Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2011

Fighting Cling-ons for Three Decades

• Toto’s warm water-spraying Washlet toilet seats celebrated 30 years of keeping things clean down under, living up to their slogan, “Buttocks, too, want to be washed.”
• Locals in Miyazaki rolled out the welcome wagon for the Yomiuri Giants as they opened “spring” camp, lavishing 20 kilos of kumquat, 20kg of mikan, 10 boxes of strawberries and 100 broiled eels on the Central League powerhouse.
• But the Giants gave as good as they got, donating some ¥3 million to support local relief efforts as Miyazaki battles bird flu and a spewing volcano.
• Meanwhile, the Softbank Hawks also got a welcome gift at their camp when 10kg of tuna and 10kg of shrimp were dropped off by the Miyazaki Fish Federation.
• 16-year-old ballet dancers Shizuru Kato and Yuko Horisawa finished fifth and seventh, respectively, at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne competition, each earning year-long scholarships to some of the top dance schools in the world.

Gimme a “J,” Gimme an “O,” Gimme a “B”

Illustration by Eparama Tuibenau

• In the midst of “the bleakest employment outlook Japan has faced in years,” roughly 1,500 college students attended a pep rally in a Tokyo park—complete with cheerleaders—to draw attention to the lack of jobs.
• HSBC is offering housing loans to non-residents of Japan, provided you have at least ¥10 million in deposits and/or assets invested with the bank.
• It was reported that some of the sumo wrestlers implicated in the bout-rigging scandal tried to dodge culpability by breaking their cellphones before turning them in to authorities, or by turning in new phones altogether.
• Two TV commercials featuring yokozuna Hakuho, who so far has not been implicated in the sumo match-throwing scandal, were pulled nonetheless.

Cat Burglar

• A 36-year-old truck driver with a bizarre sense of fashion was nabbed by police while walking down a Saitama street wearing pink Hello Kitty sandals—the same kind of footwear cops say a robber has worn at the scene of hundreds of burglaries in Gunma and Saitama.
• A court in Indonesia sentenced two men to 17- and 18-year jail terms for murdering an elderly Japanese couple near Jakarta last year.
• A Hyogo woman and her live-in boyfriend were arrested after tying up her 3-year-old son in a misguided attempt to discipline the toddler.
• In Ibaraki, a man who killed a wheelchair-bound woman and her husband in a hit-and-run accident before fleeing on foot later turned himself in to police.

News from the Sticks

• It was reported that a cattle breeder living at the foot of Mount Shinmoe in Miyazaki named a newborn calf Nozomi (“Hope”). What he hoped was that the damned mountain would stop spewing volcanic ash.
• Officials in Akita Prefecture are hoping to boost the country’s lowest marriage rate by starting a government-run computer-dating service.
• University of Tokyo researchers got all excited when they discovered naturally spawned eel eggs in the ocean for the first time off the Mariana Islands. Just sounds like an excuse to hang out in the South Pacific to us.
• No more excuse for a bad photo: the new FX 77 digital camera from Panasonic lets users retouch their photos—a little more color here, a bit off the nose there, eyes open a bit wider.
• Airline passengers in Japan will be allowed longer access to their cellphones prior to takeoff and quicker access to them upon landing, the transport ministry announced.

Damn Russkies

• Prime Minister Naoto Kan described a visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the disputed Northern Islands as “an unforgivable outrage.”
• Russia’s foreign minister responded by saying that Kan’s choice of words was “not diplomatic.”
• The Russian Foreign Ministry then demanded action after a group of right-wingers in Tokyo dragged a Russian flag along the ground and covered it with black crosses on what is known here as Northern Territories Day.
• The Russian Embassy in Tokyo also revealed that it had received an envelope containing a bullet and a note saying “The Northern Territories are Japanese.”

Strange Days

• A 30-year-old sergeant from the US Air Base at Kadena was found dead in his Okinawa apartment, bleeding from a neck wound.
• The Cabinet Office said that, during the past six years, an average of 2,881 people killed themselves in March, making it the most popular month for ending it all in Japan.
• The former head of a chain of onsen called the Okamoto Hotel Group was arrested for “defrauding some 8,000 members of a hotel club fund out of over ¥20 billion and funneling cash to the yakuza.”
• In an effort to scrub paint off recycled bumpers of its Leaf electric car, Nissan is employing the same technology used to polish rice.

Super Lowrider

• Students at Okayama Sanyo High School in Asakuchi are trying to get their custom-made electric car certified by Guinness World Records for lowest vehicle height. Their car sits just 45 centimeters off the ground, which is some 2.5cm lower than the current record.
• A nasty blizzard in Hokkaido caused a 25-car pileup that left 12 people injured.
• Ueno Zoo held a “Kaba Matsuri” to mark the 100th anniversary of receiving its first hippo, which arrived from Germany in 1911.
• Ueno Zoo has been home to 29 hippopotamuses since 1911. In an unsavory little sidenote to the story, “some visitors reportedly complained that they could not see the [first] animal when the pool became cloudy with its dung.”

And Finally…

• In Osaka Prefecture, several finger bones likely belonging to a missing man were dug up on the property of his adopted son, who committed suicide last May.
• The health ministry said 1,503 people in Japan were found to be newly infected with the HIV virus, and a record 453 of them developed AIDS.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “Even Gateball Now Has its Own Manga Series” (via The Asahi Shimbun)
• Close runnerup: “Giant Kagoshima Radishes Donated to Aomori to Commemorate Bullet Train Connection” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

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