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Post by tangerinesun on May 18, 2017 16:48:06 GMT -5
"Prince of the Sea" is honorific baloney, come onhttp://instagr.am/p/BULhy2ygMsy Huh???!! Japanese Princess to give up royal status to marry commoner classmate she met in a restaurant2017 MAY 17 by Danielle Demetriou, Tokyo for the Telegraph UK www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/17/japanese-princess-give-royal-status-marry-commoner-classmate/ Princess Mako plans to marry Kei Komuro, a legal assistant who apparently loves the ocean and enjoys skiing, playing the violin and cooking, according to Japanese media reports.
The pair, both 25, reportedly met five years ago at a party being held to discuss studying abroad when they were both students at International Christian University in Tokyo. Shocker, but he's a dreamboat after all. Mako-sama's got a mind of her own. I am not your emperor incubator. The royal family and the news media in JP are cooperating with the idea. Under current law, this means the Princess won't be one anymore, and the royal house was already thinning out badly as it was. It puts conservatives in a tougher position regarding succession to the throne. Keeping it a boys' club could mean that, further down the line, there's no heir. Then no matter what, the mossbacks will find it hard to win the gender game.
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Post by tangerinesun on Jul 23, 2017 18:57:31 GMT -5
Girls run wild thorugh Osaka annually, with photos/videos The 33rd Tenjin Matsuri Gyarumikoshi2014 MAR 28 by 天神祭ギャルみこし (06:38) 第33回天神祭ギャルみこし Day summary of the 33rd Tenjin Matsuri Gyarumikoshi tour. The homepage says, Team Gyarumikoshi took part in a marathon relay race to Osaka Castle that year. Of 741 competing teams, two received a Best Performance award, and Gyarumikoshi's was one of them. The most experienced coaches are guys, so that is who's coaching the women's teams. It'll be obvious that to carry on yelling and tossing your shrine for ages while jogging and inspiring the onlookers... you need determination, some major team élan, and great physical stamina. What's a mikoshi weigh? The hearsay figure I read was 800kg, and I see at most 4 gyaru on a side, so each one is responsible for holding up and bouncing around... 50kg or 110lb. It seems impossible, that's near enough as much as their body weight. 〜〜〜 This 2017 news report stresses the team selection tournament. Charm is important, but so are strength and good balance. "Tenjin Matsuri Gyarumikoshi" One-shot auditions were "Yoshimoto level"2017 JULY 22 by Mari Endo, photojournalist with the Asahi Shimbun for WithNews.jp (Asahi Shimbun Osaka Video Coverage Department – Mari Endo, Takaharu Yagi) withnews.jp/article/f0170722001qq000000000000000W07910601qq000015595A Tenjin Matsuri is one of the Big Three festivals in Japan. It's held for two days, 24-25 July, mainly in Osaka City's Kita Ward. Just prior to that, there's another passionate celebration by the women of Osaka. Cruising [ the streets ] on 23 July it's the Tenjin Matsuri Gyarumikoshi. TIME OUT: Tenjin Matsuri is the Festival of the Tenmangu Shrine, a huge deal culturally and economically. The article is misleading, in that this is sensibly about Tenjin and not just any heavenly kami. Gyarumikoshi is Gal Portable Shrine. The women march cheering through the streets with a shrine on their shoulders just like the men do. Yoshimoto-level refers to the Osaka-based talent agency Yoshimoto Kogyo, whose comedians are considered to be as much fun as you can possibly have. Gals are just gals… Gyarumikoshi was first held by the town council in 1981, with the aim of promoting the area of the Tenjinbashi Strip retail district, known as the longest shopping street in Japan. This year marks the 37th occasion. The official name is "Tenjin Matsuri Ladies Shrine". However, it has long since been known as the Gal Shrine. "Gal" just means "gal", not anything like kogyaru or gangurogyaru . It's a vestige of a previous era some decades ago, when gal = young woman. As it sounds well, the usage is thoroughly established. TIME OUT: Kogyaru, girly-gals, are young females ruled by a shallow obsession with fashion trends, and each other. Gangurogyaru, darkface-gals, are the classic heavily tanned, rough, gang-affiliated girls in neon shock makeup. If you want to say "girl" the English way, that's garu not gyaru. But even garu is not 100% positive in use. Physical strength exhibition competition with laughter – one-shot battle of the passionate women On 8 July in the shopping district, auditions were held to determine the two teams of shrine bearers. Gathered were 128 women, 15–30 years old, who passed document review. From there, it would be narrowed down to 80 persons.
