Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2012

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

• Tamae Watanabe, a 73-year-old who broke her back in 2005, became the oldest woman to scale Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. (Or, for fans of Monty Python, “The mountain with the biggest tits in the world.”)
• For the first time since stats were kept in 1988, the number of cellphone subscriptions in Japan is greater than the population of the country at 128,205,000, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has revealed.
• Many teachers at Japanese junior high schools are reportedly shakin’ all over since the education ministry made dance compulsory, with hip hop among the options. “Some of the teachers faced with the prospect of busting their moves in front of classes full of skeptical 12- to 14-year-olds are getting nervous,” said a report on The Asahi Shimbun website.
• Masaru Shishido, a 43-year-old actor who formerly played a superhero in the Super Sentai series on TV, opened a bar called Crystal Sky in Tachikawa where he has his waitresses dress like characters from the show and he “insists they call him Taicho (captain of the squad).”

GOTCHA!

• Renegade Penguin no. 337 was finally back behind bars, two months after escaping from Tokyo Sea Life Park and making his way into Tokyo Bay. His freedom did not come without a price, however, as the poor little bugger picked up a nasty case of pinkeye while on the lam.
• The wife of former BJ League basketball star Lynn Washington was released by Osaka cops after her February arrest for receiving close to a kilo of weed through the mail.
• A 31-year-old employee of the Secom security company was arrested after a surveillance camera caught him stealing over ¥200,000 from a Kyoto restaurant that was one of his clients. Another Secom employee recognized the dufus from the security tapes.
• A Tokyo court sentenced a former program director at NHK to a suspended sentence after illegal drugs were found in his Shibuya home. The 47-year-old was apparently addicted to painkillers and one of the drugs he was caught with bore the nifty handle 5-MeO-DIPT.

MEAT IS MURDER

• A butcher in Osaka was collared for selling beef from radiation-affected Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures while falsely claiming it came from Kagoshima and Hokkaido. “It was hard to sell by saying it was Fukushima grown,” said the man after getting busted. No shit, dude.
• Bottom Story of the Week“All 3 ibis chicks born to 1st pair in wild leave nest on Sado Island” (from Kyodo via The Mainichi)
• The romantically named AASC (Area Activation Supporting Center) in Hyogo Prefecture has bestowed the title of “lover’s sanctuary” on the ruins of Takeda castle, which features “mists that make it look like it is floating over the clouds.”
• The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is offering subsidies ranging from ¥100,000 up to ¥800,000 to homes buying storage batteries this summer. A basic lithium ion storage battery with 1 kilowatt of output goes for about ¥2 million.
• With taxes being hiked, salaries going down, and the economy in total disarray, residents of Japan will be happy to learn that their government is footing the entire bill to put up a monument in the Dominican Republic to recognize Japanese emigration to that country in the 1950s.
• Sixteen junior and senior high-school students from tsunami-hit Miyagi Prefecture visited Bulgaria at the invitation of that nation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, providing some much-needed stress relief.
• A 21-year-old Irish exchange student was strangled to death at Shinjuku’s Keio Plaza Hotel and her friend was sexually assaulted after they had attended a Nicky Minaj concert in Tokyo. Two young Americans staying at the hotel—a hip-hop dancer named James Blackston and a musician—were taken into police custody.
• “This is great news! I am so relieved and happy he is OK.” Those were the words of an American radar station technician in Alaska upon learning that a seven-year-old boy from Miyagi Prefecture, whose soccer ball had washed ashore in Alaska several months after the deadly tsunami, had survived the ordeal.
• Tickets will be pricey, ranging from ¥150,000 to ¥550,000 per person, but a new luxury train service in the works by JR Kyushu plans to operate at 90 percent capacity. The “Seven Stars in Kyushu” service will begin next year and features deluxe lounges—complete with grand pianos—and fancy dining cars.

A GUY’S GOTTA EAT

• Ousted Olympus CEO Michael Woodford is asking for $60 million in a UK court over his dismissal by the camera maker after he brought up some pretty major financial irregularities at the company.
• Thieves made off with a dozen samurai swords worth some ¥15 million from an antique store in Osaka.
  A Japanese mini-submarine sunk in Australia’s Sydney Harbor after attacking some Allied warships moored there in 1942 is now opened to curious divers, after both governments gave the OK.
• Nikon was under fire after cancelling a planned photo exhibition by a Japan-based Korean photographer focusing on Japan’s use of wartime “sex slaves.” The camera company wouldn’t cite any specific reasons for pulling the plug but did say it had gotten “complaints by mail and telephone.”
• “Is it all right for a large corporation like Nikon to permit such a wimpy reaction?” asked one outraged journalist, who called the move “Nikon’s self-censorship.”
• Hu Deping, son of Chinese reformist Hu Yaobang and a politician himself, scrapped his plans to come to Japan to promote a TV documentary “featuring secret episodes of friendship between Japan and China” that he helped produce. Rising tensions over disputed islands, Uyghurs, etc., were the likely culprit.
• Slumping Yakult Swallows slugger Wladimir Balentien was issued a “stiff warning” by the ballclub and sent down to the minors after updating his Twitter account during a 10-0 loss to the Seibu Lions.

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