April 12, 2011

April 12, 2011

April 12, 2011

This week's required reading

By

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2011

Bad Sports

  • Anyone who was optimistic about the future of Japanese soccer will be having second thoughts after the national Under-22 squad split a pair of games against… Uzbekistan.
  • It was reported that one of the two foreign sumo wrestlers who was booted from the sport for marijuana possession in 2008 is now playing football at little-known Webber International University in Babson Park, Florida.
  • The Honda Heat rugby team, which plays in Japan’s premier Top League, was ordered to pay ¥19 million to a player that it had fired after he missed practice because he was on his honeymoon.

And now for some good news…

Phil Couzens

  • A jobless man from Shinjuku was arrested for breaking into the Daini Nuclear power plant in Fukushima and driving around “for about ten minutes.”
  • Yasushi Nishiwaki, the biophysicist who examined crewmembers of a Japanese fishing boat who were exposed to radiation during a US hydrogen bomb test in the Bikini Atoll in 1954, died of pneumoniain Osaka at age 94.
  • Japan’s unemployment rate of 4.6 percent is the lowest it’s been in two years.
  • Meanwhile, industrial production in February surged 0.4 percent from the previous month.
  • At the same time, retail sales rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier, which was a lot better than the 0.5 percent drop that many economists had predicted.
  • The Tokyo District Court said JAL has favorably completed the first stage of its rehabilitation plan after making “personnel reductions and cuts in routes and flights.”
  • One supermarket chain has reported that sales of dried fish have risen 30 percent since the quake, likely because consumers are worried that fresh fish will spoil in their refrigerators as the rolling blackouts continue.
  • Mitsubishi Estate paid a cool ¥80 billion to Dallas-based Lone Star Funds for a pair of office buildings in central Tokyo.
  • A benefit album called Songs for Japan topped the iTunes charts in 18 countries.
  • Media executive Seiichiro Ujiie died at age 84 in Tokyo. As president of NTV from 1994-2004, Ujiie presided over a network that pulled off ten consecutive “quadruple crowns,” trouncing its four competitors in annual ratings during prime time, golden time, daylong and nonprime time slots.
  • Marc Kroon, whose 162kph fastball caused a sensation during his six years in Japanese baseball, was cut from the roster of the MLB’s San Francisco Giants. His release came on the final day of spring training, during which the 38-year-old reliever went 2-0 with a 1.69 ERA.
  • Sumitomo Trust and Chuo Mitsui Trust entered a merger and created the country’s largest banking group of its kind.
  • Mizuho Bank said the reason all of its 5,600 ATMs went down in late March was a surge in users making donations to quake victims and relief organizations.

UPWARDS AND ONWARDS

  • The government-sponsored Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp said it has launched a 6,100-ton ship called the Hakurei to “search for rare metals and other resources in the seabed.”
  • Kyodo news is set to unveil a new a mobile website in which “subscribing newspapers across the nation participate to offer news.”
  • A shop owner in Akihabara who normally sells two or three Geiger counters a month reports that he’s been unable to keep up with soaring demand for the devices, even though they cost upwards of ¥100,000 each.
  • It was reported that optometrists in the US are encouraging children under 6 to try the Nintendo 3DS, as “it could help catch vision disorders that have to be caught early to be fixed.”
  • As the government’s “eco-points” incentive promotion came to an end, it was revealed that the scheme helped boost sales of home appliances last November to 3.96 million units—the highest ever.
  • It was reported that the Japan Sumo Association “has already begun printing tickets and laying down preparations” for its summer basho. The spring tournament was canceled due to a match-fixing scandal.

OH, THAT EXPLAINS IT

  • An English professor at Kagawa University who beat up a woman on a train said he did it because she “stood on my foot and didn’t apologize.”
  • The Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka, originally built in 1954 and renovated in 1983 by famed architect Kenzo Tange, will be demolished to make way for an office complex.
  • An experimental “black box” aboard the Kounotori 2 spacecraft, which helped resupply the International Space Station, not only was able to record data as the satellite reentered the earth’s atmosphere, but survived impact in the Pacific Ocean “and continued to transmit data for hours as it bobbed… between Chile and New Zealand.”
  • It was reported that Toyota’s 4,900m2 pavilion at this week’s Shanghai International Auto Show will include “60 sets of technology demonstration vehicles and objects.”
  • The Supreme Court said that three death row inmates who murdered four men in Osaka, Aichi and Gifu prefectures in 1994 should face the gallows even though they were minors at the time of the killings.

SCALLYWAGS!

  • A trio of accused Somali pirates will go on trial in Tokyo for their roles in an attack on a Japanese tanker off the coast of Oman in March.
  • Some 8,000 people—more than double the average—showed up at Ueno Zoo late last month to catch the first glimpse of Shin Shin and Ri Ri, two giant pandas on loan from China.

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