Canned Dogs

The Yokohama District Court has ruled that 35 year old Sanjouba Kouji, administrator of image uploader Gazou Channel, has been found guilty of operating a bulletin board which allowed people to view indecent imagery in order to increase ad revenue.

He has been given a 2 year prison sentence and 3 years probation.

Basically he has been jailed because people were posting uncensored porn on the uploader.

Gazou Channel got 73 million hits in 2006 and was one of the largest image uploaders in Japan. The image uploader has been shut down since July last year following the arrest of Sanjouba Kouji, but it has already generated over 100 million yen (929,000 USD) in ad revenue in 3 years.

This case was previously reported here back in May.

A bus stop in Oosetochou in Nagasaki has gotten a Totoro figure put up beside it. The figure was apparently by a hobbyist who had been making the figure out of scrap materials and he managed to get approval to put the figure up near the bus stop late last month.

The bus stop is pretty much backed by a forest too, so it looks like the scene out from the movie.

Via: Nagasaki News

The eromanga/novel boards on 2channel have held a vote for best eromanga of 2007 as they have done so every year and the results are in. The vote only takes into account all the eromanga that had a tankoubon release in 2007.

Cannon sensei tobashisugi came in first by a pretty large margin and I think it’s agreeable that it deserves first place. (even if it’s not your kind of genre)

1st place
Cannon sensei tobashisugi

2nd place
Itsumo kimi wo kanjiteru
Trouble Scramble!
Giri giri Sisters

5th place
Otome no renai jouji
Oimouto

7th place
Kairaku no shiro to kuro
Wa ga niku ni muretsudoi, kurae.

9th Place
Hoshi no oujisama
Alignment you! you!
Tatoeba, sonna koto mo aru kamo!?
Shishunki Crazies

Sankei news has picked up on a irregularly operated maid cafe in Akihabara called Hibaritei, where all the maids are actually men who are cross dressing as maids. Hibaritei opens irregularly only for a few days each month, each time they borrow the shop area from other existing cafes.

The owner of the cafe apparently got the idea of a cross dressing maid cafe when he had some male cross dressers in his maid cafe when he didn’t have enough girls working in the maid cafe which he had previously owned.

The main reason why Hibaritei does not operate regularly is because all the maids have normal jobs outside of the cafe, such as a guy who’s a writer and another who’s a model.

I actually got to know about Hibaritei before from a flyer, but I’ve never dared to venture into it…

A motorboat race was held in commemoration of Katsura Kotonoha’s birthday on the 6th of January during the 26th Toda kyoutei gold cup daily sports competition. The commentator also says the race is dedicated to Katsura “Kotoha” who loves boats and that she will hopefully be happy with Makoto forever.

It costs 10,000 yen (90 USD) to sponsor a race at Toda kyoutei and you get to have the race title of your liking together with a message by the commentator, so somebody had put his money to good use.

A video of the race is available on nicovideo

Doujin Work author Hiroyuki has written on his blog that his manga will be ending in the February issue of Manga Time Kirara. They plan to also start a spin off manga starting from the April issue. I had actually expected the manga to continue for another 1-2 years after getting an anime series…

I’ve heard that the bookstores had stocked up on the manga expecting that it’d have a boost in sales after the anime started but ended up with excess stock instead when the anime wasn’t that great.

Animeanime reports that a layout and background set by Miyazaki Hayao for Laputa was sold in an auction by used goods store Mandarake for 6,000,100 yen (55,000 USD). It was the layout for cut number 1257 and depicts the castle of Laputa in its entirety.

Stuff that were directly penned by Miyazaki Hayao have gone for high amounts in the past but this was a lot higher than usual.

Other items that went for high prices in the same auction that was held from the 4th of January to the 10th was Totoro cell art that sold for 1,531,100 yen, 1,436,100 yen, and 990,100 yen, a cell art from Kiki’s delivery service that sold for 701,100 yen, and rough key frame art for Castle of Cagliostro for 902,300 yen.

Wild Life is a manga about a veterinarian working to save animals and was planned to have a TV drama on NHK starting in March. However, NHK has now announced that they will be cancelling the TV drama as a giraffe mother and child pair have died soon after they finished filming the child.

The 5 month old child giraffe “Himawari” was separated from the parent giraffes for a period of 3 days for filming, and the parent giraffes started showing symptoms of stress. The child was returned to the parents but the mother giraffe “Ririka” died in a few days. The child soon died after another 6 days.

The story for the episode was supposed to have been about the giraffe Taiyo who was fitted with an artificial leg 6 years ago at the very same zoo in Akita.

Yomiuri reports that there were a total of 300,000 visitors to Washinomiya shrine over the 3 days during the New Year. This is more than double of the 130,000 visitors that visited the shrine in 2007. Lucky Star is attracting too many people…!

Superstar blog Momotato Daioh makes a comeback update after a year of silence to let everyone know what is good in the world!