Random Japan

 photo DSC00237.jpg

RIDING THE RAILS

JR West announced plans to build Japan’s largest railway museum in Kyoto’s Umekoji Park. The 18,800m2 space, which will house as many as 50 exhibits, is expected to cost ¥7 billion.

JTB Corp. says that it expects 18.7 million Japanese to travel abroad in 2013-a record high.

A Kyoto University-led project that produced “eggs from artificially derived multipurpose stem cells” was selected by the prestigious US journal Science as one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs in 2012.

Headline of the Week: “115-yr-old Kimura Doesn’t Sweat the Small Stuff” (via The Yomiuri Shimbun)

stats

41.3

Percent of married Japanese couples who say they have sex less than once a month, according to the Japan Family Planning Association

22 meters

Height of a seawall being constructed at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka to fend off a potential tsunami

6

Number of university students and minors who died of acute alcohol poisoning last year, equaling the record set in 1995

Japanese Teacher Suspended for Hugging Students While Singing to Them

Jan 18, 2013 by Master Blaster

When I was a junior high school student my music teacher used to jab a meter stick into my gut while I played Mary Had a Little Lamb on the trumpet.  Good times.

Still, that guy could win teacher of the year next to a 55 year-old man who was suspended from his Shonan Ward high school in Kanagawa Prefecture for inappropriate behavior with some female students.

How inappropriate? For starters, he composed an original love ballad.

The teacher was acting as an advisor for the school’s music club between August and October of 2012.  During that time he called in two female club members for a private meeting which, for some reason, involved hugs.

 

Police To Investigate

Wrongly Placed Hands

Those Fish

Seem To Have Multipull Heads

Dreamliner

No Dream  

West Coast tsunami dock from Aomori



Kyodo Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013

A 19-meter-long dock that washed up on the coast of Washington last month is tsunami debris from Aomori Prefecture, state authorities confirmed Thursday.

The dock was spotted by helicopter on a rugged beach within Olympic National Park on Dec. 18 after the crew of a fishing vessel reported it floating off the coast.

The Japanese Consulate in Seattle worked with Japanese government agencies to discover the dock’s origins based on a serial number in a photo taken by a member of a cleanup team sent by the state.