Random Japan

…BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

       A bout of cold weather resulted in cherry blossoms appearing five days later than usual in the Tokyo area and three days later than last year.

   The Asahi Shimbun admitted that it failed to declare some ¥250 million in income over a five-year period, resulting in tax authorities requesting ¥86 million in back taxes.

   A class-action lawsuit filed against TEPCO by 14 residents of Iitate, Fukushima, in Tokyo District Court asked for ¥265 million compensation for “mental suffering caused by radiation exposure fears and life in temporary housing.”

   Chilean President Sebastian Pinera will donate a new Moai statue-similar to the large stone faces found on Easter Island-to a school in Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture after theirs was damaged by the tsunami last year.

   A day after Japan’s first executions in 20 months, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said, “the number of heinous crimes has not decreased, so I find it difficult to abolish the death penalty immediately.”

   Noda also pointed out that 85.6 percent of people polled by the Cabinet Office in 2009 said the death penalty is unavoidable, “depending on circumstances.”

   It has been revealed that the Japanese PM’s office “was not linked to the government’s nuclear disaster teleconference system when the nuclear crisis in Fukushima broke out” last year.

stats

 60 Percent of respondents to a Mainichi Shimbun poll opposed to raising the consumption tax

37 Percent in favor of the tax hike, which will rise to 10 percent by 2015

84 Percent of respondents to another Mainichi survey who do not feel the government’s nuclear safety tests are sufficient

100 The noise level, in decibels, at an elementary school next to Okinawa’s US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma during the takeoff and

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

          The skeleton of a 45-year-old man thought to have kicked the proverbial bucket more than two years ago was found in a Saitama apartment.

   In Tsukuba, an 87-year-old woman was found dead in her room at a nursing home a week after she passed away. Not the most attentive staff at that facility.

   A 97-year-old Japanese man was apparently arrested for trying to kill an 84-year-old woman with a sword. The ornery old fogey tried to make his getaway with a walking frame.

   Things got nasty in an izakaya in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward when two inebriated women went at each other. It ended when one of them bashed the other’s skull in with a beer mug, killing her.

   Tokyo chefs licensed to prepare poisonous blowfish sashimi are miffed at a new law coming into effect in October that will allow unlicensed chefs to slice and dice the deadly delicacy.

   Headline of the Week, courtesy of The Tokyo Reporter: “Panty-peeking parlors skirt adult-entertainment laws”

A Fool And His  Money

Are Heading For Separation  

She Passed Go

And Didn’t Go To Jail

Can I  

Park Here?

Tepco 10-year reform plan submitted

Home rate hike, reactor restarts part of bid to remain solvent

 Kyodo

Tokyo Electric Power Co. and a state-backed bailout fund handed the government Friday a 10-year restructuring plan to stave off insolvency amid the massive costs Tepco’s comprehensive special business plan, if approved by industry minister Yukio Edano, would pave the way for the injection of ¥1 trillion in public funds into the nation’s biggest utility as early as July, when it is also planning to hike household electric rates by some 10 percent.it faces stemming from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis.