Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2013

NICE WORK, FELLAS

• Two former managers of an elevator company in Tokyo pleaded not guilty of negligence in the death of a 16-year-old high school student in 2006. The boy died when he “became wedged between the elevator and [the] shaft when the elevator suddenly began to ascend while its doors were wide open.”
• A 21-year-old Chinese hacker is suspected of breaking into a Tokyo woman’s MUFJ account and transferring a cool ¥2 million to three other bank accounts—one of which was in his own name.
• Officials in Saitama have finally settled on the name of the bicycle race they’re planning to hold in October to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Tour de France. It’ll be called the Saitama Criterium by Le Tour de France.
• Several customers at a Mister Donut shop in Osaka were sickened after a numbnuts employee “erroneously put diluted chlorine bleach into a 1.8-liter [drinking] water tank.”

MILESTONES

• A blind Japanese acupuncturist who lives in San Diego is attempting to become the first sightless man to sail across the Pacific Ocean.
• A research team led by scientists at the University of Tokyo say they may have found “a clue for developing drugs to kill multidrug-resistant bacteria.”
• Researchers at the National Cancer Center recommend consuming 20 grams of saturated fatty acid daily to ward off strokes and heart attacks. That’s equivalent to “200 grams of milk a day and 150 grams of meat every other day.”
• Headline of the Week: “Cat and Bird Corpses Left on Store Escalator Again” (via Mainichi Japan)

RUMBLINGS

• Officials at the meteorological agency say that Japan was hit by 9,577 “noticeable aftershocks” in the two years following the 3/11 quake.
• A study by geologists in Tokyo found that 68 square kilometers of the city’s surface may undergo liquefaction during a major quake. That’s more than 10 percent of the area of the capital’s 23 wards, folks.
• The National Police Agency says that the number of suicides “attributed to economic or financial problems” plunged 18.5 percent last year.
• On the other hand, the NPA said the number of stalking (19,920) and domestic violence cases (43,950) reached all-time highs.

THAT’LL LEARN ’EM

• Among the new topics to be covered by high school textbooks in the 2014 academic year are the Hayabusa space probe, kabuki star Nakamura Kichiemon and “as a song by pop group Exile.”
• Officials at Kyoto University say they plan to conduct half of their liberal arts courses for underclassmen in English by 2018.
• The labor ministry says that winter bonuses in Japan fell for the fourth straight year. The average payout is down to a measly ¥365,687.
• After five patients were killed in a fire at an assisted living facility in Nagasaki in February, a newspaper survey found that about a quarter of small group homes for dementia patients in Japan are not equipped with fire sprinklers.

YOU GO, TOJO!

• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a Diet budget committee that the Tokyo war crimes trials following World War II were “no more than exercises in victors’ justice.”
• In his previous term in office, Abe said that Class A war criminals “are not war criminals under the laws of Japan.” So give him points for consistency.
• Government officials announced they will bestow the People’s Honor Award on former pro baseball stars Hideki Matsui and Shigeo Nagashima. The two men will become just the 22nd and 23rd people to be so honored.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Team Calls for Rethink of Waiting Rooms” (via The Yomiuri Shimbun)

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