than 10 students, plan to go to the United States to hand the petition to the conference.

　　Japanese film director Takeshi Kitano was conferred Tuesday France's highest honor for arts and culture in a ceremony in which the French culture minister lauded him for bringing spontaneity and a message of freedom to his big-screen productions. ''I have developed a longing for Paris the cultural center. (Receiving this decoration) is like a dream,'' said a joyous Kitano on being named a Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters. ''I feel uneasy about whether I merit this honor but I will make my best efforts at being worthy of it.''

The upper house of India's Parliament on Tuesday passed a historic constitutional amendment bill to reserve one-third of seats in the lower house of Parliament and in 28 state assemblies for women. ''It is a historic and giant step towards empowering our women. It is also a celebration of their rights,'' Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in his intervention at the end of debate in the Rajya Sabha, as the upper house is known.

Japanese film director Takeshi Kitano has been named by France for the title of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters in recognition of his achievements, France's ministry of culture said Tuesday. Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand will bestow France's highest honor for artists on Kitano later in the day, the ministry said.

Visiting Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito attended a memorial symposium in the Ghanaian capital of Accra on Tuesday held to present an award named after Japanese bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi and expressed hope for further efforts by doctors fighting infectious diseases in Africa. ''I hope from deep in my heart that the medical researchers and professionals who are fighting infectious diseases in Africa will continue putting their efforts into their activities,'' the crown prince said in a speech at the Hideyo Noguchi award symposium.

Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Yukihisa Fujita faced bitter criticism in a Washington Post editorial Monday for what the major U.S. daily described as a ''bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus'' conspiracy theory over the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States. In its editorial, the newspaper presented Fujita's views on the terror attacks, including his argument that some hijackers remain alive and that ''shadowy forces'' with advance knowledge of the plot profited from stock trading.

A British woman has developed a cooking paste which she claims will give food umami, known as the fifth taste after sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Laura Santtini mixed up classic Italian ingredients to make her umami cooking paste, which is thought to be the world's first. She is planning to sell her concept in the United States and Japan, where the umami taste was first discovered.

The Aug. 30 general election that brought the Democratic Party of Japan to power was ''close to being unconstitutional'' as the value of one vote varied greatly, a high court ruled Tuesday. While the Fukuoka High Court's Naha branch rejected the demand by a Naha lawyer that the election returns in the No. 1 constituency in Okinawa Prefecture should be nullified, its decision follows three previous rulings in similar cases at the Osaka, Hiroshima and Tokyo high courts.

The Mainichi Shimbun sat down with director Woody Allen in New York ahead of the Japan debut of his film "Cassandra's Dream," the chronicle of a humble London family's descent into tragedy.

Koichi Nakamura, vocalist from the Japanese pop group JAYWALK, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stimulant possession, police said. Police found a small amount of stimulants in a car parked in Tokyo's Minato Ward at around 2:20 a.m., while questioning the 59-year-old musician who was inside the vehicle, they said. ==Kyodo

The number of foreign nationals staying in Japan after their visas expired was down 18.8 percent from a year before to 91,778 as of Jan. 1, 2010, slipping below 100,000 for the first time in 21 years, a Justice Ministry survey showed Tuesday. The number of people overstaying their visas has been falling after peaking at around 300,000 in 1993.

winter morninga down comforterand nowhere to go--Megan Elizabeth Monish (NE Hickory, NC, USA)

Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito met with Ghanaian President John Atta Mills on Monday after arriving in Ghana's capital Accra on Sunday on the first leg of an official visit to the West African country and Kenya. ''I hope my visit this time will help promote the exchanges between Japan and Ghana to enter a new era and that the mutual understanding and friendly ties between the two countries will further advance,'' the crown prince said in a speech during a luncheon hosted by the president.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and Daiichi Sankyo Co. are each considering producing vaccines for new and seasonal influenza, a move that would likely increase sharply supplies of domestically produced vaccines, sources close to the matter said Monday. The companies are considering commencing production as demand for influenza vaccines is expected to grow amid the spread of new influenza in addition to seasonal flu and the government is beefing up support for vaccine production due to a lack of domestically produced flu vaccines.

The government has appointed Hirokazu Yoshikawa, chairman and chief executive officer of nonferrous metals manufacturer Dowa Holdings Co., to the Government Revitalization Unit effective Thursday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Tuesday.
Yoshikawa, 67, will replace Kazuo Inamori, honorary chairman of Kyocera Corp., who stepped down from the post at the government body for administrative reforms late last month to become a part-time special adviser to the Cabinet.

TAIJI, Wakayama Pref. — The gala crowd in Los Angeles cheered as "The Cove" won the best documentary Oscar with its grisly portrayal of dolphin slaughter. But residents of this small port shown in the film abhorred the attention and said it will not end their centuries-old tradition.
Residents of Taiji gathered in whale eateries with names like Tail and rolled their eyes Monday when told of Oscar laurels for the film, which they see as yet another biased foreign take on their culture.

SAGA (Kyodo) Kenichi Ikeda of the city of Nagasaki has carried around three bags and a secret he could not tell his family at home — inside the bags were hundreds of women's undergarments that he had stolen over 10 years, police said.
Police arrested the 36-year-old truck driver, who allegedly had stolen about 260 pairs of women's underwear and kept them in bags behind the driver's seat of his truck. "I couldn't leave them home because I have a wife and children," Ikeda was quoted as saying by police.