Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2014

OUCH!

●      In a talk at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Goldman Sachs managing director Kathy Matsui noted that women are better represented in the parliament of Saudi Arabia than they are in the Japanese Diet.

●      A survey by researchers at the University of Tokyo and Nagoya University found that evacuees from the March 11 disaster moved, on average, to four different shelters in the first month after the crisis.

●      The health ministry accepted a recommendation by the Food Safety Commission to prohibit restaurants from serving raw pork liver.

●      A survey by the US-based Pew Research Center has found that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe enjoys strong public support in Vietnam, but low approval among Indians and Pakistanis.

SUMMERTIME MOOS

●      A farmer from Fukushima traveled to Tokyo—along with one of his cows—to protest a plan by the farm ministry to cull cattle exposed to radiation near the Daiichi plant.

●      A professor at Shinshu University with the delightful name of Hiroshi Nose has determined that “alternately walking fast, and then more slowly, is a good way to beat the summer heat.”

●      Budget carrier Jetstar Japan says it will compensate passengers to the tune of ¥20,000 when their flights are canceled or delayed more than six hours.

●      Headline of the Week: “Government-Backed Innovation Initiative Looking for ‘Weirdos’” (via The Japan Times)

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

●      Authorities at the welfare ministry say Japan’s child poverty rate stands at 16.3 percent—the highest on record.

●      Researchers at the Japanese Society of Travel Medicine have found that 55 percent of kids who climb Mt Fuji are afflicted with “mild mountain sickness.”

●      Among the services being offered by companies in the increasingly competitive daycare industry are “original educational materials and English conversation classes.”

●      The NPA is mulling a plan to allow children under 14 to shoot air guns so that they can get a head start on training for the 2020 Olympics.

DULY NOTED

●      Princess Mako, the 22-year-old granddaughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, announced that she’ll pursue a graduate degree in museology—that is, the study of museums—at the University of Leicester.

●      Among the attractions at TeNQ, a newly opened “space museum” in Tokyo Dome City, is a planetarium with a high-definition video screen measuring 11 meters in diameter.

●      A stash of letters exchanged by Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) and a woman “believed to be his first love” was found at the writer’s former residence in Kamakura.

●      A sculptor in Akita who created a 7.5-foot-tall statue of legendary sumo grand champion Taiho (1940-2013) donated the work to townspeople in the wrestler’s birthplace on Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

GULP

●      Officials at Japan’s five major brewers said shipments of beer and “quasi-beer” during the first half of the year dropped to their lowest levels ever.

●      Executives at Kirin say they’ll set up a small brewery in Daikanyama to “make high-end beer products” by next year.

●      A consortium of Japanese airlines and other organizations announced plans to develop biofuels to power passenger jets by the year 2020.

●      The fuel will be produced from “household waste and algae.”