Participants were not limited to Osaka, a broad range [ included ] Tokyo, Kanagawa, Germany (!). 〜〜〜〜〜 The article goes on, but the photos and videos are the point. The women are having their annual blast performing feats of strength and skill for the selection committee and each other. On the 23rd, just past, the most qualified put on team jackets and shorts and ran their shrine around the district singing and yelling WASSHOI! for the honor of Osaka and the kami whose shrine they serve. They're just on the fringe of the actual festival days, but they have all the attention to themselves, so there are pluses and minuses. A junior festival observance, but the enthusiasm is contagious to watch. If you run the page through Google Translate, just be aware that a lot of phrases involving words for women or females are going to be given the most misogynistic reading possible. Google's AI spends all its time on the Internet, so that's what you can expect… but it's not at all what was intended. The Gyarumikoshi event HP in Japanese, with many photos/some videosgalmikoshi.com/
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Post by tangerinesun on Jul 23, 2017 20:19:12 GMT -5
No lifting required, but you still need endurance even to watch it all. I wonder how much of this is rote, and how much is improvised. Tenjin Matsuri Ryuu Odori no On'na Tatsujin Shouryuu Kourin 2016.7.242016 JUL 24 by y2114120 (08:07) Tenjin Matsuri Dragon Dance Woman Descent of the Rising Dragon 2016.7.24 Please pay attention to the finger movements resembling the [ two-horned ] dragon's head.〜〜〜 How a Rising Dragon can be descending is: the Chinese Tengshe has wings, so it's the sort of dragon that rises... but its abode is in heaven, so to approach us here below it would naturally descend. Most awe-inspiring and auspicious.
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Post by tangerinesun on Jul 24, 2017 0:21:40 GMT -5
OK, Tenjin Matsuri is over, but there are still days' worth of viewing on YouTube. The scale of the Osaka festival is really something else. Kasa Odori (umbrella dance) from the Tenjin lion land procession2016 SEP 08 by ひろきゅん (23:54) Holding numerous crowns as everyone knows, such as: the three major Japanese festivals; the three major Osaka summer festivals; the three principal Japanese sky deities; from the Tenjin Matsuri of the Osaka Tenjin Shrine, proceeding from the lion overland procession of the Tenjin Lecture, this is a matrix of parasol dancing.
