Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2011

HEY, YOU WANTED EQUAL RIGHTS…

• A global survey commissioned by a company called Regus reveals that women in Japan’s workforce put in just as much overtime as their male counterparts.
• The Regus poll also found that Brazil has now passed Japan in terms of the average length of working day. Didn’t see that one coming…
• A 65-year-old man who hijacked a bus in Chiba and held two hostages at knifepoint said he did it to draw attention to complaints he had over his treatment in prison after a previous brush with the law.
• The Elvis-like king of Bhutan and his super-hot new queen were in Japan for a visit, where the royal couple handed over some rare butterflies to their hosts.
• On the subject of butterflies, Japanese researchers have solved the “eternal mystery” of why the colorful insects choose to lay their eggs where they do. Apparently, it’s all in their forelegs, where sensors identify chemicals in leaves that allow them to determine locations offering the best shot at survival. You’ll probably sleep better knowing that.
• In Saitama, the father and uncle of a five-year-old toddler, who wasted away and died in their care, were charged with negligence as guardians resulting in death after previously being charged with assault in the case. The poor little tyke was given nothing but a rice ball and a piece of bread each day for about six months before he died.
• A three-year-old girl and her 81-year-old grandfather were rescued after their car crashed in snowy Hokkaido. The girl credited grandpa’s dog, a Labrador Retriever named Junior, with keeping her warm as they awaited rescue overnight.
• Headline of the Week: “Professor uses unusual facial swelling to reach out to children about bullying” (via The Mainichi Daily News)
• A close second, also from the Mainichi: “Defendant denies fatally ramming Ibaraki assembly member’s uncle as trial opens”

KITTY UPDATE

• Sanrio’s Hello Kitty brand has put out socks available only in the Nagano area that feature “Yama girl” (mountain-climbing girl). The design for the socks was voted on by the public in an online poll. If you happen to know anyone who took part in this poll, please do the right thing and terminate with extreme prejudice.
• Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa was among the crew who landed in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz space capsule after spending over five months at the International Space Station.
• The Nagasaki Doctor and Dentist Association, after reviewing documents obtained from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, concluded that radioactive black rain from the World War II atomic bombing of Nagasaki “may have fallen not only in the city’s Nishiyama district, but over a much wider area.”
• DNA testing on a 1997 murder victim who worked for TEPCO has produced no link to Nepal’s Govinda Prasad Mainali, who is serving a life sentence for the murder but claims he is innocent.
• Cops apologized to a Chinese student who was mistakenly arrested for a visa violation in Shinjuku after it was discovered that he had applied for an extension, which is good enough.
• Perhaps beating the odds, two former TEPCO employees were re-elected as assemblymen in two towns in Fukushima Prefecture.
• Despite the fact that taxes are being jacked up on the home front to pay off the March 11 disaster, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Japan will loan Iraq some ¥67 billion to help with its reconstruction efforts. Say what?
• A man in Osaka was fined ¥6,000 for riding a racing bike with no brakes on a public road. It was the first fine for the offense.

SACRE BLEU!

• A 29-year-old Frenchman named Yann Cleary, who has appeared in several commercials on Japanese TV, was arrested for working in fields “not coherent with his visa status.” Tokyo police said Cleary violated the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law.
• Cleary, who was here on a “Specialist in Humanities/International Services” visa, also worked as an English language teacher and a wedding priest, “all jobs which were not coherent with his visa status.” We’re guessing there will be a mad rush to the immigration bureau—or the airport—when a few among us get wind of this.
• Two people died and two others were missing when a fire broke out on the Kohei Maru tuna boat off the coast of Tokyo, the Japan Coast Guard reported.
• Tomomasa Nakagawa, a former Aum Shinrikyo member who has been sentenced to death for his part in sarin gas attacks in 1994 and ’95, is writing his memoirs … and just in time for the Christmas rush, too.

SEE YA!

• Yomiuri Giants GM/representative Hidetoshi Kiyotake held a press conference to rip his boss, 85-year-old Yomiuri group chairman Tsuneo Watanabe. Kiyotake was then fired. Well, duh!
• Rubirin, an Amur tiger who arrived at the Higashiyama Zoo in Nagoya in 1995 after being born in Denmark, has died of old age at 19, which is about 100 in “human terms.”
• A nurse who was fired from a hospital in Kitakyushu in 2007 for removing the nails of patients, drawing a six-month prison sentence, has patched things up with the hospital she formerly worked at and is back in the nursing game.
• In an international child-custody case in Wisconsin that would have had an entirely different outcome not long ago, a Japanese woman pleaded no contest to a charge of concealing her nine-year-old daughter from the girl’s father and agreed to return the kid to the US. The woman took the girl to Japan in 2008, shortly after the couple filed for divorce and just before the dad was granted custody by a US court.
• At New York’s Lincoln Arts Performing Center, Japanese traditional singers Saori Yuki and Sachiko Yasuda performed the final overseas concert in their 25 years of touring.

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