🇯🇵🇺🇸 Happy Independence Day to our friends in the United States!
This song is very popular here in Japan and many artists often cover it. I particularly love this one.
America burned Japan's first gift of cherry trees. All 2,000 of them, on President Taft's direct order.
The 1910 shipment arrived in DC crawling with insects and nematodes. Agriculture inspectors condemned the lot, Taft signed off on the bonfire, and the State Department braced for a diplomatic disaster. Tokyo's mayor, Yukio Ozaki, responded by sending 3,020 more, grafted from the famous grove along the Arakawa River.
Those trees have spent a century paying the friendship back.
Four days after Pearl Harbor, vandals chopped down four of them. Park officials renamed the survivors "Oriental" cherry trees for the rest of the war to protect them from axes.
Then came the twist. By 1952 the original Arakawa grove in Tokyo, the parent stock, had nearly died from wartime neglect. Japan asked Washington for help. The Park Service shipped budwood from DC's trees back across the Pacific and restored the grove that created them. When a flood wiped out more Japanese trees in 1982, horticulturists took 800 fresh cuttings from the Tidal Basin.
These 250 new trees solve a real problem too. The Tidal Basin is sinking, and a $133 million seawall rebuild forced crews to rip out roughly 150 trees. Japan offered replacements before anyone asked, timed to America's 250th birthday.
So the genetics run in a loop. Tokyo's grove seeded Washington's. Washington's saved Tokyo's. The saplings going in this spring descend from both.
114 years of diplomacy, running on grafted branches.
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL F̸̮̫́́́̏̋̂̓͛͗̌R̶̢̜̻͔̜̩̯̘͐̌̀́̀͆̒̈̀͛̔͋̕͝͠ͅI̸̢̧̮̞̯͌͋̏̈́̑̐̒́̉̌Ḛ̸̢̧͍͈̱̹̙̘͖̹̖́̐̍̐̆̒̾͂̅̔̉̽̋̃́͜Ď̸̘̤̦̤̯̺̭͓͓̠́͛̔̈́̓̾̿̊͜͝ͅ ̸̨̡̦͓̖͓̰̭͉̟̭̺̎̅̚͜ͅͅC̴̛̛͎̖̤̪̘̦̩̈́̊̇̈́̓̂̀̈́̈́͑̍̕͜H̵̩̜̗̖͙̜̣͉͇̀͐́̅̒̓͌̓I̴̭̞̘͑̆̒̃͝C̴̢̯͖̝̺͔͔̜̰̟̉́̆̉̐́ͅK̶̡͚͉̜̤̳̩̠̝̣̼̗͕̥͋̓͠Ẹ̵̗̲̫͍̞̠̠̘̱̱̠̉̇̅̀̐̇͐͑̇N̵̨̨̫͕̮̤̲͇̜̩͎̳̈́̌̓̓̌́̚͜͜͜
Without physical games:
- Midnight launches are dead
- Collectors Editions lose half of their value
- You can’t share, trade, or sell your games
- You can’t buy used games
- If there’s a server outage, you’re shit out of luck
- YOU OWN NOTHING
Sony is currently charging $70 for God of War Ragnarok digitally. It is $32 at Wal-Mart. The game is 4 years old.
People will no longer have options after 2028 and will HAVE to go directly to Sony’s digital storefront and pay whatever PlayStation says.
“Actually what’s so crazy about it is you are not the first from the animal kingdom to say that. Many animals are saying that, and you know quite frankly we won the animal vote bigly in the last election. As it turns out the animals are big Trump guys. It’s really fascinating”
🚨AWESOME! America's ally of Japan will be lighting up Tokyo Tower, Rainbow Bridge, and Tokyo Aqua Symphony RED, WHITE AND BLUE for America's 250th birthday this weekend
WE LOVE JAPAN 🇺🇸🇯🇵
An absolutely based population with an amazing culture.