As you'd expect, it's an overwhelming number of people. Local girls, little children from elementary schools, middle-school students, many children continue to participate as high-school students. The children in the lead group I notice every year. 〜〜〜〜〜 Careful about the wry face in public, it could become a poster frame on YouTube. By the looks, Hiro-kun was letting the procession go by, and then running ahead of it to catch it again. But when he got home, he cut all his footage together to give a sense of continuity. Almost 24 minutes. The sound of it alone is hypnotic. It's a long time even for you, but the youngest kids and the teenagers who aren't sure why they're doing it get pretty burned out. They stop chanting and start snacking, chewing gum, or just walking. Taking the work somewhat in shifts seems normal. This is a long march. The word they're calling is sorei (祖霊) referring to ancestral spirits that are progressively refined into a kami-like state. Or it can be a way of invoking the spirit of the kami itself individually. Tenjin particularly, the subject of the festival, was a living man of such cultivation that he simply became a god, and an angry one at that. The handfuls of split bamboo castanets are called yotsutake, four bamboos. Good ones have finger loops. I think of them as belonging to Okinawa and the Ryuku Islands, but they're sure a big part of this procession. The "lecture" part: it's as much as I have gleaned that lecturers are like lay associates of the local Tenjin shrine, so they would have everything to do with keeping the festival traditions alive by managing events and transmitting the related teachings year after year. The lion dancers are up ahead, we don't see them. This is only part of a street procession involving around 3,000 people. There's an even larger boat parade, 3X as many people or more, plus fireworks and everything else that goes along with summer festivals. Once Tenjin Matsuri has come, the festival season is in high gear. It's all to venerate this guy, the scholar's kami: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenjin_(kami)More background on the annual festival: Come and experience the spirit of people born and bred in Osaka, maintaining traditions of 1,000 years ago.www.jnto.go.jp/eng/spot/festival/tenjinmatsuri.html2017 Tenjin Matsuri in Osakawww.japan-talk.com/jt/new/tenjin-matsuri
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Post by lazybone712 on Oct 9, 2017 10:12:36 GMT -5
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Post by tangerinesun on Oct 10, 2017 2:42:48 GMT -5
Hiroo Onoda was only the most mediagenic example. The ghostwriter of his memoir later wrote his own book to deflate the image he helped to create. Best single article I have read on the "holdout" phenomenon by an independent British researcher, writer and historian. Survey of the celebrity last-to-surrender IJA soldiers includes some who never did. They faded into the wild or integrated with island natives to become subjects of legend like Bigfoot. Final straggler: the Japanese soldier who outlasted Hiroo Onoda2015 SEP 15 by ALLKINDSOFHISTORY (Mike Dash) for the A Blast From The Past blog mikedashhistory.com/2015/09/15/final-straggler-the-japanese-soldier-who-outlasted-hiroo-onoda/ Surrender left 3.5 million surviving Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen stranded overseas, just over a million of whom were stationed in the Philippines, in Indonesia and on various Pacific islands…
The number of Japanese whose fates remained unknown in these chaotic circumstances makes for stark reading. The Navy alone posted the names of 720,000 “missing” in 1946, and… that number still stood at 561 in 1950, the year in which all those still unaccounted for were officially presumed dead.
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Post by mikado-AKA-Shoknifeman on Oct 11, 2017 11:13:30 GMT -5
Gangurogyaru, darkface-gals, are the classic heavily tanned, rough, gang-affiliated girls in neon shock makeup. (I wonder why they think this looks attractive)
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Post by tangerinesun on Oct 16, 2017 2:44:57 GMT -5
The rice harvest leaves a lot of rice straw behind. Lucky thing. For the 10th anniversary of the Wara Art Festival, the straw artists went bigger than ever. Pictorial report at Spoon & Tamago: www.spoon-tamago.com/2017/10/02/rice-straw-animal-sculptures-from-the-2017-wara-art-festival... [ Niigata Events ] Wara Art Festival 2017 [ Flyover Movie ] 4K2017 SEP 13 by たりどうが (02:53) Straw Art photographed in Uwasekigata Park from ground-level and overhead.The event itself ended as of September 2nd/3rd.Straw art is still being exhibited, those who are interested be sure to come.〇 About WARA ART Matsuri In addition to construction and exhibition of various artworks using "inewara" (rice straw), the Wara Art Festival also promotes the attractions of Niigata City's Nishigama district via the sale of regional specialities, hands-on experiential classrooms, staged song and dance events, etc.
