Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2010

It’s about time

• It was reported that the National Police Agency is considering measures aimed at regulating the sales of DVDs, books and magazines that feature “junior idols”—underage models who strike sexually suggestive poses.
• An NPO called the DoggyBag Committee found that 90 percent of Japanese approve of taking home leftovers from restaurants. Doggy bags are illegal in Japan due to fears over hygiene.
• Nippon Professional Baseball, the sport’s governing body, said that Japan would follow the “universal count” when it comes to balls and strikes. In other words, no more “2 and 3” counts.
• A consortium of 24 Japanese architectural firms has developed a new type of earthquake-proof shelter known as the j.Pod, which is “strong enough to withstand the collapse of a 10-ton second-floor room.”
• 7-Eleven became the first conbini chain in Japan to offer official city services like issuing residence and personal seal certification.
• The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it plans to establish safety guidelines for robots, including “crash tests, emergency brake tests and experiments to assess the effects that heat and humidity can have on a robot’s performance.”

Strange Days

• A 24-year-old pet shop manager from Fukuoka was arrested for stealing a Humboldt penguin from a zoo in Nagasaki.
• A court in Nagoya ruled that professional baseball teams can’t prohibit private “cheering squads” from attending their games. The Chunichi Dragons and other teams had tried to ban the groups in an effort to minimize the number of “criminal syndicates and violent supporters” that show up at their games.
• Nintendo president Satoru Iwata derided Apple’s new iPad as being just “a bigger iPod Touch.”
• Iwata also expressed doubts that 3D home gaming would catch on because families would be embarrassed about wearing those goofy glasses.
• Headline of the Week: Novelist Apologizes to Market Co-op Over False Crab Fraud Allegations (via The Mainichi Daily News)

Rodrigo Rodriguez

Sic transit

• Forty-one people were hospitalized after a train collided with a dump truck during a snowstorm in in Fukagawa, Hokkaido.
• The education ministry said that the number of high school kids studying abroad has dropped 19 percent during the past two years.
• It was reported that an “underwater archaeological team” has recovered some 5,800 items from the Ertugrul, a ship carrying Turkish diplomats that sank in a typhoon off Ushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, in 1890.
• A study by the city of Hiroshima found that 3 percent of the survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder.
• A similar study found that 9.3 percent of the survivors of the Great Hanshin Earthquake suffered from the malady.
• It was reported that sales of Honda automobiles in China skyrocketed 22.5 percent between 2008 and 2009.
• Japan told the UN that it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020 if other countries pledge a similar reduction.

Law & order

• A 65-year-old Kanagawa woman was sentenced to 12 years in jail for starting a fire that killed three residents of a home for disabled people. The judge called her “irrational and selfish.”
• A 79-year-old former company president was hit with a 12-year prison term for his role in an investment scam that involved kuroge (“black cows”) which didn’t exist.
• The National Police Agency has begun offering a reward of ¥100,000 to anonymous tipsters who alert them to cases of child abuse.
• The move was instigated by the case of a 7-year-old Tokyo boy who was allegedly beaten to death by his parents two days after assuring a neighbor that “Papa doesn’t bully me.”
• The board of education in Kanagawa said it would continue keeping tabs on teachers who refuse to stand for the national anthem at school ceremonies.
• It was reported that some nutjob has been mailing envelopes with bullets inside to the offices of PM Yukio Hatoyama and DPJ chief Ichiro Ozawa.
• A 24-year-old Hyogo man was busted at Kathmandu’s airport with 10kg of hashish.

News from the recession

• It was reported that a group of ten female university students have set up a market in Meguro to sell oversize produce “grown by elderly women in Oda, Shimane Prefecture.”
• A Kyoto-based underwear manufacturer has begun renting high-end bras to fashion-conscious but cash-strapped women for ¥727 a month.
• A counterfeiter brandishing high-quality ¥10,000 notes has been targeting “private shops without security cameras” in norththern Honshu.
• After an LDP lawmaker chastised Miyuki Hatoyama for accepting a “Best Jewelry Wearer” award while the country is suffering through the economic downturn, hubby Yukio revealed that she donated the prize to help relief efforts in Haiti.

Here & There

• A 15-year-old middle school student from Hachioji placed third in the prestigious Prix de Lausanne ballet competition in Lausanne, Switzerland.
• For the first time in seven years, the number of people moving out of Nagoya exceeded the number of people moving in.
• It was reported that a Japanese NPO has sent 33 bookmobiles to South Africa, and that the mobile libraries have doled out some 80,000 books.
• A newspaper survey found that just six prefectural governments around the nation have put in place a concrete plan to ensure a “speedy recovery of administrative functions” in the event of a major disaster.
• A survey by the Japan Productivity Center revealed that running has become the country’s most popular leisure activity. Some 25.5 million took part in 2008, a rise of 12 percent from the year before.
• Meanwhile, just 23.5 million people went bowling in 2008, a drop of 6 percent from 2007.

Compiled from reports by the BBC, Japan Today, The Japan Times, International Herald Tribune/The Asahi Shimbun, The Mainichi Daily News, The Tokyo Reporter, The Daily Yomiuri, AP and Kyodo