Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2014

YOU DON’T SAY

• A researcher at Kyushu University has found “no scientific basis” for the widely held Japanese belief that blood type plays a role in personality.
• A Nakano Ward assembly member offered his resignation after tweeting that politicians who support Japan’s right to exercise collective self-defense should “die.”
• Executives at Sapporo Holdings Ltd. say the group will suffer its first-ever net loss this year. They blamed the situation on tax authorities, who decided to classify the popular Goku Zero drink as a “low-malt beer” instead of a “third-category beer.”
• A Nara woman was hospitalized after eating a gourd that was meant to be used for decorative purposes.

BRIGHT IDEAS

• Salarymen in Nagoya can party harder now that the city has extended the operating hours of its subway system until 1:15am—the latest in Japan.
• Members of a research team at Japan Women’s University in Bunkyo-ku have developed clothing tags with protrusions that allow blind people to tell the color of the garments.
• Akio Yamada, who founded electric equipment maker Mirai Industry Co., died in Gifu at age 82. Yamada was credited with a forward-thinking management style that included 140 holidays a year for employees and no overtime.
• Members of a labor ministry subcommittee have recommended raising the minimum wage from ¥764 to ¥780.

FINDINGS

• Archaeologists in Nagasaki say they discovered fossilized dinosaur teeth in a layer of earth dating back to the Upper Cretaceous period, some 81 million years ago. They believe the teeth belonged to an ankylosaurus.
• The health ministry has dispatched a research team to the Marshall Islands to determine whether human bones exposed by coastal erosion belong to Imperial Japanese Army soldiers killed during World War II.
• The welfare ministry says a record 16.3 percent of Japanese children are living in poverty.
• Authorities at the transport ministry are asking airport operators to conduct criminal background checks on workers before allowing them access to restricted areas.

BY THE NUMBERS

• Air Self-Defense Force officials revealed that they ordered fighter jets to scramble 340 times between April and June in response to “feared intrusions by foreign aircraft.”
• Authorities at the internal affairs ministry say the number of abandoned homes around the country has reached a record high of 8.2 million.
• The figure, which includes units in apartment buildings, represents an 8 percent increase from five years ago.
• A Singapore-based travel company estimates that the annual number of Muslim visitors to Japan is expected to reach one million by 2020.

AND FINALLY…

• Executives at Toyota announced a donation of $1 million to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
• Authorities at the NPA say fraudsters have swindled people out of ¥26.8 billion during the first half of 2014. That’s about ¥500 million more than the same period last year.
• LDP Vice President Masahiko Komura says he told Chinese officials during a recent visit to Beijing that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will not visit Yasukuni Shrine again.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Kobe Shopping Street Group Makes Tsunami Evacuation Map” (via Mainichi Japan)

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

At a Glance