Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2010

NOT COOL, DUDES

• A 46-year-old woman who was arrested for sending a knife and a threatening note to a Tokyo elementary school was also charged with sending a stuffed animal with a knife stuck through it to anime voice actor Show Hayami.
• Construction of an underwater observation station in Miyakojima is apparently killing off nearby coral, prompting a local environmental group to call for a halt to the project.
• Toyota announced that it will shell out for repairs on the faulty cooling systems of about 650,000 Prius cars made between 2004 and 2007.
• Reigning world figure skating champion Mao Asada is having a tough go of it under new coach Nobuo Sato. The 20-year-old opened the season with a career-worst eighth place at the NHK Trophy and then finished fifth at the Trophee Bompard in Paris.

CHEERS!

• A broker whose advice cost the All Japan Liquor Merchants Association a big chunk of its pension fund was ordered by the Tokyo District Court to come up with ¥15.14 billion in compensation.
• A Japanese man in Manila turned himself in to authorities, who were tracking him after he allegedly swindled another Japanese guy out of ¥25 million in a bogus investment scheme in the Philippines.
• A former editorial writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun sued Yomiuri Group boss Tsuneo Watanabe for ¥1.5 million over a 2007 interview in which Watanabe said he “once had to stop one of our editorialists from writing because he wrote an editorial opposing our paper’s official position” on the Self-Defense Forces.
• Kimihiro Uomoto, 62, one of the Red Army members who hijacked a Japanese airliner to North Korea in 1970, is planning on filing suit, along with the wives of two other members, to get their names removed from an international wanted list “for their alleged involvement in Pyongyang’s abduction of Japanese nationals.”

DIGITAL BITES

• We’ve heard of giving the finger, but three? A 26-year-old worker at the Tokyo Dome amusement park lost a trio of digits on her right hand while inspecting a motor on one of the rides.
• A computer glitch was blamed for the Hayabusa unmanned space probe’s inability to shoot a metal ball at an asteroid to collect rock samples. The probe still brought back some particles from the asteroid, and JAXA engineers vowed to correct the problem ahead of future missions.
• A junior high school in Hyogo decided to accept an 11-year-old boy with gender identity disorder as a girl starting next spring.
• The foreign ministry revealed in a report that Japan discussed “the possibility of going nuclear” with West Germany in 1969.

RUN-AND-TUG

• It was reported that police are cracking down on illegal massage parlors run by escaped North Koreans out of fears that they may be fronts for a spy ring.
• The head of the Japan Barefoot Running Association, which has about 30 members, was quoted as saying: “What I find strange is that Japan has a culture where we are always taking off our shoes… but they draw the line when it comes to running.”
• An avalanche near the 2,400-meter Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route swept up six skiers and snowboarders, killing one and seriously injuring two others.
• Japanese rakugo storyteller Shofukutei Kakusho will entertain kids in war-torn Iraq “by performing traditional comedic routines.”

THE CRIME FILES

Illustration by Eparama Tuibenau

• After a pair of Tanzanian nationals were brought to a Yokohama police station complaining of stomach aches, cops discovered that their sore tummies were caused by ¥78 million worth of heroin they had swallowed to smuggle into Japan.
• A 19-year-old male became the first minor to be handed a death sentence under the lay judge system. The kid did earn the honor, though, having killed two women and seriously wounded another guy in Miyagi.
• A 70-year-old author stabbed to death his 63-year-old ex-wife, who had taken up with the Aleph cult, an offshoot of Aum Shinrikyo. The writer, Saburo Nishimura, had written a book on his dealings with the cult in his attempt to reconnect with his wife and daughter.
• A court in Hiroshima sentenced a 60-year-old motorcycle dealer to 18 months in prison for illegally exporting 22 used pianos from Kobe to North Korea via China without official approval.

ALL NIPPON SCAREWAYS

• It was revealed that an ANA flight was about 30 seconds from crashing into a Hokkaido mountain before a warning went off, spurring pilots into quick action to avoid catastrophe. An air-traffic controller was blamed for the near mishap.
• In another near-miss, an ANA flight taxied onto a runway where a JAL Express plane was about to land at Osaka airport in 2009 because a pilot misheard a flight number.
• The Japan Coast Guard officer who made public controversial video footage of a collision with a Chinese fishing boat through YouTube, said he first sent the clip to CNN but they tossed the SD card in the trash because they didn’t know what was on it.
• Now here’s a switch. Japan’s defense ministry apparently received notice from the Nagasaki government saying they’d be delighted to host some new submarines at the Sasebo base.

THE CHUBU SYNDROME

• Chubu Electric Power Co. revealed that it had uncovered 104 lapses in safety checks at its nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture.
• A 28-year-old Osaka woman who had a cancerous tumor removed from her cervix during her 15th week of pregnancy gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
• The first artificial hearts manufactured in Japan have been given “tentative approval” by the health ministry’s Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council.
• A great hornbill named Kanta died after spending 46 years at an avian care facility in Fukuoka.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Aiko Turns 9, Starts Going to More Classes” (via The Asahi Shimbun)

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