I know Condi was here for a visit, and I did kind of chuckle when I read last week that Japan has promised not to go nuclear as a response to N. Korea’s wee test. I chuckled because I find it hard to believe that Japan could not assemble a nuclear weapon in less than an hour if they really had to – there’s a good stockpile of plutonium and enough heavy industry with enough expertise to put it all together. It’s true there’s a difference between weapons-grade plutonium and commercial plutonium, but, apparently, the latter can be used to make weapons.

However, no need to worry about the hypothetical today. Here’s a truly uplifting fact from an Armed Forces Journal article (don’t ask why I’d be reading an AFJ article, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless):

the annual volume of Japanese arms production — today no more than $20 billion — is on a par with the annual sales of sushi in Japan.

On that note, here’s some news that caught my eye today:

has now officially acquired

In August, Sapporo announced that it was putting forth an offer to acquire Sleeman, but the deal was made official yesterday. I wrote about recent trends in the Japanese beer industry a while ago (here), so I am hoping that Sapporo isn’t going to do anything too radical with one of my favourite Canadian beers.

The good news is that Sapporo brews Yebisu, considered to be one of the best beers from the big breweries here (I don’t love it that much, but would drink it before 90% of the other labels put out by Kirin, Asahi, etc.).

Now, if only they’ll start selling Silver Creek Lager (pictured above) in Tokyo!!