Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2012

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.

NASTY BIDNESS

• Amazon has yanked the account of erotica publisher Digital Manga Publishing after one of its yaoi (gay romance) titles apparently crossed the line. Amazon prohibits “pornography and hardcore material that depicts graphic sexual acts.”
• The website Japan Probe reports that there is a hotel in China’s Harbin city that has urinals built to resemble Japanese soldiers, where patrons relieve themselves directly into their open mouths.
• The National Police Agency said Japan had some 70,300 gangsters in 2011, the smallest number since the Organized Crime Group Countermeasures Law was enacted in 1992. Gee, maybe crime doesn’t pay after all.
• Two doctors at the prestigious Keio University medical school were accused of extracting bone marrow from 31 patients without their permission.
• The Japanese government provided data to its Australian counterpart on 4,497 POWs from Down Under who were forced into slave labor camps during World War II.
• Japanese actress/hoofer/all around hottie Ryoko Yonekura landed a starring role in the Broadway production of the musical Chicago. She had it comin’.
• Well, at least these guys don’t mind a little radioactive contamination. Abandoned rice fields inside the 20km exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear reactor have become destinations of choice for hundreds of migrating swans and other water fowl.
• A nutjob in Shizuoka Prefecture was collared for writing nasty messages about two female colleagues he was pissed off with on ¥1,000 notes and depositing the bills in ATMs.
• Nagoya University and Fujitsu have teamed up to develop software technology to “analyze phone conversations to automatically detect situations in which one party might ‘over-trust’ the other party.” The system uses keywords and tone of voice to let people know when they might be getting scammed.

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.

THAT’S MIGHTY NICE OF YA

• US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her government decided to “exempt Japan and 10 European countries from its new financial sanctions against Iran over the latter’s suspected nuclear weapons program as they have significantly reduced their oil imports from Tehran.”
• The Japan Meteorological Agency said the nation’s first cherry blossoms of the year bloomed in Kochi on March 21.
• Tokyo subway officials at Kasumigaseki station on the Hibiya Line marked the 17th anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo’s March 20, 1995, sarin gas attack that killed 13 people and sickened over 6,000. A moment of silence was observed.
• The last graduation ceremony was held at Japan’s oldest wooden schoolhouse in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture. The school had been open for over 100 years but declining attendance spelled doom for the old building.

DEATH BY BULLET TRAIN

• More than 100 trains and 88,000 passengers were delayed after a man climbed onto the elevated shinkansen tracks between Shin-Fuji and Mishima stations and got smacked by the Kodama bullet train.

Compiled from reports by AP, Japan Today, The Japan Times, The Asahi Shimbun, The Tokyo Reporter, Japan Probe, The Mainichi Daily News, Daily Yomiuri, AFP, Reuters and Kyodo.