Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2012

All in a day’s work

• JR Tokai reprimanded one of its shinkansen drivers for using his keitai to send dozens of emails and make several phone calls while on the job. A subsequent investigation found that seven other bullet train drivers engaged in similar hanky-panky.
• It was reported that a nurse in Fukuoka wrote a blog post about “using a needle to abuse a patient she didn’t like at the cancer center where she works.”
• Meanwhile, a nurse in Kyoto was slapped with a four-year prison sentence for tearing the toenails off four patients at a local hospital in August. Ouch!
• The head of a Fukuoka-based trading company was busted for exporting “500 packets of cigarettes and a dozen two-liter packs of sake” to North Korea. The Japanese government bans the export of such “luxury items” to the country.

News you can use

• Researchers from Utsunomiya University and Chubu Electric Power Co. have found that “crows possess long-term memory allowing them to distinguish and remember colors for at least a year.”
• Meanwhile, scientists from Japan and Germany have discovered that both chimpanzees and humans associate high-pitched sounds with brightness and low-pitched sounds with darkness.
• A conservation group in Iwate says that a “miraculous” pine tree which survived the March 11 tsunami will likely die because its roots have been rotted by seawater. The 30m-tall pine in Rikuzen-Takata was the only survivor from a forest of around 70,000 trees.
• Researchers from the Chiba Institute of Technology and Tsukuba University discovered that a 140-ton boulder was moved a distance of 470m (one-third of a mile) by the March tsunami.

The crime files

• A 20-year-old female college student suffered slight injuries when she was stabbed by a stranger near her home in Chiba. The woman said her assailant was a man in his late 20s wearing jeans and a dark shirt… That should narrow down the suspect list.
• Some weirdo is going around stealing “brass fire-hose connectors” and other equipment from fire stations in western Japan. There have been 480 such thefts in 19 cities in Nara, Kyoto and Mie.
• Tough times for gangsters: cops in Tokyo arrested an indigent yakuza member “for attempting to resell complimentary tickets to Sanrio Puroland.”
• Meanwhile, an Osaka man was busted for selling forged “fast pass” tickets for use on rides at Tokyo Disneyland.
• Police in Osaka charged the owner of a chain of ramen shops for tampering with the restaurants’ electricity meters. The man apparently scammed Kansai Electric out of ¥60 million.

News from Nagatacho

• It was reported that a big factor in Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s recent weight loss is his wife’s injunction “to decrease his alcohol consumption in consideration of his health.”
• The government announced that a record 2,059,871 people around the country are receiving welfare.
• Officials also say that reports of elderly people being abused by their relatives have reached an all-time high.
• The National Police Agency announced that 30 people were arrested for illegally sharing digital files, including “a Harry Potter movie, Studio Ghibli’s animated feature film Kari-gurashi no Arrietty, and songs by the all-girl pop idol group AKB48.”

Milestones

• After a 115-year-old woman from Saga died of natural causes, 114-year-old Jirouemon Kimura of Kyoto was officially declared to be Japan’s oldest person.
• The world’s oldest dog, a 26-year-old male mutt living in Tochigi, “passed away while having his head rubbed.”
• Two Japanese researchers were awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government for their role in the development of touch panel screens.
• The Canada-based World Green Building Council bestowed its Most Groundbreaking Policy Award on the city of Tokyo for a carbon-trading program involving 1,300 buildings.

The international scene

• A nationwide survey of 30,000 Japanese found that “friendly feelings” toward the US are at an all-time high.
• The Coast Guard said it will dispatch its personnel on whaling ships to help defend against environmental groups’ attacks during this winter’s whale hunts in the Antarctic Ocean.
• The Mayor of Hiroshima said he was “profoundly alarmed” by a US plan to build a park commemorating the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the atom bomb during World War II.

Occupational hazards

• A Tokyo Metro worker was killed and three others injured when a “15-meter-long switch weighing about 4.5 tons” fell on them during repair work at Toyosu station on the Yurakucho line.
• Firefighters believe a spark from machinery operated by repairmen was responsible for a blast in a tank of sulfuric acid at a chemical factory in Chiba that injured four workers.
• ANA was forced to cancel an early-morning flight from Fukuoka to Haneda when the pilot failed a breathalyzer test. The 55-year-old aeronaut admitted to drinking “about six glasses of shochu” the night before.
• The maker of Hokkaido’s famed Shiroi Koibito biscuits asked for a court injunction to stop three other companies from producing confections “that appear to be an imitation.”
• Job-hunting university students were offered advice on how to “wear suits properly and arrange their hair” during an event at the Takashimaya department store in Nihombashi.
• Bottom Story of the Week: “WHO Names Hokkaido University as Cooperative Center for Zoonosis Control” (via Kyodo)

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