Keep your friends close and your enemies pissed off

I want to see some of history
There's no other reason
Then a reason to be
-------
Well they're staring all night
And they're staring all day
I had no reason to be here at all
But now i gotta reason
--Sex Pistols

Yomiuri Shinbun

Taiwanese to no longer need visas to enter Japan
The Yomiuri Shimbun

Taiwanese visitors will no longer need visas to enter Japan after the House of Councillors unanimously approved a law concerning exceptional measures in the application of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law.

....This is right before the Yasukini Shrine visit, so this is a double "up yours" to China. Interesting.

(Incidently, at Beijing International, flights are divided into the "International" terminal or the "Domestic: Taiwan, Hong Kong" termainal.)

....Also interesting about that Yasukini Shrine article:

Conservatives Urge Koizumi To Visit Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15

It says "conversatives", but it should have read "complete morons". I love Japan, but why the Japanese express surprise over their poor reputation amongst some of their neighbours is beyond me.

The groups also proposed an event, where 200,000 people visit the shrine on August 15, in a grand gesture of homage to Japan's war dead, including convicted war criminals.

14 Class-A War Criminals. What do they mean by "Class-A"? It's short for "Class Act":

Iwane Matsui (1878 - 1948)

Matsui was the commanding officer of the Japanese expeditionary force responsible for the Nanjing Massacre in 1937.

As Commander of the Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force (SEF), he planned the attack of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province.

On December 10, 1937, the SEF began its attack on Nanjing, and the Kuomintang forces that remained surrendered on December 13, 1937. The Nanjing massacre began immediately afterwards, but halted only temporarily when Matsui marched triumphantly into Nanjing on December 17, 1937.

Yeah, that massacre.

Between December 1937 and March 1938 at least 369,366 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading troops. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered.

....And this is courtesy of the "completely ironic name" department:

In Japanese, "yasu" means peace and "kuni" means country.