Underpants!

Apparently traditional undergarments for men are coming back into style in Japan. JP at Japundit explains:

A fundoshi consists of a long piece of cloth, with a cloth string along one end. You tie the two ends of the band around your waist, with the knot on your belly and the strip of cloth hanging over your buttocks. Then you reach between your legs to grab the cloth, pulling it up to the front and tucking it under the band running across your belly.

I personally think that kind of undergarment would be pretty practical when dealing with those accursed trench-toilets. Just slip the flap out from the front and tuck it in the back, and it’s effectively out of your way.

I’d buy some for Sean, but all he would do is stare at me incredulously and then never wear them. Alas.

It looks like somebody in Japan is interested in causing indiscriminate injury. I hope they can prove that inserting sharp shards of metal into guardrails is a crime under current Japanese law. Maybe that will stop the perps, or at least slow them down. I am really baffled by the things some people do…

The National Police Agency of Japan is working on a database for the DNA of criminal suspects:

The NPA’s new database will allow all prefectural police departments to retrieve DNA information on suspects believed to have been involved in other crimes across prefectural borders, the officials said.

In addition, the NPA will set no limits on the types of crimes requiring DNA samples from suspects. Police plan to obtain court-issued warrants to take DNA samples considered vital to any kind of investigation.

The article implies that we already do that in the United States. I don’t know the specifics, but I hope the part at the end is true for us as well as for Japan–that when a person is cleared, their DNA information is destroyed.