X-Nico

28 unusual facts about Japan


2011–12 Perth Heat season

Following the Heat's inaugural ABL Championship victory, the League announced that, beginning in 2011, the winner of each ABL Championship Series would participate in that year's Asia Series, a round-robin tournament of champion teams from the baseball leagues of Asia, including representatives of Japan, Republic of Korea, Republic of China and, going forward, People's Republic of China.

2012–13 Perth Heat season

In 2012, for the second consecutive year, the Heat will represent Australia in the Asia Series, a round-robin tournament of champion teams from the baseball leagues of Asia, including representatives of Japan, Republic of Korea, Republic of China and, going forward, People's Republic of China.

Adrenaline MMA

Although the organization had yet to hold its first card, its first co-promotion effort was Yarennoka! held in Saitama, Japan on New Year's Eve, 2007.

Chirography

The intricate system of characters defined by their radicals (214 in the Chinese system, with an alternative 79 radical system in the later developed Japanese interpretation known as Kanji (漢字)) is believed to have come to use around 2000 BCE.

Dhikru'llah Khadem

He also travelled around the world for Shoghi Effendi, then head of the Bahá'í Faith, to over 50 countries including Canada, Malaysia and Japan.

Flesh-Colored Horror

The table of contents lists all the stories as originally appearing in Halloween (magazine) a monthly manga magazine produced by Asahi Sonorama (朝日ソノラマ, Asahi Sonorama?), a Japanese manga, book, and magazine publishing company.

Fusajiro Yamauchi

Fusajiro Yamauchi (山内 房治郎 Yamauchi, Fusajirō, November 22, 1859 – January 1940) was a Japanese entrepreneur who founded the company that is now known as Nintendo Company Limited.

Game Sauce

Game Sauce had wacky Japanese-style announcers and styles to go with the show's premise.

Global Day of Action

Industrialized, G8 nations like Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, UK, and USA had multiple rallies - 36 in Canada alone - being planned in cities nationwide.

Hirose Electric Group

Hirose Electric Group is a Japanese company specializing in the manufacturing of electric connectors.

I Believe in Me

I Believe in Me is the fifth studio, and major debut album released by Japanese rock band Lynch.

IBLA Internationals season 2000-01

The team was a composite team made up of players from countries such as Korea, Japan, South Africa, Guam, New Zealand, USA and Australia.

Japan, Our Homeland

At the end of the film, there is a public announcement about Japan finally being able to become a member of the United Nations, the announcer mentioning the word for their homeland in the international language of English – Japan.

Juliette Alvin

Alvin visited Japan in 1967 and 1969, sharing theory and practice with Japanese music therapy pioneers.

Karl Lentzner

Lentzner seems to have spent some years in New South Wales in the 1870s (he taught languages at Sydney Grammar and Kings School and mentions coming across "Yokahama-Pidgin" as spoken by Japanese naval officers in Sydney in 1877) which gives the Australian portions some claim to originality and importance; for the rest he relies heavily on other authorities.

Kendo Nagasaki

Kendo Nagasaki is a professional wrestling stage name, used as a gimmick of that of a Japanese Samurai warrior with a mysterious past and even supernatural powers of hypnosis.

Kitayama Station

Kitayama Station is the name of multiple train stations in Japan.

Koichi Morita

Lieutenant-Colonel Koichi Morita (1865 – 1929) was a Japanese army officer born in Tokyo.

Matsuo Yokoyama

Matsuo Yokoyama (March 31, 1927) was president of Walt Disney Enterprises of Japan from 1989 to 1994.

Max Grundig

It was only in the late 1970s that it began to lose some of its marketshare as it came under increasing pressure from lower priced Japanese products, and in 1980 the company recorded its first losses.

Mixed martial arts weight classes

With no state or government laws regarding weight class restrictions, Japanese organizations are free to schedule bouts with little regard for weight differential.

Openweight

However, Japan became a bastion of openweight fights, with fighters such as Ikuhisa Minowa and Genki Sudo commonly facing much larger opponents.

President of the United Nations General Assembly

Because of their powerful stature globally, some of the largest, most powerful countries have never held the presidency, such as the People's Republic of China, France, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Sakura Station

Sakura Station is a name of multiple rail stations in Japan

Senkaku

Senkaku Islands, disputed territory named "Diaoyu" or "Diaoyutai Islands" in Chinese, also known as "Pinnacle Islands", occupied by Japan.

Sigma Designs

Sigma Designs was founded in 1982 and is based in Milpitas, California, with locations in Canada, Denmark, France, Israel, Japan and Singapore.

Stand Up for Your Rice!

Stand Up For Your Rice! is a 2007 album by Money Mark released in Japan only.

