July 21, 2011

July 21, 2011

July 21, 2011

This week's required reading

By

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2011

DIAMOND DUST

  • Sho Darvish, the younger brother of Nippon Ham Fighters ace Yu Darvish, was arrested twice in June—once for marijuana possession and again for assaulting a 19-year-old woman. So much for weed mellowing you out…
  • Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki saw his string of ten straight MLB All-Star Game appearances come to an end when he finished seventh in fan voting among American League outfielders. He still picked up over 2.5 million votes.
  • A renegade cat delayed a BayStars vs. Hiroshima Carp ballgame at Yokohama Stadium when it got on the field and had to be chased off by security.
  • Golfer Tiger Woods may have philandered away millions in endorsement contacts in the U.S. but he’s still big in Japan. Woods is the new face of Kowa, a Japanese muscle balm.
  • The heat is on once again and the Japan Football Association has decided to allow sports drinks, as well as your standard water, on the sidelines at soccer games to prevent heatstroke. Some stadiums, however, have a water-only policy in effect, worried that a little Pocari Sweat might kill the grass.
  • A 17-year-old boy scout with Japanese roots from Utah delivered soccer balls, uniforms and whistles to students affected by the March 11 earthquake/tsunami. Perhaps more suited to Sudan than Japan, but a good deed nonetheless.

DOG DAYS

  • Japanese hot dog-eating king Takeru Kobayashi set up his own personal wolf-down event on a New York rooftop while Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest took place on Coney Island across town. Joey Chestnut won Nathan’s event for the fifth time, powering down 62 dogs, while in Manhattan Kobayashi pounded back 69.
  • Kobayashi, a former six-time Nathan’s champ, has been banned from the competition since 2010 for refusing to sign a contract with Major League Eating, the sport’s governing body. Last year, he stormed the stage and had to be subdued, “thus officially making this the stupidest controversy in the history of everything,” as Rick Chandler of NBC Sports’ Off the Bench website aptly wrote.
  • Another Kobayashi, Formula One driver Kamui Kobayashi, also found himself in hot water, and it had nothing to do with boiling wieners. Sauber’s Kobayashi was accused by a couple of other drivers of dangerous driving at the Canadian Grand Prix, a charge he vehemently denied.
  • Orders for traditional Japanese fans uchiwa are way up this year with people looking for ways to stay cool while saving energy.
  • In Sendai, meanwhile, bug sprays and fly-swatters are flying off shelves as the summer heat has turned waste piles into insect magnets.

SNAKES ON A TRAIN

  • A red and black Honduran milk snake measuring a meter in length was found on a Shinkansen bullet train going from Shin-Osaka station to Kyoto. No bites to report, but the train did stop and the reptile was removed.
  • A Mainichi story reported a senior Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry official saying that General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt “was afraid of being blamed for product responsibility and was even reluctant to meet Japanese government officials initially.” GE, in partnership with Hitachi, supplied the nuclear containment system at the Fukushima power plant.
  • It was revealed that Japan international soccer goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima can speak several languages, among them Japanese, English, Italian and Dutch. A cunning linguist if ever there was one.
  • A 66-year-old Fukuoka man, whose driver’s license was revoked “sometime around 1965,” was arrested for driving without a valid license for some 46 years.
  • A man from Mexico was given a suspended jail sentence for “forcibly taking his daughter from his separated Japanese wife last November by breaking into her home in Niigata.” His wife’s mom was injured in the fracas.

PUT A SOCK IN IT!

  • Outspoken Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said this city will once again bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics “at any cost.” Aren’t there more important things to spend money on these days… like food, shelter and clothing for people from Tohoku?
  • A day after Reconstruction Minister Ryu Matsumoto resigned, Prime Minister Naoto Kan apologized for Matsumoto’s “unpleasant remarks,” which included chastising local governors and threatening to have media blackballed if they reported his general unpleasantness.
  • A fire broke out at a nuclear power plant’s waste disposal facility in Ibaraki Prefecture, but the government said no radioactive materials were released into the atmosphere.
  • A 79-year-old Japanese fisherman died after his boat collided with a Vietnamese cargo ship near Yokohama. The man’s son survived the accident after being plucked from the sea.
  • A coolant leak led the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan to shut down its flagship Subaru telescope in Hawaii for repairs.
  • The head of internet service firm Biz International was arrested for “enticing people to join a cyberspace service, which police believe is linked to a pyramid scheme, on false information.”
  • Messages of hope written on scallop shells have been popping up at Koishihama station in tsunami-hit Iwate Prefecture.
  • TEPCO has agreed to pay up to ¥300,000 in additional compensation “to those who were forced to evacuate or were affected in other ways due to the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.” That is on top of the ¥1 million TEPCO paid to each household within 30 km of its damaged nuclear plant.
  • Susan Roos, the wife of U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos, has put out a cookbook of her own recipes to help raise money for earthquake and tsunami victims in Miyagi Prefecture.

YOU CAN’T BEAT A LIVE HORSE EITHER

  • Police in Mie Prefecture started proceedings against five men suspected of beating horses on their bellies, backsides and ribs during a Shinto festival in May 2009.
  • A former police inspector, who now drives a truck, was arrested after a woman’s severed legs were found in Yokohama Port. The guy admitted he killed his wife, cut her apart and threw her body parts in a river.
  • A 75-year-old woman in Hyogo Prefecture was injured when a raccoon attacked her after first biting her dog.
  • A Japanese man caught with five grams of marijuana and four grams of hashin his bag at Bali’s airport faces up to four years in jail.

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