While America's new president is totally cool with you smoking weed, other countries are not so lucky. Did you know Japan is like a dark ages bizarro world that is shocked by ganja? It's true!

From the Department of Mysteries: Billy Herrington is a beefy gay porn star whose career peaked ten years ago in the United States. In Japan, he's a video mashup internet meme hero. What gives?

Well, have a gander at that. An Obama roll. How did they do it? All the information you need is right there in the Japanese text. [JP.msn.com via Buzzfeed]

[A child enjoys the Sapporo Snow Festival, along with some two million other tourists, in Japan; image via Getty]

A German billionaire killed himself after hefty stock losses. A French money manager committed suicide after losing billions to Bernie Madoff. Is shame confined to the Old World?

In Japan, CEOs take shame seriously. They're expected to work late, dedicate their entire lives to the good of a company, and try to ensure that they don't work their employees to the point of suicide. And when Japanese CEOs make mistakes, they're expected to make a big show of tearily flogging themselves in public (figuratively). But here in America? CEOs get to screw up as bad as they want and walk away with millions, with nary a tear nor a nice tip to the bellhop on the way out the door. Stan O'Neal! Bob Nardelli! Dennis Kozlowski! CEOS in the USA need to STFU and get way better at public humiliation. They problem is that in this country, CEOs are only too happy to trade the scorn of the public for a pile of money. Most Americans would do the same! (Unless the revolution comes, in which case it's up against the wall with all of you). So you can bitch all you want about golden parachutes that can top $100 million for executives who didn't do shit except lose shareholder money the entire time they were employed, but that CEO will chuckle to himself, have his flack issue a statement, and then go enjoy his millions and millions of free dollars on a private island somewhere, full of untold numbers of prostitutes. So America has worked out its own ways to humiliate these CEOs without their consent. The media trumpets their salaries all over the place, hollering louder about them the worse their company does. Their kids are shunned and forced to go to special, expensive schools. Actually, nobody sympathizes with CEOs except for other CEOs, and politicians. Now, however, every company is doing poorly. So our system for determining what executives to focus our class rage upon is broken. The American public is spread too thin. That's why we need to import some sort of Japanese-style public shaming ceremony here. CEOs can apologize for their sins and wallow in misery, we can all enjoy the schadenfreude, and then we can all focus our allotment of hatred where it belongs: on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. And the CEOs will join us. America is unity!

I don't think kids need to be as coddled and protected from the ills of the world as they are today (Janet Jackson's three-millisecond tit flash = the Rapture, apparently), but some stuff is just not for little ones. Which is why it's always funny/disturbing when someone unearths a clip from a children's television show that really should be anything but. A site called Uncoached has compiled a video listicle of some of the more inappropriate kiddie show disasters (though, one of the ones they claim is real is an obvious parody). I've put my two favorite after the jump. Poo poo! This song is about fucking:

The 'stache-tastic Robert Downey Jr — along with Japan's very own Iron Man, Hal —went off on a few barrels before the premiere of Iron Man. According to Downey Jr, the barrels were asking for it and got what they deserved. Downey said, "Those barrels were mouthing off. Saying some nasty things about my performance in The Shaggy Dog and now they're going to pay." After having such a blast demolishing the barrels, Downey and Hal agreed to team up on a live action version of Donkey Kong, possibly to be helmed by Wong Kar-Wai.

There was a time when the aesthetic of the Japanese game show was thought to be too bizarre to translate to America, but the times, they are a-changin'. Hot on the heels of the summer hit Wipeout comes Hole in the Wall, a Fox remake of the Japanese show in which contestants contort their bodies to pass through a strangely-shaped hole in an advancing wall, lest they be knocked backwards into a pool. Sound simple? It is — gleefully so, as you'll see from the clip (after the jump). We could have used some more J-pop songs or cute, lightning-spouting rat/dogs watching from the sidelines, but otherwise, we think we've found the crown jewel of the fall lineup. It's bold for Hole in the Wall to premiere on the anniversary of September 11, but if this show can't heal America's wounds, what can?

Let's say up front that the super-prestigious Cannes advertising awards are, like most awards, a bit of a scam. They're a for-profit operation that charges ad agencies a lot of money to enter, and in return bestows something that the agencies can use in their own marketing materials. Plus they gave an award to those crazy sexist beer ads this year, so their judgment is obviously fallible. Still, the ad industry considers them a big deal, and they're a good guide to what's considered important in the field. So it was extremely groundbreaking when an online campaign (rather than a TV campaign) won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes this year. On the other hand, maybe it was just because people love Japanese dancers?

