Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2012

CATCH OF THE DAY

• A 269-kilo bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Aomori Prefecture sold for a record ¥56.49 million at the Tsukiji fish market, beating the record ¥32.49 million set a year ago.
• Kiyoshi Kimura, whose Kiyomura company runs the Sushi-zanmai chain that bought the pricey tuna, said that in order to break even on the record fish, they would have to charge about ¥15,000 per piece of sushi. But, he said, it would go for “the usual price, between ¥134 and ¥418 per piece.”
• Meanwhile, fishermen in the Hokkaido port of Wakkanai are not too happy that a colony of spotted seals has decided to hang out on the beach there for the winter. Tourists seem to enjoy checking out the cuddly creatures but fishermen there claim the seals eat some 200-300 salmon a day out of their nets.
• A new JR train station proposed on the Yamanote Line between Shinagawa and Tamachi could begin construction in fiscal 2014.

NICE HAUL

• Japan cleaned up at the annual FIFA awards banquet in Zurich. Nadeshiko Japan captain Homare Sawa was named Women’s Player of the Year; Norio Sasaki, who coached the Nadeshiko to victory at the Women’s World Cup, was named Coach of the Year for women’s teams; and the Fair Play Award went to the Japan Football Association.
• A 21-year-old Kyoto university student, who had done some volunteer relief work in Miyagi Prefecture after the March 11 tsunami, beat out some 3,000 people in a race to be first to pray at a shrine in Nishinomiya, thereby becoming “Japan’s happiest man.”
• In a murder that sounds like it came straight out of the game Clue, a chef found bleeding in a Ueno parking lot later died of his injuries.
• In another food-related incident, a car slammed into a ramen shop in Tochigi.
• Kodansha has announced plans to recast popular baseball manga and anime TV series “Kyojin no Hoshi” (Star of the Giants) for an Indian audience by switching the hero to a cricket player. Crikey!
• The frozen body of a 32-year-old man was found outside a game center in Mie Prefecture, apparently in a “seated position.”
• A Taiwanese man being held for the killing of two Taiwanese women in Tokyo to study Japanese killed himself while in custody in the back of a police car. The guy stabbed himself in the neck with a knife that cops apparently failed to detect on his person.

DAMN YANKEES!

• After winning the silent bidding for Seibu Lions shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima, the New York Yankees all of a sudden got fiscally responsible and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—come up with the cash to sign him. It’s back to Saitama for Nakajima-san. Oh well, maybe next year.
• A new concert hall opening in Shanghai in August will be overrun by J-pop stars and the people who love them, including Hironobu Kageyama, singer of the “Dragon Ball Z” theme song.
• The good news: Peach Aviation started selling 5,000 one-way airline tickets from Osaka to Fukuoka for just ¥250 each.
• The bad news: Remember those 10,000 free airline tickets to Japan that the nation’s tourism agency was promising back in October to promote post-March 11 travel to these shores? Well, that’s not gonna happen now… budget not approved.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

• Making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, large posters at an Osaka department store trumpeted a “Fuckin’ sale” with everything 20 percent off.
• Also from the good people in Osaka, a burger joint was advertising a “Fuckin’ yummy hamburger!!” We’ll take two … fuck yeah!
• Coming of Age Day in Japan saw a record-low 1.22 million people who will turn 20 this year, the fifth straight year the figure has decreased.
• The decline marks the first time the number has been less than half the record of 2.46 million set in 1970.
• “The roughly 620,000 men and 600,000 women comprise 0.96 percent of Japan’s population, down for the eighth consecutive year,” according to an estimate by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.
• An ornery 65-year-old Japanese man was arrested by FBI agents in Hawaii for assaulting a flight attendant on a Delta flight from Tokyo to Honolulu. Apparently, the guy “hit the flight attendant once with an open hand and once with a closed fist after drinking multiple glasses of wine.” So he hit the bottle then hit the stew.
• A court in Kobe found a former president of West Japan Railway not guilty of professional negligence over the 2005 high-speed train wreck in Hyogo Prefecture that left 107 people dead when a train hopped the tracks and hit an apartment building.
• The US magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the so-called “Doomsday Clock” in 1947, said in a statement there are still “approximately 19,500 nuclear weapons [in the world today], enough power to destroy the Earth’s inhabitants several times over.”
• A researcher in Hokkaido has concluded that marimo balls—“a type of green algae that grows in a round shape”—have been spread around the world from Japan through migrating birds.
• ANA passengers who flew on the airline’s Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” on New Year’s Day got a nice greeting from staff wearing long-sleeved kimonos while bearing gifts and souvenirs.
• A marathon in tsunami-hit Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture was held once again this year, attracting some 1,500 runners, although the course did have to be altered due to the events of March 11.
• A very pissed-off Chinese dude threw four Molotov cocktails at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul because, he says, “his great grandfather on his mother’s side died of torture while fighting against Japan’s colonial rule,” according to a report from the Yonhap News Agency.
• Three crew members from a disabled North Korean fishing boat found drifting off Shimane Prefecture were shipped back home via China. A fourth man, who had died, was also heading home in a body bag.

SAYING IT IN SONG

• Over 100 people from disaster-wracked Miyagi Prefecture decided to show their gratitude to relief and aid workers by putting on an original musical, the “Arigato o Iiniiko Project” (Let’s go say thank you project).
• Ko Young Hee, the mom of new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, apparently secretly visited Japan twice before she died in 2004. Ko, late leader Kim Jong Il’s mistress, visited her hometown of Osaka and went on a shopping spree in Ginza.
• A recent estimate by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government predicts that the population of Tokyo will peak at 13.35 million in 2020.

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