Japan still has capital punishment for the crime of murder, although typically the sentence is imposed only against those convicted of multiple murders. Executions are carried out by hanging. Japan has seven prisons at which convicted prisoners may be hanged.
The ethnic group that makes up almost the entire population of Japan are more traditionally referred to not as the Japanese, but as “Yamato” or simply “Wa.”
“Wa” comes from Chinese, and originally was derived from their character for “dwarf.” The Japanese rather understandably weren’t fond of that and so replaced that meaning with the character for “harmony” or “balance,” so they were calling themselves “the people of harmony.” Sure beats “dwarves.”
The Japanese animated television series Space Battleship Yamato imagined rebuilding the World War II battleship Yamato as a starship on an interstellar quest to save Earth. The series was a huge success, spawning five feature films and two more TV series. It was brought to the United States as Star Blazers; the animated series proved popular and established a foundation for anime in the North American entertainment market.
The USS *Yamato *is a sister ship, tragically destroyed, of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s Galaxy-class starship USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, in an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Clamato, a commercial drink made of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate and sugar, which is flavored with spices, dried clam broth (!) and MSG, is (unaccountably) popular in Canada and Mexico, but not in the US where it was developed. Clamato was produced in its current form beginning in 1966 by the Duffy-Mott company in Hamlin, New York, by two employees who wanted to create a Manhattan clam chowder style cocktail by combining tomato juice and clam broth with spices.
The electric clam (Ctenoides ales) — also known as the disco scallop 
— is found in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific ocean. It is the only bivalve known to have light displays.
Clamato is used as a mixer for several cocktails, primarily the Bloody Caesar (similar to a Bloody Mary), and beer-based drinks such as the Red Eye and the Michelada. Most such drinks are more popular in Canada and Mexico than in the United States.
(I used to have Clamato as a client. Eeeeeew.)
Red-eye gravy is a thin sauce generally served in the Southern United States. Other names include poor man’s gravy, bird-eye gravy, bottom sop, cedar gravy, and red ham gravy. The gravy is made from the drippings of pan-fried country ham mixed with black coffee. Red-eye gravy is often served over ham, grits or biscuits.
Red flannel hash is a breakfast dish made from the leftovers of a New England boiled dinner, consisting of corned beef with cabbage and other vegetables often including potatoes, rutabagas, parsnips, carrots, turnips, and beets.
The New England Governor’s Conference adopted a flag in 1998, based on early colonial and state flags of the region, most notably the so-called Bunker Hill Flag. The flag has a blue field with six white stars in a circle, a St. George’s Cross in the canton and a small green pine tree in the upper-left corner.
The Boston Marathon attracts 500,000 spectators each year, making it New England’s most widely viewed sporting event. It is also the worlds oldest marathon. Though starting with 15 participants in 1897, the event now attracts an average of about 30,000 registered participants each year, with 30,251 people entering in 2015. The Centennial Boston Marathon in 1996 established a record as the world’s largest marathon with 38,708 entrants, 36,748 starters, and 35,868 finishers.
The name of Marathon Key, Florida, dates back to the origin of the Florida East Coast Railroad. The name came from the railroad workers who were working night and day to complete the railway to Key West; due to the unrelenting pace and struggle to complete the project, workers complained that “this is getting to be a real marathon”, and the word was later used to name the local railroad station.
The Florida East Coast Railroad was completed in 1912. The company was founded in the 1880s by Henry Flagler, who had retired a few years earlier from a successful career, which included being one of the co-founders of Standard Oil.
John D. Rockefeller had many reasons for creating the oil monopoly called Standard Oil, but one of them was to make sure that the petroleum products were actually standardized so customers knew they were getting the same product.
George Washington’s widely-quoted remark at the close of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God,” is inscribed on the arch dedicated in his honor in Washington Square Park in New York City.
Square Enix is a Tokyo-based developer of video games and related content. It was formed in 2003, with the merger of two video game companies, Square and Enix. Square Enix publishes some of the world’s most popular video game franchises, including Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts.
Square Enix has also purchased several other video game companies, including Taito (creator of Space Invaders) and Eidos Interactive (publisher of the Tomb Raider series).
In his song “Welcome to the Future,” which he performed at the White House for the President and Mrs. Barack Obama in July 2009, country star Brad Paisley sang,
…My grandpa was in World War 2
He fought against the Japanese
He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma
Mailed them from his base in the Philippines
I wish they could see this now
The world they saved has changed you know
'Cause I was on a video chat this morning
With a company in Tokyo…
The “snail in the ginger beer” case, Donaghue v Stevenson, arose when a patron in a café in Paisley, Renfrewshire, drank a bottle of ginger beer, and then found the remains of a snail in the bottle and fell ill.
The House of Lords, sitting as the ultimate appeal court for the United Kingdom, held that the café was potentially liable.
The case was the foundation for the modern tort of negligence.
Traditional ginger beer, produced by the natural fermentation of prepared ginger spice, yeast and sugar, is usually a non-alcoholic beverage. Ginger beer has experienced a marked increase in popularity in recent years accompanying the popularity of cocktails based on it, such as the Moscow Mule (made with vodka) and the Dark ‘n’ Stormy (made with dark rum).
Cozy mystery author Leslie Meier has written stories for four Christmas anthologies: Candy Cane Murder (entitled Candy Canes of Christmas Part), Gingerbread Cookie Murder (Gingerbread and Gunshots) and the title stories from Eggnog Murder and Yule Log Murder.
Her next anthology, to be released in August, is a Halloween one: Haunted House Murder.