December 28, 2011

December 28, 2011

December 28, 2011

This Week's Required Reading

By

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2011

DON’T GIMME ANY CRAP

  • Former sumo wrestler Konishiki apparently got into a shoving match with a pedestrian in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward when the big Hawaiian refused to scoop up his dog’s poop, as required by law.
  • A team of researchers from Fukushima University plans to enlist the aid of wild monkeys to measure forest radiation levels using special monitoring collars placed on the primates.
  • The Chinese character “kizuna” (bonds between people) was chosen as the kanji “that best reflects the events of 2011,” according to the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation. More here.

CAT FIGHT!

  • An endangered Tsushima wildcat named Takara had to have its paw amputated at a zoo in Sasebo after it got into a vicious scrap with an Amur leopard cat in an adjoining cage.
  • Headline of the Week: “Noisy gay orgy in Shinjuku prompts raids by cops” (via The Tokyo Reporter)
  • The aforementioned orgy allegedly took place at a well-known gay bar in the area called Destruction and cops were alerted “by the raucous animal-like screams being emitted” from the joint. Destruction indeed!
  • Another headline winner: “Serial killer’s accomplice says she now understands meaning of life” (via The Mainichi Daily News)
  • Tokyo police confirmed that a man found hanged to death in a public toilet at a Tokyo park in April was, indeed, 62-year-old TV news reporter Eishi Okuyama.
  • A Chinese man was arrested for trying to sell a stuffed endangered panda to tourists out of his house in Ota-ku, Tokyo.
  • Dante Carver, a 34-year-old actor and model from New York who has gained fame in Japan by starring in several Softbank TV commercials, was in trouble after being pulled over in Shibuya and presenting an invalid international driver’s license to cops.
  • A 31-year-old former Tokyo primary school teacher got 28 years in prison for sexually assaulting 12 girls, including raping an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old.

FOIE PAS

  • The Wendy’s hamburger chain is relaunching in Japan. Among the items on the menu this time around is a “Foie Gras Rossini” burger which, along with your standard beef patty, includes “foie gras terrine, harmonized with Madeira and Balsamico sauce along with truffle cream.”
  • Meanwhile, at a beach in the town of Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture, a stone monument put up to honor the victims of the deadly tsunami was unveiled, “the first of 500 such monuments planned to be built in the Pacific coastal areas of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.”
  • Call him the Lone Ranger, but 52-year-old Naoto Matsumura is the only person living in the town of Tomioka, which lies just 12 km from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear reactor. Despite a 20-km evacuation zone around the reactor, Matsumura refuses to leave his hometown and passes his days feeding abandoned pets.

PLAYING GOD

  • Professor Shoji Asai of the University of Tokyo, one of the scientists with the ATLAS project searching for the Higgs boson—otherwise known as the “God particle”—at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, announced they had “found hints of the elusive particle in the subatomic debris created by slamming protons together in the 27-km-round particle accelerator.”
  • The mother of figure skater Mao Asada passed away from liver disease at age 48 in Nagoya. Asada tried to make it back to her bedside from a competition in Canada for a final goodbye, but sadly arrived too late.
  • In Seoul, former “comfort women,” as sex slaves pressed into action by Japan’s army during World War II have been so charmingly called, staged their 1,000th protest in front of the Japanese Embassy since 1992.
  • A passenger in a wheelchair was kicked off an AirDo flight about to take off from Haneda to Hokkaido after joking with a stewardess that he had a bomb in his carry-on bag. Good one…
  • In Chiba, a 65-year-old doctor was arrested for hit-and-run at a gas station after driving into an attendant and then taking off in his freshly washed car.
  • A drunk driver in a pickup truck killed two young brothers in Hyogo Prefecture as they returned home from watching a lunar eclipse.
  • Prince Mikasa, the uncle of Emperor Akihito and the oldest member of Japan’s royal family at 96, was hospitalized after complaining of breathing problems. He was diagnosed with “mild heart failure.”

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