Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2010

GO FIGURE

• Estimating the cost of competing at the elite level at ¥20 million a year, two-time Olympic figure skater Fumie Suguri made a public plea for sponsorship funding.
• In other news from the ice, the future of Japanese figure skating looks to be secure after Yuzuru Hanyu and Kanako Murakami won the men’s and women’s world junior titles.
• Disgraced sumo wrestler Asashoryu held a press conference in his native Mongolia, telling reporters he “didn’t commit any violent acts” after all, despite retiring last month after being accused of beating up a man outside a bar in a drunken rage.
• Urawa Reds soccer team officials launched “Project Eagle,” unleashing a few birds of prey to chase pesky ducks away from their training field. The ducks, it seems, were leaving plenty of droppings and feathers on the pitch.
• Teenage golf phenom Ryo Ishikawa skipped a US PGA Tour event so that he could attend his high school graduation ceremony.
• A new museum is opening this summer at Yahoo Dome in Fukuoka to honor the life and times of baseball legend Sadaharu Oh, who still holds the all-time home run record of 868 (no asterisk required).
• A gold medal from the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896 was stolen from a Tokyo museum.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY

• The Central Japan Railway Company is implementing guard rails to prevent Tokaido line shinkansen trains from jumping the tracks in the event of earthquakes.
• Diners at curry restaurant Niagara in Yutenji can get their lunch delivered on a model train, leading to an increase in business from tetsuko (women who dig railway stuff).
• An international police operation involving Japan, Taiwan and South Korea resulted in the arrest of brazen jewel thief Chong Yong-hui, a suspect in a robbery at a Tiffany store in Shinjuku.
• The Los Angeles Times reported that Toyota was urged by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to fix the brakes on some models as long ago as 2007.
• As if things weren’t going bad enough for Toyota, a factory worker at a plant in Aichi committed suicide by gassing himself to death in a Prius just off the assembly line.

WHATEVER IT TAKES

• In an effort to encourage other men to follow suit, Hironobu Narisawa, the mayor of Tokyo’s Bunkyo-ku, announced that he was taking two weeks of paternity leave to be with his newborn son.
• A 69-year-old American perv who operated an English school in Fukuoka was arrested for a litany of unsavory offenses, including child molestation and filming child pornography.
• Some manga artists were up in arms over a proposed law that would “restrict sales of anime, comic books or games depicting children in sexual acts.”
• The CEO of Prada Japan ordered local operations to get rid of about 15 shop managers and their assistants who were “old, fat, ugly, disgusting or not having the Prada look.”
• Sticking with weasels, nine crested ibises were attacked and killed by a bunch of weasels (literally) at a conservation center in Sado.
• In happier crested-ibis news, a pair of the birds were seen “engaging in courtship behavior” in Sado, getting researchers excited that the first-ever successful pairing of ibises released into the wild in Japan was underway. Got the birds, now what about the bees?
• Oops! Nagoya-based drug maker Taiyo Yakuhin was ordered to suspend operations at a plant in Gifu after distributing an ulcer drug that was prepared improperly.
• An associate professor at the University of Tokyo was forced to resign after allegedly touching some of his female students in an inappropriate manner and sending them raunchy emails.

GET THE PARTY STARTED

Photo by Jun Sato

• Seiji Maehara, Japan’s transport minister, read the riot act to Skymark Airlines after photos surfaced of the captain and crew cavorting while in flight. Maehara called the behavior “outrageous.”
• According to her former coworkers in rural Oita Prefecture, newly crowned Miss Universe Japan Maiko Itai was a workaday civil servant who “wore little make-up and came to the office in gray suits every day. We never even saw her wear shoes with heels.”
• Two railway lines in Ibaraki Prefecture have hired young women dressed in cosplay outfits to serve drinks to passengers on what they are calling “Maid Trains.”

THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK

• Nearly 30 Japanese women were treated for injuries in South Korea after strong winds caused a platform to collapse during filming for the Bae Yong-joon drama Winter Sonata.
• In Osaka Prefecture, a 24-year-old housewife was arrested for murder after shaking her 2-month-old daughter to death when the baby would not stop crying.
• A man was found guilty of defamation for saying on his website that a chain of ramen shops was linked to a cult.
• A 69-year-old resident of a Fukuoka nursing home went on a stabbing rampage, knifing three of his fellow seniors, all of whom survived the ordeal.
• Videos of a group of junior high school students beating and bullying a classmate in Chugoku were posted on the internet by another student.
• Yakuza members were suspected of firing several shots into the home of an anti-gang crusader in Kitakyushu.
• A man in his 20s was found dead on a Kokubunji street, his hands and feet bound with tape. Police suspect he “was the victim of a crime.”

Compiled from reports by Japan Today, International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, The Daily Yomiuri, The Japan Times, The Mainichi Daily News, The Associated Press, AFP, CNN, Reuters and Kyodo.