Whilst in the UK people are seemingly content with endlessly recycling the recent past as a supposed ironic subcultural statement, in Japan they have been doing some sociological R and D, and developing something new and scarily orange.
That doesn't mean they aren't coming up against the same problems - you know, the "first it was just me and my mates and we did it to be different, but now there are all these others who don't really get it, weekenders and part timers, and they have wrecked the whole scene" thing - witness the death throes of the yamanba (there is a picture of a yamanba girl halfway down this page (and here is an old (2000) article in a "these people are the wreckers of our civilisation" kind of vein).
Elsewhere, science has been doing what God has spectacularly failed to do by
a) existing, and
b) giving sight to the blind.
Check out the rather disturbing videos here, particularly the one with the discreet hat-mounted webcam....
Business News: you know all those "Make money from home" type posters you see stuck to trees and lamposts and stuff? well it turns out that not only are they an international phenomena but nearly all stem from the one company - as revealed in some entertaining web journalism from Cockeyed.com.
