Jan 14, 2010

January 14, 2010

Jan 14, 2010

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010 Not so funny Manzai comedian Tamotsu Kuroda of the popular duo Messenger was arrested for beating a 23-year-old restaurant manager in Osaka and causing “a serious facial fracture.” During a TV Asahi talk show, postal reform minister Shizuka Kamei revealed a private discussion he’d had with the emperor. […]

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Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010

Not so funny
  • Manzai comedian Tamotsu Kuroda of the popular duo Messenger was arrested for beating a 23-year-old restaurant manager in Osaka and causing “a serious facial fracture.”
  • During a TV Asahi talk show, postal reform minister Shizuka Kamei revealed a private discussion he’d had with the emperor. Apparently, disclosing that kind of thing is a no-no.
  • Kamei said he suggested that the emperor move to Kyoto or Hiroshima, to which the emperor reportedly replied, “I like Kyoto.”
  • One of the 11 participants chosen to attend the traditional New Year poetry reading at the Imperial Palace on January 14 said she “became weak at the knees from joy and nervousness” when told of the news.
  • A former executive at a Chiba-based marriage agency called Web Corp. was busted for selling personal data of 11,000 male and 5,000 female customers. If you ask us, the real crime is that this company gets away with charging a ¥3 million joining fee and a ¥200,000 commission for “marriage support.”
Law & Order
  • Accused murderer Tatsuya Ichihashi told police that he and his victim, English teacher Lindsay Hawker, spent time “listening to a Martin Luther King speech via the internet” before the killing.
  • Meanwhile, the National Police Agency announced that it would distribute ¥10 million reward money to four informants whose tips led to Ichihashi’s arrest—the first such disbursals since the system was introduced in 2007.
  • Three men arrested early last month for the 1995 murder of a hotelier in Ibaraki were let go by police because of the “short time left before the statute of limitations expires… and a paucity of evidence against them.”
  • Disgraced Livedoor president Takafumi Horie forked over ¥20.8 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by his erstwhile employers.
  • Police were seeking the whereabouts of 61-year-old novelist Toshiyuki Tajima (Fushigijima), who disappeared after sending letters to his family by express mail announcing his decision to “retire from writing and end his social life.”
Rocks of contention
  • It was revealed that the Ministry of Education will “continue to seek that [teachers] abide by the Japanese government’s position” regarding the disputed Takeshima islets. The territory is claimed by both Japan and South Korea, which refers to the rocky outcroppings as Dokdo.
  • Seoul responded by saying that this move “could cause [a] negative effect on developing future-oriented relations… by infusing wrong territorial perceptions into Japan’s future generations.”
  • It is estimated that 200 non-Japanese instructors, mostly Koreans, teach at public primary, middle and high schools across the country.
  • The Japanese Olympic Committee nixed a plan by Hiroshima and Nagasaki to make a joint bid for the 2020 Summer Games because the IOC doesn’t allow cities to serve as co-hosts.
  • The mayor of Nagasaki then said it would be cool if Hiroshima hosted the games and held some of the events in his city.
  • Following a “drastic decrease” in the number of foreign visitors to Japan, the transport minister replaced the first-ever head of the Japan Tourism Agency.
  • The new tourism honcho, Hiroshi Mizohata, is credited with transforming Oita Trinita into one of the country’s top J.League teams.
  • Illustration by Kohji Shiiki

    Illustration by Kohji Shiiki

    Twenty restaurants from Chiba, Kanagawa, Ishikawa and Oita will take part in the catchily named National Summit Meeting of Donburi Dishes in Ishikawa Prefecture 2010 D-4.
The dismal science
  • Defying predictions by economists, Japan’s unemployment rate rose 0.1 percent in November, to 5.2 percent.
  • Meanwhile, the number of employed people declined 2 percent to 62.6 million.
  • At the same time, deflation is worsening, with the consumer prices index falling for nine straight months and prices dropping 1.7 percent compared with last year.
  • Further confusing matters was the fact that, although average monthly household income fell 0.3 percent, household spending rose 2.2 percent.
  • The number of suicides in Japan topped 30,000 for the 12th straight year.
Unhappy Holidays
  • Four workers at a chemical plant in Osaka were killed in an explosion that took place near a tank of boron trifluoride.
  • An 81-year-old man spilled kerosene while filling up a heater at his home in Arakawa-ku on Christmas Eve, resulting in a fire that killed his wife and 11-year-old granddaughter.
  • The mayor of Miyama in Fukuoka awoke one morning last month to find that someone had smashed in two windows of his house and left the body of a 70cm-long raccoon dog on his doorstep.
  • It took firefighters in Kita-Kyushu about four hours to extinguish a blaze caused by a mysterious underground explosion that blasted a crater 3m deep and scattered concrete chips in a 20m radius.
  • Seven cars were wrecked and eight people injured after a truck crashed into the median strip on a rain-slickened highway in Muko, Kyoto Prefecture.
  • Some 4,000 passengers were delayed after the Okayama-Tokyo shinkansen was stopped by an instrument that wrongly showed carriage doors were opening while the train was moving.
  • It was revealed that 17.6 percent of Tokyo University students come from families that earn less than ¥4.5 million a year, compared with just 9.3 percent in 2007.
  • A villa in Odawara that served as the setting for Osamu Dazai’s renowned novel Shayo was destroyed in an apparent arson attack. Built in 1928, the “unique” 140m2 structure was “based on a Japanese design but infused with some Western and Chinese touches.”
  • The infrastructure ministry says it will review 30 of the 56 dam projects scheduled to take place around Japan during the next fiscal year and “abandon those it deems unnecessary.”
  • It was also reported that only 20 of 36 shopping centers which were operating in Kobe’s Nagata Ward, the site of the devastating 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, have reopened since the disaster.

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