Tag: Random Japan

NICE STEAL

        Curtis Terry, an American guard with the Akita Northern Happinets of basketball’s BJ league, was cut by the club after he got caught stealing a few cans of chuhai from a local conbini.

   Keiichiro Kawahara, a 27-year-old volunteer from Japan who is touring the world by bicycle, was touched after a huge groundswell of support on the Chinese version of Twitter helped locate his stolen bike in Wuhan.

   A 14-year-old kid in Aichi Prefecture stabbed his mom after she took away his new video game. He was arrested for attempted murder.

   A man with gang ties, who had recently shot another man to death at a Denny’s restaurant in Chiba, was himself found dead in his car of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

   Rubbed bare as a stripper’s love patch, the grass at Tokyo’s Chichibunomiya Rugby Ground has pretty much disappeared in large chunks due to overuse of the field.

 KIDS THESE DAYS…

    The Tokyo Board of Education says elementary school students walk 30 percent less than kids did in 1979. The Board even went so far as to count the number of steps: 11,382 vs. 17,120.

   The education ministry says that the costs for parents to send children to high schools-both public and private-have never been lower.

   USA Today named the Texas Rangers’ new $60 million man, Yu Darvish, as the top young baseball player in America. Which is impressive, considering the 25-year-old has yet to throw a pitch in the majors.

   Tokyo officially registered its bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. The other hopefuls are Doha, Madrid, Istanbul and Baku, Azerbaijan.

Well, duh

   A study panel from the labor ministry has identified six categories of behavior that constitute “power harassment,” including “giving the cold shoulder in the workplace” and “demanding the impossible.”

   The NPA says the recent rise in fatal traffic accidents on expressways might be linked to the elimination of tolls, which has “drawn inexperienced drivers to highways.”

   The welfare ministry found that workers who make less than ¥2 million a year “have more health problems than higher earners.”

   A 37-year-old Chinese man was arrested for throwing four Molotov cocktails at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

 Brave new (digital) world

      “Silent camera” apps are being blamed for a rise in complaints from women about perverts snapping illegal upskirt photos. The National Police Agency says the number of such incidents increased from 1,068 in 2006 to 1,702 in 2010.

   An LDP lawmaker got a surprise when he discovered that someone hacked into his YouTube account and uploaded a Russian-language porn video.

   Meanwhile, a hacker disabled the website of the government committee investigating the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

   Two Japanese companies were fined a total of ¥17 million by the Intellectual Property High Court for broadcasting copyrighted TV programs over the internet.

   An Osaka man became the first person in Japan arrested for breaking a six-month-old law against creating computer viruses.

SPEAKING OF YU

     Former Nippon Ham Fighters ace Yu Darvish showed up in Texas to meet local media and baseball fans wearing what many in the US deemed to be a bizarre T-shirt featuring a large silk-screened marijuana leaf. It was actually a Japanese maple leaf, which looks just like a leaf from a pot plant, accompanied by the phrase, “I will survive.”

   In other diamond dust, former Yakult Swallows pitcher and current player agent Terry Bross found himself in a bit of hot-and steamy-water when it was revealed that he used the “services” of porn star Bibi Jones to help him land several clients.

   A story on The Tokyo Reporter website claims that more and more seniors are frequenting Japan’s soaplands these days, with one “fashion health” massage joint being visited regularly by an 85-year-old geezer.

Clever darlings

        The woman accused of harboring Aum Shinrikyo fugitive Makoto Hirata for 17 years says she made up her pseudonym-Kyoko Yamaguchi-by combining the names of popular actress-singers Kyoko Koizumi and Momoe Yamaguchi.

   A survey by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government found that 9 percent of expectant mothers failed to undergo pre-delivery health checks “because they didn’t realize they were pregnant.”

   As part of efforts to prepare Tokyo for a major earthquake, JR East has stockpiled water bottles and blankets for 30,000 commuters, while Tokyo Metro is storing relief supplies for 100,000 others.

   Two rare crested ibises injured on Sado Island recently are believed to have been attacked by falcons. The incidents are puzzling, as falcons normally only attack animals smaller than themselves.

Space President Newt

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

       Making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, large posters at an Osaka department store trumpeted a “Fuckin’ sale” with everything 20 percent off.

   Also from the good people in Osaka, a burger joint was advertising a “Fuckin’ yummy hamburger!!” We’ll take two … fuck yeah!

   Coming of Age Day in Japan saw a record-low 1.22 million people who will turn 20 this year, the fifth straight year the figure has decreased.

   The decline marks the first time the number has been less than half the record of 2.46 million set in 1970.

   “The roughly 620,000 men and 600,000 women comprise 0.96 percent of Japan’s population, down for the eighth consecutive year,” according to an estimate by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

   An ornery 65-year-old Japanese man was arrested by FBI agents in Hawaii for assaulting a flight attendant on a Delta flight from Tokyo to Honolulu. Apparently, the guy “hit the flight attendant once with an open hand and once with a closed fist after drinking multiple glasses of wine.” So he hit the bottle then hit the stew.

   A court in Kobe found a former president of West Japan Railway not guilty of professional negligence over the 2005 high-speed train wreck in Hyogo Prefecture that left 107 people dead when a train hopped the tracks and hit an apartment building.

   The US magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the so-called “Doomsday Clock” in 1947, said in a statement there are still “approximately 19,500 nuclear weapons [in the world today], enough power to destroy the Earth’s inhabitants several times over.”