Wired magazine is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, with much reflection and self-congratulation. But one strange thing: in its very first issue in 1993, Wired ran an article that had already run under a different byline in a different magazine. A tipster provides evidence that an article in that issue about Japanese computer hackers by Karl Taro Greenfeld ran almost verbatim a year earlier-under a different byline-in Tokyo Journal. Furthermore, Greenfeld ran another article on the same subject in the LA Times Magazine, in which he describes one computer hacker identically to how he had described a different computer hacker in the Wired piece. Something seriously weird is going on here. [UPDATE: We now have a note from Karl Taro Greenfeld, saying that he is the author of all the pieces in question, and explaining the byline discrepancy, which is posted below. An explanation of what happened here-and key portions of all the stories in question-after the jump].

Some secret Japanese government files have emerged about Tadamasa Goto, the Yakuza gangster boss who's threatened the life of American reporter Jake Adelstein and his family. And—we hate to say it—but it really sounds like Goto is not a guy you would want to be threatening your life. The file notes that he both pays off reporters and "will seriously and relentless threaten whoever is responsible for unfavorable coverage." Duh! Well uh, he's not really brutal, is he?

Earlier this month we told you about Jake Adelstein, the American reporter who spent 15 years covering organized crime in Japan and who now, unfortunately, finds himself and his family marked for death by an angry gangster. Adelstein's tormentor, Yakuza boss Tadamasa Goto, has been very sick lately; Adelstein's hope was that Goto would pass away, so he could return to America to be with his family without fear of assassination. Well, bad news: it's been revealed that Goto and three of his henchmen got precious, lifesaving liver transplants in Los Angeles (while many others died waiting). Thanks, science!

Jake Adelstein is an American reporter who spent the last 15 years covering Japanese organized crime for that nation's largest paper. I have to admit I always thought the Japanese yakuza crime syndicates were some overblown fantasy movie creation, but turns out they're actually very real, 80,000 strong, and they want to kill Jake Adelstein. You learn something new every day! Adelstein got along with the cops and the gangsters fine for a while, until he tried to break a scoop about the "John Gotti of Japan" flying to the US for a liver transplant. "Erase the story or be erased," said the gangsters, dramatically. So Adelstein decided to hold off on the story until things blew over. But that plan didn't quite work out:

A government worker in Japan got in trouble this week for looking at porn at work. Specifically, his computer at his place of employment recorded 780,000 hits on porn sites in nine months. Assuming 22 work days per month, that's nearly 4,000 hits per day! Quite a feat. Even more impressive: he totally got away with in for nine months.

In America, nerdiness went mainstream a few years ago, with everyone reading Harry Potter and playing video games and using social networks and wearing polyester shirts until "nerd," formerly a stigmatized subculture, was just another dimension of normal personality. (This has already been covered to death in a million magazine pieces, right? 'Cause if not I need to e-mail the New Yorker.) Anyway the same thing happened in Japan, says writer John Lichman in his obituary for "otaku". The term "was the equivalent of saying 'nerd,'" he says, "but with even darker intent." Otaku were outcasts. But in Japan too, their obsessions (anime, video games, quietly nursed unrequited crushes) became mainstream. And it's partly our fault!

Somewhere in Japan a ragtag group of people on some sort of television show got together and (some donning black face) reenacted, with eerie precision, the famous pile-up of celebrities that is the video for 1985's charity song "We Are The World". Japanese Michael Jackson! Japanese Cyndi Lauper! Japanese Lionel Richie! Even Japanese Ray Charles! No matter that this has nothing to do with anything. We just can't send you into the comfort of the weekend without first making you ponder the fact that things such as this exist. Video after the jump.

Bono gave a red iPod to the Japanese Prime Minister hoping to encourage more support from Japan to combat African poverty. Yasuo Fukuda asked Bono if his music was preloaded on the device. "No, but you can download it."

Disney is pitching a mobile phone service (Disney web sites, games, videos and ring tones on phones covered with the Mickey Mouse head) to Japanese women, says the WSJ, a year after the entertainment company shut down a similar U.S. service. More has changed than the target demographic; the new program gives more of the grunt work to carrier Softbank Mobile than Disney's failed partnership with Sprint. But Disney is also encouraged by its popularity among women over 20; the Journal notes that 75% of Disney sites' subscribers are this demographic, and that Tokyo Disney is popular for dates. What will the Japanese schoolgirls do to set themselves apart from their older sisters?

Apple is in talks with Japan's top cell-phone company, NTT DoCoMo and with Softbank, the No. 3 carrier in the market. Reuters spoke to a source inside DoCoMo who said "the negotiations are not going smoothly, as Apple's conditions are extremely hard to meet." No surprise there. Apple likely wants similar terms to ones that AT&T and Deutsche Telekom agreed to: a cut of the subscription fees and a hefty markup on the iPhone itself. Apple had similar negotiations in other countries, in which Jobs infamously referred to prospective partners as "girlfriends." One of these companies will end up married to the iPhone, likely for the price that Apple quotes. When it comes to for-richer-or-for-poorer, Apple usually picks "for richer." (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)