Jan 28, 2010

January 28, 2010

Jan 28, 2010

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010 Bored in space Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi celebrated New Year on the International Space Station with traditional activities like hanetsuki (hitting a shuttlecock with a battledore) and kakizome (writing the first calligraphy of the year). It was reported that a “love hotel mutual fund” offered by Shibuya-based Initia […]

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Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2010

Bored in space
  • Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi celebrated New Year on the International Space Station with traditional activities like hanetsuki (hitting a shuttlecock with a battledore) and kakizome (writing the first calligraphy of the year).
  • It was reported that a “love hotel mutual fund” offered by Shibuya-based Initia Star Securities has been enjoying annual returns of 5-8 percent.
  • Japan decided to ban the import of poultry and eggs from Texas after a flock of ducks there were found to be possibly infected with avian influenza.
  • The agriculture ministry intends to spend ¥1.6 billion to establish about 20 farmers’ markets in major cities around the nation.
  • After kicking up a storm over a blog post in which he claimed that “advanced medical care allows those to live who would once have been weeded out by natural selection,” the mayor of Akune, Kagoshima Prefecture, lashed out at his critics via the city’s community PA system, which was set up for use during disasters.
News from the recession
  • A group of 50 leading publishing companies will begin selling their magazine articles online on a pay-per-view basis. The move is seen as a “make-or-break attempt to lure more readers” following a 70 percent decline from peak magazine readership.
  • A health care worker at a hospital in Kobe was busted for stealing ¥52 million from “a 92-year-old bedridden woman and her senile 86-year-old sister.”
  • After one of its two doctors resigned at the end of last year, Japan’s first public facility for people with Hansen’s disease (a.k.a. leprosy) was forced to stop treating outpatients. The sanatorium is located on the remote island of Amami in Kagoshima Prefecture.
  • Sentence of the Week: “A man recently released from prison stole a single cup of instant noodles and turned himself in here [in Nara] Friday in an apparent attempt to return to jail, police said.” (via The Mainichi Daily News)
Sic transit
  • A quick-thinking passenger saved the day when she took control of a bus whose driver had lost consciousness on a road in Ehime. The driver later died.
  • Illustration by Kohji Shiki

    Illustration by Kohji Shiki

    Officials at Haneda Airport plan to start around-the-clock bird patrols in an attempt to avoid avian strikes against aircraft.
  • A Tokyo University study found that airport screening measures designed to identify and quarantine travelers infected with type A/H1N1 influenza are largely ineffective.
  • Popular tour operator Hato Bus Co. held a ceremony for 17 of its young female guides three days prior to Coming-of-Age Day. Yeah, that seems real nice, until you learn that the service was held because Hato made the women work on the national holiday, which means they were unable to go back to their hometowns for the ceremony.
  • A 38-year-old business executive in Shiga Prefecture was killed when his car was hit by a Tokaido line train at a crossing and dragged 80 meters.
  • It is expected that 42 witnesses will be called to testify in the trial of a 27-year-old man who killed seven people in a rampage in Akihabara in June 2008. The trial is expected to last a year.
Strange Days
  • A Kumamoto man who convinced a 62-year-old female supermarket worker that he had “seven legendary horse racing predictors” was arrested for swindling the woman out of ¥1.5 million.
  • Korea-based confectioner Lotte has opened a hotel in Sumida Ward that houses a restaurant owned by mega-popular actor Bae Yong Joon, a chocolate bar, and “rooms featuring its Koara no Maachi (Koala’s March) cookie snack mascot.”
  • The town of Erimo, Hokkaido, recorded a record amount of snowfall for the month of January when 115cm of snow fell—by January 5th.
  • A lottery stand in the town of Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture (pop. 160,000), sold two winning tickets for the year-end Jumbo lottery. The tickets were worth ¥200 million each.
  • A new law allows the National Diet Library to collect information about public institutions without getting permission from them.
  • Archaeologists in Nara have unearthed “the nation’s largest known cylindrical glass bead,”kudatama. The artifact dates to approximately the third century AD and measures 8.16cm long.
  • Researchers at the same site also discovered some 80 bronze mirrors dating to the same period.
Funky foreigners
  • A new apartment guarantor service for Korean and Chinese speakers has been set up by a Tokyo-based NPO called the Information Center for Foreigners. The service was established in response to a 2006 questionnaire which found that “foreign residents in Tokyo were visiting an average of 15 real estate agents before finding a landlord willing to lease a home to them.”
  • Japan and South Korea have started discussing the framework for the “first-ever formulation of a joint declaration on security between the two nations.”
  • It was reported that China has “informally asked” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to visit the city of Nanking later this year. It would be the first time a Japanese PM has visited the site of atrocities committed by the Imperial Army during World War II.
  • The education ministry began a series of hearings with professors and local government officials to address “how to improve education for foreign students in Japan.”
Up in smoke
  • A chemical plant in Yokohama that was the site of a fatal explosion in 2008 blew up again earlier this month. This time, eight workers and two passersby were injured.
  • Cops in Kobe busted three teenage girls—a 16-year-old and two 14-year-olds—for possession of 0.5 to 1.5 grams of pot.
  • Some 3,500 computers across the country were hit with a virus called Gumblar, which “direct[s] them to harmful sites and embed[s] malware via hacked web pages.”
  • A Tokyo-based internet watchdog said that a recent edict by the education ministry to prohibit cellphones from elementary and middle schools has had little effect on “the number of problematic message postings.”
Here & There
  • A rare public exhibition of about 400 pieces of clothing and jewelry worn by traditional entertainers are to be put on display by a retired geiko in Kyoto.
  • It was reported that Japanese authorities have seized 239 shipments of illegal ivory since 1989, the second highest total in Asia, after China’s 575.
  • Headline of the Week: “Big-headed Fish to Make Big-screen Debut” (via the Daily Yomiuri Online)
  • The Diet is set to consider a bill that would provide compensation ranging from ¥250,000 to ¥1.5 million to former detainees of labor camps in Mongolia and Siberia following World War II. Some 600,000 Japanese, mostly servicemen, were thought to have been held by the Soviet Union, and approximately 100,000 are still alive.

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