Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2014

GOING BATTY

• Legendary baseball-bat craftsman Isokazu Kubota, 70, announced his retirement from sporting goods manufacturer Mizuno Corp, where he had worked for 55 years.
• The news prompted former Yomiuri Giants and New York Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui to say: “I’m proud of having been able to stand the batter’s box with a bat made by Mr Kubota.”
• Authorities at the labor ministry say the number of foreign workers in Japan—717,504—is the highest since recordkeeping began.
• By nationality, Chinese workers are the most numerous (303,886), followed by Brazilians (95,505), Filipinos (80,170) and Vietnamese (37,537).

WILD BLUE YONDER

• Two Air Self-Defense Force T-4 jets belonging to the Blue Impulse aerobatic team were involved in a “minor midair collision.” As if there were such a thing.
• A Chiba-based company called Weathernews is set to release 1,000 “smiley-face-like robots” that can measure atmospheric pollen content.
• The robots operate by gulping air “in the same amounts as humans” then changing color according to the pollen levels.
• Cops in Ibaraki arrested a man for assaulting another man who complained about his tossing a cigarette butt into the street. The victim died of his injuries.

CAPITAL GAINS

• The Imperial Household Agency says it may open a tree-lined thoroughfare inside the Imperial Palace grounds twice a year so that commoners can enjoy the cherry blossoms and fall foliage.
• A US-based cult expert says members of AUM Shinrikyo may have developed a nerve gas five times more lethal than the one used in the deadly 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway.
• Fraudsters in Tokyo scammed an elderly woman out of ¥200 million by offering her “preferential rights to buy the corporate bonds of a pharmaceutical company.”
• Authorities at the MPD say it’s the largest sum they’ve ever seen a single person lose in a fraud case.

HERE & THERE

• According to the NPA, a total of 578 people suffering from dementia went missing last year.
• Of these, 359 were eventually found dead “in forests, rivers, irrigation channels, the gardens of empty houses, roads and elsewhere.”
• Officials at Sanriku Railway Co. in Iwate are about to reopen two train lines that were knocked out of commission in the March 11 disaster. The price tag for the repairs? A cool ¥9.2 billion.
• Headline of the Week: “Experiment Indicates Ancient Mirror in Kyoto is Chinese Magic Mirror” (via Mainichi Japan)

BIG BROTHER IN THE NEWS

• The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology is deploying 90 cameras in and around Osaka station as part of “an unusually large study on tracking location data using facial-recognition technology.”
• Authorities at the Fire and Disaster Management Agency say they want to develop a search-and-rescue helicopter operated by remote control.
• The government announced that, to celebrate the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it will authorize the issuance of commemorative license plates for the first time ever.
• Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have ranked the Tokyo-based Japan Institute of International Affairs the top think tank in Asia.

Compiled from reports by AP, Japan Today, The Japan Times, Jiji, The Tokyo Reporter, The Mainichi, The Japan News, AFP, Reuters and Kyodo