Tag: Random Japan

The high seas

   Talk about a bad day: two men from Kanagawa were cruising up the coast to Aomori on a yakatabune when the vessel began taking on water. So they did the smart thing and headed for the nearest spot of land… which turned out to be in the no-entry zone around the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant.

   The US Coast Guard sank a “ghost ship” that was set adrift from its mooring in Hokkaido following the March 11 earthquake. The 50-meter Ryou-Un Maru had approached within 150 miles of the coast of Alaska.

   Officials in Kochi are considering setting up underground evacuation shelters for local residents in the event of a tsunami. The structures would employ “submarine technology” and be large enough to house 200 people each.

   Police in Kanagawa were forced to issue a public apology after a drunk 73-year-old man hopped into an idling patrol car and took it for a spin.

…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.

BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN…

   Empress Michiko decided to forego the standard dress-and-heels ensemble in favor of traditional kimono and wooden sandals when she attended a memorial for victims of the March 11 quake/tsunami. It seems she was worried that she might have to spring into action if the Emperor, who had recently undergone heart bypass surgery, started to go down, and high heels just might not cut it under those circumstances.

   Speaking of ailing Emperor Akihito, it was reported that he twice had to have fluid drained from his chest after his heart surgery.

   In Iran, thousands of women have been training in the way of the ninja, but it’s more for fitness and protection, their instructor says, not to unleash an army of trained female assassins on an unsuspecting world, as some Western media have speculated.

   Maya Nakanishi, a 26-year-old paralympian who lost her right leg in a work accident five years ago, put out a calendar featuring semi-nude photos of herself to raise funds to get her to London for the Games this summer. You go girl!

   A 33-year-old train conductor was arrested for grabbing the boobs and nether regions of a 16-year-old high-school girl on an out-of-service Odakyu Romance Car. He is also accused of “committing sexual acts” with the same girl at a karaoke shop and in a hotel on two other occasions. Hold on… sounds he was just trying to add some romance to an ongoing relationship.

   Meanwhile, a 23-year-old art teacher at a junior high school in Kagawa Prefecture was canned after surreptitiously snapping photos of students’ snappers up their skirts while on the job.

   Ninety-two people wolfed down as many fermented beans as they could during a natto-eating contest in Ibaraki Prefecture. A 27-year-old from Nara was crowned king of the natto-eaters after downing 350 grams of the sticky stuff in 27.7 seconds.

GROOVIN’ TO THE OLYMPIC BEAT

   Arata Fujiwara, who will represent Japan in the London Olympic marathon, credits a new dance craze with helping him qualify for the Games. “After I got some lessons from (dancer Hiromi) Kashiki and her curvy dancing, my running style dramatically improved,” said Fujiwara, after finishing second in the Tokyo Marathon.

   Hiroshi Hoketsu, 71, Japan’s oldest-ever Olympian, will compete in the equestrian dressage event at the London Games. Hoketsu first saddled up for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

   BJ League basketball star Lynn Washington of the Osaka Evessa, a two-time league MVP, and his wife Dana were arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle a kilo of weed into Japan.

   A couple of high school runners orphaned by the March 11 tsunami were part of a tour of Dodger Stadium while in Los Angeles for the LA Marathon.

   The news just keeps getting worse for the storied Yomiuri Giants baseball club. This time, the rival Asahi Shimbun dug up dirt that the Giants paid pitcher Takahiko Nomaguchi cash under the table when he was still an amateur playing in the corporate league, which is a definite no-no.

   Osunaarashi, or “Great Sandstorm,” won his debut sumo bout at the Spring Tournament in Osaka, becoming the first African to enter the age-old sport. The 20-year-old jonokuchi hails from Egypt.

GETTING THE LARD OUT

   A government survey revealed that 25 percent of people who receive medical consultations for “metabolic syndrome” are able to overcome the condition.

Metabolic syndrome is better-known in the West as “being a fat-ass.”

   A 500kg bull in Kagoshima gored a 56-year-old farmer as he tried to shield his three grandkids from the rampaging animal. The man is in serious condition.

   Pasmo halted an online service that provided details about the train-riding history of its cardholders to anyone who entered basic information about the user. Apparently, wives and husbands were using the site to check if their partners were cheating on them.

   The health ministry says Nagano has the lowest death rate of any prefecture in Japan, while Aomori is the spot most frequently visited by the Grim Reaper.

THERE’S GOOD NEWS AND THERE’S BAD NEWS…

          Women’s World Cup titleholders Nadeshiko Japan beat the powerful Americans in soccer once again, this time 1-0 at the Algarve Cup tournament in Portugal.

   Unfortunately, however, the Japanese women would go on to lose 4-3 to Germany in the Algarve Cup final.

   US pop singer and 1980s icon Cyndi Lauper was in tsunami-hit Ishinomaki to cheer up local elementary school students with a few songs. Lauper was also here a year earlier, arriving on March 11, 2011. Not the greatest timing for a girl who just wanted to have…

   A private detective agency in Japan revealed that 21.5 percent of married women with jobs that they were hired to track had been unfaithful.

   The number of Japanese students who committed suicide in 2011 was up to 1,029, a record and over 100 higher than the previous year, according to the National Police Agency.

   A 6m fishing boat, swept away by the March 11 tsunami from a town in Iwate Prefecture and later recovered off the coast of Hyogo Prefecture, was returned to the owner’s family. The man who owned the boat was killed by the tsunami.

   A Buddhist temple in Nagano has made wooden Jizo statues, which spiritually protect temples, out of fallen pine trees from disaster-hit Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture.

   US Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the man who coordinated the US military’s post-March 11 relief operations in Japan-Operation Tomodachi-stepped down from his post as commander of the US Pacific Command.

   An elderly man and woman were found dead in a Tokyo apartment. The pair apparently expired due to “illness,” according to the local police.

   Pieces of haniwa clay figures shaped in the form of humans dating from the 5th century were found at a burial site in Shimane Prefecture, the oldest artifacts of their type ever discovered in Japan.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

         The municipality of Nagaoka in Niigata has entered into a sister-city partnership with the Hawaiian capital of Honolulu. Which is interesting, because Nagaoka’s most famous son is Isoroku Yamamoto-commander-in-chief of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

   The mother of AKB48 performer Minami Takahashi-one of the group’s most popular members-was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old boy.

   The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Consumer Agency will distribute 500,000 leaflets urging people to get rid of non-childproof cigarette lighters.

   Bottom Story of the Week: “Researchers have discovered that a wooden strip unearthed at an ancient ruins site in Ibaraki Prefecture bore a ‘kanji’ Chinese character meaning the unit for a length of cloth, which had been in use in an ancient capital in western Japan.” (via Mainichi Daily News)

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.