Random Japan

Stuffed

For the second year in a row, Japanese competitive eating champion Takeru Kobayashi, 30, lost the Nathan’s Fourth of July hot dog eating contest to 24-year-old American Joey Chestnut. The match, held in Coney Island, New York, went to overtime after both men scarfed down 59 franks in the 10-minute regulation period.

The farm ministry announced its intention to boost Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate to “over 50 percent” from the current 45 percent.

A 58-year-old Tokyo business executive and his son were among ten people arrested for their roles in a Ponzi scheme involving shrimp farms in the Philippines. Officials recovered some ¥700 million, including ¥100 million found in a family tomb in Gunma.

Get your kicks

The sales director of a Nagoya real estate firm who hadn’t made a single sale after four months on the job won a court case against his former boss, who had kicked him in the leg out of frustration.

A senior official at the Atsugi Taxation Office in Kanagawa was busted for helping the owner of a leasing company evade ¥50 million in inheritance tax.

A book written by Sakie Yokota, whose 13-year-old daughter Megumi was abducted by North Korean spies in 1977, will go on sale in the US next year. The work is titled North Korea Kidnapped my Daughter.

A man and an 18-year-old boy were arrested for posing as a police officer and a lawyer to trick a Kanagawa woman into posting bail money for her son, who the pair claimed had been arrested. The scheme netted ¥4.5 million.

STATS

16.9 million

Number of blogs in Japan, according to a survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

20

Percent of all Japanese internet users this figure represents

36

Years it took to complete the Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway, which was formally opened on July 5

¥1.22 trillion

Cost of building the expressway

1.9

Height, in meters, of a monument unveiled in Nagasaki honoring 33 Chinese slave laborers who were killed in the 1945 atomic bombing

A 41-year-old middle-school teacher in Ehime Prefecture apologized for hitting 83 students who had shown up late for an assembly about good behavior.

No Irony There

The Fukuda Show

Ratings so low cancellation is required

The Wedding Isn’t Important

Its the size of the diamond

Where’s Dear Old Dad?

In Storage

Lawyers In Lust

Let me show what I’ve got.

Thing’s You Shouldn’t Write On Your Blog

I want to kill my boss

Loud and Clear

It’s time for emperor Akihito to rev up his own Sound Truck