Domo Arigato, Michelin-San

Revealing something I've always had a sneaking suspicion was true (or, in the least, truthy), Michelin Guide today declared Tokyo the world's top city for cuisine.

Ze quote:

Eight of Tokyo's restaurants won the maximum three stars — only two fewer than Paris itself. Another 25 got two stars and 117 one star.

To add to Paris's embarrassment, three of the top eight restaurants in Tokyo serve French food. Three more offer traditional Japanese fine dining, and the other two are sushi houses.

"Tokyo is becoming the global city with the finest cuisine, the city in the world with the most stars," said Michelin guide director Jean-Luc Naret.

In other news, it turns out it is possible to clean blood off a knife with soap and water (or, preferably, bleach).

Link of the day, Vol. XIX

Alas, I cannot resist.

Japanese workers in Wikipedia row

Japan's Agriculture Ministry has reprimanded six civil servants who spent hours at work editing articles on Wikipedia - mainly about robots.

One man was found to have made 260 entries to articles about Gundam, a popular animated series featuring giant robotic fighting machines.

Read the story.

My manga portfolio has seen better days

Just two weeks after the meteoric, Paul Martin-esque rise and fall of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan is set to have a new chief executive: 71-year-old Yasuo Fukuda.

Thoughta? For one, Taro Aso, Fukuda's chief competitor and a great fan of manga, will not be PM.

(And here I was hoping for more North American imports of hentai DVDs.)

It also means that Japanese foreign policy in East Asia may return to form, breaking from the more jingoistic regional relations practiced by Abe and his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. As the BBC writes:

Mr Fukuda is seen as a foreign policy dove who eschews Mr Abe's more ambitious policies, such as revising Japan's pacifist constitution to facilitate military deployments overseas.

He has emphasised the need for cordial ties with China and promised not to visit the contentious Yasukuni shrine, which Japan's neighbours see as a symbol of the country's past militarism.

He has also hinted at a more flexible stance towards North Korea to resolve a row over Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But Mr Fukuda is in favour of continuing Japan's naval mission in the Indian Ocean to refuel warships supporting the war in Afghanistan.

Coming off recent progress made on the North Korean nuclear issue, Fukuda's dovishness is good news for the region — which is, I might add, the only region where things seem to be going in the Bush administration's favour.