It is an event to promote and expand the non-resident population as well as foster the residents' sense of unity. Townspeople and students from Musashino Art University in Tokyo collaborate to create the art. Straw artworks large and small are exhibited at the gathering place in Uwasekigata Park. www.city.niigata.lg.jp/nishikan/about/kankou/wara-art/index.html
Photography: 2017/09/09 and other Location: Uwasekigata Park, Nishika Ward, Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture Cameras: Terrestrial~ DJI OSMO PRO Aerial~ Phantom 4 Pro Film editing: Filmora BGM: "Seisen no eiyuu" (Hero of the Holy War) (HMIX GALLERY)
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Post by tangerinesun on Oct 20, 2017 16:35:27 GMT -5
The Death of Liberalism in Japan2017 OCT 15 by KOICHI NAKANO for the NY Times Opinion pages www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html TOKYO — Last month, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan dissolved Parliament and called a snap election for Oct. 22, he seemed to be making the decision from a position of strength…
In fact, the decision was a sign of weakness — of Mr. Abe’s political weakness and also, more problematically for the country, of a crisis of representativeness in Japanese politics…
Voters have never given a ringing endorsement to Mr. Abe’s “Take Back Japan” agenda, which promotes a “stronger” Japan both economically and militarily with a distinctively nationalist tone, glorifying Japan’s past… It goes on. A very worthwhile 3-minute read if you want to check your sense that Japan's politicians as a class are using the prevailing global currents to re-align the nation against its never-again-war promise enshrined in the liberal democratic constitution imposed by the US in 1946. Also, denouncing the militarism of the 1930s and '40s is going out of fashion. The Emperor won't go near any enshrined Class A War Criminal dead, but the PM will and does. The people who think historic mistakes are being made are swimming against the tide. The Koichi Nakano NYT opinion piece concludes: …before any ballot is cast on Sunday, one outcome already seems clear: The election will spell the demise of Japan’s liberal left. A conservative two-party system without real checks and balances is emerging in Japan, and the gap keeps widening between the country’s politics and the people’s preferences.Before you get too bummed out, consider this unscientific street survey: Are Young Japanese Interested in Politics? (Interview)2017 OCT 17 by That Japanese Man Yuta (09:30) Yuta wants you to know that his interviewees are not representative of all Japanese, and thankfully they're not. But they betray hardly any embarrassment when they're revealed as sheep. That suggests to me that their attitudes are not far different from the people they know. Being completely checked out from government must be accepted, even if not admired, among their youthful peers.
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Post by tangerinesun on Oct 20, 2017 16:44:44 GMT -5
Meanwhile back at the palace, the Heisei era is winding down. Japan's Emperor Akihito likely to abdicate at end-March 2019: Asahi2017 OCT 19 by Staff for the Reuters news agency www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-emperor/japans-emperor-akihito-likely-to-abdicate-at-end-march-2019-asahi-idUSKBN1CP024 TOKYO (Reuters) – [ English with photos ] Japan’s Emperor Akihito is likely to abdicate at the end of March 2019 and Crown Prince Naruhito is expected to ascend the throne in April, the first abdication by a Japanese monarch in nearly two centuries, the Asahi newspaper reported on Friday…
In written remarks for her 83rd birthday on Friday, Empress Michiko said that she thought this year her travels with Emperor Ahikito around Japan might be their last, and have become deeply emotional."Likely to abdicate" in the same sense as it's likely to get colder in Tokyo this December. Some in government are still saying they're unclear how this will work. 〜〜〜 The story in the Asahi Shimbun is here (free login required to read it all): www.asahi.com/articles/ASKBM54KNKBMUTFK025.html Asahi referred to a speech by His Majesty the Emperor last July, floating the topic of abdication. At the time he remarked that more than 70 years have passed since the end of the Pacific War, and that the 30th year of the Heisei era defined by his reign concludes in January 2019. It looks like HMtE settled on the March 31 date to give himself a good finish and his successor an upbeat start, while leaving enough time to pack up and get out of town after the anticipated celebrations for his 30th anniversary. He had wanted to go sooner, mainly for reasons of health. He's spent the Heisei period working to fully accomplish the humanization of his formerly divine office, forcibly begun in 1946 with his father the Emperor Hirohito. 〜〜〜 Most people are going to hate to see him go. Even more so the Empress Consort Michiko, who is widely adored. She was the first commoner in Japanese history to marry into the royal dynasty, over the bitter, actually vicious, opposition of her future mother in law. There's never been a formal process of abdication in Japan. The Diet had to pass a bill specifically enabling this one to happen, in which they refused, again, to consider the vexed topic of female succession to the throne. Since 1889, Emperor of Japan is explicitly boys-only, and male successor candidates have been sparse for many decades.
