Metropolis Japan

December 26, 2012

This week’s required reading

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2012

ZERO-SUM PLANE

The only airworthy World War II “Zero” fighter plane left in the world was put on display at the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum in Saitama. It’s on loan from a museum in California.
The president of a facility for the mentally disabled in Chiba was arrested for beating a former patient who worked for her as a chauffeur.
In what’s being described as a “precious find,” researchers in Kyoto have unearthed 9th-century piece of pottery inscribed with some of the earliest examples of hiragana script.
OK, see if you can stay with us on this one: a temp worker at a subsidiary of Kansai Electric Power in Aichi was arrested for leaking private information about the utility’s customers to a private detective she had hired to spy on her husband.
For the first time ever, the Consumer Affairs Agency has punished a company that sells products on a TV shopping channel. The case involves a “diet tea” firm that refused to offer refunds to customers despite a money-back guarantee.

Officials with the Meteorological Agency say this past autumn was the warmest ever in northern Japan.
The Wild Bird Society of Japan says the decline of the wild swallow population is likely due to “attacks by crows and removal of nests by humans.”
Police in Saitama are searching for a masked assailant who netted ¥12 million in a brazen armored car robbery outside a local supermarket.
Officials from the labor and education ministries say 63.1 percent of college seniors have received job offers ahead of graduation this year. That’s the second year in a row the figure has risen.
Scientists at the University of Tokyo and private companies have developed a “humanoid conversation robot” to accompany Japanese astronauts on long-term voyages.
Bottom Story of the Week: “SDF members to Teach Car Repair in E. Timor” (via The Yomiuri Shimbun)
The health ministry will add 760 quasi-legal drugs that have effects similar to narcotics to its list of regulated substances.

Guinness World Records has certified that Japan’s Ikaros is the “first space yacht to succeed in using photon propulsion to sail.”
The National Police Agency says that suicides in Japan dropped by a whopping 9.8 percent during the past year. Experts believe the total number will fall below 30,000 for the first time in 15 years.
A survey by the Development Bank of Japan found that travelers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand say Japan is their ideal vacation destination.
Headline of the Week: “JAXA to Develop Firefighter Clothing from Space Underwear” (via Jiji)
An education ministry survey found that 6.5 percent of Japanese schoolkids have “difficulties reading and writing as well as staying calm.”
Japanese researchers studying an enzyme called glucokinase say they have “shed light on a bodily mechanism that causes obesity.”

Among the hit Japanese “products” of 2012 identified by Dentsu Marketing Insight are “robot cleaners,” “salted rice malt” and “Tokyo station.”
Sentence of the Week: “Consuming large quantities of a key ingredient in beer can protect against winter sniffles and even some serious illnesses in small children, a Japanese brewery said citing a scientific study.” (via AFP)