Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2011

Scream Away, Kids!

Photo by VigilancePrime

• Bullet trains running between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka have introduced “family cars” for people with kids in tow, allowing them “to feel more at ease traveling with rowdy or crying children.”
• The education ministry announced that nearly 5,500 Japanese schoolteachers took sick leave for depression and “other mental disorders” during the past academic year.
• An anonymous donor left ten randoseru knapsacks worth a total of ¥300,000 at a children’s welfare facility in Maebashi on Christmas Day.
• Officials at the Saitama Children’s Zoo gave their capybaras—large rat-like creatures from South America—a hot yuzu-filled citrus bath on winter solstice.

Hard to Swallow

• Apparently size does matter. After a spate of choking incidents involving konnyaku sweets, the Consumer Affairs Agency decreed that the treats be limited to 1cm in diameter.
• A popular takoyaki stand in Osaka’s Dotonbori district has relocated just down the street after city officials claimed it was occupying space on a public road, which is a no-no.
• Close to three tons of king crab valued at nearly ¥7 million was pinched from a warehouse in Hokkaido.
• Headline of the Week: “Gutting Sea Breams a Matter of Nerves” (via The Asahi Shimbun)

Sports Ticker

• A year-end poll revealed that Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki was Japan’s top-earning athlete in 2010, with a salary of $18 million. Naohiro Takahara of Shimizu S-Pulse was the highest-paid soccer player, at just ¥160 million a year.
• In a possibly related matter, Japanese soccer players said they want a pay raise when representing their country, and suggested that they’ll boycott matches to protest their low salaries. JFA boss Junji Ogura responded by saying, “We’ll go on with the players who want to play.”
• All-conquering yokozuna Hakuho was named winner of the Japan Professional Sports Award for 2010 after a year that saw him dominate in the raised ring, including putting together a 63-bout winning streak.
• The management team of Olympic gold-medal figure skater Kim Yu Na lodged a complaint with NTV after the broadcaster aired hidden-camera footage of her practicing in Los Angeles.

Money Matters

• Start ringing up those charges! Softbank will provide iPhone users with an embedded sticker that gives their keitai e-money capabilities.
• Former Japan PM Yukio Hatoyama received a ¥130 million refund on the ¥610 million he paid in taxes after receiving gifts from his mom. Apparently, the statue of limitations had been reached in some cases.
• Three Chinese men who were already under indictment for robbing a department store in Tokyo were also charged with stealing ¥93 million in watches and jewelry from a shop in Sapporo. The trio is thought to be part of the Hong Kong-based “Bakusetsudan” crime network, so called because of their penchant for “using force to break a hole in a wall.”
• The government will build a dock and roadway on the southern island of Okinotori as part of a project “to study marine resources and protect an exclusive economic zone”—at a cost to taxpayers of some ¥75 billion.

Grim Tidings

• A suspected yakuza gang member was found dead on the banks of Tokyo’s Arakawa River with a nasty head wound and a gun nearby. Suicide was presumed.
• Disputing the “official” version of events, the wife of a lawyer who was stabbed to death after police responded to an emergency call at their home said she and her husband had their hands in the air as an intruder held them at gunpoint when cops arrived. The woman claims the police then apprehended her husband, allowing the bad guy to stab him to death.
• In Osaka, a prosecutor had his pay slashed and was taken off the case after telling police to delete testimony of an arson suspect that would have given the man an alibi.
• Ten immigration control officers at Narita airport are suspected of assaulting a 45-year-old man from Ghana as he was being forcibly deported, causing his death.

Gone Missing

• The whereabouts of a quarter of former prisoners who completed their terms for sexually assaulting minors were unknown, according to the National Police Agency, despite the fact that they are subject to surveillance upon release.
• Japan had 111 death-row inmates at the end of 2010, the most since World War II.
• A group of people whose relatives committed suicide at rented apartments filed a petition with the social affairs ministry seeking protection from landlords who demand large payouts. The landlords fear that prospective tenants won’t want to live in rooms where people offed themselves.
• The environment ministry revealed that a hooded crane found dead in Kagoshima tested positive for avian flu.

See Ya

• Some 300 vehicles were stuck on the road for 33 hours in Fukushima after a truck slid off the highway in heavy snow.
• Japan’s new ambassador to Russia assured the public that he won’t be visiting the disputed Kunashiri Island, which is what got his predecessor sacked.
• Princess Aiko’s chief caretaker, a 64-year-old former kindergarten chief, has resigned her post for “personal reasons” thought to be health-related.
• It was revealed in recently declassified documents that Tokyo gave the US “tacit” permission to use Okinawa as a staging base for air attacks during the Vietnam War.

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, Reuters and Kyodo