Tag: Random Japan

ALL NIPPON SCAREWAYS

It was revealed that an ANA flight was about 30 seconds from crashing into a Hokkaido mountain before a warning went off, spurring pilots into quick action to avoid catastrophe. An air-traffic controller was blamed for the near mishap.

In another near-miss, an ANA flight taxied onto a runway where a JAL Express plane was about to land at Osaka airport in 2009 because a pilot misheard a flight number.

The Japan Coast Guard officer who made public controversial video footage of a collision with a Chinese fishing boat through YouTube, said he first sent the clip to CNN but they tossed the SD card in the trash because they didn’t know what was on it.

Now here’s a switch. Japan’s defense ministry apparently received notice from the Nagasaki government saying they’d be delighted to host some new submarines at the Sasebo base.

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.”

KARMA-RIFIC

A senior citizen trying to steal coins from a donation box at a shrine in Tokushima fell and hit his head while attempting to flee the scene. He later claimed his six stitches were “punishment from God.”

A 35-year-old Japanese man was caught at the airport in Bali with 6kg of hash. Apparently, he recently served time in an Indian prison for a similar offense, and now faces the death penalty under Indonesian law.

The 19-year-old son of an American soldier stationed in Japan was found guilty of seriously injuring a 24-year-old Tokyo woman by stringing a rope across a roadway in 2009, causing her to fall off her scooter “just for laughs.” Three other American kids involved got off without charge.

Three Tokyo teens, meanwhile, were arrested for breaking into a couple of cars using a method they had learned on YouTube.

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

WIMPS “R” US

It was reported that hammocks are becoming trendy among Tokyoites, in part because lying in one “feels similar to being in the mother’s womb.”

The number of “citizens’ farms” rented out by local governments has increased threefold during the past 15 years.

Declaring that “the Democratic Party of Japan is in bad shape,” 63-year-old former PM Yukio Hatoyama put off retirement from the House of Representatives.

The environment ministry said it is launching a “no-holds-barred campaign” to eradicate the Java mongoose in Okinawa. The creature has been deemed an invasive alien species that threatens local wildlife.

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.