TV Timer: Squabble over refereeing puts handball in the national spotlight
02/06/2008
The Japanese men’s handball team has not qualified for an Olympic Games in 20 years. And hardly anyone really cared. But that changed late last year.
Now, the team’s star player, Daisuke Miyazaki, is a household name. TV wide shows are scrambling to cover the squad’s practices. An Olympic qualifying game between Japan and South Korea at Yoyogi Gymnasium in Tokyo was televised nationally–a rarity for handball–even as Japan played Bosnia and Herzegovina in soccer at the same time.
Why all the attention?
It took an international squabble and complaints of unfair practices to put handball in the national spotlight.
If only ‘Ultraman’ was here to stop the wrecking ball
02/08/2008
BY ATSUSHI OHARA, THE ASAHI SHIMBUNA movie studio and the offices of the company that produced the popular “Ultraman” TV series, facilities considered sacred by the superhero’s fans, are to be torn down.
or many, the decision to close the former headquarters of Tsuburaya Productions Co., a TV and film production company founded in 1963, and a studio affiliated with Toho Co. is the end of an era.Ultraman first appeared on TV screens here in 1966 as a sort of Japanese version of the superhero characterized by Superman, much like “Godzilla” resembled “King Kong.”
TV newscaster’s indecent exposure not just a flash in the pan
Once people took their eyes off the naked bodies of the women posing nude outside the Miyazaki Prefectural Government office, they realized one of the faces was extraordinarily familiar. In fact, Shukan Post (2/15) notes, one of the women was once a broadcaster for the local TV network and is actually quite famous in the area.Late last month, Hiroyuki Asakura, Mitsumi Takahashi and Megumi Ifuku made national news after they were arrested for indecent exposure when the women stripped down to their birthday suits to pose in front of the brick building that has become a hot tourist spot since ex-comedian Hideo Higashikokubaru was elected Miyazaki governor in January last year.
Crime time
A 57-year-old woman in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, killed her 29-year-old son because he was a shut-in who had isolated “himself from the world for more than 10 years.” Then, fearing that her other son, who is 24 years old and mentally handicapped, “would be left alone” if she were arrested, killed him tooA 16-year-old boy in Niiza, Saitama, was arrested for racking up a ¥348,000 bill
at a hostess club and refusing to pay.
apanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986), who is credited with saving the lives of some 6,000 Jews in World War II by arranging visas for them in violation of an edict by the Foreign Ministry, was awarded a posthumous decoration from the Polish government at a ceremony in Tokyo.