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Post by mikado-AKA-Shoknifeman on Oct 21, 2017 9:41:15 GMT -5
I would prefer to see ALL monarchies eradicated, from the face of the Earth!
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Post by tangerinesun on Oct 23, 2017 17:45:02 GMT -5
I would prefer to see ALL monarchies eradicated, from the face of the Earth! The monarchies you think of first are mostly pageantry, like Queen of the Carnival, but I'm not too crazy about playing royals vs. peasants in general. What really worries me is the self-perpetuating oligarchies that dictate everything to their citizens from the top down, rule by repression, and call themselves representational. They're more harmful than the simple tribal warlords, and there are a lot of them.
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Post by tangerinesun on Oct 31, 2017 15:15:28 GMT -5
It felt like a good idea to close the loop on the recent national election. So, between the LDP and it's partner Komeito, Prime Minister Abe got a refresh on his 2/3 parliamentary supermajority, although not really the resounding endorsement he might have wanted. This is based on the sort of commentary you can find all over the place. The Washington Post wrote up a summary last week. Abe retains supermajority in Japan’s election, may push to amend constitution
2017 OCT 22 by By Adam Taylor for the Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/world/japanese-voters-brave-typhoon-to-cast-ballot-in-snap-election/2017/10/22/8c7aeab4-b5dd-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.39c7f03b3b1f#comments …in an interview with NHK after polls closed, Abe said he would push for an amendment [ to Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution ].
“The ruling parties have been granted a majority,” he said. “I think it was the people’s voice telling us to make progress in politics and bring results with a stable political base.”
…one exit poll cited by Kyodo showed 51 percent of voters saying they don’t trust Abe, while 44.1 percent said they do. 〜〜〜 It's a much-needed pat on the head from voters, after some scandalous charges of political corruption last summer. But the opposition was pathetic. The most exciting alternative was the shaky and also decidedly right-of-center Party of Hope opportunistically launched by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. People were intrigued at first, but then turned off by what they saw from her. Also, a typhoon depressed turnout at the polls, and younger voters stayed away in herds. The people who did vote are on board with Abe because they're afraid things could get a lot worse if they rock the boat. There's much more to the Post article, but I'm quoting all of one reply by a reader. It addresses the item on the LDP agenda that gives the greatest discomfort to the greatest number of Japanese. I cleaned up the English because it was a little hard to follow. 〜〜〜 Ichiro Kisaragi 10/27/2017 8:09 PM PDT Not Easy To Amend the Constitution of Japan. It's a common knowledge among Japanese that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) consists of several factions (“habatsu” in Japanese) of both the Lower and Upper House members, whose thought and ideas range from right-wing to centrist — even influenced by the liberals — from dove to hawk, from moderate to strong conservative, nationalist, or pragmatist.
In the LDP, many members with various thoughts co-exist. Since the mid-1950s, the LDP has never been a party dominated by right-wing nationalists. For example, the current Foreign Minister, Taro Kono is a famous moderate conservative member, termed a dove.
Only small number of members or faction have had nationalistic ideas. Shintaro Ishihara, the former Governor of Tokyo, is a well-known nationalist politician, and Mr. Nobusuke Kishi, who is the grand-father of Shinzo Abe, was a famous nationalist.
The 2/3 majority of the ruling coalition parties in both the Upper and Lower House does not mean that the amendment of the current Constitution of Japan be realized. In practice, Abe’s Cabinet Ministers are selected from those factions in proportion to the number in each faction, in order to make a political power balance within LDP.
An “habatsu” is a kind of “party-within-a-party”. A legislative bill cannot be passed by both Houses of the Japanese Diet without the cooperation of, and political deals between, habatsu leaders.