Susanne Charlotte Engelmann

With the death of her mother in June 1940, Engelmann, at 54 years of age, moved through Russia, Siberia, Mandchuria and Japan to finally reach the USA in 1941.


1988 Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship

With the championship generally ignored by most of the top teams from the stronger Group A championships (Australia, Europe and Japan), Crowe, Bond and Pirro were able to gain the top three placings despite each only running in two of the four rounds.

1993 Asian Baseball Championship

The tournament was won by defending champions Japan; their eleventh Asian Championship and their third consecutive title, equalling the record they set in two separate sequences previously: 1955-1959-1962 and 1965-1967-1967.

2002 AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships

The 2002 AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships was a tennis tournament played on outdoor hard courts at the Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo in Japan that was part of the International Series Gold of the 2002 ATP Tour and of Tier III of the 2002 WTA Tour.

318th Fighter Group

At the completion of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign the 72nd FS was transferred to the newly activated 21st Fighter Group to prepare for the job of escorting the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses over Japan.

Adrian Adlam

Adlam has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, the USA and Japan.

Akira Tohei

For the next eight years Tohei, in addition to his teaching at the headquarters, was also an instructor at Asia University, Akita Economics University (now North Asia University), Keio University, Nihon Women's University, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.

Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities

The opening suite "Words with the Shaman" was simultaneously issued as a 12" single, while "Steel Cathedrals" was used in a short film by Sylvian and Yasayuki Yamaguchi, shot in Tokyo, Japan, and released on VHS.

Alfred M. Gray, Jr.

After his Vietnam War tour, Gray served as Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, Battalion Landing Team 1/2; the 2nd Marine Regiment; the 4th Marine Regiment; and Camp Commander of Camp Hansen, Okinawa, Japan.

Amy Yamada

In an interview with Bungei Shunjū upon winning the Akutagawa Prize, Risa Wataya and Hitomi Kanehara named Yamada's Afterschool Music as one of their major influences, explaining that her works were one of the greatest depictions of modern Japan.

Banded houndshark

The first scientific description of the banded houndshark was authored by German biologists Johannes Peter Müller and Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, based on a dried specimen from Japan, in their 1838–41 Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen.

Big Egg Wrestling Universe

The event featured representatives from joshi promotions All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW), GAEA Japan, Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (JWP), and Ladies Legend Pro Wrestling (LLPW), as well as puroresu promotion Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (which had a large women's division at the time).

Confucian Academy

They met with the Prime Minister of Japan Yasuo Fukuda, who expressed support for the promotion of the Confucius birthday in Asia.

Doom VI – Illegal Soul

Doom VI – Illegal Soul is the fifth studio album by the Japanese band Doom.

Flying syringe

In 2008 the Gates Foundation awarded $100,000 to Hiroyuki Matsuoka of Jichi Medical University in Japan to do research on them, with a condition that any discoveries that were funded by the grant must be made available at affordable prices in the developing world.

Historical behaviour studies

A particular characteristic of the Stuttgart studies of historical behaviour was the comparative turn towards non-Western societies like Indonesia, Japan, and China.

IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal

Nishizawa was professor, director of two research institutes and the 17th president at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, and contributed important innovations in the fields of optical communications and semiconductor devices, such as laser and PIN diodes and static induction thyristors for electric power applications.

Iwama

Iwama, Ibaraki, former town in Nishiibaraki District, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

Japanese minelayer Yaeyama

Yaeyama covered the landing of Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces (SNLF) reinforcements in the Battle of Shanghai, and participated in the evacuation of 20,000 Japanese civilians and non-combatants from the city back to Japan.

Jim Rodwell

In 1995, Rodwell captained the Great Britain University side at the World Student Games in Fukuoka, Japan.

Kimitoshi Nōgawa

On April 12, 2005 it was reported that Nougawa had apparently signed with Canon Yaoundé in Cameroon on a one-year contract and that he would be the first Japanese player to play in Africa.

Konghou

It has recently been revived in Japan, and the Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda has composed for it.

Kotoka

Kotooka, Akita (also transliterated as Kotoka), a town in Yamamoto District, Akita, Japan

Lennox Gardens

It has a number of memorials and monuments such as Kasuga stones presented to Canberra by Japan in April 1997, a monument to Australians in the Spanish civil war, and a stone monument commemorating the centenary of Federation and the Jewish National fund.

Lou Gramm

In April 1997, two months after providing vocals for Christian rock band Petra's Petra Praise 2: We Need Jesus, and on the eve the band was to leave for a Japan tour, Gramm was diagnosed with a type of brain tumor called a craniopharyngioma.