   A researcher in Hokkaido has concluded that marimo balls-“a type of green algae that grows in a round shape”-have been spread around the world from Japan through migrating birds.

   ANA passengers who flew on the airline’s Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” on New Year’s Day got a nice greeting from staff wearing long-sleeved kimonos while bearing gifts and souvenirs.

   A marathon in tsunami-hit Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture was held once again this year, attracting some 1,500 runners, although the course did have to be altered due to the events of March 11.

   A very pissed-off Chinese dude threw four Molotov cocktails at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul because, he says, “his great grandfather on his mother’s side died of torture while fighting against Japan’s colonial rule,” according to a report from the Yonhap News Agency.

   Three crew members from a disabled North Korean fishing boat found drifting off Shimane Prefecture were shipped back home via China. A fourth man, who had died, was also heading home in a body bag.

Official statements

   The commanding general of the Ground Self-Defense Force admitted that he thought Japan “was done for” in the early days of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

   The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office has requested that officials in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Yokohama allow social welfare experts to sit in on police interrogations of “possibly mentally disabled suspects.”

   Among the themes addressed by the Emperor in his traditional year-end waka poems were his wife’s 77th birthday and the evacuees of the March 11 disaster.

   During a visit to India, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Japan would contribute ¥4.5 billion toward a large-scale development called the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor.

IF THE SHOES FIT …

Running shoes worn by competitors in a national ekiden relay race have been sent to underprivileged student-athletes at schools in Nagasaki, a move spearheaded by Nike Japan and a Nagasaki Prefecture track and field association.

Some frozen beef imported into Japan from the United States in July apparently contained spinal columns, “so-called risk materials feared to cause mad cow disease and barred from importation into Japan.”

Winter bonuses at major companies in Japan rose an average of 3.62 percent from the previous year, up to ¥802,701. It was the second consecutive rise and the first time the figure cracked the ¥800,000 barrier in three years, according to the Japan Business Federation.

A 77-year-old man, who was punched out and lost consciousness after telling two men not to cross the street on a red light outside Oimachi Station, has died from his injuries.

Two-time Olympic judo champion Masato Uchishiba was indicted for allegedly raping a member of a university judo team he was coaching after first plying the young woman with alcohol.

A 55-year-old air traffic controller who nodded off while on duty at Naha airport was docked 10 percent of his pay for a month by the transport ministry.

CAT FIGHT!

An endangered Tsushima wildcat named Takara had to have its paw amputated at a zoo in Sasebo after it got into a vicious scrap with an Amur leopard cat in an adjoining cage.

Headline of the Week: “Noisy gay orgy in Shinjuku prompts raids by cops” (via The Tokyo Reporter)

The aforementioned orgy allegedly took place at a well-known gay bar in the area called Destruction and cops were alerted “by the raucous animal-like screams being emitted” from the joint. Destruction indeed!

Another headline winner: “Serial killer’s accomplice says she now understands meaning of life” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

Tokyo police confirmed that a man found hanged to death in a public toilet at a Tokyo park in April was, indeed, 62-year-old TV news reporter Eishi Okuyama.

A Chinese man was arrested for trying to sell a stuffed endangered panda to tourists out of his house in Ota-ku, Tokyo.

Dante Carver, a 34-year-old actor and model from New York who has gained fame in Japan by starring in several Softbank TV commercials, was in trouble after being pulled over in Shibuya and presenting an invalid international driver’s license to cops.

A 31-year-old former Tokyo primary school teacher got 28 years in prison for sexually assaulting 12 girls, including raping an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old.

MONEY MONEY MONEY

The environment ministry says that ¥11.5 billion worth of “eco points” from the government’s recent energy-saving promotion are set to expire next March without being redeemed.

Authorities are investigating the president of a used-car company over suspicions that he bilked 2,500 investors out of ¥1.3 billion “on the pretext of helping victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and poverty-stricken African people.”

Police in Okayama and Yokohama busted three Chinese man and one woman for smuggling 3kg of stimulants into Japan aboard a cargo ship last month. The drugs have a street value of ¥230 million.

It was announced that Japan will provide $2.9 million of additional funding to support the UN-backed trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia. By the end of the year, the tribunal will have spent nearly $150 million.

Sentence of the Week: “A ‘veteran’ pickpocket has told police he’s lost his touch and he’s going straight after he was caught lifting a person’s wallet on a bus [in Fukuoka] by another passenger.” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

MILESTONES

Railway fans flocked to Tokyo station to witness the initial runs of the new 300kph E5 Series Hayabusa bullet train. Someone even bid ¥385,000 for a ticket.

A young woman received a kidney from her brain-dead mom, the first case of a family member being prioritized since Japan revised its organ transplant law last year.

Peace-loving no more: lawmakers say they are rethinking Japan’s long-standing ban on the export of “weapons and related technologies.”

Takuya Kagata has taken sumo wrestling to the beaches of Japan as executive director of the Nippon Beach Sumo Association.

Fagiano Okayama defender Ryujiro Ueda scored what is thought to be a world-record 58.6-meter goal with a header during a J. League second division soccer match against Yokohama FC.

It’s official-Guinness World Records has declared the 634m-tall Tokyo Sky Tree the world’s tallest tower, supplanting the 600m Guangzhou Tower in China.