Ry-zing Sun
All sorts of silly stuff about Japan.



A museum devoted to bloodsuckers! (May 11)
Massive swollen testicles, gross out displays and a recreation of an 8.8-meter-long tapeworm are just some of the delights on display at Meguro Parasitological Museum. Meguro Parasitological Museum is the world’s only museum devoted exclusively to parasites! The museum maintains 45,000 parasite specimens. But collecting, organizing and maintaining specimens is only one of its tasks. The museum [...]


Kanamara Matsuri, the Festival of the Iron Penis (Apr 11)
Kanamara Matsuri, or the Festival of the Iron Penis, has got to be one of my all-time favorite Japanese festivals. The most interesting part of the festival is the trannies who carry the huge pink phallus around on their shoulders while screaming out “dekai mara (huge penis!).” The number of people attending the festival is [...]


Japan?s Greatest Love Hotels: Room 306, Hotel Geihinkan Kawasaki (Apr 11)
Room 306 at the Hotel Geihinkan in Kawasaki has got to be one of the most bizarre love hotel rooms in the entire country. Instead of the typically gaudy ceiling mirrors and disco lights, Room 306 has a running stream, stone lanterns, rock gardens, a wisteria tree, four-poster futon-style bed with wooden decking and TWO bridges inside [...]


Mount Takao Fire Walking Festival (Apr 11)
Mount Takao Fire Walking Festival is an event I have had an interest in since I moved to Hachioji in 1994, but had never been to until this year, when it occurred on March 10. I missed a lot. It was an enjoyable ceremony, even if it was filled with a few too many long, boring [...]


1957: LDP reluctantly refuses membership to 100,000 whores (Apr 5)
Jan. 7 The government, readying for the end of the akasen, opens women?s consultation centers for prostitutes seeking rehabilitation. Feb. 7 The National Venereal Disease Prevention Association, an organization created by businesses operating in the sex trade, submits an application to the three highest?ranking members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party asking it to reconsider the date the [...]


Belgrave, the small Australian town where I grew up (Apr 4)
Belgrave was where I lived the first 17 years of my life, though a part of it has remained in my heart forever. I’ve visited for the past two Christmases, but I doubt I’ll ever go back to the town of Belgrave again now. View Larger Map


A truly Australian wonder at William Ricketts Sanctuary (Apr 4)
William Ricketts Sanctuary is one of the most amazing places I have ever visited in Australia. It is a park in the middle of a forest and dotted with some of the most amazing statues of indigenous Australians I have ever seen. Incredibly, I grew up just a few minutes drive from the park, but had never [...]


Bobby Fischer makes a tactical change (Mar 28)
Japan?s legal system attracts the country?s brightest students, who have promptly turned the profession into a dull, archaic world filled with gloom for those who have to deal with it. Simply becoming a leading player in the Japanese legal world is a monumental task. Each year, around 50,000 people sit for the bar exam, roughly the [...]


Rwandan president slams French reaction to 1994 genocide (Mar 15)
Back in 2006, I had the opportunity to interview Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the man some blame for ordering the shooting down of an airplane carrying the then Rwandan and Burundi presidents and sparking the genocide that followed. Rwanda’s genocide was one of the most hideous acts in history. Rwandan Hutus massacred 1.1 million Tutsis and [...]


Jailed Fischer makes a counterplay (Mar 11)
One of the first people to visit Bobby Fischer in his cell at the Narita Airport Immigration Bureau Detention center was a well dressed, articulate Canadian media consultant who had lived in Tokyo since the early 1990s. His name was John Bosnitch. Bosnitch had kept a quiet profile in his 15 years in Tokyo, but the [...]