María Luisa Reid

Her work has appeared in collective exhibitions in France, Spain, Japan and Cuba with the most important of these being 300 Latino-americans dans l’espace in Paris, the IV Encuentro Iberoamericano de Mujeres en el Arte in Alcalá de Henares, Spain and the Viva la vida Frida in Havana.

Marxism–Leninism

However, that was followed by a brief Allied military intervention by the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and others against the Bolsheviks.

Masajiro Miyazaki

Miyazaki was born in the vicinity of Hikone City in Japan and moved to Canada in 1913 with his father.

Miki Sumiyoshi

She then moved to Vancouver in Canada, graduating from high school, and again to Japan, where she attended and graduated from International Christian University.

Muon spin spectroscopy

This is presently achieved at few large scale facilities in the world: the CMMS continuous source at TRIUMF in Vancouver, Canada; the SµS continuous source at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland; the ISIS and RIKEN-RAL pulsed sources at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, United Kingdom; and the J-PARC facility in Tokai, Japan, where a new pulsed source is being built to replace that at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan.

Origin: Spirits of the Past

Three hundred years later, Japan is a dystopia covered by the Forest, a huge expanse of sapient trees, and ruled by the tree-like Zruids, which inhabit the planet and control the water supply of both trees and humans.

Phosphofructokinase deficiency

It was named after the Japanese Physician, Seiichiro Tarui (1927- ), who was a native of Hyōgo Prefecture in Japan.

Ponyta and Rapidash

Ponyta and Rapidash were two of several different designs conceived by Game Freak's character development team and finalized by Ken Sugimori for the first generation of Pocket Monsters games Red and Green, which were localized outside of Japan as Pokémon Red and Blue.

Sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly

In the first round of voting, the General Assembly and the Security Council concurrently and independently elected Giorgio Gaja (Italy), Hisashi Owada (Japan), Peter Tomka (Slovakia), and Xue Hanqin (China), but the two organs were deadlocked between two African candidates for the fifth available seat.

Stratos Boats

Stratos began building boats in 1984, and sells throughout a network of dealers throughout the United States, Australia, France, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Italy and Venezuela.

Taihei Ueda

Ueda was a member of the Japan team at the 2011 Rugby World Cup, playing one match against eventual winners the All Blacks.

Takao Kitabata

Kitabata announced on August 7 that Japan was again requesting information from the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), asking whether CNOOC had begun developing the disputed Chunxiao gas field in the East China Sea.

Tamawashi Ichirō

On a visit to see his sister in Japan, they went to Ryōgoku where Tokyo's official tournaments are held.

Technodelic

For "Seoul Music", the kanji "京城" are used, referring to Gyeongseong (경성; known as Keijou in Japan), the name of Seoul when Korea was under Japanese rule.

Teishin Shudan

The paratroop brigades were organized into the Teishin Shudan as the first division-level raiding unit, at the main Japanese airborne base, Karasehara Airfield, Kyūshū, Japan.

The Destruction of Small Ideas

"Don't Go Down to Sorrow" was the first single from the album, released in the UK on April 9, in the United States on April 17, and in Japan on March 23.

Thomas Taro Higa

Word spread and Professor Tadaoki Yamamoto, the Department Chairman of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at the Waseda University, came to meet Higa and asked him to come to Japan and study.

Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago

In 2003, the Toyota Technological Institute of Nagoya, Japan opened the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, jointly with the University of Chicago.

Toyotarō Yūki

However, following the assassination of Yasuda Zenjirō, Yūki left the Bank of Japan to join the Board of Directors for the Yasuda zaibatsu in November 1921, and was appointed Managing Director of Yasuda Bank the same year.

Uesugi Akisada

His loss of the Izu Province to Hōjō Sōun in 1492–1498 marked a significant development of Japan's Sengoku period.

Ultra Seven

Ultra Seven is sometimes incorrectly called "Ultraman Seven" by many sources outside Japan (or in the case of KHON/Honolulu, Hawaii, Ultra7, as listed in TV Guide when it ran in 1975).

UltraMantis Black

As UltraMantis, his original red and green attire was based on the main protagonist from the Kamen Rider series, while his ring name was derived from another Japanese television program, Ultraman.

Usui Pass

The pass on the ancient Tōsandō highway was described as early as the 8th century, in the Nihon Shoki, as Yamato Takeru went through the pass during his journey in eastern Japan.

Woody Pop

It would be the last game released in Japan with the Mark III branding and on a My Card.

X-ray fluorescence holography

X-ray Fluorescence Holography (XFH) is a relatively new technique that benefits greatly from the coherent high-power X-rays available from synchrotron sources, such as the Japanese SPring-8 facility.