Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2012

THANKS GUYS!

• A post office in Fukuoka gave a 50-year-old woman’s address to her former boyfriend, who is 70, without her permission. The woman was trying to avoid the guy because he used to beat her up regularly.
• Two senior Kumamoto government employees were in hot water for making a “subordinate in his 20s sit on his heels on the floor to preach him for long hours… and beating the younger employee on the head from the backseat while he was driving.” They also forced Junior to buy tempura and sushi lunches for them, which cost the underling over ¥1 million.
• The personal data of a female victim of a sex crime—including her name and cellphone number—was “erroneously posted on an internet message board with no browsing restrictions,” the Japan Federation of Bar Associations revealed.
• It appears to be bedtime for bongo—permanently. An African bongo antelope named Matsu, believed to be the world’s oldest, died at a Nagoya zoo at the age of 22. That’s over 100 in human terms.
• Ace pitcher Yu Darvish, currently in negotiations to join the Texas Rangers, was among the celebrities honored by an eyebrow treatment salon for having the best eyebrows of 2011. Others included actress Yukie Nakama and singer/actor Masaharu Fukuyama.
• In other baseball-related news, Yakult Swallows infielder Hiroyasu “Beavis” Tanaka told reporters he was thinking about taking ballet classes this winter to improve his flexibility. Might come in handy avoiding take-outs at second base, too.

PLUMBING THE DEPTHS

From the annals of The Tokyo Reporter come the following three gems:

• Via the Nikkan Gendai… a man on a bicycle in Osaka has been rubbing turd in the faces of unsuspecting women pedestrians, always on a Thursday. It has apparently happened nine times now. We’ve all been shit-faced on occasion over the holidays but this is a bit extreme.
• Via The Mainichi Shimbun… Tokyo cops arrested a drunk fireman after he set off three fire extinguishers and hit an employee in the head at a Kabukicho hostess club after a dispute over the bar tab.
• And, via Jitsuwa Taiho… the higher yen has apparently led to an influx of South Korean hookers into Japan. In the immortal words of the TR, “ladies from the Land of the Morning Clam, er sorry, Calm, have been converging on Japan, using short-term tourist visas to sell short-time services.”

GOTCHA!

• The Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group said it located the Japanese whaling fleet bound for the South Seas by using two high-tech drones.
• Police believe that a suspicious fire at the gate to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo was the work of an arsonist. That theory is probably valid since traces of kerosene were found at the scene and “a man in blackish clothes was filmed on a security camera as he was torching the gate.” Good police work, fellas!
• Two men from China were arrested on Christmas Day for trying to exchange 10 ill-gotten Disneyland e-tickets for the real thing at the theme park. The e-tickets had been bought earlier on a couple’s credit card without their knowledge.
• A money box filled with ¥300 million in miniature cash put out by the Bandai toy company has become a huge hit in Osaka, where, we guess, cash is king.
• Transport minister Takeshi Maeda told reporters that bullet train tracks would be laid between Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture and Tsuruga in Fukui Prefecture, Hakodate and Sapporo in Hokkaido Prefecture, and Isahaya and Nagasaki in Nagasaki Prefecture.
• About 60,000 passengers on the Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train line were stuck for over two hours after a tree covered in snow fell on the tracks and cut power in Gifu Prefecture.

DOGGED COPS

• Smoky, a Labrador retriever, has been enlisted by Tokyo police “to sniff out bombs and search for disaster survivors.” They opted for a kinder, gentler Lab this time over another German Shepherd, which can be “intimidating,” according to the cops.
• Meanwhile, in Tottori Prefecture, officials there have seen fit to put two toy poodles to work as police dogs.
• After receiving letters from some 100 school kids in tsunami-hit Sendai, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao “expressed willingness to lease giant pandas to a zoo in the disaster-hit Japanese city to cheer up children there.”
• Researchers from the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology in Chiba Prefecture are collecting swallows’ nests from around the country “to investigate the effects of radiation released from the Fukushima nuclear disaster on birds.”
• An anonymous man dropped off 10 schools bags at a child welfare facility in Gunma Prefecture. The unknown Santa then left without identifying himself.

RESIDUAL DAMAGE

• A Kyodo News survey has shown that the number of government officials in 33 quake/tsunami-ravaged municipalities who took sick leave “for mental ailments” from April to October following the events of March 11 was up 70 percent over a year earlier.
• In a related matter, residents in Saga Prefecture sued the operator of the Genkai nuclear power plant “demanding that all four reactors there be suspended from operations due to the risk of accident caused by a potential earthquake or tsunami.”
• Of the 342 students aged 15 or under who died or went missing on March 11, 120 lost their lives after being picked up from school by their parents, a Kyodo News survey has revealed.
• A leading South Korean newspaper ran a revised headline on its March 12 edition—nine months after the fact—after its initial March 12 issue was deemed “inappropriate.” The original headline, “Sinking Japan,” was changed to “Japan struck by huge disaster.”
• Seventeen students from Japanese high schools and universities who lost loved ones in the March 11 disaster got a tour of the Kremlin in Moscow at the invitation of Svetlana Medvedev, wife of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

IF THE SHOES FIT …

• Running shoes worn by competitors in a national ekiden relay race have been sent to underprivileged student-athletes at schools in Nagasaki, a move spearheaded by Nike Japan and a Nagasaki Prefecture track and field association.
• Some frozen beef imported into Japan from the United States in July apparently contained spinal columns, “so-called risk materials feared to cause mad cow disease and barred from importation into Japan.”
• Winter bonuses at major companies in Japan rose an average of 3.62 percent from the previous year, up to ¥802,701. It was the second consecutive rise and the first time the figure cracked the ¥800,000 barrier in three years, according to the Japan Business Federation.
• A 77-year-old man, who was punched out and lost consciousness after telling two men not to cross the street on a red light outside Oimachi Station, has died from his injuries.
• Two-time Olympic judo champion Masato Uchishiba was indicted for allegedly raping a member of a university judo team he was coaching after first plying the young woman with alcohol.
• A 55-year-old air traffic controller who nodded off while on duty at Naha airport was docked 10 percent of his pay for a month by the transport ministry.

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