Tag: Random Japan

THE MEDICAL FILES

It was reported that NTT Communications and a consortium of other companies are developing a system in which users can get calorie counts of the food they’re about to eat by taking a picture of the dish with their keitai.

A 22-year-old Tokyo woman was arrested for terminating her pregnancy using the “abortion pill” mifepristone, which is illegal in Japan. The woman, who was five months pregnant, bought the drug over the internet at the urging of her boyfriend.

A 37-year-old anesthesiologist in Yokohama was busted for possessing and injecting himself with fentanyl, a narcotic “around 200 times stronger than morphine.”

It was reported that Japanese households consumed a record 21.25 billion kwh of power in October, thanks to the “lingering summer heat wave.”

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL DESK

A kids’ book written by a 34-year-old Tokyo housewife about the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Miyazaki Prefecture has become an internet hit, being downloaded approximately 2,600 times since late September. Sounds positively uplifting.

Kenya’s Daily Nation reported that a former ambassador to Japan was questioned by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) over dubious dealings regarding the purchase of land in Tokyo. Not a terribly interesting story, but we just had to get that acronym in there.

Virgin Atlantic Airways and Mori Building City Air Services have started free helicopter shuttles from Ark Hills in Akasaka to Narita Airport for high-end travelers from Tokyo to London.

A few weeks after getting busted in Chiba with cocaine in his pocket, Aussie pro golfer Wayne Perske was banned for the rest of the season by the Japan Golf Tour Organization.

Perske’s problems came on the heels of Kiwi golf pro David Smail’s sex scandal, when his former Japanese girlfriend sent compromising photos and videos to the media after the married Smail tried to break up with her. Man, talk about putting it in the wrong hole!

A female desk clerk at a hotel in Aichi held a press conference to draw light to her situation after a male guest called her to his room to “apologize” over some issue with an escort service. The horny old dude then tried to jump her, “unbuttoning her clothing and touching her lower body.”

SAY WHAT?

Officials in Toyama are taking multitasking to a whole new level with a project that trains hairdressers to spot emotionally disturbed customers who might be contemplating suicide.

How do you know when you’ve become an obasan? A survey of young Japanese women showed that muttering “Yoisho” is the number one indicator that you’ve made the transition from sexy young thing to a life of cutting in lines and holding on to other people when laughing.

Nissan has developed the world’s first Wrong-Way Alert Program, which gives clueless drivers a heads-up when they’re going against the flow of traffic.

Major insurance firm Nipponkoa became the first Japanese company of its kind to enter the daycare business

MILESTONES

For the first time ever in Japan, a woman who received a kidney transplant has given birth. The new mom, who is in her 40s, delivered a baby boy at Osaka University Hospital.

Ahead of next week’s APEC summit in Yokohama, a police bomb unit conducted Japan’s first-ever antiterrorism drill on a shinkansen. The exercise took place at Shin-Osaka station.

Sign of the times: a mass electronics retailer will operate a shop in Ginza for the first time when Laox opens a branch inside Matsuzakaya department store.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has unveiled a massive container ship that cuts CO2 emissions by 35 percent. The vessel uses an “air lubrication system” to reduce the “frictional resistance between the hull and seawater by running air bubbles along the bottom.”

JAXA announced that it will shift the focus of its astronaut training programs to Russia ahead of NASA’s planned retiring of its space shuttle fleet next year.

WHACK JOBS

Tokyo’s former chief medical examiner claimed that there are approximately 200 cases of people masturbating themselves to death in Japan each year, with 20 to 30 in Tokyo’s 23 central wards alone.

In other matters of the heart and hands, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology organized a tennis date for singles looking for a love match. Apparently it’s all “part of a project… to improve the nation through sports.”

A 33-year-old therapist from Kyoto was crowned champion of the Z-1 Grand Prix floor-wiping competition in Ehime Prefecture. Koichi Fujiwara set a new record of 18.23 seconds pushing a wet rag through a 109-meter-long hallway at the Uwa Rice Museum.

A computer armed with the “Akara 2010” system beat the top women’s shogi player, Ichiyo Shimizu, in 86 moves in a match staged at the University of Tokyo.

KAWAII DIPLOMACY

Officials in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, were beaming after Hikonyan, a “samurai cat” that serves as the city’s mascot, was chosen as the favorite character at the Japan Expo in France.

A Japanese woman was one of six people selected to become a temporary panda keeper in China’s Sichuan province.

A Toyama-based NPO called Dream of the Earth has embarked on an 18-month project to teach fishermen in southern Sri Lanka “a traditional Japanese fishing method using fixed nets.”

In an unusually poetic turn of phrase, a Fuji TV newscaster described the scene at last week’s rescue of miners in Copiapo, Chile, as kisu no arashi-“a storm of kisses.”

Meanwhile, Japan’s space agency revealed it had sent the miners a care package that included “antibacterial underwear” and brown-sugar candies that are used for “space food.”

THE NAKED AND THE CRISP

Participants in Chiba’s Ohara Hadaka Matsuri (“Ohara naked man festival”) got a jolt when lightning struck, injuring 34 people carrying shrines, two of them seriously.

