Random Japan

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Robotic dancing troupe World Order kicks off the new baseball season with seven-man pitch

KK Miller

Springtime means one thing for sports fans: baseball! While Major League Baseball is still toiling away in spring training and pre-season games, the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league has already kicked off their season with the first games occurring at the end of March.

Since spring signals the time for new beginnings, what is more precious than the beginning of the first home game of the year? And with it brings the first opening pitch of the season. For the 2013 Japan Series winners, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, they asked Genki Sudo and his group World Order to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

STATS

5.17 million

Number of commuters who could be stranded in downtown Tokyo in the aftermath of a major quake

50,000

Size of the security force that will be deployed during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

4,991,900

Estimated sales of new cars and trucks in Japan in fiscal 2015, the first time in four years the number is expected to drop below 5 million

RIDING THE RAILS

          Officials at JR West have unveiled a successor to their much-loved Twilight Express sleeper train, which was decommissioned last month after a quarter-century of service.

   The new train, dubbed Twilight Express Mizukaze, features open-air observation decks and guestrooms with bathtubs. It will go into service in early 2017.

   Government seismologists hope that a network of cables being laid off the coasts of northern and eastern Japan will help speed up tsunami detection times by as much as 20 minutes. The cables are attached to “gauges and other observation devices.”

   Staff at the Japan Documentary Film Preservation Center say they’ve acquired three movies featuring previously unseen footage of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The films total about 15 minutes in length.

 What’s That Scooter Best Used For?

   Purse Snatching

  The Noodle King Is Dead

  Long Live The Noodle King

Uber

  Told To Hit The Road

‘Brave and exciting dining’ at Florilege



by Robbie Swinnerton

Spring brings new beginnings. It also ushers in restaurant openings galore. This year, few are likely to be as radical and impressive as the rebirth and reinvention of Florilege.

For the past five years, the creative modern-French cuisine of owner-chef Hiroyasu Kawate has been one of Tokyo’s best-kept culinary secrets.

At his bijou restaurant, hidden deep in the residential backstreets of Aoyama, he has built up a devoted following among local gourmets while remaining largely ignored by out-of-towners.