When Abe returned to the Prime Minister’s Office in 2012, we felt as if the LDP had reverted to the past, and the Abe cabinet was quite similar to the style of 1950s to 1980s, with old-fashioned LDP policy making.
Unless Abe acquires a majority within the LDP itself, an amendment to the Constitution of Japan cannot be realized. [ But ] never has a majority of the LDP been in complete sympathy with PM Shinzo Abe.
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Post by tangerinesun on Jan 15, 2018 19:08:09 GMT -5
Happy Birthday, MLK Japan still has much to learn from Martin Luther King’s nonviolent struggle2018 JAN 14 by Patrick Parr, contributing writer, for The Japan Times / Foreign Agenda www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2018/01/14/voices/japan-still-much-learn-martin-luther-kings-nonviolent-struggle/ On this day, Jan. 15, the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 89 years old… I corresponded with two Japanese professors who have written about King and the civil rights movement in America.Professor [ Makoto ] Kurosaki of Kanda University… believes the U.S. and Japan view the idea of nonviolence in very different ways.“Peace in the United States is essentially regarded as a presence of justice instead of an absence of tension,” he says, whereas in Japan, “it is often considered to be the state in which there is no conflict.“In this regard, I have to say that most Japanese people misunderstand nonviolence. As King explained and practiced, nonviolence is a method of deliberately creating tension and conflict so that the opponents will have no alternative but to face the issue. Most Japanese people, however, incorrectly equate nonviolence with nonresistance.”“In the United States,” Kurosaki says, “the process of establishing a democratic government was achieved by the hands of the very people who fought the War for Independence, which, in essence, was a bottom-up process. Therefore, it is quite natural for American people to take a stand that the government has to be closely monitored so that it does not abuse its power over citizens.“In Japan, on the other hand, the process of creating a democratic government was,” he says, “a top-down process. Democracy in the real sense was planted in the soil of Japan after World War II, when it was given to the Japanese government by the United States and then to Japanese people by the government. For that reason, it is quite natural for Japanese people to cultivate a tendency in thinking that the government is basically trustable and people should follow its policies.”〜〜〜Professor Miyuki Kita writes, “In my limited view, the Japanese press confuse protests with uprisings and riots…” She cites coverage in Japan of demonstrations against police brutality and racism in Ferguson, Missouri, and after the death of Eric Garner at the hands of New York police, both in 2015. “I saw several examples of … Japanese news reports about Ferguson and New York describing protests as ‘riots.'”When Dr. King, after years of doubt, was faced with speaking out against the war in Vietnam, he read one line in particular that harmonized with his feelings: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” As I continue to grow accustomed to this culture, I can only hope that, when the time calls for it, a nonviolent demonstration will be viewed more as a call to action rather than a brief flicker of frustration that will soon pass.〜〜〜 Of course, the Japanese press is not alone in trying to form a false equivalence between rioting and peaceful protest — since this mistake serves the purposes of people who want to suppress political dissent, as well as of the people who want to use public protest to mask campaigns of intimidation through threats of violence. 〜〜〜 Patrick Parr’s book The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age will be released by the Chicago Review Press in April. See www.patrickparr.com. Foreign Agenda is a forum for opinion about issues related to life in Japan.
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Post by tangerinesun on Feb 25, 2018 0:55:04 GMT -5
Nara deer bites up 15% last year Social media snapshots blamed Nara announces record number of deer bites as tourists flood inB2018 FEB 08 by MIZUHO AOKI for The Japan Times www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/08/national/naras-famed-deer-bite-back-taunting-tourists/ According to [ Nara prefectural government official Yuichiro Kitabata ], many tourists lure the deer with shika senbei (deer crackers), which are sold in Nara Park. But once the deer approach the tourists hide the snack, making the animals wait as they try to snap the perfect shot. And that makes for some irritated deer... They linked to this classic deer park vacation video. Snappy buck deer makes his impatience known. Finally it's just, get out of here if you're not going to feed me. Butt-biting deer in Nara Japan2014 JUL 09 by karl Chill (00:29)
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