In a bid to crash Apple’s iPad party, Sharp is rolling out its new portable e-reader called Galapagos. The company says the tablet will be “adopting a unique evolutionary path of using Japanese technology and design to match the needs of the Japanese user.” (Does that mean we will now be spared grown men reading pornographic manga on the train?)

After paying ¥17 million a year for the naming rights to Miyashita Park in Shibuya-ku, Nike came up with the catchy “Miyashita Nike Park” moniker.

OUT OF A JOBS

It was reported that Steve Jobs vowed never to return to Japan after officials at Kansai International Airport confiscated ninja throwing stars that the Apple chief was carrying to his private jet. A company spokesman denied the report.

At last month’s World Judo Championships in Tokyo, 19-year-old Majlinda Kelmendi competed under the banner of the International Judo Federation instead of her native Kosovo, in part because Russia doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent nation.

Too sweet for its own good: confectionery company Ishida Roho was ordered to pay ¥2.8 million in damages to 17 people who lived near its factory in Kyoto’s Minami Ward. The residents said they suffered health problems due to the smell from the manufacturing plant.

For the first time ever, Japanese TV stations lost money televising the World Cup. Broadcasters blamed increased rights fees and the poor performance of the Japanese national team.

A 55-year-old crew member for a Japan Airlines subsidiary was reprimanded for filming the descent of an aircraft from the cockpit with his cellphone camera.

WHAT A WAY TO GO

Ko-ko, a 14-year-old male giant panda at Kobe’s Oji Zoo, died after being given an injection as part of an artificial insemination process.

The National Diet Library is pioneering a kinder, gentler, safer method of pest control by using carbon dioxide to kill bugs and their larvae.

A 24-year-old man and his 19-year-old buddy were being held on suspicion of robbery causing death in Chiba after they allegedly cycled past a woman on a bike and grabbed her purse out of her basket. The woman lost control of her bike and died after smacking her head on the pavement.

Sakuranbo Primary School, scheduled to open next spring in Yamagata, will change its name after officials were informed that a porn website went by the same moniker. The local mayor said they didn’t want “suspicious people showing up when the children are walking to and from school.”

CLEVER CRIMINALS

A 31-year-old Chiba man was arrested after cops found 550 grams of stimulant drugs with a street value of approximately ¥50 million hidden inside noodle containers in his home and in an apartment in Tokyo.

A Fukushima woman was busted for pocketing a ¥300,000 gift from the local government that was meant for her mother on the occasion of the older woman’s 100th birthday. Mom was, in fact, deceased.

The MPD busted a 41-year-old Tokyo man and a 31-year-old Chiba man for stealing 220 motorcycles and scooters and selling them to a Ghanaian accomplice, who allegedly smuggled them to Africa.

Sentence of the Week: “Police turned over to prosecutors Wednesday their case against a 21-year-old man who walked naked on a street in Yokohama last month and a 22-year-old woman who ordered him to do so” (via The Japan Times).

CRAZY TRAINING

Ten-year-old Japanese guitar prodigy Yuto Miyazawa made such an impression on his idol Ozzy Osbourne that the rock’n’roll relic took him along on his 2010 Ozzfest tour.

A 26-year-old bassist from Kanagawa was arrested for breaking into a musician’s home and stealing five double basses and some other stuff worth ¥53 million.

For the first time in Japan LPGA Tour history, twin sisters played a round together when Keiko and Noriko Kubo, both 23, shared the same grouping at the Nitori Ladies tournament in Hokkaido. Unsurprisingly, the twins shot identical 2-over-par 74s in the first round.

A Mainichi Shimbun report revealed that officials at the Tokyo Detention Center execution venue are only made aware of impending executions when the center calls them and asks, “Are you free tomorrow?”

The Azabu Police Station in Roppongi revealed that credit-card scams targeting foreigners have been running rampant in the area over the past year.

Eikichi Sokokurai, originally known as Enhetubuxin, became the first Chinese wrestler to reach sumo’s makuuchi division. The 26-year-old from Inner Mongolia “spent his childhood living in a yurt and tending farm animals.”

In Matsuyama, an apparently jilted psycho stabbed his ex-girlfriend and her mom before stabbing himself in a fit of rage. He and his ex survived the ordeal, but the mother was not so lucky.

A court in Bali sentenced a 31-year-old construction worker to 20 years behind bars for killing a Japanese woman, robbing her, then having sex with her dead body. “The defendant committed a crime forbidden by all religions,” said the judge. Ya think?

BRAVE NEW WORLD

A survey of 300 Japanese iPad users by research company Macromill Inc. found that 20 percent of them had digitized their own books.

The editors at the Oxford English Dictionary added the word hikikomori to the reference work’s third edition.

An agriculture ministry survey found that the number of people who became farmers last year shot up by some 11 percent, as did the number of people taking over farms from elderly relatives.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have found that beni-zuwaigani crabs like to cluster around sea vents that emit a compound called methane hydrate. The researchers added that this substance is “a possible next-generation fuel that has a sherbet-like consistency.”