Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2012

DOG DAYS OF WINTER

• A van belonging to a dog-grooming school in Kobe was stolen with 13 mutts inside. The animals were later found unharmed. In a possibly related development, a local Korean BBQ joint was seen doing brisk business.
• Grande Maison Graciani, a renowned, century-old French restaurant in Kobe, was gutted by fire. The cause of the blaze is being investigated.
• An 18-year-old female high schooler working at an Osaka “girls bar” was found dead of apparent alcohol poisoning.
• Keihito Tagonoura, a sumo stablemaster and former makuchi-division wrestler, died of unknown causes at a Tokyo hospital at the relatively tender age of 46.

FAMILY FEUD

• Outspoken Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and his son Nobuteru have been engaging in a war of words. “I feel like Hamlet,” despaired Ishihara fils, who is secretary-general of the LDP. Responded Pops: “I feel sorry for him because he’s in such an absurd political party.”
• Nobuteru also found himself in hot water after describing the sight of bedridden hospital patients being kept alive by feeding tubes this way: “It was like parasitic aliens living by eating humans.”
• The Japan Pension Service said some 72,000 folks will be missing out on ¥1.7 billion in benefits that were due February 15 because “the government mistakenly collected more income taxes than necessary.” Huh?!?
• Giving new meaning to the term “Throw me a rope,” Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists messed with Japan’s “research” fleet in the Antarctic Ocean by tossing a rope that got caught up in a ship’s propeller.

BOOB JOB

• A professor from the Tokyo Institute of Technology apparently received cash from an engineering firm in exchange for promoting “lenient inspection standards for spent nuclear fuel casks that the company produced.” What do you expect from a boob who worked at the TIT?
• Soba noodles produced in Okinawa were found to contain high levels of radioactive cesium, “apparently because they were made with water filtered by ashes from Fukushima-produced wood.”
• Japanese scientists in the Ogasawara Islands have spotted a seabird known as Bryan’s shearwater. It’s believed to be the first time since the (re)discovery of the albatross 60 years ago that that a supposedly extinct bird species has been found.
• JR West has managed to salvage 15 diesel locomotives that were destined for the scrap heap—by selling them to Myanmar’s railway ministry.

HARSH TOKES

• A 24-year-old Nagoya man died after he and some friends smoked “legal herb drugs.”
• Seventeen sailors were rescued when a Russian cargo ship sank in Niigata Port after colliding with another ship from Singapore.
• Officials “preemptively destroyed” six of the 228 snow sculptures at the Sapporo Snow Festival after a woman was seriously injured by the collapse of a 3m-tall work depicting the animated pop star Hatsune Miku.
• Six employees of a company in Kyoto were arrested for creating a computer virus that displayed pornographic images that users had to pay the company to get rid of.
• The New Zealand government says the CTV building in Christchurch, which collapsed during a major earthquake last February, “did not conform to correct building standards.” Nearly two-thirds of the 185 people who died in the quake perished when the building fell, including 28 Japanese.

DRINK UP

• A group of employees of gyudon chain Sukiya traveled to a refugee camp in Kenya to distribute milk packs to starving Somali children.
• The health ministry says 5.9 percent of male Japanese workers have “experienced problems due to excessive drinking, including damage to social relationships and taking a day off due to a hangover.”
• The Japan Coast Guard has discovered a species of clam that ekes out an existence by feeding on hydrogen sulfide 5,620m below the ocean surface near the Mariana Trench.
• A population research institute has found that 32 percent of Japanese women and 25 percent of men who are living alone are subsisting below the poverty line.

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

• In response to a lawsuit filed by local residents seeking the closure of the Tomari nuclear facility, Hokkaido Electric Power Co. admitted, “absolute safety cannot be expected for nuclear power plants.”
• The communications ministry says it will consider taking “drastic preventative steps” to address the recent network blackouts suffered by leading mobile carriers Docomo and KDDI.
• After eliminating unprofitable routes and inefficient aircraft, JAL has found itself with a surplus of employees. The solution? “Loaning” pilots to other airlines in Asia.
• Researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Ibaraki have developed a dosimeter that’s about the size of a computer memory card.

KIDS THESE DAYS…

• The Tokyo Board of Education says elementary school students walk 30 percent less than kids did in 1979. The Board even went so far as to count the number of steps: 11,382 vs. 17,120.
• The education ministry says that the costs for parents to send children to high schools—both public and private—have never been lower.
• USA Today named the Texas Rangers’ new $60 million man, Yu Darvish, as the top young baseball player in America. Which is impressive, considering the 25-year-old has yet to throw a pitch in the majors.
• Tokyo officially registered its bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. The other hopefuls are Doha, Madrid, Istanbul and Baku, Azerbaijan.

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