Classroom Frustrations...and booze-filled fish

I've been frustrated in a classroom before. I've even been to the point where I wanted to pull my own hair out, but never anyone else's!

Teacher slaps whole class of elementary school students in face
MainichiYOKOHAMA -- An elementary school teacher is in hot water for hitting all the children in her class after misbehavior from only a handful of students, school officials have admitted.

The school authorities offered deep apologies to the students and their parents over the incident.

"I was desperate to start the class. I did a terrible thing," the 54-year-old teacher was quoted as telling her bosses.

The incident occurred during a fifth-grade class at the Yokohama Municipal Yamata Elementary School in Tsuzuki-ku on Tuesday, in which students were supposed to observe plants growing on school grounds. However, despite the teacher announcing the start of the lesson, some of the children kept on playing instead -- prompting the infuriated instructor to line all the students up and slap them in the face, even though most of them were not at fault.

The teacher was working as the class's substitute homeroom teacher, while the regular teacher is on maternity leave.


Naked Festival Poster Too Racy for Japanese Railway

A Japanese rail company has refused to display posters advertising a 1,000-year-old "naked festival" held at a temple in northern Japan, saying the design is too extreme.

The festival at Kokuseki temple in Iwate Prefecture is one of several held around Japan in which men dressed only in "fundoshi" loincloths, which barely cover the genitals, take part in purification rituals and wrestle for possession of wooden charms.

The poster shows a hairy-chested man in the foreground, with rear views of other naked men in the background.

"The overall design is rather extreme, said Kaichi Yamazaki, spokesman for the Morioka branch of JR East, which refused to display the posters.

We just want passengers to be able to use the station in a pleasant atmosphere," he added. "We do not mean to be negative about the people in the photographs, or about the festival itself," he added.

Domestic media said the company had said displaying the poster would amount to sexual harassment.

Tokyo's subways briefly ordered parts of a poster of a naked and heavily pregnant Britney Spears to be covered up in 2006 because it was considered "too stimulating," but quickly reversed the decision.

Posters featuring photographs and manga drawings of scantily clad young women are, however, commonplace on trains. Reuters

The "hairy naked man" poster that's all the buzz in Tokyo!


Here's a funny little vid....
A doctor who can't use chopsticks?? Look out!



Like a fish out of water, carp struggle to drink sake in strange ceremony

TONAMI, Toyama -- Some people are said to drink like a fish, but in a recent event here it was the fish that were getting their fill of alcohol.

The fish were the drinkers in a strange ceremony dating back to the Edo Period in which lively carp are made to consume a large dose of sake as they symbolically take on people's calamities. After drinking the sake, the fish are released into a river.

A total of 62 people who this year were set to reach an age said to require care against calamities -- 25 and 42 for men and 19 and 33 for women -- took part in the Jan. 7 ceremony, praying for things such as long life and academic achievement.

During the event, which involved proceedings at a Shinto shrine, carp were captured by men wearing traditional crest-bearing garments, and a woman dressed in a kimono poured a bottle of sacred sake into the mouths of the fish before they were released into the river.

Filled up with sake, the carp at first turned belly-up on the surface of the water. But they soon recovered and swam off. Mainichi...